Smooth, plasticky, yellow, oozing, ready-to-consume; spreads easily; sounds like "Jesus" but isn't; appears bright and colorful; doesn't have a lot of serious nutritional substance -- it's gotta be Cheeze Whiz Church
The Megachurch Dictionary
Align with the mission – stop questioning the agenda of the ministry team
Apathy – attitude of small churches
Authentic - working hard not to seem phony
Be relational – being social in a godly kind of way
Carrier of the vision - the main leader; the high one; the pastor
Cast vision – spread our ideas while presenting them as God’s
Catch the vision -- agree with the leadership
Cause or effort greater than yourself – Sort of God, but not if you don’t believe yet. It’s God if you do, but if you don’t, it’s OK, too. Don’t sweat the details.
CGM - code word for "church growth movement;" a philosophy espousing a market-model for expanding the reach of a church and enriching its leaders. Also known as PDC
Church family – congregation, but friendlier
Church growth – increasing the number of giving units
Church people –(derogatory) attenders who object to cultural relevancy shifts, e.g. pot-smoking in the nursery; pole dancing in the fellowship hall- or who show other signs of uptight, old-fashioned church behavior. Often used with scare quotes to show disdain.
Clarity of vision – agreement with the leaders on the direction or practices of the church
Conversion rate – for all practical considerations, the rate at which unchurched become churched
Coaching – turning a mediocre servant-leader into someone as brilliant and engaging as ourselves
Commitment – spending more time on church events than with family; the quality of being on a higher spiritual plane than low-involvement “church people.”
Closing their doors – what small churches do
Cultivating fresh experiences – rejecting traditional methods; see Missional
Do church -- attending or running church; a slightly satirical expression since the word "church" should be avoided except in sarcasm
Equipping – giving underlings the skills God won’t create in them, so they can do mighty things for the Kingdom
Energy – trait seen among ministry teams aligned with the mission and also seen in high-involvement lay people; missing from most churched people
Exponential kingdom growth – the goal of the megachurch; becoming a giant inflatable
Fellowship -- a churchy term that somehow sounds less churchy than church
Giving units – church attenders who pay the bills so that the church can buy more A/V equipment
Harvesting the unchurched – making services attractive to people who don’t like church, so they will eventually become giving units
High-impact ministry -- a little more cutting edge than "making a difference," but not quite as culturally relevant as "missional"
Heart-perceptions – much more reliable than mind perceptions (which can be skewed by too much reading of old literature, like scripture)
High-yield church planting – producing lots of giving units from just a few
Incarnational approach – being OK with the flesh; also, being intimidated by secular criticism about the inspiration and authority of scripture
Influencers -- the high-powered, quality people in the congregation that leaders can use to put pressure on others when needed
Innovators – creative, high-involvement attenders or leaders who aren’t afraid to break a few eggs while doing great things for God
Intentional – purposeful, deliberate; as opposed to haphazard methods of church leadership, like following the leading of the Holy Spirit
Internally-focused – the self-centered aims of traditional churches, not churches that spend thousands on high-tech equipment, theme-park Sunday schools and luxurious recreation facilities for members.
Involvement (see Commitment) – slightly higher than faith on the spiritual gift inventory; possessors of this quality enjoy being in a position of glory in a megachurch
Inspiration – a commodity that can be borrowed or purchased from sermon outline companies or online sermon sharing sites
Kingdom engineers – ministry team members who know how to move people around to get the most out of everyone, for God
Kingdom impact – making a difference in a holy kind of way, but not too holy
Kingdom mindset – a rare perspective in churches that puts the creation of multiple giving units above everything else. Only servant-leaders with a kingdom mindset care enough to make a difference with the unchurched.
Kingdom principles – a set of rules for helping God out aggressively
Leadership skills – what talented pastoral teams develop to make it easier to move non-leaders around
Leadershipteam – the ones who get the front seats; see Ministry team
Low-involvement members – those who only come to morning services and never help in the nursery
Ministry team – movers and shakers; the only “churched” people who count
Mission – the leaders’ way
Missional – the best kind, superior, on fire, evangelical, on a higher plane
Missional churches – among the elite few churches that care about the lost, er, unchurched
Navigate issues – keeping troublemakers quiet
Out-of-the-box -- Once, this meant creative and unique approach; it's been overused now, though, so it's becoming an in-the-box term that innovative servant-leaders avoid
Outward leader – good pastor
Paradigm - model, example. Used frequently to show cultural and vocabular relevance
Passion – what drives missional leaders but is lacking in others
Pastoral talent team – Those God has called to make creative decisions and sit in the highest seats
PDC model -- Purpose Driven Church model, a way of making your church elbow its way into relevance and growth
Relevant - ten years behind the times, instead of 50 like non-missional churches
Research – ranks higher than scripture in authority
Statistics – rank even higher than research in authority
Servant – Megachurch pastor title (see Servant-leader)
Servant evangelism - anything you do for the church; sounds better than just evangelism
Servant-leader – a church authority with all the glory of Christ’s humble label for church workers, while still enjoying the most prominent place in decision-making
Small church – an inferior church, an unsuccessful church
Strong culture - What missional leaders will establish in their church to coerce new attendees to become missional and invite friends
Team – The pastor and his groupies
The churched – (derogatory) backwater people who only like hymns and who cause trouble when churches move too fast into enlightened servanthood
Training – teaching wannabes how to do what we big pastors do
Transfers – church attenders who come from other churches; less desirable than the unchurched, but still welcomed as giving units
Tribe – church family
Vision – A plan for filling the largest building available with the most people, for God. Can substitute "delusion."
Vision community – those special people in the congregation who think, walk, talk and act like the pastor or leaders, especially concerning church growth movement philosophy
Vision statement – a multi-part expression, usually including mixed metaphors, that rephrases what the church intends to do to something that sounds godly
Worship - Repetitive, loud, thematically bland music, performed before a standing crowd
Much like church growth businesses, Cheeze Whiz is smooth, bright and tasty, has an exciting name, spreads, has an appealing color, has kind of a plasticky feel to it, sounds sort of like Jesus but isn't -- and has virtually nothing of serious nutritional substance.
By taste testing the many dishes CGM finds itself serving up, we'll explore the rich variety bubbling up in the kitchen of evangelical thought. Grab a bib and join us!
The pavilion is set up like a virtual worship environment, incorporating video projection, web streaming, moving lights, digital audio console technology, personal monitoring and live worship music. -- Technologies for Worship Magazine
Last month's: I always say we meet on Sunday night so you can work off your hangover from Saturday night before coming to church. -- Tim Wilson, Wisconsin church "visioneer" posted on Steve Sjogren's site