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Non-Evangelical Mega-Church:  5,500 Members Blend Science & Religion

Orginally published on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 3:56 AM
by Todd Rhoades

An interesting article over the weekend at the Denver Post. It's about Lakewood, CO's Mile Hi Church. According to The Post: "It has 5,500 members, a modern auditorium, loud contemporary music, jumbo screens, a media store and a child-care center.

The trappings are the same. The message is not.

It is not evangelical Christian.

The motto under Mile Hi's big, domed sanctuary, a $10 million, 1,500-seat hall that opened in April, is "It's different here."

"We use some of the same approaches and tools as megachurches, but Mile Hi is profoundly unique," said senior minister Roger Teel.

Mile Hi Church teaches the science of mind and spirit. It seeks to blend science and religion — drawing from elements of all the world's great faith traditions. Christianity is just one of them...

“The ultimate truth for us is that we live in infinite love and oneness,” Teel said. “We are all expressions of the divine.”

Colorado’s other 28 megachurches, defined as congregations of more than 2,000, share a main characteristic: evangelism and conservative Protestant theology.

Mile Hi doesn’t fit this mold, yet it resembles the Christian megachurches in other key ways, including success, if enrollment is any indicator.

One reason for the popularity of the nation’s more than 1,300 megachurches, which have more than doubled in number since 2000, is that they offer a positive message and a host of social and recreational activities, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Megachurches are important community-building institutions for suburban Americans, who have experienced an extensive breakdown in traditional social networks in recent decades.

Mile Hi, for example, offers classes, concerts and guest speakers such as self-help gurus Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra. It has youth, singles and service groups.

Mile Hi has been steadily growing since its inception in 1959, said Teel, yet membership has taken off in the past 15 years. In the past three years alone, Mile Hi has grown by 24 percent.

Although there are 5,500 members, average weekly attendance for the three Sunday services is about 3,000, said church spokeswoman Karen Thomas.

Mile Hi is now the single largest church affiliated with the 80-year-old religious science movement. That movement, now rebranded as the United Centers for Spiritual Living, is moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Denver in July.

You can read more here in the Denver Post...


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  There are 26 Comments:

  • Posted by
    Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 8:22 PM

    Peter,

    Good job, Dr. Walter Martin would be proud, we are defining the terms.  That always helps in trying to be on the same page.  I’ll assume the writer had that definition in mind and concede my point was a poor one And yes Jesus had a style but he didn;t feed the 5,000 until they had listened to him all day, and later he really freaked them with something he said and they followed him no more, a lesson for some of our mega-churches ? do I have time to get into that ................. maybe another day.

    God Bless, John

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