Megachurches set up more-personal locations

People who don’t want to be part of a large congregation like the suburban feel of the satellites.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Devin Braun’s place of worship looks more like a big cafe or a small concert hall than a megachurch.

Young people lounge on couches that could’ve been swiped from Mom and Dad’s basement. They laugh at photographs of bad tattoos (Clay Aiken’s face on someone’s back?) blown up on two projection screens at either end of the room, part of a lesson about decisions you can’t take back.

The 500 people who attend two weekly meetings sip coffee and energy drinks, thumb through well-worn Bibles and listen intently to a sermon delivered by a woman who can’t be much older than they are.

This branch location of the evangelical Xenos Christian Fellowship, whose main campus in suburban Westerville sees 3,000 people each weekend, meets inside a newly renovated space near Ohio State University’s campus.

It is one of many satellite churches in central Ohio and across the country, set up by megachurches to allow congregants a more personal experience even as they grow. The branch locations also are a way to reach people who wouldn’t join thousands of worshippers every Sunday at main, mainly suburban churches.

“The whole thing is keeping the scale down, keeping it more personal,” said Jay Reilly, a spokesman for Xenos, which also oversees a weekly meeting in the Franklinton neighborhood of Columbus. They’re considering planting a location in suburban Pickerington, too. “It’s a way to become a big church without becoming an impersonal one,” he said.

The Xenos branch is convenient for Braun, 19, an engineering student who lives down the street.

More important, it’s comfortable.

“It’s small enough people can ask questions and actually get answers,” Braun said. “It’s not like some megachurch where you get lost in a sea of people.”

Opening new locations is a popular growth strategy of evangelical megachurches across America, said the Rev. Jim Zippay, pastor of Heritage Christian Church in Westerville. It’s a way for nondenominational churches to feel like part of a network, without the structure or hierarchy of a denomination, he said.

Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, about 30 miles southeast of Columbus, has membership of more than 2,000 and a second location in nearby Baltimore, where about 400 people worship.

Sometimes, churches branch out by setting up new locations with separate pastors and leadership. Other times, the senior pastor’s sermon is broadcast on video to the various locations, which enjoy their own live music and fellowship.

That model is used at the 23,000-member Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, one of the country’s biggest churches.

The main campus is in the northwestern suburb of South Barrington, and has an attendance of 18,000 a weekend, said Susan DeLay, a church spokeswoman.

DeLay attends one of four regional campuses, which are dispersed between 20 and 50 miles from Chicago. The church also has a downtown service that meets at the 4,000-seat Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University.

Together, the regional campuses draw about 5,000 people a week, DeLay said.

They each have their own worship team and live music and drama, but the weekly sermon from South Barrington, often delivered by the Rev. Bill Hybels, senior pastor, is shown on several video screens.

It’s an idea being considered at Vineyard Church of Columbus, said the Rev. Rich Nathan, pastor.

People drive from as far as Bucyrus and Marion, 35 to 50 miles to the north, to come to Vineyard in Westerville, he said.

Nathan finds the chance to extend his ministry to new parts of Ohio appealing. His sermon would be transmitted from Westerville, and the staff at the main campus would oversee the branch’s finances.

He would appoint a local pastor to duplicate the services Vineyard Columbus provides for those in need. Branch leaders wouldn’t have to be career ministers, but rather laypeople with a desire to carry out the Vineyard mission. “There would be a group of people in another city who would be able to reach their communities in a way we can’t in Columbus, Ohio,” Nathan said.

Branch locations give you the resources of a big church with the coziness of a small one, said Bobbette Quinlan, who attends Heritage Christian Church Marysville, a branch of Heritage Christian in Westerville, about 25 miles northwest of the main branch.

Heritage also has locations in suburban Dublin and Delaware. Each has its own pastor.

It’s easier for churchgoers to bring friends when there’s a location right around the corner, said Zippay, who founded Heritage 18 years ago with a Bible study group of 30.

“I think our responsibility is to continue to extend the message of Christ to more and more people,” he said. “We can only do so much here.”