[lizknope]

I'm not religious but one of my coworkers goes to a megachurch a few miles from where I live.

I looked up their web site and they have 14 different people listed as "pastor."

It looks like it is divided up between a senior ministry team, adult and family ministers, care, college, music, sports, student ministries. Then there are about 30 elders and another 50 deacons.

I just looked at the satellite photos and they have 6 separate soccer fields. The youth and sports are big parts of it. They have 10 different youth sports and 8 for adults. Multiple summer camps.

I would never join anything like this but I would also never join a fraternity or sorority. It seems like you're paying a group to be friends with you but it is their money so whatever.

[foobarian]

Ah so like a professor teaching an intro chemistry class at State U, with their 50 TAs. :-)

[smcin]

Yes from what I've seen the ministries are split into families, teenagers, seniors, Spanish-speaking, missions, sports etc. Seems like that would have serious pros and cons.

Another underreported part of the value proposition is that single/divorced/widowed people can find partners/spouses via that church and its social events (and it gives some basic implicit level of background verification, more than dating apps).

This is likely gradually becoming more important in part as civic engagement and volunteering are reportedly decreasing in recent decades, esp. in the US. [I looked for studies but didn't find much.]

At the extreme cusp of megachurch/influencer, Hillsong Church NYC's (ex-)pastor Carl Lentz [0] befriended[/recruited/targeted/whatever verb] Justin Bieber (baptized him in an NBA player's bathtub) [1] and other celebrities [2]. The term "hypepriest" was coined [3]. "Marketing lessons from a Southern megachurch" [4] is an interesting read; the degree to which church preachers and Instagram influencers have things in common depends presumably on the type of church, which demographic it might be targeting and how narrowly, its KPI, the preachers' compensation incentives, social-media presence etc. Haven't seen much study of this, presumably because much of the data is not public. But as the concept of social capital is being redefined in the internet age, clearly there are long-term implications.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsong_Church

[1]: https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/1/17596502/justin-bie...

[2]: https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/stars-who...

[3]: https://www.gq.com/story/hypepriests-pastors-who-dress-like-...

[4]: https://medium.com/@greenglassheart/marketing-lessons-from-a...