“Many small churches either have disappeared around the megachurch … or they’ve created their own mission … and have figured out a way to offer alternatives to what the megachurch offers. [They’ve] made sort of their peace with the big kid on the block,” says Thumma. At the same time, megachurches that have adopted the multisite model “are essentially diversifying, fracturing into smaller pieces so that they can cover a whole city rather than make all of the people drive to one location,” he says.

Something clicked for Marlena Bhame when she first stepped into Liquid Church about four years ago. She’d been searching for something more spiritually dynamic and meaningful than the faith tradition she’d grown up in, or the various others she had tried out over the years.
When Bhame, who was raised in the evangelical Christian and Missionary Alliance tradition, arrived at the church in Parsippany, N.J., she was immediately struck by a feeling of belonging. The congregation mostly looked like her — a lot of millennials and Gen Z — and everyone seemed enthusiastic about being there.
“I was blown away by the amount of young people,” she says.
Liquid Church has helped Bhame, 28, and others like her find meaning even as many in her generation have turned away from organized religion. It is one of about 1,800 “megachurches” in the United States — defined as having 2,000 or more members. At a time when empty pews are forcing churches across the country to shutter, these mostly nondenominational houses of worship are largely bucking that trend — attracting younger, more vibrant and more diverse congregations.
The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey. By contrast, a separate 2020 study found that three-quarters of megachurches were growing, many at a rapid clip.

Experts say these trends have continued since the start of the pandemic. Liquid Church claims 6,000 members, 84% of whom are under the age of 55, with most younger than 35. About a quarter of members are Hispanic/Latino, 13% Asian and 8% Black.
Like Bhame, David and Katherine Ramirez bounced around different churches before landing at Liquid. The couple both grew up in the Pentecostal tradition, but when they decided to marry, they went looking for a new church.
“I can say that for me, the deciding factor was just the fact that there were people in my age group,” David says.
The Liquid Church’s core beliefs, “Grace wins” and “Truth is relevant,” are capped by a less theological component: “Church is fun.”
“It’s one of the pillars,” says Katherine. “That’s just the culture in the church. So everyone’s kind of onboard with that.”
Church barbecues, pizza and movie nights are all part of the mix. On Sundays, “it’s loud. … it’s casual. People can wear flip-flops and drink coffee,” says Pastor Tim Lucas, who founded Liquid Church in 2007.
“We’re at the gates of Manhattan,” he says. “People can go in and see Hamilton or Billy Joel at [Madison Square] Garden. We’re not competing with the world. What we are trying to do is … put the timeless message of Jesus into new wineskins.”

Liquid Church also steers clear of politics, he says. That’s common in most megachurches because they are more diverse, according to Scott Thumma, a professor of sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. “The vast majority of them have nothing to do with politics,” he says.
“You need a building, we need a pastor”
For the last several years, Liquid Church has been one of the fastest-growing churches in the nation, and a big part of its success has come through assimilating smaller, more traditional congregations. Four of its seven campuses — all in New Jersey — have come through these mergers.
This “multisite” model has been adopted by about 70% of megachurches across the country, according to Lifeway Research, a church consultancy. In it, the main church beams its Sunday sermon to branch campuses, where it is projected onto huge LED screens. Each of the satellite churches has its own pastor, live music and worship services.
“It’s like a marriage,” explains Lucas. “An older congregation with a rich history but a declining population joins forces with a younger church like Liquid, with fresh energy and vision and volunteers. You basically bring them together and rebirth the church.”
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From the beginning of his New York ministry, Miller was not despised for his youth but instead proved an exemplary colleague. The local Reformed ministry included not only Miller’s pastoral colleagues at Collegiate, but also John M. Mason (Associate Reformed) as well as Reformed Dutch pastors John H. Livingston and William Linn. It was really a golden opportunity for Miller to serve the Lord with such experienced colleagues. He often spoke in other churches and delivered lectures before societies. Miller expressed his opposition to slavery and promoted gradual emancipation when he spoke to his fellow members of the New York Society Promoting the Manumission of Slaves in 1797.

