New megachurch : coexistence of sacred and secular

Abstract

Protestants today seem to approach public worship with one or the other of two quite different attitudes. Many Protestants understand worship as primarily a matter of feelings; others see worship as basically work done in God's service. While there are glamorously designed churches emphasizing value of sacredness and its symbolism, there are also practical and temperate churches valuing people rather than the place. Whether the latter development of secular church forms were developed out of liturgical sincerity or as the result of Capitalism due to economic competition, it is most prevalent form of Protestant churches today. Specifically on my site near Flushing, NY, with high density of Korean immigrant settlements who mostly serve on ethnic commercial and service business, many of informal church typology of pet architecture started to emerge. Its phenomena along the main artery of Korea Town in Flushing are so predominant that there are multiple churches per every single block of city fabric on Northern Boulevard. One cannot distinguish a church from a commercial store if there was not a signboard indicating its name. Liturgical principle of religious space is completely ignored with invention of commercial churches. The term megachurch generally refers to any Protestant congregation church with a sustained average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more in its worship services. With its high density of pet churches in Flushing, NY, average total attendance of weekly Korean Protestant worship easily exceed 10,000. My thesis is about invention of typology of new megachurch. Rather than a giant space occupied by a single congregation, it is an infrastructure for agglomeration of religious spaces that can expand and contract based on its demand. Acknowledging abnormal high density of religious needs around Korean immigrant community and the importance of service industry, a new mutant typology of sacred and secular spaces in coexistence is proposed. Simply put, it is a shopping mall of churches offering their religious services in competition, which the exact situation is happening in Flushing today.