Evangelicals model ministries on business

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Evangelicals model ministries on business

Earthly Empires

By William C. Symonds, with Brian Grow in Atlanta and John Cady in New York

BusinessWeek Online

businessweek.com

There’s no shortage of churches in Houston, deep in the heart of the Bible Belt. So it’s surprising that the largest one in the city – and in the entire country – is tucked away in a depressed corner most Houstonians would never dream of visiting. Yet 30,000 people endure punishing traffic on the narrow roads leading to Lakewood Church every weekend to hear Pastor Joel Osteen deliver upbeat messages of hope. A youthful-looking 42-year-old with a ready smile, he reassures the thousands who show up at each of his five weekend services that “God has a great future in store for you.” His services are rousing affairs that often include his wife, Victoria, leading prayers and his mother, Dodie, discussing passages from the Bible.

Osteen is so popular that he has nearly quadrupled attendance since taking over the pulpit from his late father in 1999, winning over believers from other churches as well as throngs of the “unsaved.” Many are drawn first by his ubiquitous presence on television. Each week 7 million people catch the slickly produced broadcast of his Sunday sermons on national cable and network channels, for which Lakewood shells out $15 million a year. Adherents often come clutching a copy of Osteen’s best-seller, Your Best Life Now, which has sold 2.5 million copies since its publication last fall.

To keep them coming back, Lakewood offers free financial counseling, low-cost bulk food, even a “fidelity group” for men with “sexual addictions.” Demand is brisk for the self-help sessions. Angie Mosqueda, 34, who was brought up a Catholic, says she and her husband, Mark, first went to Lakewood in 2000 when they were on the brink of a divorce. Mark even threw her out of the house after she confessed to infidelity. But over time, Lakewood counselors “really helped us to forgive one another and start all over again,” she says.

Disney Look

Osteen’s flourishing Lakewood enterprise brought in $55 million in contributions last year, four times the 1999 amount, church officials say. Flush with success, Osteen is laying out $90 million to transform the massive Compaq Center in downtown Houston – former home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets – into a church that will seat 16,000, complete with a high-tech stage for his TV shows and Sunday School for 5,000 children. After it opens in July, he predicts weekend attendance will rocket to 100,000. Says Osteen: “Other churches have not kept up, and they lose people by not changing with the times.”

Pastor Joel is one of a new generation of evangelical entrepreneurs transforming their branch of Protestantism into one of the fastest-growing and most influential religious groups in America. Their runaway success is modeled unabashedly on business. They borrow tools ranging from niche marketing to MBA hiring to lift their share of U.S. churchgoers. Like Osteen, many evangelical pastors focus intently on a huge potential market – the millions of Americans who have drifted away from mainline Protestant denominations or simply never joined a church in the first place.

To reach these untapped masses, savvy leaders are creating Sunday Schools that look like Disney World (NYSE: DIS - News ) and church cafés with the appeal of Starbucks (NasdaqNM: SBUX - News). Although most hold strict religious views, they scrap staid hymns in favor of multimedia worship and tailor a panoply of services to meet all kinds of consumer needs, from divorce counseling to help for parents of autistic kids. Like Osteen, many offer an upbeat message intertwined with a religious one. To make newcomers feel at home, some do away with standard religious symbolism – even basics like crosses and pews – and design churches to look more like modern entertainment halls than traditional places of worship.

 

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Branding Whiz

So successful are some evangelicals that they’re opening up branches like so many new Home Depots (NYSE: HD - News) or Subways. This year, the 16.4 million-member Southern Baptist Convention plans to “plant” 1,800 new churches using by-the-book niche-marketing tactics. “We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers,” says Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board.

Branding whizzes that they are, the new church leaders are spreading their ideas through every available outlet. A line of “Biblezines” packages the New Testament in glossy magazines aimed at different market segments – there’s a hip-hop version and one aimed at teen girls. Christian music appeals to millions of youths, some of whom otherwise might never give church a second thought, serving up everything from alternative rock to punk and even “screamo” (they scream religious lyrics). California megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s 2002 book, The Purpose-Driven Life, has become the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, with more than 23 million copies sold, in part through a novel “pyro marketing” strategy. Then there’s the Left Behind phenomenon, a series of action-packed, apocalyptic page-turners about those left on earth after Christ’s second coming, selling more than 60 million copies since 1995.