Samuel was born Reformation Day, October 31, 1769, in Dover the eighth of nine children and the fourth son of John and Margaret (Millington) Miller. Margaret was the daughter of an English sea captain who abandoned the uncertainties of sailing the seven seas for living on the good earth as a planter in Maryland. John Miller was minister of the Presbyterian churches in Smyrna and Dover Delaware and the household lived on a hundred-acre farm. During the division of the Presbyterians into Old and New Sides, 1741-1758, he was a member of the Old Side Presbytery of New Castle. The Sides are not the same as the Old and New Schools. The Sides divided over interpretation and application of the Adopting Act of 1729 concerning subscription to the Westminster Confession. An associated issue was itinerant evangelists conducting revival meetings within presbyteries of which they were not members. The Old Side believed in full subscription to the Confession while the New opposed subscription or believed in a greatly limited commitment to its summary of doctrine. The Old Side held to strong church judicatories governed by presbyters that directed their churches with a thorough commitment to the Westminster Standards and presbyterian polity.
Samuel’s early education in preparation for college was with two older brothers under the direction of his father. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1788. The university was during its years before Miller attended influenced by Francis Alison, a leader of Old Side Presbyterians. Mark Noll described Alison as “an Old Side stalwart” (Princeton & the Republic, 40). Alison’s work at the university was influential extending 1752-1779 with his positions including master of the Latin school, rector of the academy, teaching moral philosophy, professor of Greek and Latin, and vice provost. But at the time Miller attended the provost was John Ewing, pastor of First Church, Philadelphia. Ewing was taught in Alison’s New London academy then graduated the College of New Jersey (Princeton, New Side). Had Samuel been encouraged to go to University of Pennsylvania by his father because of its Old Side history during Alison’s years anticipating his continued influence through his students? Possibly, but Ewing’s views were not so rigorous as Alison’s. Young Miller, he was nineteen, graduated with high honors July 31, 1789 after only one year of attendance. As salutatorian he delivered a Latin oration against the lack of concern for educating women in his time. Note that this was the year after the United States Constitution was ratified and he was speaking of equality for women regarding education. Degree in hand, he returned to Dover.
Dover would always be home for Samuel Miller because he enjoyed the family farm and country life. John tutored his brilliant son in theology in preparation for the ministry. Licensure involved a multi-step process. He began trials at Rockawalkin Church in Somerset County, Maryland, April 20, 1791, delivering his doctrinal sermon from 1 Corinthians 15:22—
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
The weighty doctrine of federal headship correlates the fall and sin with its defeat through the perfect righteousness and atoning work of the resurrected Christ. The next step for licensure was in June, followed by further examinations during the fall meeting in October to complete the process. He was tested regarding personal piety, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, logic, natural and moral philosophy, as well as divinity. At the October meeting he delivered what was described as a “popular sermon.” During this same meeting Samuel’s recently deceased father was remembered for his forty-three years of ministry to his congregations and for the presbytery.
The usual procedure for continuing his study of divinity would have been to find a local minister and pick up where his father’s instruction ended, but in November, Miller made his way west to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle was a community settled and developed by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; it was a western enclave for Presbyterians who felt disenfranchised by the Eastern elite. He made the move with approval of his presbytery to study with Charles Nisbet (1736-1804), the president of Dickinson College. Nisbet could speak nine languages, was a member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and a defender of rigorous Calvinism. Nisbet had recommended John Witherspoon for the College of New Jersey Presidency. Miller commented in his biography that in the evenings for two or three hours he would meet in Nisbet’s home to inquire
on whatever subject I might desire information, whether in Theology or Literature, ancient or modern, I had but to propose the topic, and suggest queries, to draw forth everything that I wished. (Life, 1:58; “I” has been substituted for “he”)
Nisbet’s knowledge was encyclopedic. Miller had expected Professor Nisbet to be cold and distant, but instead he found the Scotsman and his family affable and hospitable. Nisbet was as important doctrinally for Miller, other than his father, as was William Graham for his future colleague at Princeton Seminary, Archibald Alexander. When Nisbet died in 1804, the search for a replacement led to Miller, but he turned it down. Miller would publish in 1840, Memoir of the Rev. Charles Nisbet, D.D., but when he was asked to edit Nisbet’s lectures for publication, he turned down the request.
In 1792 Miller was invited to candidate for a church on Long Island, but when he stopped for a visit in New York he was invited to preach in a church. That fall, he was issued a call by a unanimous vote of the Collegiate Presbyterian Church of New York to join ministers John Rodgers and John McKnight.
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What is clear from Davenport is that a Christian commonwealth is one of coordinate states wherein rulers fulfill Isaiah 49:23 by helping, nourishing, and protecting the true religion, the true church. None of this implies a dependence of Christ’s objective preeminence on any earthly powers—get that out of your head! It is a matter of duty, justice, and order according to the natures and ends of both powers. More basically, the best form of government is one where both church and state flourish according to their design, mutuality, and end (mediate and final). 

