Andy Stanley, the senior pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, says he has realised that he made a mistake when he accused people who prefer small churches of being "so stinking selfish."
Writing on his Twitter account (@AndyStanley), Stanley says, "the negative reaction to the clip from last weekend's message is entirely justified. Heck, even I was offended by what I said! I apologise."
"The negative reaction to the clip from last weekend's message is entirely justified. Heck, even I was offended by what I said! I apologise."
Earlier, Stanley said there is a very good reason why people build big churches. "We want churches to be large enough so that there are enough middle schoolers and high schoolers, that we don't have one youth group with middle school and high school together. We want there to be so many adults that there will be so many middle school and high school kids that we can have two separate environments," he said.
Stanley knows that there are Christians who prefer to go to congregations that only have a couple of hundred members, because they like an intimate setting more. However, he does not agree with them.
"When I hear adults say 'well I don't like a big church. I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody.' I say you are so stinking selfish," he said. "You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don't care about your kids, anybody else's kids."
Stanley understandably upset many churchgoers. Even though they accepted his apology, they said they could not forget what he said. "I forgive you, but it really chapped my hide. I don't think 140 characters is enough. God bless the regular size churches!" commented Matt Krachunis.
He later added, "I may be a bit too upset, but MAN, that was about the most smug thing I've ever heard a mega church guy say."
Fred Liggin IV wrote, "Thanks bro. I appreciate your humility here. I hope one day you can meet some of the folks from our 'small churches' to hear how God is forming them [and] their children."
