Faith Works 9-18-2026
Jeff Gill
Mega is a matter of opinion, in data or discipleship
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Data centers aren’t new to artificial intelligence becoming a point of public debate; they’ve been going up in Licking County since 2019.
Back then in the “beforetime” pre-COVID, the Advocate talked in that year about our having “a data center.” Now there are at least fourteen operating in the western half of our county, with 20 more planned and moving forward. Ohio has at least 160, maybe 200 working now, with around 100 of them in the Columbus metro area (which includes us).
They’re going up so fast it’s hard to get a solid read on how many are up and running, and there are both large and small data centers, even if the small ones would look pretty big next to, say, your house.
Dozens of them are “hyperscale” or large-scale data centers, which is where the rhetoric threatens to collide with reality. I’m going to say the average data center is really big compared to having a child care center built nearby, but our profusion of distribution centers since 2010 is to my eyes hard to tell apart.
Called fulfillment centers or distribution or logistics centers, they tend not to be called warehouses, and are pretty mega (but I definitely never hear them called mega-warehouses). From the outside, they look grim and overwhelming on the landscape, horizontally dominating the view along I-70 and US 40 and now all along Rt. 161 three and four deep.
One concerned website says that Licking County is “the definitive epicenter of Ohio’s data boom” with “massive, multi-gigawatt facilities” for half a dozen entities in the New Albany area on our side of the county line, Microsoft building them soon in Hebron and Heath, and Cologix in Johnstown. Lancaster and Sunbury are getting looks, but we are definitely the epicenter of this technological earthquake.
This eruption, and the difficulties in both defining what we’re talking about, and measuring what’s happening on the ground, reminds me — as you might expect — of the explosion of megachurches in the 1980s & 1990s.
What is a megachurch? You can search around for a standard definition, and find a fair amount of variation. One of the more common is any single site where a thousand or more attend each weekend for worship. Central Ohio began to hear about megachurches in the 1980s with Rod Parsley and World Harvest Church just to our southwest; Parsley was mentored by Lester Sumrall who with others like Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart had brought worship and television together into televangelism.
But megachurch status doesn’t necessarily require a TV feed, and now even small congregations can pull off streaming video. Mega when it comes to churches is usually contemporary worship music in a large open facility, without windows to facilitate video screens and projections systems. Almost any megachurch started small at some point, but their defining characteristic is size, and aspirations to get larger. Jersey Church, which is interestingly also in the Licking County part of New Albany, has the stated goal of getting over 5,000. Spring Hills Baptist Church, Cornerstone Church, God’s Acres are all up there, Heath Church of Christ and More Life Church as well, with others working into that category.
I always like to note that Catholics listen to these discussions with some bemusement: many, even most parishes will have a thousand or more each weekend coming to Mass. But they are rarely called megachurches.
Like hyperscale data centers, you can find a fair amount of debate around whether the development of megachurch-ness is good or bad. Those within them say they are successful in reaching people for Christ, which is the only real measure worth considering.
Size does many things well; the question is what still might benefit from smallness? In faith or discipleship, and even in technology?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in a variety of settings and would hate to name a favorite. Tell him what you think about size and speed and efficiency at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
One source used:
https://stopohiodatacenters.org/licking-county
Jeff Gill
Mega is a matter of opinion, in data or discipleship
___
Data centers aren’t new to artificial intelligence becoming a point of public debate; they’ve been going up in Licking County since 2019.
Back then in the “beforetime” pre-COVID, the Advocate talked in that year about our having “a data center.” Now there are at least fourteen operating in the western half of our county, with 20 more planned and moving forward. Ohio has at least 160, maybe 200 working now, with around 100 of them in the Columbus metro area (which includes us).
They’re going up so fast it’s hard to get a solid read on how many are up and running, and there are both large and small data centers, even if the small ones would look pretty big next to, say, your house.
Dozens of them are “hyperscale” or large-scale data centers, which is where the rhetoric threatens to collide with reality. I’m going to say the average data center is really big compared to having a child care center built nearby, but our profusion of distribution centers since 2010 is to my eyes hard to tell apart.
Called fulfillment centers or distribution or logistics centers, they tend not to be called warehouses, and are pretty mega (but I definitely never hear them called mega-warehouses). From the outside, they look grim and overwhelming on the landscape, horizontally dominating the view along I-70 and US 40 and now all along Rt. 161 three and four deep.
One concerned website says that Licking County is “the definitive epicenter of Ohio’s data boom” with “massive, multi-gigawatt facilities” for half a dozen entities in the New Albany area on our side of the county line, Microsoft building them soon in Hebron and Heath, and Cologix in Johnstown. Lancaster and Sunbury are getting looks, but we are definitely the epicenter of this technological earthquake.
This eruption, and the difficulties in both defining what we’re talking about, and measuring what’s happening on the ground, reminds me — as you might expect — of the explosion of megachurches in the 1980s & 1990s.
What is a megachurch? You can search around for a standard definition, and find a fair amount of variation. One of the more common is any single site where a thousand or more attend each weekend for worship. Central Ohio began to hear about megachurches in the 1980s with Rod Parsley and World Harvest Church just to our southwest; Parsley was mentored by Lester Sumrall who with others like Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart had brought worship and television together into televangelism.
But megachurch status doesn’t necessarily require a TV feed, and now even small congregations can pull off streaming video. Mega when it comes to churches is usually contemporary worship music in a large open facility, without windows to facilitate video screens and projections systems. Almost any megachurch started small at some point, but their defining characteristic is size, and aspirations to get larger. Jersey Church, which is interestingly also in the Licking County part of New Albany, has the stated goal of getting over 5,000. Spring Hills Baptist Church, Cornerstone Church, God’s Acres are all up there, Heath Church of Christ and More Life Church as well, with others working into that category.
I always like to note that Catholics listen to these discussions with some bemusement: many, even most parishes will have a thousand or more each weekend coming to Mass. But they are rarely called megachurches.
Like hyperscale data centers, you can find a fair amount of debate around whether the development of megachurch-ness is good or bad. Those within them say they are successful in reaching people for Christ, which is the only real measure worth considering.
Size does many things well; the question is what still might benefit from smallness? In faith or discipleship, and even in technology?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in a variety of settings and would hate to name a favorite. Tell him what you think about size and speed and efficiency at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
One source used:
https://stopohiodatacenters.org/licking-county
