Michael Dusseau and his two
sons at church
"We typically have about ten-to-fifteen people at the service. It's very informal."
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With a few dozen house churches hosting small groups of worshippers, and hundreds more attending on the church's website, Northland would seem to be taking away one of the primary ingredients of Christian worship: community.
"That was a concern from the beginning,"
says the church's communications director Robert Andrescik:
"But it's the same as if somebody walks into a church, doesn't say a word to anyone, and walks out. How's that any different than worshipping on the web by yourself. And people who worship with us, actually participate. If there's communion, they take communion with us. They just do it from a different place." TV studio|
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Mr Andrescik shows the control room at the mother church outside Orlando. It felt more like a television studio than a church, and, sure enough, most of the technical staff have backgrounds in television. The church has invested millions of dollars in technology to make this all possible. But why go to all the trouble? Why don't people such as Michael Dusseau just start their own local church?
Dan Lasich is pastor for distributed sites at Northland, he says the costs in technology may be high, but it remains more efficient than lots of local churches: "When you establish yourself as a separate identity as a church now you have to provide all of the resources that that church needs. They don't have to worry about that. They're covered under the umbrella of the Northland Church and so all they need to worry about is building relations with one another and living out a Christian life in their community. We take care of the rest. That's part of our central service."
Full circle
Michael Dusseau says he misses going to the main church. But he feels Northland is onto something with the idea of the home church:
"This is how we all started as Christians in the beginning. Churches started out of the homes. Now we've come full circle in the year 2008. We're bringing the church back into the home."
Amen.
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One such state is Florida. Northland's Pastor Joel Hunter has emerged as a national figure among evangelical Christians. A Republican himself, Pastor Joel is not endorsing either candidate, and tells his congregation only that they should go out and vote. Pastor Joel himself said a prayer at the Democratic National Convention. |
Tags: community, evangelical, Florida, mega church, Northland, Orlando, worship