Critics argue that megachurches use fog machines, loud music, and colored lights to create an experience that will make people feel emotionally and spiritually moved. Many argue that these emotional atmospheres are intended to make people feel emotionally connected with God and emphasize feelings of spirituality over issues of doctrine. Others accuse megachurches of attempting to create an emotional atmosphere where people feel guilty about their sin and feel pressured into salvation.
If these are indeed the intended aims of megachurch atmospheres, there are striking resemblances to the camp revival meetings of the Second Great Awakening (SGA).
A few years ago (many, actually) I read Charles Finney’s Revivals of Religion. After reading that I wondered why anyone bothered with writing another book on the subject. It is the playbook for revivalistic Christianity.
I think the motivation to write other books is an attempt by our ministers to look original when in fact originality isn’t their strong suit. (My use of the phrase “our ministers” is in itself a loan from Finney.)
The one weak point in Finney’s playbook is the lack of a really clear method of personal evangelism. That has been solved with methods such as are presented in Evangelism Explosion. Those methods have been criticised also (some thing don’t change) but the problem with them now is that they presuppose pre-evangelism and pre-discipleship by a culture that no longer does either. This is why we’re seeing a shift to methods that emphasise relationship building and pre-discipleship. Big-meeting and megachurch revivalists may minimise the impact of these methods, but when we get into a culture where large-scale evangelism becomes difficult, they’re our only option.
Positive Infinity 