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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
"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.
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?”<p>So… basically they are businesses selling a product.
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.<p>UU is basically the church of <i>be excellent to each other</i>, 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.