I am told by someone who knows that WCC has a two tier membership structure, one for folks who attend the Sunday services and participate in the social life, who (I understand) are discouraged from even contributing money, or maybe not permitted to; and a committed cadre membership which more than tithes. The mass membership is intermittently approached for cadre membership, but the latter is a real commitment.
The nontraditional approach was apparently derived from nonprofessional but intelligently run marketing surveys conducted by the founders, who went around gathering data on why people didn't go to church.
Maybe left groups might take a cue. Unions are: the SEUI has been studying the WCC and other big box churches to see how they, as one says in today's repulsive jargon, "grow" their membership.
--- Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Michael J. Smith wrote:
>
> > Actually this is not a bad description of the
> Middle America where I grew
> > up. Most everybody went to church, though often
> not every Sunday. But
> > cases of deep commitment, much less fanaticism,
> were very much more
> > the exception than the rule. The week-in, week-out
> church experience
> > was for most people, as far as I could tell, more
> a matter of maintaining
> > and enjoying a certain kind of social interaction
> than anything else. Of
> > course it was a solace in times of bereavement and
> trouble, too, and I
> > imagine that most people were believers in some
> not-too-stringent
> > sense. But most pew-sitters were definitely not
> militants, and it was
> > considered very poor manners to talk about
> religion outside of church.
>
> From what I see, church-going is mostly a social
> experience for many
> people.
>
> > The recent phenomenon of mega-churches -- which
> postdates my
> > growing-up days in Kentucky -- is best treated as
> a branch of
> > the entertainment industry, I would say.
>
> The mega-churches are really a form of privatized
> entertainment in their
> communities. They provide everything from basketball
> courts to daycare
> to coffeeshops to counseling of every kind. My take
> is that the more
> conservative megachurches are designed to be a total
> cultural experience
> for their members. They want their
> members--especially children--to have
> as little contact with secular society as possible.
> The more "liberal"
> megachurches are mainly community centers and
> outreach centers to the
> "unchurched."
>
> In one sense, megachurches are an indication that
> our society has become
> more secularized. Organized religion needs a big
> gimmick to draw folks in.
>
> Chuck
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