The Church Report recently released a list of the top 50 most influential churches. I get the impression that these are the top 50 most influential American churches, but more on that later.

The top 10:

1. Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL)
   Bill Hybels
2. Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA)
   Rick Warren
3. North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA)
   Andy Stanley
4. Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX)
   Ed Young Jr.
5. Lakewood Church (Houston, TX)
   Joel Osteen
6. Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY)
   Bob Russell
7. LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK)
   Craig Groeschel
8. The Potter’s House (Dallas, TX)
   T.D. Jakes
9. Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY)
   Jim Cymbala
10. North Coast Church (Vista, CA)
    Larry W. Osborne

The entire list can be found here.

Something that someone said in the discussion here jogged a couple of observations on this list:

1. Not every large American church is on the list. There are some that are larger than these. The significant issue here is if they are influential outside of their own congregation and building’s walls.

2. Almost every pastor on the list has written at least 1 book.

3. The “Pastor’s Job Description” is very non-traditional. Moreover, it seems to be shaped by the mission of the church to reach out, rather than by what “pastors normally are supposed to do.” The pastors are able to put major time and effort into the use of their top gifts, and the rest is delegated to others. They manage to do this without becoming caricatures of their true selves.

4. Each one of these congregations has raised up strong non-professional leaders alongside the professional ones. “Pastoral Care” is distributed across the leadership. Much of it is done by people in the “small groups” that these churches meet in.

5. Most of these churches began VERY small. Something like a Bible Study in someone’s home. Either that, or they made some successful transition from “traditional” to these non-traditional forms.

6. Most of these churches use small-group or cell-group models, but most are still big-event centered congregations.

And now, for a couple of criticisms of the list:

1. It’s only American churches. One could suggest that David (Paul) Yonggi Cho’s Yoido Full Gospel Church (Assemblies of God) could be considered pretty influential with 780 THOUSAND members. No, they don’t all meet for worship at the same time. [Reference] Are the only influential churches in the world American? I think not!

2. Because of the nature of the list, there isn’t much to tell whether these congregations are influencing their local neighborhoods and communities. Do they have (inter)national impact? Of course! But how are they doing with local issues, especially poverty/injustice?

3. There are some very small churches and communities with a disproportionate impact that could not be listed in a “top 50″. The WWW has helped to launch many of them to stardom. Maybe we need a “top 50 most dispropotionately influential (little-guys)” list.

All in all, however, as Bob Franquiz says, most of these churches influence us in a lot of different ways.

As for me, I’ve read Hybels (1) and Warren (2). I haven’t read Cymbala (9) (yet), but I’ve read McManus (12). I can’t get enough of Rob Bell’s (17) stuff, and I thought it distressing when Mark Driscoll (22) from the other Mars Hill started firing from the hip at the emerging folks. Stanley (3) and Osteen (5) are people I’ve seen as peripheral in my work, and one guy at church quotes me TD Jakes (8) a lot. Falwell (27)? Well. McArthur (31) isn’t my cup of tea; I used to listen to Greg Laurie (33) on the radio after my bedtime as a kid. I did so surreptitiously. Kent Hughes (37) and College Church were good parts of my Seminary experience, bringing in intellectually stimulating seminars that I attended. Michael Slaughter (38) was usually Dr. Quicke’s Prime Example Number 1 for creativity in preaching, although Dr. Q. had his issues with Slaughter from time to time, I think. I used Piper’s (42) Baptist Catechism for a while. It’s a Baptistified [heh] version of the 39 (or XXXIX) Articles which retains enough Calvin to make some people gag. However, it is a very useful system I’ve used as a model for my own catechesis development. Dr. Tony Evans (44)? Wow. I could listen to that guy preach ALL DAY. Every day. Ortberg (45)? Well, I did hear him preach when he was at Willow Creek. His reputation for never coming in contact with an iron preceded him, and he lived up to the expectation that day. And his book on Spiritual Disciplines is going to take us all by storm around here these days, ’cause if you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat, even with all of the wind and the waves. Lucado (46), well, most of his stuff isn’t my style but he’s cool. Leith Anderson (47) spoke at Northern when I didn’t know who he was and I think I missed it. My loss. My BIG loss.

By my count, that’s 19 of the 50. Yeah, they’re influential.

Found via CMS.