Evangelicals’ eager embrace of corporate-style growth strategies is giving them a tremendous advantage in the battle for religious market share, says Roger Finke, a Pennsylvania State University sociology professor and co-author of a new book, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. A new Pope has given Catholicism a burst of global publicity, but its nominal membership growth in the U.S. stems largely from the influx of Mexican immigrants. Overall, the Catholic Church’s long-term decline in U.S. attendance accelerated after the recent sex-abuse scandals, there’s a severe priest shortage, and parish churches and schools are closing in the wake of a financial crisis.

Similarly, the so-called mainline Protestants who dominated 20th century America have become the religious equivalent of General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM - News) The large denominations – including the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church – have been shrinking for decades and have lost more than 1 million members in the past 10 years alone. Today, mainline Protestants account for just 16% of the U.S. population, says University of Akron political scientist John C. Green.

In contrast, evangelicalism’s theological flexibility gives it the freedom to adapt to contemporary culture. With no overarching authority like the Vatican, leaders don’t need to wrestle with a bureaucratic hierarchy that dictates acceptable behavior. “If you have a vision for ministry, you just do it, which makes it far easier to respond to market demand,” says University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sociology professor Christian Smith.

With such low barriers to entry, the number of evangelical megachurches – defined as those that attract at least 2,000 weekly worshippers – has shot up to 880 from 50 in 1980, figures John N. Vaughan, founder of research outfit Church Growth Today in Bolivar, Mo. He calculates that a new megachurch emerges in the U.S. an average of every two days. Overall, white evangelicals make up more than a quarter of Americans today, experts estimate. The figures are fuzzy because there’s no common definition of evangelical, which typically refers to Christians who believe the Bible is the literal work of God. They may include many Southern Baptists, nondenominational churches, and some Lutherans and Methodists. There are also nearly 25 million black Protestants who consider themselves evangelicals but largely don’t share the conservative politics of most white ones. Says pollster George Gallup, who has studied religious trends for decades: “The evangelicals are the most vibrant branch of Christianity.”

 

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The triumph of evangelical Christianity is profoundly reshaping many aspects of American politics and society. Historically, much of the U.S. political and business elite has been mainline Protestant. Today, President George W. Bush and more than a dozen members of Congress, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, are evangelicals. More important, the Republican Right has been fueled by the swelling ranks of evangelicals, whose leaders tend to be conservative politically despite their progressive marketing methods. In the 1960s and ‘70s, prominent evangelicals like Billy Graham kept a careful separation of pulpit and politics – even though he served as a spiritual adviser to President Richard M. Nixon. That began to change in the early 1980s, when Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority to express evangelicals’ political views. Many of today’s evangelicals hope to expand their clout even further. They’re also gaining by taking their views into Corporate America. Exhibit A: the recent clash at software giant Microsoft.

As they thrive, though, there are growing tensions, with some mainline Protestants offended by their conservative politics and brazen marketing. “Jesus was not a capitalist; check out what [He] says about how hard it is to get into heaven if you’re a rich man,” says the Reverend Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the liberal National Council of Churches.

Especially controversial are leaders like Osteen and the flamboyant Creflo A. Dollar, pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga., who preach “the prosperity gospel.” They endorse material wealth and tell followers that God wants them to be prosperous. In his book, Osteen talks about how his wife, Victoria, a striking blonde who dresses fashionably, wanted to buy a fancy house some years ago, before the money rolled in. He thought it wasn’t possible. “But Victoria had more faith,” he wrote. “She convinced me we could live in an elegant home…and several years later, it did come to pass.” Dollar, too, defends materialistic success. Dubbed “Pass-the-Dollar” by critics, he owns two Rolls Royces (NasdaqNM: RYCEY.PK - News) and travels in a Gulfstream 3 jet. “I practice what I preach, and the Bible says…that God takes pleasure in the prosperity of his servants,” says Dollar, 43, nattily attired in French cuffs and a pinstriped suit.

 

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Hucksters?

