American megachurches are thriving by poaching flocks
economist.com
economist.com
Many churches still operate this way, but mega churches do not. They work on economy of scale: the typical visitor or member is much less involved than in a small church, but lots and lots of small donations still add up to a large budget, so the mega churches can have a paid staff to take care of all the things that would be volunteer in a normal church. This results in a more “polished” experience where people don’t have to do anything other than show up on Sunday and occasionally chip in a few bucks.
This is bad, spiritually, as the entire Christian teaching emphasizes service and community so much. But it fits the trends in an increasingly consumerist America where most people (a) live in indistinguishable commodity suburban subdivisions they don’t care about, (b) mostly judge their quality of life by their hobbies and how much stuff they acquire, and (c) are used to commuting to regional facilities for everything they do anyway. It lets people feel like they’re still part of a “Christian culture” even though they’ve reduced it from a deep life commitment to a spectator social club.
Unsurprisingly the mega-churches are very controversial within more traditional Christian communities — they are seen as “not real churches,” and many question whether their attendees are sincere in their faith.
1. They were very oriented to young adults (say, <40 years old): modern music, chic building/space design, coffee-shop feel (especially because people would regularly come in with their lattes), and the amazing perk that they had numerous rooms for kids of different ages. Kids were treated very well and had so much fun in the bouncy houses or whatever, and parents could really focus on whatever the message was that day.
2. Critical mass. Being around more people really gives a feeling of belonging, and I think it's pretty well-established that the big crowds, swelling music, etc., really does elicit an emotional response that some people interpret as the holy spirit while others simply think of it as a warm, wonderful feeling you get going to church. That feeling is definitely self-reinforcing for attendance.
Do people here mean "community" in a very narrow sense of "attending a religious service for one hour a week standing in a huge room beside a thousand others who are essentially strangers"? Not like "group of friends and neighbors"? Or "not just a church focused on extracting tithes and acquiring new members", but "is genuinely concerned with its members' wellbeing, has programs and events, pastors/mentors know who their members are"? Or a more hands-off "members get a sense that they could call them if they ever needed help"?
> If you're a strange face in a small church, everyone is going to start a conversation to welcome you.
Umm, ok, how is that bad? I'd just chat with them, limit any excessively personal disclosures or nosiness. I think the glass is half full if they simply want to get to know you without any ulterior motive [e.g. converting your entire family], that's pretty rare.
indeed.
> Umm, ok, how is that bad?
Like I started my comment off with, "If you are asocial". I was really thinking of myself when I wrote that, although I'm an atheist. I think this is ridiculously difficult for some people to comprehend, and I have completely cut people out of my life because of it, but it is genuinely exhausting to have a conversation with someone, especially someone I don't know.
Given that context, in what ways do you find it preferable to attend a (large) church instead of streaming online, or visiting a church when a service isn't on? Does it give you a sense of community, and if so how do you define community for you?
it's very uncomfortable.
you're also a prime target for any and all volunteering activities. great if you really love the church; unbelievably awkward otherwise.
i went to a mega-church once. (hillsong nyc in 2011.) it was a weird experience that i didn't want to do again, but they definitely put together a really nice product, and you could absolutely hide in plain sight.
Services at a megachurch have almost a laid back rock concert type atmosphere. There is a lot of contemporary music played and everything else is made to be as “soulful” and engaging as possible. It’s a very unique atmosphere, but the appeal is much the same as something like a country music concert. The services are a whole production.
The other advantage big churches have (and I did see this with my church growing up) is that larger communities make a lot of things easier. It’s easier to form service missions, bible groups, youth activities, etc, because it’s much easier to reach a critical mass when you have such a large congregation to pull from.
https://manchesterumc.org/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_United_Methodist_...
I don't go to any church, so this was extra over the top.
I would say the main allure of megachurches is the gap between being a consumer and a contributor of that “local church”. Bridging that gap is always challenging for any normal person, and that is true for all sorts of communities. Couple that with an easy-listening “TED-talk”, it is not too difficult to see why one rather just consumes from the pews every Sunday from a larger church.
If you’d use coffee as an simplified analogy for Christianity, the worship service at a megachurch is like a Frappuccino - the easiest drink to get started, appeals to the masses, sweet, lots of other stuff and not too much coffee, which is bitter. Smaller churches feel a bit more like getting coffee at a hipster cafe, costs a lot more (you have to get involved in church, oh my), doesn’t necessarily suit everyone’s taste, a lot more coffee than additives, and only starts tasting great if you’ve learned a bit more about coffee.
