Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of the largest evangelical churches


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. The obvious problems of this article and how to correct these can be discussed on the article talk page. Randykitty (talk) 15:27, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

List of the largest evangelical churches

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I'm being bold here, but per WP:TNT, owing to the number of errors and lack of consistent methodology for this list article, I think it should be deleted till we clearly define what we want it to represent. Wikipedia is widely used, and its better a topic isn't covered at all, than for it to be propagating false information.

The ERRORS

Let me start with the three Nigerian churches listed, RCCG, LFCW and Deeper Life definitely have more than a million weekly attendance every Sunday morning. These churches are present in every Nigerian state, and in most African nations. The 50k listed for LFCW is the intended capacity for their international headquarters, Faith Tabernacle same as the 65k for Deeper Life 1. For RCCG, there is no real central national headquarters, except the monthly convention, which is where they got the 500k from. This has always been held once in a month, not weekly. For Yoido, the weekly attendance is about 200k, not 800k. Even the affiliation column for most is not accurate. I have sources for everything I have stated above, it just seem easier to type without links. WHAT I THINK THE ARTICLE SHOULD BE

This article should contain list of largest church buildings based on human capacity. We already have list articles based on area, height and width as seen List of largest church buildings, List of tallest churches and List of longest church buildings. We have none for human capacity, which is key considering that even Guinness World Record recognizes this metric in its release 1 2 3. For an estimate on the number of entire members of churches we have List of the largest Protestant denominations.

cc HandsomeBoy (talk) 01:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep This is a referenced list; AfD is not for cleanup. PCHS-NJROTC  (Messages)Have a blessed day. 01:55, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That is the problem, I don't know the direction to cleanup. Is it meant to contain largest evangelical churches in a single church building based on weekly attendance? HandsomeBoy (talk) 02:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * From my reading, I doubt that it is intended to imply single buildings, but I could be wrong about this. jps (talk) 02:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply jps. If that is the case, then there is a problem. I'm 100% certain that the three Nigerian churches listed have more than one million members attending services on Sunday morning, but you can't get a factual estimate of the actual number. Recently, the founder of one of the church listed stated that they have 6 million members, which is definitely closer to the truth than the 50k listed in the article. If it is for the entire church, then I'll rather remove the three Nigerian churches listed there than continue to propagate incorrect information. HandsomeBoy (talk) 02:20, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I can understand the desire not to misinform, but that's sorta the problem with lists like this. We have to do the best we can with the sources we have. It's important, however, to distinguish churches with congregations. Single congregations can scale greatly now with technology and some "megachurches" will have satellite campuses which arguably count as single congregations. This means that congregations are not necessarily confined to single buildings. On the other hand, we aren't talking about "churches" or "denominations" in the sense of "communions" which may have separate congregations led by different people, for example. jps (talk) 02:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree and understand your point about issues with lists such as this. But its scope and titular objective should be clear, and we can have a sensible estimate. Your point about congregation is also apt. I've been a part of all three listed churches via their satellite viewing centers, and it is still normally used. That is why I think congregation might not be so measurable from available sources. But the sitting capacity of churches is factual verifiable public knowledge that deserve a list article. At the time of completion, Faith Tabernacle was listed by Guinness World Record as the largest church auditorium in the world. Last Sunday, a 100k capacity church auditorium was opened in Abuja, and has been regarded by Nigerian media as the largest in the world. This was what draw my interest to these articles, I came to Wikipedia to find other similarly large church auditoriums in the world (sitting capacity), only to discover ambiguity. I understand the differences between churches and denominations, these megachurches listed are also denominations. Infact, they are the only church under their denomination, but have multiple branches which is only disambiguated with its location i.e ChurchName, LocationOfBranch. I've an Anglican background, so I also understand how a Diocese can have multiple archdeaconary, parishes, etc. HandsomeBoy (talk) 03:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I think we're on the same page. Although in principle it's easy to know building capacity (and that is more easily verified than claims as to worship service attendance), in practice, this amount is often not well documented either. Can we agree in principle that it would be a good idea to separate the idea of a church building, a congregation, and a church/denomination? It's possible that these ideas could overlap and that should be okay too. jps (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to List of largest evangelical congregations as this is a less ambiguous title for the intended content. jps (talk) 01:58, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:55, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:55, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   08:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - article may need some work but does not need to be deleted. Skirts89 (talk) 15:39, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It will be very helpful if you can add what you think this article should contain to your keep rationale. Just saying it should be kept because AFD it not cleanup does little good order than promoting inconsistencies which has led to falsehood in the article.HandsomeBoy (talk) 23:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the article should be kept, even as is. If you would like to edit it to improve it further, that is always welcomed! Skirts89 (talk) 20:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.