Some evangelical leaders acknowledge that flagrant materialism can raise the specter of religious hucksterism à la Sinclair Lewis’ fictional Elmer Gantry or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. “Our goal is not to turn the church into a business,” insists Warren, the founder of Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif. After The Purpose-Driven Life made him millions, he repaid Saddleback all the salary he had taken over the years and still lives modestly. Cautions Kurt Frederickson, a director of the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.: “We have to be careful when a pastor moves into the CEO mode and becomes too market-oriented, or there might be a reaction against megachurches just as there is against Wal-Mart.”

Many evangelicals say they’re just trying to satisfy demands not met by traditional churches. Craig Groeschel, who launched Life Church in Edmond, Okla., in 1996, started out doing market research with non-churchgoers in the area – and got an earful. “They said churches were full of hypocrites and were boring,” he recalls. So he designed Life Church to counter those preconceptions, with lively, multimedia-filled services in a setting that’s something between a rock concert and a coffee shop.

Once established, some ambitious churches are making a big business out of spreading their expertise. Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., formed a consulting arm called Willow Creek Assn. It earned $17 million last year, partly by selling marketing and management advice to 10,500 member churches from 90 denominations. Jim Mellado, the hard-charging Harvard MBA who runs it, last year brought an astonishing 110,000 church and lay leaders to conferences on topics such as effective leadership. “Our entrepreneurial impulse comes from the Biblical mandate to get the message out,” says Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels, who hired Stanford MBA Greg Hawkins, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, to handle the church’s day-to-day management. Willow Creek’s methods have even been lauded in a Harvard Business School case study.

Hybel’s consumer-driven approach is evident at Willow Creek, where he shunned stained glass, Bibles, or even a cross for the 7,200-seat, $72 million sanctuary he recently built. The reason? Market research suggested that such traditional symbols would scare away non-churchgoers. He also gives practical advice. On a recent Wednesday evening, one of his four “teaching” pastors gave a service that started with 20 minutes of music, followed by a lengthy sermon about the Christian approach to personal finances. He told the 5,000 listeners about resisting advertising aimed at getting people to buy things they don’t need and suggested they follow up at home by e-mailing questions. Like Osteen, Hybel packages self-help programs with a positive message intended to make people feel good about themselves. “When I walk out of a service, I feel completely relieved of any stress I walked in with,” says Phil Earnest, 38, a sales manager who in 2003 switched to Willow Creek from the Methodist Church he found too stodgy.

So adept at the sell are some evangelicals that it can be difficult to distinguish between their religious aims and the secular style they mimic. Last December, Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Tex., staged a spectacular Christmas festival, including a 500-person choir, that attracted 70,000 people even though the cheapest ticket was $20. Throughout the year, some 16,000 people take part in its sports program, which uses eight playing fields and six gyms on its $100 million, 140-acre campus. The teams, coached by church members, bring in converts, many of them children, says Executive Pastor Mike Buster.

 

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Gushers of Cash

Kids are often a prime target audience for megachurches. The main campus of Groeschel’s Life Church in Edmond, Okla., includes a “Toon Town” of 3D buildings, a 16-foot high slide, and an animatronic police chief who recites rules. All the razzmatazz has helped Life Church quadruple its Sunday school attendance to more than 2,500 a week. “The kids are bringing their parents to church,” says children’s pastor Scott Werner.

Such marketing and services help to create brand loyalty any CEO would envy. Willow Creek ranks in the top 5% of 250 major brands, right up with Nike (NYSE: NKE - News) and John Deere (NYSE: DE - News), says Eric Arnson. He helped develop a consumer-brand practice that McKinsey then bought and recently did a pro bono study for Willow Creek using that methodology.

Other megachurches are franchising their good name. Life Church now has five campuses in Oklahoma and will expand into Phoenix this fall. Pastor Groeschel jumped the 1,000 miles to Arizona after market research p(name removed by moderator)ointed Phoenix as an area with a large population but few effective churches. Atlanta’s Dollar, who is African American, has pushed into five countries, including Nigeria and South Africa.

All this growth, plus the tithing many evangelicals encourage, is generating gushers of cash. A traditional U.S. church typically has fewer than 200 members and an annual budget of around $100,000. The average megachurch pulls in $4.8 million, according to a 1999 study by the Hartford Seminary, one of the few surveys on the topic. The money is also fueling a megachurch building boom. First Baptist Church of Woodstock, near Atlanta, for example, has just finished a $62 million, 7,000-seat sanctuary.

