Megachurch

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‘When two or three are gathered together in my name.’ Not just one. But not a hundred either. Two or three.
—Simone Weil
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:6[1]

A megachurch (also known as a McChurch) is a money-sucking device invented for the purpose of getting Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and upscale families in the exurbs and suburbs back into church, creating a ready-made Republican Party voting bloc, and, of course, making its owners mighty rich.

Contents

[edit] Gimmicks

The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California, which went bankrupt in 2011 and is currently being renovated into a Catholic church.

Megachurches use a lot of gimmicks to attract people (especially those in their twenties and thirties): rock music in the service, Christian motorcycle clubs, skateboarder ministries, "spiritual warfare", etc. Megachurches have chucked out the old hymns and sing a lot of repetitive "praise and worship" choruses. They are known for huge buildings with plush carpeted auditoriums, Jumbotrons, and modern sound systems, and incorporate bookstores, snack bars, fitness centers, schools, day cares, parking lots the size of several football fields (gotta love that suburban sprawl), and the kitchen sink. Many of them follow either evangelical or Pentecostal beliefs, and their politics and social views lean towards the conservative/fundamentalist end of the spectrum. Some of the larger ones are associated with a prominent televangelist or (chiefly before the '70s) radio preacher.

[edit] Church placement

Generally, people are born into a church, they are baptized (if their church does youth baptism), they go to Sunday school, they take lessons in their church's catechism, and they are confirmed as a teenager (or baptized, if their church believes strictly in adult baptism). Or, if they convert as adults, they will take catechism instruction and then be baptized.

By contrast, joining a megachurch can be more like a job interview. Instead of catechism instruction, the prospective megachurch member may be put through a rigorous series of classes to determine what "spiritual gifts" (read: skills the church can exploit for $$$) the prospective member has, at which point they are assigned to such groups as the skateboarders' ministry or the "Gearheads for God" assembly.[2]

[edit] Target audience

The most successful megachurches are predominantly based in suburban and exurban areas, most notably in the American South (aka the "Bible Belt") but also in the Midwestern and Western United States. The Northeast has largely been immune to the megachurch trend, possibly because of the preponderance of Catholicism, "mainline" Protestant churches, secularism, and liberal politics in that part of the country. Megachurches tend to be predominantly white, although black people are also well-represented in both the laity and in the top ranks; Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, T. D. Jakes, and Charles Blake are among the more prominent black megachurch pastors. Latinos, conversely, are a vanishingly rare sight in most megachurches, likely due to the fact that most Latinos are Catholic. In terms of age, membership is skewed towards those between the ages of 35-49, i.e. people who came of age in the 1980s and '90s. The foremost growth years for megachurches as a whole were in the 2000s, which were, not coincidentally, the era of the George W. Bush administration, though they seem to have leveled off since then.[3]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. [1]
  2. http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=1006
  3. This infographic, containing various statistics on megachurches and quotes from some of their pastors. (Source: OnlineChristianColleges.com)
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