It’s interesting to observe. Historically, churches were many, small, and deeply rooted in particular neighborhoods. The more traditional churches heavily emphasized service within the church itself and the surrounding neighborhood.
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.
I grew up Catholic, but had some Charismatics as friends from the 80s to the late aughts. In Florida, their mega-faith-church-complex was a combination movie theatre, shopping mall, food court (with one fancy restaurant), and modest arcade . . surrounding and attached to the vast "church" area proper, which was more like a stadium. All, of course, were religious organizations . . I often wondered to myself: how much money could you spend entertaining your family in this . . religio-entertainment-complex . . which you could then write off on your taxes? Rather a lot, it turned out.
I wasn't in the church, so the details I am a little short of, but they had something like a tiered system where everyone had cards like on a cruise ship. So you could get some things here, but not things from there, with a limit. It seems not unlikely that they had to separate the donation from the transaction, but there was still a "transaction-like" activity there. I'm honestly not sure if that church is still around, but it was enormous.
"The Righteous Gemstones" is pretty much mandatory entertainment watch if this subject has any interest. Superbly entertaining (at least 2 first seasons, less keen on the 3rd).
While at a coffee shop I happened to observe someone from a local large church trying to convince someone from a smaller church to attend their church instead. Someone who was an influencer among their church attending peer group, it seemed.
Years ago, when I would tag-along with my wife at her church, I got some perspective on how these mega-churches work. (I don't know what the total attendance was at its various locations, but I'm guessing it was in the high four-digits?) At least for this particular church, the draw seemed twofold:
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.
If you're asocial, and want to go to church but avoid the social aspect, ironically it's easier to blend into the large crowd than to attend a small church. If you're a strange face in a small church, everyone is going to start a conversation to welcome you.
Ok but everyone here is defining "community" and "social aspect" differently.
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.
> Ok but everyone here is defining "community" and "social aspect" differently.
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.
I had read that you wrote asocial. The definitions I found for that were not "finding conversations with strangers exhausting", only "avoiding social interaction"; "lack of motivation to engage in social interaction, or a preference for solitary activities". Your personal experience sounds like the extreme or rarer case. (I and many people I know have been called asocial at times.)
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?
doubly so if you're a black dude in a majority-white church. (this happened to me.)
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.
I grew up in a megachurch but I wouldn’t call it a “megachurch”. It (Manchester UMC) is large at about 2500 members but still does the services in the same format as it has been doing since as early as I can remember. However, I have been to a couple of “megachurches” with that style of service and can comment on the appeal.
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.
I went to one in LA, extended family went for Xmas.
It's weird, super produced. The back wall was a teleprompter and a timer, so they could time this service and start the next.
I don't go to any church, so this was extra over the top.
The other churches that are near where I live have abandoned historical Christian teachings or they have basically become MAGA focused. So I’ve been attending one of these mega churches.
Can’t speak for the American megachurch since I didn’t attend one but I spent a good 10 years in one in Singapore (grew up there) whose membership peaked at >20k at one point.
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.)
My wife briefly attended one similar, though far from the one of the largest. Large enough to have sheriffs office shut down and direct traffic on a large highway at start and end.
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.
I don't attend one, but I have stepped foot in some. Compared to an 'average' (200 person) church, the big ones have more refined music, teaching, and user experience. I guess it's easier to put more effort into content when the user base is 2,000 or 20,000, versus 200.
My wife and I went to New Spring Church in South Carolina for about 6 years and really enjoyed it. The pastors were great communicators and kept my attention much better than churches I'd been to in the past. Actually got me curious and interested enough to finally read the Bible. I love talking about it now too.
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.
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.
The more people in the ceremony, the bigger the energy. It is a spectacle for even non-believers -- but not much more so than watching your local sports team.
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'm not religious but one of my coworkers goes to a megachurch a few miles from where I live.
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.
Yes from what I've seen the ministries are split into families, teenagers, seniors, Spanish-speaking, missions, sports etc. Seems like that would have serious pros and cons.
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.
I believe this line of thinking is actually harmful to many pastors. Once a church hits a couple of hundred, the single-pastor model completely falls apart. I find that churches either figure it out and embrace a mature elder/deacon model or they tend to just chew through pastors every 3-4 years and wonder why.
Seems like this issue could be and probably is solved with having more than 1 pastor. The article mentioned a subordinate relationship of pastors. There’s probably more than 1 pastor per church.
As I read the replies, I hear a lot about the experience of attending. But what I don’t hear about is community. Isn’t that part of the value of church?
My impression (as a complete outsider) is that these churches are replacing community with charismatic faith and leadership.
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.
The article fails to mention that although these megachurches are “nondenominational” they mostly line up with a combination of Baptist (specially baptism only for professing believers by immersion) and Presbyterian (a board of elders run the church instead of congregational style) theological and ecclesiastical slants maybe with some Pentacostal practices.
> Bill Hybels, a megachurch pastor felled by sexual-misconduct allegations in 2018, was said to parrot Peter Drucker, a management guru: “What does the customer consider value?”
So… basically they are businesses selling a product.
Woah woah woah let’s not give megachurches extra points for things they didn’t lead in. Tax breaks yes, more dishonestly, no.
If you don’t think every business that makes it, and even more so for those that make it big, don’t have shady dealings to thank for getting them there, you should join one of these megachurches.
Also, Amazon isn’t a church with tax exempt status but I remember headlines a few years back something along the lines of they paid a whopping 0 dollars in federal tax or something just as unbelievable yet actually true.
If anything, churches are looked at harder because they have the tax exempt status, so people are looking for abuses of that, yet we have corporate entities that can sway the global economy skirting taxes in the open and even legally, somehow.
