Mega-Churches

The idea that Big is Beautiful and always Better is so obviously part of the American imagination that you could be forgiven for thinking it is actually a constitutional requirement.

And now it is even true of religion.

At a time when British churches are being sold off to developers or bulldozed to make way for something more popular, America's Mega-churches, which can seat thousands of people at a time, are booming.

And in this new Religi-business some of the Mega-churches market themselves more like shopping malls than places of quiet religious contemplation.

Jon Leyne reported.

RICH YOUNG:
If you don't like being around a lot of people worshipping God, you're not going to like Heaven.

BOB RUSSELL:
As the world is getting worse, Christian people feel the need for a greater strength, and there is the feeling of greater strength sometimes in large numbers.

JOE PHELPS:
I have a dear friend in San Antonio, Texas, who's pastor in a megachurch. He confessed to me one day, "Joe, I'm not the pastor of the church. I'm the mayor of the city."

JON LEYNE:
This is how they worship the Lord in Louisville, Kentucky. Church for those who don't like churches. 5,000 people enjoying a new style of religion.

Rich and Laurie Young have been taking Communion here at Southeast Christian Church for three years.

From the anonymity of the crowd, the best view of the preacher is on one of the massive TV screens. This is a service without ceremony, no vestments, no altar, no hymn book. It is still a tightly choreographed production.

PREACHER:
I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

LEYNE:
It's also a faith of total immersion, like the baptism new members are encouraged to undergo - part of the fundamentalist reading of the Bible the congregation find so attractive.

LAURIE YOUNG:
It is taught differently from my previous background, in so much that the Bible is the truth. There is no guessing and they apply it to your daily life, and help you to realise that all the answers are there.

RICH YOUNG:
Christ said wherever two or more are gathered, he would be with us. God is here, and there just happens to be 4,000 of us at a time.

AEROBIC INSTRUCTOR:
All right. Switch again. Go!

LEYNE:
And Christianity here comes with an added punch. Kick-boxing classes, rock climbing, day-care for the kids, a 24/7 service that includes a cafeteria in this shopping mall of religion. Even this massive auditorium may soon not be big enough, and there are more than 9,000 seats here. In the four years they've been in this building, the congregation has nearly doubled in size. It's like they've found a magic formula for religion. And it's not just here. The megachurches across the US are booming - the bigger the better. It's like expansion is part of the creed. In this church, they're working every day to recruit new members.

STEVE KITTS:
And we pray that we'll play free of injury¿

LEYNE:
Take the basketball ministry. It's more about saving souls than scoring baskets in the church's magnificent gymnasium. Many of those who come here aren't even members of the church, at least to start with, but no-one is beyond redemption.

KITTS:
I was here strictly to play basketball. I didn't want to be involved in the church particularly because I grew up in the church and wanted to get away for a while, but God has a strange way of calling us back. The whole purpose of the church is to lead people to Christ. That's the number one mission and we do it through different avenues. There are just different things that click with different people.

LEYNE:
That aggressive approach has helped megachurches spread their message across more and more of America.

Baptist pastor Joe Phelps showed us the harsh reality outside the sanctuary of Southeast Christian. Here in downtown Louisville, churches have been closing down for decades. This one is now a centre for the homeless. Like the Wal-Mart effect, Southeast has speeded up the process, sharpened up the competition.

JOE PHELPS:
There's no doubt that you can go to Southeast Christian - it's one-stop shopping. You can get your spiritual needs met, your bible study, your exercise, your small groups. It's all right there, and so there could be some sense of resentment from the more "mom and pop" churches that they're taking away our customers.

LEYNE:
The tradition and intimacy of Pastor Phelps' church has drawn back Chad and Jennifer Clayton after they tried out Southeast Christian. When Jennifer's mother died, no-one over there even knew. Here there's more space for the individual.

CHAD CLAYTON:
One of the things I like here is people speak up in this church. At Southeast, they didn't really speak up. That was a difference. There was a lot of "group-think", if you will. I was a business major, and so when you are talking about group-think, you're talking about people sitting around in a circle. They're afraid to say a new suggestion because they don't want to be an outcast.

LEYNE:
Do you think people joined Southeast just to make contacts, business contacts, that sort of thing?

CLAYTON:
I am an independent contractor here, and I just... I got a lot of business from Southeast, just word of mouth. I didn't necessarily want to - I didn't advertise in the paper - but some of my friends who are also independent contractors said to me, "You're going to the right church. You'll have plenty of contacts."

LEYNE:
Southeast certainly looks like the prosperous country club of religion. Every weekend they raise $500,000 in donations from the mainly white, middle-class congregation. They even have a police escort for the collection. It's money that fuels ambitious new plans.

GREGG DEDRICK:
We're planning on building two additional buildings on campus here. One's going to be right over here, called the ministry support centre.

LEYNE:
In Gregg Dedrick, they even have what amounts to a chief executive to supervise the $30 million expansion. He's using the skills he learnt selling Kentucky Fried Chicken to promote the business of God.

DEDRICK:
The Church needs to be a living, growing organism. Any organisation, whether it's secular or the Church, really can't stand still. It's either growing or dying. We're going to grow. What shape that growth takes - whether it will be additional buildings here, or outreach elsewhere - will vary.

LEYNE:
Already this vast campus is an alternative universe. A medieval city clustering round the Church. Like America itself, the people are looking inwards, seeking security and certainty, putting up walls and fences.

BILL LEONARD:
The church creates a parallel culture, in which it simply takes secularised practices and ideas and Christianises them. So there are, inside the church, movie theatres, shopping areas, food courts. People can still dress and act much as they do in the world, but with a Christian turn, Christian emphasis. So, rather than be engaged in the world, people find the particular campus of the megachurch a kind of cocoon, that indeed may protect them from the world, but it also may keep them removed from it.

LEYNE:
For Bob Russell, the minister who's led this almost miraculous growth for nearly 40 years, this is not just some sociological phenomenon. It's a sign of a higher power intervening in this troubled world.

BOB RUSSELL:
It's God that makes the seed grow, and it's God that makes a church grow. Somebody said, "You can look at a turtle on top of a fence post and you know that it didn't get there by itself." You can look at a church like this and realise it's not of human origin. There's something really supernatural happening there.

LEYNE:
Back here on Earth, the church has bought up just about every scrap of land around. So is there any limit?

RUSSELL:
People will come in here and say, "Was this your vision?" I tease and say, "Oh, yes. We're a little bit behind what I really envisioned." The truth is we've almost always reacted to growth. There's going to be a limit out there somewhere. I don't know where. We've said, "Let's keep sowing the seed, and as God gives us people, let's find some way to help them to grow."

LEONARD:
I think that megachurches have a limited shelf life, and that is because often shopping centres do. So, unless they find ways to stay ahead of the demographic and economic curves, they will confront the same kind of difficulties that shopping malls do in 10-20 years.

LEYNE:
In the meantime, inside the Biblical-themed day-care, they're doing their best to prepare a new generation for the Church. A little corner of safety in what the believers see as an increasingly hostile world.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.