[mcurial]

Can’t speak for the American megachurch since I didn’t attend one but I spent a good 10 years in one in Singapore (grew up there) whose membership peaked at >20k at one point.

I would say the main allure of megachurches is the gap between being a consumer and a contributor of that “local church”. Bridging that gap is always challenging for any normal person, and that is true for all sorts of communities. Couple that with an easy-listening “TED-talk”, it is not too difficult to see why one rather just consumes from the pews every Sunday from a larger church.

If you’d use coffee as an simplified analogy for Christianity, the worship service at a megachurch is like a Frappuccino - the easiest drink to get started, appeals to the masses, sweet, lots of other stuff and not too much coffee, which is bitter. Smaller churches feel a bit more like getting coffee at a hipster cafe, costs a lot more (you have to get involved in church, oh my), doesn’t necessarily suit everyone’s taste, a lot more coffee than additives, and only starts tasting great if you’ve learned a bit more about coffee.

(Well, that’s as far as coffee goes to explain a very complicated and nuanced subject matter, but hey, it was worth it.)