While I agree with you that knowing God requires self-sacrifice and self-discipline, I think that your information about why some churches are growing and some are dying is instructive. Most 21st-century people probably would not enjoy most 17th-century activities including religious services that required sitting a better part of the day, often in complete silence. Similarly, people of today are often more in touch with their spiritual selves through contemporary music, etc., and these mega-churches are using brilliant marketing to get Americans back into the pews. Church as an activity competes in ways it did not a century ago (i.e., ball games, travel and work commitments, shared custody, etc.) as well as with itself on television and radio.
However, whether or not people do or do not go to church on Sunday, I have come to the conclusion that, much like keeping the Christmas spirit the whole year through, it's often better to keep the faith going the whole week through. I would rather see a man pray about how life is going to work out for the guy he's about to fire than be in a church parking lot where basic rules of civility, muchless Christianity, have been forgotten. And because so many churches seem to preach about anything but the Bible (fund-raisers, schools budgets, political stands, etc.), it's often better to be engaged in reading the Bible in daily private quiet prayer time than enduring temporal rhetoric and calling it "worship".
I would rather see a man pray about how life is going to work out for the guy he's about to fire than be in a church parking lot where basic rules of civility, muchless Christianity, have been forgotten. And because so many churches seem to preach about anything but the Bible (fund-raisers, schools budgets, political stands, etc.), it's often better to be engaged in reading the Bible in daily private quiet prayer time than enduring temporal rhetoric and calling it "worship".You're absolutely right in so many ways. Your words make me realize how fortunate I am to be in my church, which doesn't mention fundraising, budgets, or politics at all, ever, and simply tells people clearly how to draw closer to God. What a rare blessing it is. And maybe this also explains why so many men, married and single, go there.