WCC LEADER SLAMS BIG CHURCHES -- HOW IRONIC
A few days ago the World Council of Churches General Secretary Samuel Kobia slammed the megachurch movement as being "shallow in theology."

I'm not a megachurch pastor and there are certain megachurches that I think are shallow. But there are plenty of smaller churches which are shallow, too. Shallowness isn't necessarily related to size. I do believe that it is harder work and requires more energy to cultivate depth in a larger setting (and this is why I'm an advocate for the development of more smaller churches) but it can be done and is being done quite well. So it seems that Kobia's criticism is a cheap shot without justification. And there is a certain irony in having it come from the WCC leadership. Ted Olsen, the CT weblog editor expresses it well:

We just don't pay attention to the WCC. As many say these days, it's the World Council of Churches Nobody Goes To Anymore. But World Council of Churches General Secretary Samuel Kobia is getting a fair bit of press for an interview he did with Reuters. In it, he slams the megachurch as having "no depth, in most cases, theologically speaking, and has no appeal for any commitment. It's a church being organized on corporate logic. That can be quite dangerous if we are not very careful, because this may become a Christianity which I describe as 'two miles long and one inch deep.'"

Now, one can criticize megachurches in particular, and one can talk about the challenges of size, but recent research has demonstrated that it's almost impossible to say anything uniformly about "megachurches." A few trends that did emerge from the Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research study, however, directly contradict Kobia's statements about theological depth and lack of commitment. What's notable about Kobia's statement is how familiar it sounds. Theologically shallow? A religion-is-for-Sunday-only mentality? That's not the megachurch, friend—that's the mainline churches that form the majority of the WCC. And as for being organized on corporate logic, if ever there were churches that look like boardrooms and shareholders' meetings, it's the mainline denominations and their ecumenical bodies. Still, it's safe for Kobia to slam megachurches. After all, most churches he represents don't have anything to worry about when it comes to getting too big.