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I've noticed that small churches depend on people in their congregation having children to gain or maintain growth or they have to depend on former members who left to pursue "the world" to screw up and come running back for solace. In the large churches, they have all the creature comforts, bells and whistles and theatrics to lure potential members.
What I've noticed, however, is that there seems to be far less people coming into the church because of the Christian message itself. Granted, there are those who join up because of a sense of desperation or confusion and turmoil in their lives. These might find the Christian hope of perfection in the next life or Jesus fixing everything in this life might come in, but a conviction that the message is beyond question, I'm not so sure.
Most of my neighboors are Fundamentalist Christians. The guy across the street was trying to get me to go to his church. The reason: theatrics, once a mo. the church puts on this elaborate service. Once, the pastor brought out a tiger in a cage, plus they have a full-time rock band. This is totally contrary to the way I was raised which was very traditional, church choir and quiet prayer. I find any church that needs to put on a show, very suspect and definetly not my thing. That said, these mega-churches, replete with coreographed(sp?) shows, are becoming very popular. I wonder what is behind this trend?
I think for the most part people who go to church are sincere in their beliefs but there's no question that the latest trend is to simply entertain the crowd or wow them with a multimillion dollar church with all of the amenities. I remember listening to my StepFather's relatives who are very religious and they were a couple of fairly young guys who were really into these martial arts guys who do performances on television and in megachurches and put on the pretense that God is giving them power to break a bunch of concrete blocks or whatever it is that they happen to be doing. I thought it was the most stupid thing I'd ever heard of as they described it to me but I've seen it on tv myself so I know it's for real. I would think that any Christian who really wants to hear a positive message in a sermon that would be typical in a small church would be disgusted by the commercialization of religion. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is attracting new members while the small neighborhood churches are slowly fading away.
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