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In New Milford, a town of thirty thousand, Faith Church is a matter of curiosity. The doors of Faith Church open onto a spacious and well-lit reception area with plasma TV screens and comfortable sofas. Brochures advertise Bible-study classes, a day care, a K-12 school, and a variety of ministries.
The sanctuary at Faith Church looks like a modern concert hall, with more than a thousand seats arrayed in front of a deep stage. The services often begin with soft rock music. The congregation is forty per cent white and thirty per cent African-American, and the rest Latino and Asian. The doctrinal statement on the church Web site makes it clear the church is Pentecostal, but Faith Church is nondenominational and the worship decorous. Writer describes a sermon given by Santora. When Santora took over the church in 1997, its congregation numbered less than three hundred. Faith currently draws fifteen hundred people to its weekend service, and at its current rate of growth, it will draw two thousand, and attain the status of a megachurch within the next year.
Discusses the rarity of megachurches in New England and the challenges of establishing one there. The vast majority of megachurches are in the South and Southwest. They are almost without exception theologically conservative. Tells about Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church and Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Church, which have created a pattern for many of the newer churches. They have tailored their churches to meet the needs and desires of the people they serve. Tells about Santora’s upbringing in New York City and New Jersey. He attended a Pentecostal church as a teen-ager before graduating from Rutgers. While still in college, he went to a seminar at the Rhema Bible Training Center in Oklahoma. There he met Anthony Storino, a New Jersey pastor. Santora went to work part-time at Storino’s church.
After graduating, he and his fiancée moved to Danbury, Connecticut, where she taught at Bright Clouds Christian Church. Four years later, the pastor of Bright Clouds resigned when he was found to be having multiple affairs with his congregants. Santora took over. Describes how he transformed Bright Clouds into Faith Church. Santora closely followed the model of the “seeker church,” which lowers the threshold between the church and the secular world.
Discusses the role of marketing and brand creation in seeker churches and the similarities between megachurch leaders and C.E.O.s. Describes accusations by evangelical pastors that the seeker churches are teaching “me-centered” Christianity-lite. Santora maintains that his teaching, though seeker-oriented, is wholly orthodox.
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