Megachurch business ventures sometimes grow beyond the bounds of the church itself. In the mid-1990s, Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Wharton MBA who sold bonds for First Boston before he enrolled in seminary, formed an economic development corporation that revived a depressed neighborhood near Houston’s 14,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church, which he heads. A former Kmart now houses a mix of church and private businesses employing 270 people, including a Christian school and a bank. New plans call for a massive center with senior housing, retailing, and a public school.

For all their seemingly unstoppable success, evangelicals must contend with powerful forces in U.S. society. The ranks of Americans who express no religious preference have quadrupled since 1991, to 14%, according to a recent poll. Despite the megachurch surge, overall church attendance has remained fairly flat. And if anything, popular culture has become more vulgar in recent years. Still, experts like pollster Gallup see clear signs of a rising fascination with spirituality in the U.S. The September 11 attacks are one reason. So is the aging of the culturally influential Baby Boom, since spirituality tends to increase with age, he says. If so, no one is better poised than evangelicals to capitalize on the trend.

 

[beckers]

I live in Houston and have seen the old Summit transform from an arena into a “church” I don’t deny that Lakewood is spread the word of GOD; I just don’t like they way it is spreading it. How can people feel at home when God is taken out of the church? There is nothing that defines these places as houses of GOD. Nothing to show that this is his dwelling place. Nothing to show and no feelings of just awe and reverence when you walk into his home. He has been almost throuwn out of the equation. It amazes me that people critize the Church for our donations and talk about how we have used all this money on places of worship (ie St. Peters Aquare) and even “buying” indulgences BUT these people have no problem with these mega-churches bring in the huge donations…and no one knows excatly what that money is spent on.

The most distrubting part is “”"“With no overarching authority like the Vatican, leaders don’t need to wrestle with a bureaucratic hierarchy that dictates acceptable behavior. “If you have a vision for ministry, you just do it, which makes it far easier to respond to market demand,””""" What this means is that no one is regulating what these people are preaching…there is no authority…nothing to stop them from making things up…It is very distrubing to think that people can just seize on idea, lease some property at a strip mall and start a church. This is making me so sad…UGH!!!

God Bless
Beckers

 

[CarolAnnSFO]

beckers:

It amazes me that people critize the Church for our donations and talk about how we have used all this money on places of worship (ie St. Peters Aquare) and even “buying” indulgences BUT these people have no problem with these mega-churches bring in the huge donations…and no one knows excatly what that money is spent on.

I read this article (and the other five or six articles on the same topic in the magazine), and it appears that at least part of the money is needed to pay for consultants, and other employees needed when a church is run like a business corporation. Not to mention keeping up those huge conference center-like buildings. Some of those churches preach the “prosperity gospel”, and there you would have the trappings of wealth – expensive cars, private jets, etc.

These churches represent “feel-goodism” at its most extreme. No bibles, crosses, hymnals, or anything else that would make a non-believer uncomfortable. No doctrine whatsoever – just the pastor’s interpretation of the Bible, presented to the flock in small, easily digested sound bites. They concentrate on growing the church like a business, and pulling in as many people as possible. But is it more important to have huge numbers, or to have the truth?

The article claims that evangelicals are now the largest religious group in the US, but it overlooks the fact that with no doctrine or authority of any kind, each one of these churches is its own religion. The pastors answer to nobody, and they can indeed “make it up” as they go along.

beckers:

It is very distrubing to think that people can just seize on idea, lease some property at a strip mall and start a church.

They are pulling in huge numbers, but I have to wonder how much of a “church” they really are. I mean, what exactly makes them “Christian”? Are they really churches, or just Christian-oriented theme parks/day care centers?

The fact that hordes of people are flocking to them means they are offering something that those people aren’t finding in their old churches.

I don’t know what the answer is to this; in no way should we ever water down doctrine. You don’t reject or try to alter the truth just to make people feel good. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt Catholic churches to try to be more responsive to peoples’ needs – all of their people.

One example comes to mind – I looked at several of the “megachurch” web sites, and one thing they all have in common is a strong ministry to single people – adult singles, not just young people who don’t happen to be married yet. How many single people leave the Catholic Church because they don’t feel welcome there? This is not a reason to leave the One True Church, but I understand the feeling – my former parish was so rabidly family-oriented that it more or less excluded anyone who wasn’t part of a family. If you weren’t married with children, you were of no importance, you didn’t exist. I left every Mass in tears. My current parish isn’t like that, praise God. But the feeling that you just aren’t wanted does drive some people away, right into the waiting arms of the evangelicals.

