Note: This table doesn’t appear to allow for horizontal scrolling on some mobile devices and is best viewed on a tablet or desktop. Someday, maybe, I’ll fix it or design it. But by that point, it will be time for a new list…

“Is this the movie theaters?” “No, sir, it’s a church. A very large one.”

Since I happen to go to a megachurch (Crossroads Church in Cincinnati), I recently became curious about all the other megachurches out there. The word megachurch just implies that it’s a really large church and nothing else, even though the megachurch stereotype includes modern worship services with loud music and a place where you have comfy seats and can bring your coffee in, but not all of these churches are like that. It was eye-opening for me to check out all these other churches (by looking at their websites and articles about them- thanks Google!) and compare them to mine. Kind of brought me out of my bubble a bit. On the one hand, it was interesting to see so many commonalities between them all (like their extension locations), which made my church not seem as unique, but it also made me appreciate my church more for certain things, like how we don’t sell books and other materials on our website and our senior/founding pastor doesn’t even have a picture or bio up on the website because he’s not trying to make it all about him (I’m assuming). They are all heavy on the males in leadership- every single church has a male senior pastor that is on average 54 years old and only two- The Potter’s House and Hopewell Missionary Baptist- are non-white. All the pastors are married with kids and it appears only one- William Sheals of Hopewell Missionary Baptist- is divorced (he is now remarried).  I found only two churches, The Potter’s House and Crossroads, that listed female pastors.  Most of the churches, especially those near the top of the list, had very snazzy websites and videos. Oddly, I was kind of happy my church’s website wasn’t as sleek- it felt more like a true church and less business-like and consumer-driven (update: the website has been updated since this post was written).

I love that my megachurch is a place that is capable of doing great things. Crossroaders are very generous people who have donated tons of their own money to make things happen in our city and elsewhere, like funding after-care homes for girls rescued from sex slavery in India. We don’t focus on religious rituals but rather on community, service, and educating people on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It’s definitely a Bible-based church, not some New Age self-help center like some people think, and people there are the real deal. I’ve truly been challenged to change the way I think about things and live my life. I’ve also managed to find really good friends there, something I didn’t think would be very easy at a megachurch. I’ve learned A LOT as well. Before I came to Crossroads, I didn’t really understand what it meant when people said “Jesus died for your sins” and things like that. I get it now and I’m very grateful I found Crossroads.

Please take all this information with a grain of salt as websites are not always up-to-date and I’m not actually visiting or talking with people to get this information.  I  compiled it primarily through Outreach Magazine’s 2014 “Largest Churches in America” list and added a few churches I knew were missing, like Lakewood (probably because they didn’t fill out Outreach’s survey), and googled around for other lists. The attendance totals for a few may be from a different year and it’s also hard to compare a church if they list membership instead of attendance, because that’s not the same thing. So the bottom line is that this list is not perfect and could be missing a couple churches and the order could be slightly off. And when reading my notes, keep in mind that no churches are perfect, they all have flaws as they are being ran by flawed people.