Consternation from certain wings of Evangelicalism over Christian nationalism consistently ignores threshold questions for essential any political theory, thereby exposing they do not have an operative political theory apart from baptizing the status quo. Namely, what would you do if you could start from scratch? What is best and permissible in principle? What is the ideal? Or as one friend likes to ask, what if we win? What if Christians were in charge and the majority of the population was at least culturally Christian? What kind of polity, what kind of church-state relationship, what kind of laws would you set up? I shudder to think how limp and lame many contemporary answers to these questions would be.
Concessions according to prudence and context can only be properly considered once these kinds of threshold questions, the types of questions political theory are most concerned with, have been answered.
This is the entire purpose of the so-called state of nature discourse. It is not, in its best form, concerned with vainly divining primordial existence. Rather, it is a heuristic for determining proper socio-political organization.
A fatal problem with most of our interlocutors is that they do not or cannot contemplate these things. Their entire vision, intellectual frame, is saturated with what currently is, or at least as they understand what is, which is almost never in a functional but rather ideological sense.
That is, the ideological sense—explanations—as proscribed by the incumbent ideology itself. This exercise is unserious because it is unrealistic and lacks utility.
In any case, this, among other reasons, is why reading older political theory from our rich Protestant tradition is essential, even if the reader rejects the conclusions therein, the sources in view reform the mind. John Davenport’s short treatise, A Discourse About Civil Government (1663), is one such text and should be read, for maximum effect, in conjunction with his 1669 election sermon.
To begin, Davenport improves upon the predominant framing of church-state questions.
“the only wise God hath fitted and appointed two sorts of Administrations, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Hence, they are capable of a twofold Relation, and of Action and Power suitable to them both; viz. Civil and Spiritual, and accordingly must be exercised about both in their seasons, without confounding those two different states, or destroying either of them.”
This is, of course, boilerplate. Few disagreements will emerge from it. We have two administrations or polities, spiritual or ecclesiastical and civil. What will appear irregular to some readers is that Davenport elects not to distinguish between the two administrations or powers with a church-state (commonwealth) dichotomy, but rather to speak of a “Christian Communion” with the ecclesiastical and civil administrations being two species of the same Christian communion genus. This makes sense given that God is the author and efficient cause of both, his glory is the end of both, and man is the common subject of both. Differences, indeed, remain. Thus, they are not of identical species and the genus in which they both participate is limited to two species (e.g., Luke 22:38).
The kind or expression of power is a notable distinction. Davenport says the ecclesiastical power has only “oeconomical” power by which he means stewardship given that Christ is the only true head of the universal invisible church. The civil power, on the other hand, possesses “despotical” power (Luke 22:25), or what Baxter would call regal power or Hale would call nomothetical power. Christ has given civil rulers “lordly” power over men (1 Peter 2:13). This is proper since, while there is overlap, the ecclesiastical power primarily concerns itself with the inner man and the civil power with outer man, albeit, again, this distinction is not clean or absolute. For the ecclesiastical power is accidentally, we might say, concerned with the outer man just as the civil power is accidentally concerned with the inner man, but these are auxiliary concerns.
The glory of God is the final end of both administrations of Christian communion. Their mediate ends are diverse. The mediate end of civil order is preservation of society and the common welfare; the mediate end of the ecclesiastical order is salvation of souls and the sanctification of men. But both, as receptors of power from God must glorify God.
These differences explain their difference in operation. But this does not make them contrary to one another or anywise in tension. They are to be “coordinate States,” mutually helpful, reciprocal, aiding the whole man within one Christian communion and honoring the same God.
Here we have the ideal, theoretical relationship between what we now call church and state. This is the vision of a happy, cohesive and coherent society. Now the question arises as to what is to be done in a preexisting society and a newly founded one “wherein men are free to choose what Form they shall judge best.”
Here’s the kicker. Many Christians today take Paul’s advice to the Romans as perennial, delineating the permanent posture for believers (i.e., subjugation and martyrdom) in any and all circumstances. Davenport begs to differ. An extended quote is in order. Be forewarned: it will break some brains.
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