 

[David_Paul]

I am neither Catholic nor evangelical Prot.

Saw this post yesterday and decided not to reply.

But now that it is up, to all the Christian People, I do urge you not to get into this.

We must unite. We are not several. We are one.

Or we are nothing.

 

[beckers]

CarolAnnSFO:

One example comes to mind – I looked at several of the “megachurch” web sites, and one thing they all have in common is a strong ministry to single people – adult singles, not just young people who don’t happen to be married yet. How many single people leave the Catholic Church because they don’t feel welcome there? This is not a reason to leave the One True Church, but I understand the feeling – my former parish was so rabidly family-oriented that it more or less excluded anyone who wasn’t part of a family. If you weren’t married with children, you were of no importance, you didn’t exist. I left every Mass in tears. My current parish isn’t like that, praise God. But the feeling that you just aren’t wanted does drive some people away, right into the waiting arms of the evangelicals.

I am one of those young single adults. It is truly hard to get motivated to be involved in the church. Your not quite sure what your position is or should be. Most things are geared towards kids, married couples, and widowers. I have to search out and do things to try to get involved with other young adults from around the city. It’s difficult because there is no one church that is geared more towards singles then families— it’s not like a college town were the church is focused on helping the college students. I understand that a church has to be focused on growth and life with in its church but sometimes it feels like Young adults are the black sheep of the church. There are these great CCE program and the life teen programs and married classes but not a lot of Young adult stuff.It’s hard to have all of these programs focused on your younger years and your married years but what about in between? Are we not anything unless we are children or until we are married???Are we to be left out of the equation??? This has an effect because as you said we are the most likely to leave for these mega churches. We need to feel wanted. The Arch Diocese tries to help but throwing a conference once a year is not truly supporting us.If you want us to grow up and get married in the church help us meet people who hold the same values. Help us build our faith and our future families. I don’t mean to imply that the church should offer a dating service but helps us build friendships with others just like you do with building family unity with in a specific parish but instead over the whole diocese because single adults are very mobile and spread out all over the area. I am lucky that my church offers a young adult group.I’ve meet some great friends. We go to bible study together and do service projects and also just have parties and hang out together. It’s truly been a blessing for me. I am starting to feel like a member of the whole church. I am worried about those who don’t have that support from their church. I’ve been a member of another church that didn’t have the support and it was awful.

Peace be with you,

Beckers

 

[Thekla]

It’s really wild the way many of these ministries encourage parishoners to pray for stuff; money, homes, cars, etc. The idea that God is like Santa and gives you the items on your list. It’s really warped.

 

[Lisa_N]

Thekla:

It’s really wild the way many of these ministries encourage parishoners to pray for stuff; money, homes, cars, etc. The idea that God is like Santa and gives you the items on your list. It’s really warped.

Do you think this is a result of the popularity of the Prayer of Jabez? Basically it tells you to pray for prosperity. I wonder if this whole theme is a take off from that best seller.

Lisa N

 

[Lisa_N]

beckers:

I
. I don’t mean to imply that the church should offer a dating service but helps us build friendships with others just like you do with building family unity with in a specific parish but instead over the whole diocese because single adults are very mobile and spread out all over the area. I am lucky that my church offers a young adult group.I’ve meet some great friends. We go to bible study together and do service projects and also just have parties and hang out together. It’s truly been a blessing for me. I am starting to feel like a member of the whole church. I am worried about those who don’t have that support from their church. I’ve been a member of another church that didn’t have the support and it was awful.

Peace be with you,

Beckers

Beckers, our small Christian community brought this up recently. Basically everything is focused on families with small children and empty nesters. Lots of resources on the kids, Liturgy of the Word, Communion classes, kid activities. Not much for teens and nothing for the young adults.

I hope we can change things in our parish. What would be of interest do you think? We are also trying to figure out what we can do for our teens and college age parishioners. They are sort of left out of the loop.

