The rise of the megachurch

I’m in a large, dark auditorium, watching a professional band playing an upbeat set of tunes. The lead singer, a handsome chap wearing a baseball cap and a baggy jumper, is supported by four backing vocalists spread out along the stage. At one point, they do a choreographed spin. There’s a light show, and a large screen above the drummer displays arty videos. A camera crew is filming the band, streaming live online. Around me, the audience (mainly in their twenties and thirties) sing along. Because this is the era of the smartphone, some people are, inevitably, filming the whole thing.

But, despite appearances, I’m not at a pop concert. It’s Sunday morning, and I’m at an event put on by a Hillsong church, which takes over the Dominion Theatre on central London’s Tottenham Court Road every week.

Hillsong churches were founded in Australia in the 1980s and are now present in several countries worldwide. The church has recently come under the spotlight for a series of leadership scandals. Still, this doesn’t seem to have affected numbers this week, and the stalls are packed.

While I’m not religious, I did go to a Church of England church as a child, and the style of worship at Hillsong is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Starting with the music, the band is professional, and while people are singing along, it feels more like a spectacle than something participatory. Once the music is over, a charismatic Australian pastor comes on stage. Among other things, he spends a good five minutes describing the various ways people can give money to the church. To an outsider, this feels somewhat excessive.

There are prayers, the kids go off to a youth group, and notices are read out about forthcoming Bible study sessions. Then there is a 30-minute sermon, which I must confess I don’t entirely follow. At the end, the preacher asks anyone who is interested in becoming a Christian to raise their hands and accept Jesus into their hearts. At least a couple of dozen hands go up. Then it is back to the band, and, after a couple more uplifting singalongs, out into the sunshine and the crowds of central London.

Megachurches are defined, somewhat arbitrarily, as any church with a congregation of 2,000 people or more. And in the UK, they’re a fairly recent phenomenon, only really emerging in the late 1980s and 1990s. Most are in London, where there are at least 13. Several of these have other branches around the country.

On the international scene, the UK’s megachurches are small fry. The world’s biggest megachurch is South Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, which has a reported 830,000 full members and up to 200,000 weekly attendees. West Africa also goes in for megachurches, and there are a handful with more than 100,000 weekly attendees in Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast. Latin America also has a few 100,000+ churches, in Colombia, El Salvador and Chile. But arguably, the inspiration for all these other countries’ megachurches are those in the United States.

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While megachurches in the US don’t seem to reach the size and scale of those elsewhere, it surely has the highest number. A study in 2012 found that there were at least 1,200 such establishments across the country, a number that has risen significantly in recent decades (there were only 350 in 1990).

Megachurches trace their origins, at least partially, “to the Welsh Revival and a series of other global revivals at the start of the 20th century”, reckons Dr Andrew Davies, a scholar at the University of Birmingham. The Welsh Revival triggered several other such returns to faith in various countries around the world, and was characterised by a very lively and dynamic approach to worship. However, the style of worship and the use of huge auditoriums, or even tents, as opposed to ordinary parish churches, only really reached the UK in the 1980s.

A significant number of megachurches belong to Protestant denominations, either Pentecostal or Evangelical. Another thing they have in common is charismatic leaders. Professor Richard Burgess, a social sciences lecturer at Roehampton University, notes that “in most of them, there’s a kind of senior pastor who is a really important figure”. These pastors not only preach well, but are also exceptional organisers, who seem able to grow their flocks fast.

Megachurches also know how to put on a good show, as I witness in my visit to Hillsong. Dr Davies talks about the “spectacle” of these churches. “You’ve got great, professional bands who are producing records that are selling in their millions, that churches all over the world are singing. So you get the scale and the drama of a rock concert, but a kind of worship experience as well.” If you don’t attend megachurches, you might never have heard of them, but some worship bands have huge global followings, and their anthems are loved by many.

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Lucy, a megachurch-goer who asked for her real name to be withheld, pointed out some of the other interpersonal benefits: “They’re great to meet other Christians. If you are single, it can be helpful if you want to find a single Christian, or if you are new to a country or city you can find an instant community.”

For someone arriving into a country as an immigrant, going to a megachurch can also provide a sense of comfort and home from home. Dr Davies says: “If you're new to the country, you might live right next to a parish church, which might be white majority. So, you might think, ‘Well, actually, I can travel an hour or so and go to KICC [a church in northeast London] and there might very well be lots of people from my hometown there.’”

Attending a megachurch can also help people to get involved in social action. Dr Davies explains that these churches often run homeless shelters or food banks. While smaller churches also perform charitable activities, thanks to their size, megachurches can do it on a “more epic scale”.

