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Megachurches represent an interesting empirical and conceptual phenomenon. Empirically, megachurches (Protestant churches with average weekly attendance of greater than 2,000 members) are growing at a time when overall church participation in the United States is steady or declining. Conceptually, megachurch pastors can be viewed as institutional leaders who attempt to reconcile new technologies and large congregations within a highly institutionalized setting. While many of these megachurches have a denominational affiliation, some do not. In this essay, we describe the literature on megachurches and offer observations about the megachurch as an institution. Drawing from preliminary analysis of a sample of over 1,400 megachurches (identified from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research), we also draw tentative conclusions about the characteristics of the pastors of megachurches, and one growing institutional maintenance practice: writing texts. We propose that examining megachurches can help extend the current research on institutional leadership, institutional work, and institutional support mechanisms.

Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces and the religious refugee wishes to consume in an effort to increase their membership. The model illustrates that megachurches expect little in regard to financial or time commitment of new attendees. However, once the attendees perceive a good fit with the church, the megachurch increases its expectation of commitment. Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

The paper serves to illustrate the dynamic process by which megachurches attract new attendees and transform those that find a good fit between their needs and what the church offers into full members of the church.

Purpose – To assess the following question: Do large Protestant congregations in the United States exert social and political influence simply as a function of their size, or do other characteristics amplify their influence?

Methodology/Approach – Using the U.S.-based National Congregations Study and the General Social Survey, the chapter employs a multivariate regression model to control for other factors related to church size.

Findings – Larger congregations contain a larger proportion of regular adult participants living in high-income households and possessing college degrees, and a smaller proportion of people living in low-income households. In congregations located in relatively poor census tracts, the relationship between high socioeconomic status (SES) and congregation size remains significant. Across Protestant groups, size and proportion of the congregation with high SES are correlated. Individual-level analyses of linked data from the General Social Survey confirm the positive relationship between the size of congregation the respondent attends with both high household income and possessing a college degree. These analyses also reveal a negative relationship between size and low household income.

Social implications – Size is an important factor when considering the social impact of congregations.

Originality/Value of chapter – This chapter identifies a systematic difference between churches of different sizes based on SES. This relationship has not been previously identified in a nationally representative sample.

The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may better understand these trends.

This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015 Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better understand these trends.

The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.

The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and growing the church's membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342

This organizational climate empirical case study involves a religious organization in the United States of America, which has experienced a substantial decline in membership and weekly service participation numbers over the previous five years. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to reveal motivating factors that drive parishioners to leave or stay within a traditional protestant congregation and to uncover the strengths and weaknesses within the organization.

The methodology behind the study considers personal observation by the author and engages current and former members of the organization as well as front-line employees and senior leadership. Qualitative essays were completed through Qualtrics by participants and analyzed with the use of MAXQDA software for thematic frequency and organization.

During analysis, correlations were found to exist between the church's membership decline and ineffectiveness of senior leadership. Also, it is quite evident that the church's strengths were found in the quality of its members and the relationships they developed. This was found to be a significant motivation to stay within the organization.

The study provides value to practitioners within organizational development fields. Usage of this knowledge could assist in providing insights into possible reasons why religious organizations falter under ineffective leadership, which in turn could provide opportunities to implement improvements based on discoveries.

This essay uses Reeves-Ellington's discussion of the timescape as a departure point for describing one way in which marketing managers have responded to consumers’ lived experience of time. It focuses on the retail theatrics of the retroscape as a source of meaning for beleaguered consumers. It then extends the notion of the liminal to account for the temporal orientation that consumers display with regard to both clock time and cosmic time. It concludes with some observations on pluritemporality in postmodern culture.