Recently, Business Week ran a story on the phenomenon of megachurch marketing. Many religious commentators made a huge deal over the sheer size and scale of some of these churches. The biggest of them all: Lakewood Community Church in Houston, Texas pastored by Joel Osteen, expects weekend attendance to top over 100 000 souls by this July. According to the article, 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.
The article goes on to say that the three biggest churches in North America are, right now, in the midst of building campaigns, with the total cost for three new facilities running almost a quarter of a billion US dollars. That’s a lot of money for three buildings. Of course, none of these churches are Lutheran so it’s easy for us to look down our noses at such excess.
But in the interest of full disclosure, I...(the rest here)
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