(Well, that’s as far as coffee goes to explain a very complicated and nuanced subject matter, but hey, it was worth it.)
One thing I as an observer found weird was the general vibe of the church. I don't know if this applies to any but the one I was at, so take with a grain of salt.
At this church, every one seemed dress for image. Giant logo tight fitting shirts, bleached skinny jeans, spray tans, hair gels. Inside, giant TVs and loud music speakers. It felt like more going to a concert or club on a Friday night than a church.
In contrast, when I was a kid, every man wore a suit or some boring button up and slacks or jeans, women would wear a simple dress or something similar.
I'm not sure if church has changed that much in the last 20 or 30 years, or it's just that one, but I found it rather off-putting. It seemed like everyone was there to make it about themselves, and less about congregating for a religious reason.
The way that I explain it to people is like this. It's Christianity 101. They do an excellent job of creating a low pressure "come as you are" environment and that is really critical. In the same way the people tend to leave jobs because of bad management, they often leave churches because of bad experiences with some of the members. When you go to a more traditional church, there's often an expectation to dress a certain way or to feel like you don't want to draw attention to yourself. I've heard this referred to as the Christian Pageant Show.
A lot of mega churches have called this out and invite people to come as they are. Shorts, t-shirts, flip flops. Some people dress up. There is no right way to hear the Gospel. As this has been called out more, it's had an influence on a lot of other churches to realize...you know what, they're 100% right. Everybody dressing up is great if they're doing it for the reason of "bringing your best to God" but you're creating an environment where people feel like they don't fit in if they aren't doing that.
Taken a step farther, people will often act like they have it all together in more traditional churches. They'll think they are supposed to. The reality is that this is supposed to be the place where you can share your struggles. You tend to need to get involved and get to know people a little bit more before you're comfortable doing that in a lot of cases.
Now, I say all that to say this: going to a church like New Spring (I can't speak for all mega churches) is an ideal place to go if you don't have a church home or don't want a bunch of people coming up to you afterwards, inviting you to lunch and trying to get to know you. Sometimes that's great, but if you just want to walk in and see what this is all about you want the same level of pressure you'd feel if you were going to a movie theater...zero. This also creates an environment that is REALLY easy to invite people into, because you know they won't have to worry about fitting in either. It's great like that.
We attended for about 6 years. Volunteered. Tithed regularly. I remembered being excited about going to church for the first time in my life. I learned all sorts of stuff that I didn't know and I actually remembered sermons better than I ever did before too. It got through to me, made sense and though it's a bigger story for another time...changed my life for the better.
But after 6 years we also realized we just didn't know many people. We wanted to go somewhere that had adult Sunday School classes, so we changed to a more traditional church.
After having gone through what I call "Christianity 101" I felt a lot more like I fit in this environment now. We'd have a discussion and I could actually participate instead of sitting quietly in the back of the room. I could ask questions, add discussion points and even offer AND back up some corrections on things that a lot of people thought but weren't really biblically supported.
After enough of this, I actually got asked to help teach and did a couple of times a month for a little over a year. Really liked that too. Prepared and presented just like I would for a programming talk and that got really interesting as well.
I go down really strange rabbit holes when I'm researching to teach. Eventually, I even started blogging about it.
Like, the origins of Hercules:
https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/was-herculesjewish-biblical-...
Or does the math show that Solomon was potentially depressed?
https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/solomons-country-song
I don't write as often as I probably should, but I'm going to try to pick it up a little more in the future.
Anyway, I hope that answers your question. It basically boils down to people often not feeling like they fit in the church where they are, for one reason or another, and these mega churches are designed specifically to create an environment where there's no pressure to fit in. There's a lot of appeal to that.
One of the parts of having a pastor is using that person as a spiritual counselor. It's THE core part of their job. If you belong to a megachurch, then unless you are a huge donor, your pastor will likely never even know your name, much less help you out with any issues you might have with faith or morality based issues.
I looked up their web site and they have 14 different people listed as "pastor."
It looks like it is divided up between a senior ministry team, adult and family ministers, care, college, music, sports, student ministries. Then there are about 30 elders and another 50 deacons.
