Time was that the megachurch was not highly thought of by those who claimed the name Reformed or looked to the Reformation for their historical inspiration.  This was consistent with two basic concerns which had high priority for the Reformers: opposition to things such as pluralities (ministers holding multiple appointments) and absenteeism (ministers not actually ever being where they ministered); and the fear of turning leaders into fetishes.

Reforming pastoral ministry along these lines was a hallmark of Reformation Protestantism.  It had, after all, started with a pastoral problem and rapidly became an issue of the nature of church authority.  In the process, the importance of putting in place educated ministers who could articulate the faith and offer pastoral nurture to the people was never far from the centre of concern.

On the whole, that lasted until about five to ten years ago when, all of a sudden, megachurches started to arise which sounded a bit like the Protestant Reformers, at least in the buzzwords and catchphrases they use.  Now, strange to tell, there are actually debates going on in small 'r' reformed circles about whether pluralities and absenteeism (today known as multi-site ministries) are a good thing or not. 

This is clearly antithetical to the ecclesiological concerns of the Reformation.   The lack of pastoral care such multi-sites engender is common knowledge.   Further, the whole idea seems clearly to turn certain preachers into fetishes. Medieval Catholics liked to obtain the body, or even just a fragment, of a saint for their church building in order to make it an authentic church, or a better church than the one in the neighbouring town (see. the undignified fight for the corpse of St. Anthony of Padua); today we need a virtual piece of a famous preacher in our locale to have access to the magic. 

The cost is high: the Reformers predicated pastoral care (from preaching to personal interaction) on having local knowledge of local people.  They feared cults of personality (which they saw as leading to the idolatrous medieval veneration of the saints) so much that they actively discouraged them and did not simply play the `Nothing to do with me, guv' card when they arose. 

Further, they were too busy training people to go to places where there was no Reformation witness to have found the idea of church planting on the doorstep of faithful churches to be an attractive idea - let alone to do so in a way that would have brought no personal discomfort or cost to themselves but caused great frustration and distress to other decent saints.  I have become aware of a number of `ordinary' (sic) pastors recently - good men, solid preachers, diligent churchmen - whose ministries have been seriously harmed by the arrival of `videolink' ministries of big names in their locales.   

Yes, these particular local pastors are decent preachers.  Do not fob me off with the lazy argument 'Well, small churches often have boring preachers' gambit -- that is sometimes the case, it is true; but let us be honest -- some of today's biggest reformed names spend more pulpit time telling jokes and talking about themselves than preaching the biblical text; they may not be boring and they may fill the house to the rafters but a twenty minute sermon should not take fifty minutes to deliver (and, as an aside, is it not time somebody of influence in such circles pointed that out?).

Yet these small church pastors can only offer their people hard work and the need for real get-your-hands-dirty commitment.  By contrast, the video hook-up brings the fetish to town and makes few demands upon anyone beyond the tech guy, the head of physical plant and the local praise band. In today's consumer world, there is no doubt who has the more attractive product to sell.  Presumably the cancer wards will offer similar video link-ups when members of the virtual congregation lie dying and in need of final comfort.

This is not reformation in any way that the sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformers would have understood it.  It is rather the kind of thing against which they were reacting, and that with passion.

The problem with the way `Reformed' is often used today is that it divorces certain things (typically the five, or more often, four points of Calvinism) from the overall Reformation vision of pastoral care, church worship, Christian nurture and all-round approach to ministry.  The Bible becomes sufficient for the doctrines of grace; but what works, what pulls in the punters, becomes the criterion for everything else, especially ecclesiology and pastoral practice.

I have noted before how grateful I am that my sons grew up in churches where the pastor knew their names, chatted to them after the service and even stood on the occasional touchline or track to cheer them on at school sports events. If they ever abandon the faith, it will not be because they never knew the pastor cared for them as individuals, rather than just as mere concepts or numbers or pixels on a two way videolink. I am also grateful that my pastors really cared about my wife and me, prayed for us regularly by name and, I am sure, even occasionally shaped parts of their sermons to give a word of needed encouragement and to help us with trials through which they knew we were going.  These pastors were not perfect -- far from it; but they were at least actually there, really available and genuinely concerned.  In short, they tried to embody true Reformation -- biblical! -- church leadership.

The Reformation was about more than a doctrinal insight into justification; it was also about abolishing the fetishisation of certain great figures as if they possessed some special magic and about instituting an ideal of educated, personal, local ministry.    Maybe the Reformation is nearly over; and maybe it is not Benedictine Catholicism but actually the new reformation, with its multi-sites and its virtual pastors, that is finishing it off.  That is quite a sobering and ironic thought.