Is big bad?

Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, according to a study released yesterday that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience.

Researchers at the Institute for Studies of Religion, who defined megachurches as those with more than 1,000 worshipers, found that their members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches. They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church -- attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.

(Clipped from the Washington Post)

As the authors of the article note, larger churches tend to be more "evangelical" than smaller churches on average, so this may be a comparison of liberal vs. conservative Christianity in disguise. On the other hand, Osteen et al may distort things in the other direction - perhaps what they're really detecting is consumerism that some mega-churches seem to be focused on. In any case, it's some interesting food for thought.