But I get taxed when I make my money, and then again when I spend that money, which was already taxed.
There’s no difference between a FANG and a megachurch. They are both for profit machines that bleed people dry. When the church pamphlet has bar charts on the back with quarterly projections, and the pastor/whomever lets everyone know that they are a few million behind their target, before discussing the scripture, their priorities are very clear.
The screens, coffee bars, childcare, and well produced music and video, are all there to make you feel special, part of something, relaxed, and wanting to come back, next week, after you get paid again.
The same way in Mad Man the account execs would take clients out to dinner and then to strip clubs to make them feel special and relaxed, so they’d later associate good feelings when asked to hand over their wallets, megachurches have what I listed above. If bowls of cocaine could be legally laid out, you’d be handed one while walking in.
Gotta spend money to make money, but they know the high rollers and if you pay attention, they don’t pay any attention to anyone not forking over cash.
Edit: if you want more signal that megachurches are not about God, look at how many of the 7 deadly sins they proudly embody. Greed. Gluttony. Pride. Those are obvious. Sloth probably also obvious. That’s gotta mean something right? These complexes are tiny cities that sit vacant most of the week.
"If you don’t think every business that makes it, and even more so for those that make it big, don’t have shady dealings to thank for getting them there, you should join one of these megachurches."
I was a contractor for one, so I had an insider look at the donation page optimization, dating apps, marriage counselling (90% of which involved a pastor in some way, including the stereotypical), seeing how people were pressured into donations, what interns were picked for, grandma being pressured into living her last $10 so that the IT team mostly there through connections could have $50-100/person lunches, etc.
And no - there is still a difference of outright misleading the most vulnerable, and I say this regardless of your views on religion.
And? The comparison is on purpose. The idea of a shepherd and their flock has numerous references in the bible and is used as allegory, which pre-modern people would've understood.
Wow, I really like the contrasted view here. It is definitely thought provoking. One day, I may use it in a book or blog post. How shall I cite your thought? Link here?
Bear in mind you'd be linking to (apparently) the first place you became aware of a thought that literally dates back as far as sheperd | flock metaphors in any book of the bible.
Perhaps I was a bit unclear. I was not referencing the general idea of raising sheep, but the negative end result - slaughtering (i.e. malicious). The major Christian view of raising sheep is in the positive. It was unique experience for me to read this in the negative light here.
It's genuinely difficult for me to work out parts of your comment.
> 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.
Consider checking out your local UU (Unitarian Universalist) church if one exists. They're one of the few positioned to poach from the huge flock of "nones" without any change in belief.
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.
UU sounds awesome. Their 4th principle, the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” sounds particularly enticing when I think about what their sermons would be like. I’d expect the pastors to draw from an expansive set of sources to support that search.
A subset of the members of my former UU congregation are some of the nastiest people in my social media network. The way they talk about their conservative neighbors is horrendous and at the end of the day it’s just trading one set of religious precepts for another.
> 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.
My observation of UU is that it's not really about disbelief and skepticism like an atheist meetup. It's more the liberal/progressive ideology wrapped in a church interface. They talk a lot about peace and love, and fighting stuff like climate change, fascist ideas, and inequality.
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.
Two of my good friends from college are UU (via their families) and I found their whole “thing” pretty interesting and positive. I can confirm your anecdote about it mostly being older people, though.
"Higher power" is an Alcoholics Anonymous thing, which has been rationalized by the group to include atheism and agnosticism, although not all atheists and agnostics are on board with that (Cf. Secular Organizations for Sobriety, Rational Recovery). In Freemasonry, you're looking for the "Supreme Being," the God of "that religion in which all men agree" which is an attempt at universalism from a 18th century cultural Christian perspective. While that concept has been harmonized with Buddhism, Hinduism, various Neopaganisms, and many other religions that aren't a natural fit, atheism remains explicitly called out as something that's incompatible in the ritual used in the Anglo-American Masonic tradition. Adogmatic or Liberal Freemasonry admits atheists (and sometimes women!), but they're much fewer in number outside Latin America and Continental Europe and unrecognized by the larger Anglo-American faction.
The disqualification of atheism is because it is a materialist anti-belief, where the necessary condition is that any faith of others is wrong, which makes it the essence of choosing to have an irreconcilable difference. They literally identify as adversaries to the faithful.
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.
Masons require a belief in a supreme being and scripture, and various things online say they've explicitly forbidden atheists before. I take everything I read about Freemasonry with a grain of salt, but it still seems fairly hostile to atheists.
You're correct that Anglo-American Freemasonry requires a belief in a Supreme Being. However, the issue of scripture is a bit more nuanced. There's no requirement to believe in the veracity or to honor any scripture in particular. There is a Holy Bible on an altar in a lodge room but it's used as a symbol. During an initiation, a candidate usually has the option to use the holy book of his choice. If one is opposed to the idea that holy books should be honored at all, he might not be a good fit for the institution, but there's nothing technically preventing him from joining. There's also a few times when portions of the Hebrew scriptures are read aloud, though they're pretty unoffensive from a universalist perspective.
They seem to be somewhat welcoming towards most major religions, but atheists still seem frowned upon. One could argue that the universe itself is a supreme being, but any scripture put forth would likely raise some questions.
I'm sure an atheist could successfully become a member, but I doubt many are trying to as the original post joked.
Luther’s 95 theses literally condemn « indulgences » as promoting greed…
I assume you were making a reference to Weber’s work (the Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), which happened a few centuries later and has been heavily criticised and nuanced since.
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.