Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/First United Methodist Church of Lufkin

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. Happyme22 (talk) 18:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First United Methodist Church of Lufkin[edit]

The article doesn't assert notability, fails WP:ORG (Non-commercial organizations), and there do not look to be any decent, secondary source. Call me sacrilegious... :P Leonard^(Bloom) 01:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. —Leonard^(Bloom) 01:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Sorry, Delete~~ Sorry, Keep Wow, I totally missed the 2,000 members figure, which would make this a megachurch. Thanks Paul. Mandsford (talk) 16:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC) With the exception of some that have been described as "inherently notable", most organizations have to prove their notability in order to merit keeping their own page on Wikipedia. Is this church more notable than any other church in Lufkin, Texas? Say, perhaps, the East District United Methodist Church? Or the Felton Avenue Church of Christ? Has it received recognition, perhaps, by the General Conference of the United Methodist Church. Notability has to be shown in some way, and the article doesn't demonstrate it. Mandsford (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC) [reply]
Neutral Delete. Speedily even, since it doesn't assert notability: tens of thousands of churches or church communities around the world have 2000 members and are 125 years old or older. What makes this one special? --Amalthea (talk) 12:31, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because having 2000 members is NOT something that tens of thousands of churches have. Most churches that focus on membership numbers have 1,000 as their ultimate goal and books/workshops have been produced to support that. I know that for Wikipedia, that's just a number--but the industry itself views the number as significant. Having doubled the industry standard of significant, I think it's worth a closer look.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:16, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- My knowledge of US methodist churchs is arguably limited - is it somewhere in the top 20 communities among those? I was arguing based on the situation in my country, where pretty much every municipality (more than 2000 citicens on average) has at least one church community, more than 50% of the people are in a church, so there must be a thousand communities of that size here alone.
  That's a very rough estimation of course, but the twenty ghits for that name aren't implying great notability either. --Amalthea (talk) 15:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- ETA: There are more than 25 million Roman Catholics in Germany, there are close to 13,000 parishes, that's already 2000 members on average. --Amalthea (talk) 15:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - OK, but that doesn't mean that any single cathedral in the parish has 2,000 people attending. There usually is more than one Roman Catholic church serving a parish. Mandsford (talk) 16:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Hmm. The current article says: The church has a membership of over 2,000. I'm unsure of what that means. Does it mean that there are 2,000 people regularly attending services, at the same time? Or does it mean that the community has 2,000 members? The latter seems, as I said, relatively small.
      Anyway, after a more thorough search, a look at First United Methodist Church (yeah, WP:OTHERSTUFF) and because I'm probably blinded by a fundementally different situation here I'll keep out of this discussion and change my vote to neutral. Or rather, I'll go with the close to useless WP:NPT in-a-nutshell comment: Localities that are, will be, or have been, recognized by a government, communitity or a representable subsection of the populace might be considered notable.
      I recommend though to rename the article First United Methodist Church (Lufkin, Texas) - it's just not called "First United Methodist Church of Lufkin" which is why I didn't find any Google results at first - and neither did the nominator.
      Cheers, Amalthea (talk) 18:06, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Left unsaid here is the fact the church is over a 100 years old, and should have some historical significance. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 21:31, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Again, every village church in Europe is over a hundred years old if it managed to survive war and fire. :)
  It sure might have historical significance, but as it stands I can't even find sources that mention the age of the church. The official website mentions none of it: not the age, not the (allegedly very notable) size, not even a picture. Wait, I stand corrected: I just now found two web sources, each mentioning the 125th anniversary celebration while in fact talking about the great cookbook that was sold there [1] [2]. Hmm.
  According to WP:NPT, it still is not notable. All the information that was used above to support is at the very least unsourced, and I haven't found *any* reliable sources writing about the church that go beyond trivial coverage, e.g. service announcements or the like.
  The same is, of course, true for a great many church articles (or school articles, for that matter) on Wikipedia. I'd welcome a clearer community consensus on where we want to be in that regard. In principle, BTW, after thinking about it quite some time today, I'd even support Wikipedia having an article about any dedicated church building if it's either of a certain age or of a certain size. --Amalthea (talk) 22:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's unfair to compare places that were inhabited for thousands of years to places that are only inhabited for a few hundred years. While a 100 year old church might not be a big deal in a place that has been around for far longer, a 100-year old church is a big deal to a place that only been around for a few hundred years. Moreover, and I guess I'm borrowing from the aforementioned size argument, a 100-year old church in a small village can properly be merged into the article on the village, but a large churh within a large city cannot properly be merged. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 22:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I've added in a source for the church attendance. I agree that the page title should be moved in order to be consistent with practice, and I think I'll be bold and go ahead and do that. I would tend to agree with Amalthea that the age of the church alone wouldn't make it notable. There are lots of churches in the United States that existed before 1908, at least one in every town; not surprisingly, those that have the word "First" in their names tend to have been established before the ones that are not as old. Mandsford (talk) 23:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. A church with 2,000 member is small. In a city a church of this size is rather normal or maybe the smallest one available. Fails WP:RS, WP:V, WP:N and WP:ORG. Now if they are still in the same building from when they were founded, the building probably is notable. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Average? 2,000 is not "small" for church membership... the average church attendance for the PCA is reported to be 205 in 2007. That's one denomination, true... but a good sample.[3] And here's another website [4] that reports that there are only 1,210 churches in the US with attendance at 2,000 or above, accomodating for less than half of one percent of all US worshipers. Please check facts before making statements as though they were fact.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Your quoted article explicitly talks about "churchgoers". I'm still not convinced that there are 2000 people regularly attending services in this church *building*, or that there'd even be room for them. Having "a membership of over 2,000" means in my eyes that there are 2,000 people belonging to the church *community*, which makes a big difference - but of course, since all of that is completely unverifiable using online sources, we just can't say. --Amalthea (talk) 08:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Just a thought... maybe you should assume good faith in the offline sources.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Hmm? All I can try to do here is assume that there *are* offline sources since none are given in the article. I don't think I have implied that anybody is acting in bad faith here or in the article - I'm just very unhappy that the church membership bit, the only thing that has been brought forward to establish notability, is ambiguous and unsourced. --Amalthea (talk) 11:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP Their summer program is notable (turned up on a quick scan of google news archive.) but what is really needed is a better article. It's clearly a large church. there must be notable aspects.Elan26 (talk) 15:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)Elan26[reply]

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.