41–50 of 93 posts
A flock is, after all, how you refer to sheep.
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.
Curious if members of HN attend any of these megachurches. If so, what is the draw?
Curious if members of HN attend any of these megachurches. If so, what is the draw?
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.
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.
> it's almost entirely old people 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.
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.
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.
Curious if members of HN attend any of these megachurches. If so, what is the draw?
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, 2. Critical mass. Being around more people really gives a feeling of be…
Protestantism and capitalism is basically the same idea. Greed is, for lack of a better word, good.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's creepier. 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.
> 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.
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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.