How did Whitfield, Spurgeon, Wesley and Calvin lead their congregations with hundreds of staff?
Life, and our expectations, are more complicated now than in the 18th century.
I was raised to sit in cold 18th-century Episcopal churches without electronics or modernism of any kind, to hear music of previous centuries and listen to the Word of the Lord in absolute simplicity. But as we all know, the Episcopal church transmuted into the left-wing political organization whose attitudes infuriate us all. The Lord showed me in a very clear, unmistakeable, even shocking way that He wanted me to be in this new church. In twenty years it has metamorphosed from six people in the pastor's living room to something that's soon going to be a megachurch, and it is now heavily reliant on electronics to run the huge building, record sermons, manage the sound system, etc. The traffic problems its services create are so awful that phalanxes of cops have to turn out to manage them on ordinary Sundays (a common problem in our area), and the huge new nave is not large enough to hold parishioners and all their kids at the same time. Screaming babies are discouraged in the services because sermons are taped for TV broadcast.
Am I entirely comfortable with all this modernism? No, not by a long shot. But God said I was supposed to be there, and the message the pastor speaks each week enlightens our family and is bringing my atheist ex-husband to Christ. So I can't argue with it or take myself off in a pique because the service schedule doesn't please me.
Because they changed from being about the word of the Lord, into a dog and pony show for the almighty greenback, IMHO.