Lisa N

 

[sconea]

A lot of this sure sounds like the famous “health and wealth gospel” in scripture referred to as thinking of “gain as godliness”…they are even up to the old fundraising tricks in Iraq…

Iraqi Prelate Blasts Evangelicals

Archbishop Emmanuel Delly, patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the highest-ranking prelate in Iraq, denounced US evangelical missionaries working in Iraq, accusing them of bribing Iraqis into becoming Protestant Christians.
During a visit to Paris, reported Reuters’ Tom Heneghan, the prelate told a gathering of reporters that the US missionaries were exploiting poor Iraqis for fundraising purposes.
The patriarch said, "Iraq did not need missionaries as its Christian churches dated back long before Protestantism. As for trying to convert Muslims, he said:
“You can’t even talk about that here.”
Christians make up 3% of Iraq’s 26 million mostly Muslim population, the largest group being the 600,000 Chaldeans who are Eastern rite Catholics linked to the Vatican.
"Saying the evangelicals were not real missionaries, Delly said they attracted poor youths with displays of money and taking them ‘out riding in cars to have fun.’
"Then they take photos and send them here, to Germany, to the US and say “look how many Muslims have become Christian”,’ he said.
The patriarch declined to say if the missionaries were a challenge for his Church or if the US authorities supported them.
It is estimated that 100-200 evangelical missionaries are working in Iraq.

 

[XAnglican]

Anyone interested in this thread should read the book “Church Next - Quantum Changes in How We Do Ministry” by Eddie Gibbs. This books is not only the blueprint for what is taking place now in the Evangelical Protestant movement, but also ask many serious and painful questions about what is happening. Just one example would be that most of the mega churches are “first generational” churches living on the personality of the founder. The question is will they live long enough to become second generational churches?

Enjoy…

 

[Fitz]

Church attendence is dependent on the dynamic pastor. That is not good because it becomes worship of a person and not of God. I am not saying that it is bad to have a dynamic pastor, but our relationship with Jesus needs to be ours and not because of a wonderful speaker.

 

[Thekla]

That relates to the Old Testament theme that God blesses His people with prosperity. All through Catholic School, we were never taught to pray for stuff, but rather prayed that God would help us deal with any trials or tribulations.

I understand that it would be much more fun to pray for things, but whenever I see evangelists on TV encouraging people to just pray for things, it seems unseemly. It sounds terrible, but I see a real encouragement for selfishness in some of these ministries. I guess that’s part of the appeal; it makes it acceptable.

 

[MugenOne]

Have you guys ever seen those pastors in their multimillion dollar homes? Driving top of the line luxury cars? It’s a business for them. I feel sorry for those poor worshippers who get taken for a ride.

 

[CarolAnnSFO]

beckers:

I am worried about those who don’t have that support from their church. I’ve been a member of another church that didn’t have the support and it was awful.

My church recently started a ministry for young, single adults (up to age 35). I hope it’s very successful; that’s a void in the Church that needs to be filled. It’s probably easier to do this in a huge, urban parish than in a small rural or suburban one – in the smaller churches, those single people may fall through the cracks (and be snapped up by the evangelicals).

If you really want to feel left out, try being my age, and never married – we’re totally invisible. My church is far better than most in making all kinds of people feel welcome, and in any event, I get a lot of love and acceptance from my choir and my Secular Franciscan fraternity. But not everyone can sing, and not everyone belongs to a lay order. The Church just needs to do a much better job in reaching out to all of its potential congregation. We’re not all going to a part of a traditional family. God has already decided the number of children I will have – zero. Does that mean I have no place in the Church? I hope not!

By the way, what really scares me about the evangelical mega-churches, is that they are looking to grab political power, and if they get it, some of them will seek to overturn laws such as those preventing discrimination in hiring, and will use them to see that only evangelicals are hired (this is from that same series of articles). If they’re just talking about hiring within their own church, then that’s not a problem – they have a right to hire the kind of people they want. But what happens when such a church starts taking over a whole town?

I know we Christians are all supposed to be one, but I don’t think the mega-churches are looking at it that way at all.

---

Crazy Internet Junkie Society
****Carrier of the Angelic Sparkles Sprinkle Bag

 

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So I saw Joel Osteen last night on Larry King. There’s more than marketing involved. He’s also positive, enthusiastic, and an optimist. Larry King half-jokingly said he and his wife were the happiest people he’d ever interviewed. I can see why that’s attractive to people. Anyone else watch it?