One of my reasons for skepticism about megachurches has been that I thought of it mostly as a white-suburban concept. Go somewhere where the population is exploding, start an excellent seeker service and you’ve got a pretty good chance of tapping into the same public preference that is creating larger and larger Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Best Buys.

Then at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit, I heard James Meeks, megachurch pastor (who lead a church from a few hundred in 1985 to 20,000 today). His most memorable line: “I learned church growth principles and applied them, and the principles didn’t know I was black, so they worked for me.” It is Meeks’ church, Salem Baptist on the far South Side of Chicago, that boasts the largest worship center in Chicagoland, larger even than Willow’s new building.

Christianity Today did an excellent story on Meeks a few years ago, writing about him as the most effective megapastor you’ve never heard of. A remarkable fact is that Meeks is not only a pastor but the Illinois State Senator for the 15th District which includes some of the poorest places in the city. At first blush this seems unwise - “If God calls you to pastor, don’t stoop to be a king” and all that. But in a poor area, the justice and poverty issues that hamper people’s lives call for political measures as well as spiritual ones. Meeks convinced me that he is ministering in the Senate just as surely as he is from his pulpit.
Salem Baptist, like Willow, demonstrates the strength of a megachurch. In 1998, Meeks and his members united to “dry up” their community and close 26 liquor stores. In another effort, they visited all 800-plus street corners in their community and talked about the Lord to prostitutes, drug dealers and anyone they could find. They gave free Bibles to every home in their community - 33,000 in all, a monumental delivery task.

Now Meeks and Bill Hybels, lead pastor at Willow, have formed a genuine friendship which they both find joy in discussing. Several dozen leaders from the two congregations took a bus tour last year to visit many of the significant civil rights locations, and Meeks and Hybels meet the group in Selma to walk across the famous bridge there. As a result of this trip and other activities, members of these two churches actually KNOW one another as friends, and care about each other’s experiences.

I still don’t think that the megachurch is the only way, and of course it has its problems just as surely as the microchurch does. But with all the other blessings these two churches have given, add this: Meeks and Hybels have given us an example to follow.

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