Community Christian Church

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High Praise: Naperville Church Lands on List of Most Influential

Published July 14, 2006

By: Sarah Pulliam, Staff Writer

Naperville-based Community Christian Church is the 13th most influential church in America, according to a list compiled by a religious magazine and released this week. Community Christian's lead pastor, Dave Ferguson, said it's the first time the church has been on a list like this. "It literally felt like I was on the VH1 top 50 child stars. It's funny that they do it with churches," Ferguson said. "On the other hand, I was pretty flattered."

The church – based out of a box-shaped yellow building at 1635 Emerson Lane near Ogden Avenue and Rickert Drive – has a weekly attendance of 4,000 people distributed among 20 services at eight locations: two in Naperville, two in the Montgomery-Aurora area, two in the Romeoville-Plainfield area, one in Shorewood and one in the Pilsen Community of Chicago. Some of the services are taped and played at other services. Ferguson said the church could be on the list because of the many churches they've started in Detroit, Boston, New York City, California, Knoxville and Denver. The church is deciding whether to start a place of worship in Rwanda.

Ferguson, a native of the south suburbs of Chicago, founded the church with his brother and friends in 1989, while he was attending graduate school at Wheaton College. The megachurch functions like a community center and includes a café open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., wireless Internet, a gymnasium and a school for the arts that enrolls about 400 students. But Ferguson doesn't think they are really that influential yet. "We're just getting started in some ways," Ferguson said. "I'm only 40. Does this mean I've peaked, and I'm going down from here?"

The list was released by The Church Report, a monthly magazine that Publisher and Editor Jason Christy says is distributed to about 50,000 church leaders across the country. Community Christian Church was not listed in the top 50 last year – the first year the magazine compiled the list. "This is peers honoring peers," Christy said. "In that small area, you've got some of the most influential churches in the country, pretty much within a stone's throw of either other. The 2006 survey was e-mailed to leaders of more than 2,000 church congregations in April and May. Participants were asked to recommend up to 10 churches and a total of 83 churches were recommended.  Christy spoke about the influential churches as a guest on Naperville native Paula Zahn's CNN show Monday. According to the transcript, Christy told Zahn the offering of multiple programs is what brings people to megachurches. "You've got the success of these major huge churches," Christy said. "You've also, as was said, the denominational churches are suffering. There's political strife, infighting, bickering, any number of issues in the mainline churches."

Other local churches that made the list are College Church in Wheaton – which was ranked 37th its first time on the list – and Willow Creek in South Barrington, which was named the No. 1 most influential church in the country after finishing second last year.