However people feel about the ministry of TV evangelist Creflo Dollar -- and opinions are sharply divided over his Pentecostal message that God wants people to be prosperous -- one has to be impressed by his entrepreneurial innovation.
His announcement this week tends to take one’s breath away: He's saying, now, that he has earmarked Battle Creek, Michigan, as the pilot for a vast project in what he envisions someday will become a 500-church denomination nationwide.
He’s already got his home church in College Park, Georgia, near Atlanta –- and he commutes by plane each week to New York City where he’s had a second congregation since 2004. That’s quite taxing. He has realized that, to add a third or fourth or 100th location is physically impossible via real-time commuting.
So, he’s using TV, a medium he already has conquered, to send himself to what he hopes will become hundreds of congregations simultaneously.
Dollar said in an interview this week that, if he could establish 500 congregations and expand them to an average attendance of 2,000 people, “then I would be able to minister to 1 million people at one time, and could do it through technology.”
The technology he’s talking about is satellite-linked TV broadcasts, which aren’t anything new in themselves. What’s new is the idea of launching a denomination like a series of McDonald’s franchises. The McDollar congregations (and that’s our phrase, not his, we need to point out) would develop their own local music-and-worship teams to lead the first hour of worship each Sunday. They’d also develop their own social-outreach programs, Dollar said this week.
But, once the hour of song and praise ended each Sunday morning, then everyone in all his churches coast to coast would focus on big screens on which his hour-long sermon will be beamed live from his home church near Atlanta.
His Battle Creek pilot opened this past Sunday, very quietly, attended by Dollar TV viewers invited to attend this experiment in worship at a community center on Michigan Avenue in Battle Creek. They were drawn via a direct mailing sent out from Dollar’s extensive nationwide mailing list. About 115 people showed up.
And, since no local congregation has formed yet, the entire service was led via a huge TV screen.
Alice Brown, a retired fine-arts illustrator, who attended with her husband Douglas Brown, a Battle Creek firefighter, said that it was a terrific experience.
“I actually don’t know if what we saw was live or not. And, honestly, I don’t think it mattered," she said. “For the first service, we had a big projection screen at least seven feet tall and 13 feet across in the front of the room. We had comfortable chairs for everyone to sit in and it was just like we were sitting there with people in Creflo’s church.”
“On the screen, when the music started and people were raising their hands and clapping, we sang and raised our hands and clapped along, too.”
Even Dollar acknowledges that he doesn’t expect “live” vs. “delayed” to be a huge distinction with his followers. In fact, delayed broacasts may be built into his church expansion plans to help with varying time zones and service schedules.
“Our goal is really to build churches that will hold about 1,000 to 1,500 people and, if we have to go to multiple services in those churches, then we will capture the message on DVD-R and we’ll replay it for the next service,” Dollar said. Unlike a pastor who can wind up exhausted after a high-energy sermon, Dollar said, “a DVD-R never gets tired.”
Of course, this raises all sorts of questions for preachers. For example, since the technology exists to burn messages quickly onto DVD-R discs, a preacher with multiple services in a busy mega-church could stop after preaching a “best” version. Then, the preacher could switch to the DVD-R on big screens for the balance of the preaching schedule that weekend. Or, if the pastor is called out of town, nailing a great sermon mid-week before his parish’s cameras, burning it onto DVD-R and then broadcasting it on the weekend wouldn’t be a problem.
So, that’s the basic question that Dollar’s staff is posing in this experiment: When it comes to preaching, is Memorex as good as live?
Before you jump to the conclusion that people certainly will want “live,” consider this: People already enjoy watching Dollar in the privacy of their own homes. What he’s betting on is that people will enjoy it even more, if these viewers come together to watch him in a hybrid congregation that’s half real and half virtual.
In Battle Creek, Alice Brown said she and her husband are very enthusiastic.
Dollar himself quietly dropped into Battle Creek on May 3 to meet key leaders of what he hopes will become his first-of-500 congregation. That impressed the Browns, too.
Alice Brown said that she and her husband plan to tithe to the new church. So, their response, so far, is whole hearted and sincere. The problem they have faced in the past, Brown said, is that it’s too far to drive from Battle Creek to reach big churches that have this particular kind of Pentecostal service “live.”
For instance, in Southfield northwest of Detroit, there's the Rev. Keith Butler, founder of the enormous Word of Faith Christian Center. Butler and Dollar are not partners in ministry. They're not part of the same denomination, even. But the gospels they preach are similar -- and Dollar says he regards Butler as a good friend.
So, the Browns might enjoy Butler's congregation, but from their perspective in Battle Creek, both Dollar and Butler are the same distance away from their home: Tooooo far. Now, thanks to Dollar and his staff, they can have that big-church, Pentecostal experience close to home.
Dollar has roots in the Pentecostal movement and often has been described by critics as a “prosperity preacher,” suggesting that getting rich is one of his ministry’s central goals.
Dollar said this week that the phrase “prosperity preacher” misses the larger message of his ministry.
“When I use the word prosperity I’m not talking just about money,” he said. “I could use the word success. I believe that God wants us to be successful in our spirit, our soul, our physical body and our relationships. Our finances are included in that but, but my message is much bigger than finances.”
If you care to read more about Dollar and his ministry, Click Here to jump to his personal Web site for Creflo Dollar Ministries. Or, Click Here to zero in on Dollar's own autobiographical summary on his site.
There's also a page for the Battle Creek pilot within the World Changers site that Dollar's staff also runs.
And, if you're curious about Dollar's nationwide schedule of revivals -- at which either he or his wife will personally appear -- then click here to check out the Dollars' travel schedule.
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