America's roughly 1,800 megachurches are defined by Hollywood-style production and mesmerising crowds. While most American churches are struggling to fill pews, these congregations are only getting bigger. Although most churches have fewer than 100 members, 70% of people attend the largest 10%.
The megachurch model is built for growth. At any given service roughly a sixth of the crowd is made up of newcomers. Volunteers at "connections" booths give first-timers gifts and usher them towards small groups. Churches are now franchising: Oklahoma's Life Church has 46 campuses and Alabama's Church of the Highlands has 27. Some rent high-school gyms and theatres that are empty on weekend mornings; others buy new buildings. Church has expanded well beyond a Sunday service: members play pickup sports, attend marriage counselling, take anger-management lessons and send their children to church-run schools. Many megachurches now run colleges.
Surveys by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research found that between 2020 and 2025 the average megachurch's annual revenue rose by 25%, from $5.3m to $6.6m. Nearly all of it came from congregant donations. Megachurches report spending half their cash on staff salaries, just over a third on building maintenance and programming, and a tenth on charity.
Federal tax law exempts churches from filing annual returns and shields them from audits. "The only people keeping an eye on these big churches are insiders," according to Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer of the University of Notre Dame.
About a quarter of megachurches preach the prosperity gospel, a theology asserting that God rewards faith with material wealth. Most, like a rising share of American Protestants, are non-denominational, building brands designed to be popular and flexible rather than tying themselves to traditional sects with rigid doctrines. The majority of megachurch pastors do not preach politics or address hot-button issues such as abortion or homosexuality from the pulpit.
The Trump administration scrapped rules that stripped pastors of some tax exemptions if they publicly endorsed political candidates. Nonetheless most megachurches said they had no plans to start doing so.
Albert Mohler, the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, calls the prosperity gospel a "direct threat to biblical Christianity" and a "pseudo-religion". He reckons that young people want a Christianity that is more serious and that megachurches will wane if being associated with them no longer confers social capital.
Absence makes the heart go wander.