About 20 years ago George Barna, probably the #1 pollster of Christians and all things religious, did a book called “Revolution.” In it, his polls showed that people were dropping out of church, not because they were LESS religious, but because they thought the churches didn’t go deep enough into Christianity and Christian messages.
This was, of course, the beginning of the “megachurch” and the “community church.” (I notice even the venerable “Far Hills Baptist Church” in Dayton, OH, changed its name to “Far Hills Community Church.”) As a rock and roller, I’m NOT opposed to good music in church. But over the last 20 years the “show” has become more important than the message. Bands play the very latest from Christian radio, which is fine if you’re at a night club, but murder if you want people to sing and worship. People cannot sing what they don’t know. Most of the singers are scruffy faced guys with whiny voices (and the girls are whiny, but not scruffy faced). In fact, this is a terrific (and very accurate) parody of what goes on: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=parody+of+new+megachurches&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002.
Even Willow Creek, one of the major “megachurches,” found in an internal survey that its own members were deeply disappointed that they weren’t getting more “God” and that the spiritual discussions were superficial and, well, often meaningless.
Barna found that the “Revolutionaries” actually pray more, read the Bible more, but don’t tithe as much and obviously don’t go to church as much.
Great link. There are some good parody’s on there.