I just looked at the satellite photos and they have 6 separate soccer fields. The youth and sports are big parts of it. They have 10 different youth sports and 8 for adults. Multiple summer camps.
I would never join anything like this but I would also never join a fraternity or sorority. It seems like you're paying a group to be friends with you but it is their money so whatever.
Another underreported part of the value proposition is that single/divorced/widowed people can find partners/spouses via that church and its social events (and it gives some basic implicit level of background verification, more than dating apps).
This is likely gradually becoming more important in part as civic engagement and volunteering are reportedly decreasing in recent decades, esp. in the US. [I looked for studies but didn't find much.]
At the extreme cusp of megachurch/influencer, Hillsong Church NYC's (ex-)pastor Carl Lentz [0] befriended[/recruited/targeted/whatever verb] Justin Bieber (baptized him in an NBA player's bathtub) [1] and other celebrities [2]. The term "hypepriest" was coined [3]. "Marketing lessons from a Southern megachurch" [4] is an interesting read; the degree to which church preachers and Instagram influencers have things in common depends presumably on the type of church, which demographic it might be targeting and how narrowly, its KPI, the preachers' compensation incentives, social-media presence etc. Haven't seen much study of this, presumably because much of the data is not public. But as the concept of social capital is being redefined in the internet age, clearly there are long-term implications.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsong_Church
[1]: https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/1/17596502/justin-bie...
[2]: https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/stars-who...
[3]: https://www.gq.com/story/hypepriests-pastors-who-dress-like-...
[4]: https://medium.com/@greenglassheart/marketing-lessons-from-a...
What professional football on TV is to your local neighborhood games; a substitution of one human interest for a stronger (but arguably less positive) one.
So… basically they are businesses selling a product.
> The major Christian view of raising sheep is in the positive.
> but the negative end result - slaughtering
I'm in Australia, in a rural area surrounded by a lot of wheat and sheep farmers, many of them with christian backgrounds, many actual christians.
All regard raising sheep as a positive enterprise that brings in revenue through wool and meat - it always ends in slaughter (save when there's a drought | fire | etc. when there is unintended / uncontrolled death).
That's farming livestock for you, flocks always veer towards an end by slaughter.
Now, outside of any Christian | biblical viewpoint there has always been cynicism about religion, about charismatic self declared prophets leading lambs to the slaughter in holy wars.
It's not a parallel unique or original to the GP comment here on HN .. and indeed it's such a straightforward observation that shepards only invest effort in protecting flocks from wolves so that they themselves can harvest the flock instead of the wolves that I often wonder why christians even use such imagery.
Yup. You are born, grow, work, pay taxes, and die.
No ... I don't think that describes me, but I'll admit I do have some broadly nihilistic/athiestic views and I tend to cynicism.
No, I'm actually not fun at all at parties: I'd rather read a good book than mingle and attempt to engage with intoxicated dullards.
UU is basically the church of be excellent to each other, yet whenever I go it's almost entirely old people. It's fun to chat and drink coffee with them, but I wonder where all the younger atheists/humanists are.
Home, sleeping.
As an atheist, this is a challenge if you’re looking for community. These religious communities are organized around some common understanding of whatever sacred text they claim as truth. But it’s hard to feel as connected over disbelief and scepticism. Or maybe it’s all a multifactorial “Bowling Alone” problem that crosses religious and secular boundaries.
Since I moved back to the Midwest (not sure if that was a terrible idea), UU feels like a microcosm of the Bay Area.
Maybe the "problem" is that younger people who want to make the world better tend to move to places where stuff actually happens, instead of sitting around talking about it.
Amen. That was my experience.
> I wonder where all the younger atheists/humanists are
They’ve turned to Freemasonry and the Elks. Ha! No, millennials don’t believe in community organizations. Too creepy.
If you've ever seen a dog scramble to take food and wolf it down without a sense of consequences because the food is the end in itself, materialism is the human version of that but for power. Without a shared abstraction for morality, there is no basis of trust or responsibility to expose anything valuable to them. In this sense, belief in a supreme being is a much more rational position than its critics apprehend.
I'm sure an atheist could successfully become a member, but I doubt many are trying to as the original post joked.
At home getting stoned and playing video games.
… only half-joking.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism#Terminology