For decades, weekly church attendance in the UK has been in decline. For example, in 2009 around a million people went to church every Sunday, but that was down to about 854,000 in 2019. Megachurches, however, seem to be bucking the trend. So what is drawing people to this style of worship?

Dr Davies notes that it’s a little simplistic to assume all church attendance is in decline, and there’s quite a bit of variation between denominations. He reckons that the area of biggest decline is in the more “liberal traditions”. Meanwhile, “megachurches tend to be a little bit more dogmatic and a little bit more assertive... they’re a bit more hardline on those kinds of things. So for people who like grey areas, a megachurch isn’t the place to go.”

He also reckons that part of the decline in church attendance is the collapse in “social Christianity”. “There was a time in the 1920s and 30s when you went to church because it was just what you did, and you couldn’t be a functioning adult in society without going to church,” he says, while “people who go to church now go because they really, really want to be there”.

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Another part of the draw is the opportunity for networking. Prof Burgess explains that besides Sunday worship, “they’ll have maybe special-interest groups for business people, for young people, for singles, for lawyers”. In this way they try to cater for different groups’ needs.

Lucy adds: “Big churches often mean more people – greater opportunities to network and meet people from different backgrounds, which is lovely.” She also points out that church is “one of the few places where people from different ages, cultures, backgrounds, social class gather in one space – it is beautiful”. This is definitely true at Hillsong, which feels very multicultural.

Not everyone is necessarily overjoyed by the emergence of megachurches. Indeed, traditional churches may even see them as competition. Since megachurches sometimes “plant” offshoots in other UK towns and cities, this draws people away from existing parishes, which can cause resentment.

Megachurches also have a big, brash style, which annoys some people. “The more liberal Anglican clergy sometimes say, ‘You’re harming the reflective and critical side of the church. And you’re just being too dogmatic. You’re teaching people that everything’s black and white, and too simplistic,’” Dr Davies says.

Some may also question the wisdom of having such huge congregations. Davies points out that in a traditional parish church, where you might have 30 to 50 people in the whole congregation, everyone knows everyone else, everyone has a job to do, and a real community is formed. In a megachurch, you can do just as I do: sit at the back and skulk off once it’s finished.

Still, this isn’t always bad, as Lucy says: “When I have been through really tough times in life, I visited these churches for a sense of anonymity and consolation. It was comforting to be among people but not necessarily have to connect deeply with them, when emotions were raw from bereavement. I would sometimes go to these big churches so that I didn’t have to deal with the rawness of my emotions with those who knew me – like in my close local church family – yet it was a safe place, because I was with fellow believers, to be able to grieve and be spiritually nourished.”

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Some megachurches also preach a “prosperity gospel”. This is essentially the idea that through worship – and giving to the church – people will be blessed in their professional lives. This, points out Dr Davies, can leave those congregants who aren’t making what they want wonder why they’re not being blessed.

It’s also impossible to ignore the requests for money in these churches. As I notice on my way out of my visit to Hillsong, there are fancy brochures detailing the ways to donate. “The vast resources that are involved in making these megachurches work mean that they’re always asking for money,” explains Dr Davies.

Of course, churches have always raised funds from their members, and if people want to give money then that’s their business. But, given their size and scale, megachurches can raise much more cash than your local parish church’s bake sale to fund repairs to a leaky roof. Some have celebrity followers and in at least a few megachurches abroad, leaders have been accused of embezzling funds or using church money to lead luxury lifestyles (there’s no suggestion that any of the UK megachurches are doing anything untoward).

There have been other controversies, the Australian founder of the global Hillsong Church, Brian Houston has pleaded not guilty to charges of concealing child sexual abuse, relating to accusations of abuse allegedly committed by his late father, Frank Houston, in the 1970s. Separately, Brian Houston resigned as global senior pastor of Hillsong Church in March 2022 having been found by an internal investigation by the church to have engaged in conduct of “serious concern” with two women, which “breached the Hillsong Pastor’s Code of Conduct”.

When it comes to funding, there is a reasonable amount of transparency in UK megachurch funding. Churches like Hillsong are required to report their accounts to the Charity Commission, and their income and expenditure are visible online.

Megachurches are certainly growing, but how much bigger they’ll get is unclear. Professor Burgess reckons they’ll hit a limit at some point in the UK, purely because of space and demographics. He also points out that younger generations have much less implicit trust in large organisations – this might also extend to big churches, meaning the interest in them could lessen over time.

For now, though, megachurches look likely to continue attracting the faithful. Lucy, who attends megachurches while also being a parish church member, says: “Church is the gathering of the people – not the building... I think there is a place for local churches and for the megachurches.”