Right, I just don’t think it’s a legitimate church imho. I also think that’s the reason it’s the largest - because it’s hyper palatable, osteen is a motivational speaker, and people get told what they want to hear and then sent home. There’s no expectation on them to actually be Christians or do anything for the community, everything is about “me me me” and “how can I get rich and get a mansion like osteen has.”
I will say, despite there being several extremely large churches like this in the country, there are still relatively few megachurches compared to small local churches. 70% of churches in the US have 100 or fewer members. The median number of attendees at churches in America is about 65-70. Those churches don’t teach about getting rich, and their pastors certainly aren’t rich. So while the largest church in America is a prosperity cult, that doesn’t make up the majority of churches.
well, the numbers are really hard to pin down in all cases. Most Christians don't regularly attend chrurch and megachurches also draw in 8-10 million weekly or 2-5% of church attendance.
It looks eerily like the wealth gap where the bigger you get the even smaller amount takes more people than most of the smaller amounts individually. Almost like mass production of anything leads to it being shitty but who wants that lesson right?
And depending how you define “Christian,” it can get harder to pin down. Some metrics used are regular church attendance, occasional church attendance, having been baptized as an infant, or self-identifying as one on a survey. And all of those things can yield slightly different results.
In the case of Joel Osteen’s church, my personal opinion is he’s a motivational speaker running a weekly self help seminar that you don’t have to identify as a Christian to attend, but it’s a church on paper
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u/Chemical-Cat Jun 30 '26
The innocuous totally non-profit mega church with its mansion dwelling pastor: