107. Megachurches

Summary

The Economics of Everyday Things – Episode 107: Megachurches

Podcast by: The Freakonomics Radio Network
Host: Zachary Crockett
Aired: September 22, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode delves into the world of American megachurches—prodigious religious institutions known for their vast congregations, celebrity pastors, and multi-million-dollar operations. Host Zachary Crockett investigates how these churches evolved, the economic engines that drive them, their business-like models, and the controversy (or lack thereof) surrounding their financial transparency and community impact.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Transformation of American Churches

• Julie Roys’ Perspective on Change
  Julie Roys, a journalist and former evangelical insider, contrasts the small, intimate church of her youth with today’s spectacularly large megachurches:

  "It used to be the pastor as a servant and a shepherd, and now he's more like a corporate CEO. There's thousands of people that come to the church and he doesn't know anybody on a first name basis." (02:02 – Julie Roys)

• Rise of the Megachurch
  Sociologist Scott Thuma explains these churches formed from movements in the 1960s-70s, offering a vibrant, less traditional style:

  "The megachurch really attempted a different model... created a relaxed and different perspective on how to do church." (04:55 – Scott Thuma) "This isn't my grandparents' typical religion. And it was attractive, especially to these younger, late 60s, 70s, boomer kind of people." (05:31 – Scott Thuma)

Defining "Megachurch"

• A megachurch is identified as having 2,000+ weekly in-person attendees; there are roughly 1,800 in the US, including facilities that rival sports arenas and multi-site campuses.

  "Out of those 1800, there's about 100 of them that have 10,000 people or more." (06:03 – Scott Thuma) "If you've ever seen Joel Osteen... that arena holds what, 15,000 people at a time. It used to be where The Houston Rockets played." (06:16 – Scott Thuma)

• Recruitment and Growth
  The size itself becomes a marketing tool, turning churches into local attractions:

  "If you get big, you're going to stay big because people are interested in what circus came to town." (07:39 – Scott Thuma)

Megachurches as Multi-Functional Enterprises

• Elaborate facilities feature coffee shops, gyms, nurseries, and robust programs to attract families. Some sell merchandise or produce lucrative media (i.e., music albums).

  "You're going to have multiple bands. You're going to have hundreds of programs... You might even have an entire sports facility to work out." (08:05 – Scott Thuma)
  Citing Hillsong: "150,000 global members... released more than 100 albums and has made millions of dollars in royalties for music." (08:42 – Zachary Crockett)

• Budget and Income
  While some income comes from secondary streams, donations are vital:

  "96% of their income comes from member contributions. ...On a median, per person, donation is about $1,800 a year." (09:18 – Scott Thuma) "Median megachurch budget is $5.5 million a year... compared to around $120,000 for your typical small congregation." (09:35 – Zachary Crockett)

Regulation, Transparency, and Scandal

• Legal Status and Accountability

  • As 501(c)(3) nonprofits, churches (unlike most nonprofits) are automatically tax-exempt and exempt from financial disclosure requirements:

    "They’re subject to far less regulatory oversight and fewer filing requirements. It’s up to them if they really want to file with the IRS or not." (11:27 – Scott Thuma) "I can't imagine any other organization or industry where we would expect there to be zero accountability..." (12:05 – Julie Roys)

• Financial Scandals and Celebrity Pastors

  • Julie Roys, now an investigative reporter, details abuse of trust and funds:

    "You have people embezzling the church's money. This is why there just has to be checks and balances within churches." (19:44 – Julie Roys)

  • Some pastors accrue significant personal wealth via legal benefits, including lavish "parsonages" (church-owned homes), royalties from books, and even private jets:

    "Kenneth Copeland reportedly owns several private jets... justified them as a business expense necessary to avoid demons on commercial flights." (19:57 – Zachary Crockett) "Included a $12.5 million, 30-bedroom compound owned by New Light Christian Center Church." (20:55 – Zachary Crockett)

• Blurry Boundaries Between Ministry and Business

  • Activities run the gamut from child daycares to sports leagues to music festivals, which can muddy the definition between genuine religious activity and for-profit ventures:

    "If they're doing a daycare or they have a school or they have a sports league... is that really part of their religious activities?" (21:47 – Scott Thuma)

Preaching Prosperity and Soliciting Donations

• Prosperity Gospel

  • The doctrine equates faith with material success; some leaders encourage supporters to “sow” donations as a means to reap wealth:

    "[People] think if you plant a seed that you will get back much more. ...They're going to get a thousand back." (22:54 – Julie Roys, paraphrasing prosperity teaching)

• Pressure to Give

  • As churches get larger, individual accountability and giving wanes, requiring more direct solicitation:

    "The larger the congregation gets, the weaker its influence and pressure on the individual..." (23:29 – Scott Thuma) "If they don't talk about it, they're not going to get the money. If they do talk about it, ...they're going to get criticism." (23:29 – Scott Thuma)

Efforts at Reform and Reputable Practice

• External Auditing and Watchdog Ratings

  • About three-quarters of megachurches undergo voluntary independent CPA audits and/or join oversight bodies like the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). But transparency remains uneven:

    "Only around 40% of ministries in the database were awarded a grade of A. More than a quarter of them received a D or an F..." (25:15 – Zachary Crockett)

• Positive Contributions

  • Despite their flaws, megachurches attract young people and innovate with hospitality and programming:

    "A lot of these things that the megachurches do, like have clean bathrooms and good coffee and a hospitality team that welcomes people... I think there's a lot to learn from them." (26:10 – Scott Thuma)

The Personal Response

• Julie Roys now prefers a smaller, more interactive church experience:

  "I'm in this tiny house church and it's wonderful. ...We're opening the scriptures and we're all discussing it... None of that has changed. But what church looks like for me has changed a lot." (26:37 – Julie Roys)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "There just has to be checks and balances within churches. They're sinners. I mean, just like everybody else." (19:44 – Julie Roys)
• "We're supposed to have one celebrity. That's Jesus, right?" (27:42 – Julie Roys)
• "If you get big, you're going to stay big because people are interested in what circus came to town." (07:39 – Scott Thuma)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment Summary | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:34 | Julie Roys describes childhood church vs. modern megachurches | | 04:41 | Scott Thuma introduces the sociological context and the boom in megachurches | | 06:58 | How megachurches attract/recruit members | | 08:42 | Megachurch revenue streams: donations, music, and merchandise | | 09:35 | Megachurch budgets compared to small churches | | 11:27 | Churches' legal/tax-exempt status and lack of oversight | | 15:38 | Julie Roys discusses her shift from mainstream Christian media to watchdog reporting | | 17:22 | Impact of celebrity pastors and megachurch power dynamics | | 19:44 | Financial scandals and embezzlement in megachurches | | 21:47 | Discussion on blurring of ministry and business boundaries | | 22:54 | Prosperity Gospel and its effect on poorer congregants | | 23:29 | Challenges of fundraising in large congregations | | 25:15 | Transparency: ECFA, audits, and watchdog grades | | 26:37 | Julie Roys on why she chose a minimalist house church model | | 27:42 | Julie Roys: "We're supposed to have one celebrity. That's Jesus, right?" |

---

Tone and Style

The episode is journalistic and balanced, featuring direct, candid interviews and real-world examples. It blends warm anecdotal moments from Julie Roys with sober explanations and objectivity from sociologist Scott Thuma, all peppered with Crockett’s concise, accessible narration.

---

For listeners curious about faith, economics, or institutional transparency, this episode offers both a critical and empathetic lens on how America’s largest churches operate—not just as places of worship, but as cultural and financial powerhouses.

Transcript

[T-Mobile Advertiser]

For years everyone thought Verizon had the best network because they did. But now the best mobile network in the US is T Mobile. T Mobile's network has the most advanced 5G with more towers and their signal reaches further than ever. So you can text an Insta talk and say, you won't believe where I am.

[Zachary Crockett]

T Mobile has the best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Ookla of speed test intelligence data 1H2025CT mobile.com network the economics of Everyday things is sponsored by Dell. Huge savings for businesses on Dell AI. PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here and they're newly designed to help you do more faster. They can generate code, multitask without lag, draft emails, summarize documents, and even extend your battery life. That's the power of Dell AI. With intel inside, refreshing your tech has never been easier. With Dell Premier you can explore, buy and manage it confidently in one personalized hub while saving up to an additional 5% for your business. Upgrade your workforce today by visiting Dell.com BusinessDeals that's Dell.com BusinessDeals Growing up in the town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Julie Royes spent much of her youth in a local church.

[Julie Roys]

It was a small church, maybe 150, 200 people, wonderful pastor who was a friend of the family and everybody knew each other.

[Zachary Crockett]

As she grew older, Roy's became more involved in the evangelical Christian faith. But she found that many of the newer churches weren't like the ones she grew up in. They were enormous, a hundred times the size, and they were run more like businesses than religious institutions.

[Julie Roys]

I went to church after church and I saw they're very highly programmed. The pastor gives a very entertaining sermon that really doesn't teach much about scripture. It used to be the pastor as a servant and a shepherd, and now he's more like a corporate CEO. There's thousands of people that come to the church and he doesn't know anybody on a first name basis.

[Zachary Crockett]

What Roy's noticed is a part of a larger story that's been playing out in America over the past few decades. While many small community churches struggle to stay afloat, a new breed of megachurches has emerged. Some of them boast weekly attendance in the tens of thousands. They're run by celebrity pastors with boards of directors. Their worship services feature live rock bands, fog machines, and sometimes much grander theatrics. Here's a clip of an event organized by a 16,000person megachurch in Missouri. Heavy metal blares through a PA system while a tank rolls across a stage and crushes a row of cars. The crowd goes wild.

[Julie Roys]

I present to the tank driven by.

[Zachary Crockett]

None other than just to some, these mega chur a master class in community building. To others, they're a machine for extracting money from the faithful. Either way, their multi million dollar budgets often raise eyebrows. So where does all that money go?

[Julie Roys]

A lot of Christians don't want the church to be regulated at all by the irs. But this has created a situation where you have mega churches that are making literally 30, 40, 50, $50 million a year and there is zero accountability.

[Scott Thuma]

For.

[Zachary Crockett]

The Freakonomics radio network. This is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, megachurches in most of America, you can't go far without seeing a religious institution of some kind. By one estimate, there are around 370,000 of them across the country. The vast majority of these are churches of various Christian denominations. And most of them are pretty small. The median church hosts around 60 attendees a week. But over the past few decades, a number of megachurches have emerged. Few people know more about that trend than Scott Thuma.

[Scott Thuma]

I'm a professor of sociology of religion at Hartford International University and the director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

[Zachary Crockett]

Fiuma has been researching megachurches for more than 30 years.

[Scott Thuma]

In the 1950s and 60s, you had a pretty standard way of how to do church. They all had similar liturgies, they all sung hymns. The megachurch really attempted a different model coming out of the Jesus movements in the 60s and a kind of openness that spawned the hippies. And it created a relaxed and different perspective on how to do church.

[Zachary Crockett]

These new churches traded in hard pews and solemn hymns for cushy seats and soft rock ballads.

[Scott Thuma]

And so consequently people were like, well, this is something different. This isn't my grandparents typical religion. And it was attractive, especially to these younger, late 60s, 70s, boomer kind of people. And it just started to grow.

[Zachary Crockett]

Thuma's definition of a megachurch is any church with a weekly in person attendance of more than 2,000 people. He estimates there are around 1,800 of them in the US and some of them are many, many times that size.

[Scott Thuma]

Out of those 1800, there's about 100 of them that have 10,000 people or more.

[Zachary Crockett]

Some of these churches have one enormous facility where thousands of people gather each week.

[Scott Thuma]

If you've ever seen Joel Osteen and the Houston Lakewood Church, that Arena holds what, 15,000 people at a time. It used to be where The Houston Rockets played.

[Zachary Crockett]

But megachurches have become so large that many of them have multiple locations, sometimes even in different states.

[Scott Thuma]

They might have one mother congregation that seats two or 3,000, perhaps, but then they also have auxiliary satellite congregations.

[Zachary Crockett]

By Thuma's estimation, around 95% of megachurches are evangelical Christian. And many of them encourage attendees to expand the congregation.

[Scott Thuma]

They go out and evangelize. They want to win more people for Jesus. But megachurches are not asking their people to go out and try to save other. They say, go bring other people into the church. The emphasis is really on recruitment. At least 50% of the people from some of our surveys say that they're pretty active in trying to recruit people to come to the church.

[Zachary Crockett]

As a church grows, the size of the congregation itself becomes its own marketing tool. It's sort of like how dance clubs with long lines outside the door tend to attract more people.

[Scott Thuma]

It captures people's attention when you drive down the street and all of a sudden on a Sunday morning, you see traffic and you see hundreds and sometimes thousands of cars parked. If you get big, you're going to stay big because people are interested in what circus came to town.

[Zachary Crockett]

Megachurches also invest resources into building attractive facilities. The largest of them operate almost like small towns.

[Scott Thuma]

If you're a church of 43 people, you're probably not going to have many programs. You're not going to have a good nursery for the kids, you're singing hymns may be a little off tune, but if you go to a congregation of 15,000, you're going to have multiple bands. You're going to have hundreds of programs that both you and your wife can do, your kids can do. You might even have an entire sports facility to work out. It's a much more seeker friendly, consumer oriented faith for megachurches.

[Zachary Crockett]

Getting more people in the door isn't just a matter of spreading the gospel. It's how they pay the bills. Some megachurches earn money through ancillary revenue streams. They might charge membership fees for those sports facilities, run conferences, or sell Christian themed merchandise in on site stores. Hillsong, a megachurch that reports 150,000 global members, has released more than 100 albums and has made millions of dollars in royalties for music. At most megachurches, though, the bulk of the money comes from donations.

[Scott Thuma]

Basically, 96% of their income comes from member contributions. Offerings tithes dues on a median per person donation is about $1,800 a year.

[Zachary Crockett]

Thuma says the median megachurch budget is $5.5 million a year. That's compared to around $120,000 a year for your typical small neighborhood congregation. Of course, it has to cover a lot more overhead.

[Scott Thuma]

Roughly 50% of expenditures of megachurches go to staff salaries, benefits, things like buildings and operations, utilities, mortgage insurance. All that kind of stuff is about 20%. 20% goes to things like programming, materials, education, and then usually around 10% goes to things like missions and benevolence. If they get five and a half million, that's about what they spend. They extend what they think God is telling them to do by building more buildings or reaching out in new and different ways. It's a very different model compared to a traditional church that might have a surplus and then create an endowment because they want to be here forever. The megachurches function in a much more dynamic financial way.

[Zachary Crockett]

The largest megachurches pull in much more than $5 million. Lakewood Church in Texas, headed by the celebrity pastor Joel osteen, once reported $79 million in revenue. And the Oklahoma based Life church, which boasts 85,000 weekly attendees, reportedly rakes in nearly twice that. All of this money is entirely tax free because under section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, churches, regardless of size, are designated as nonprofits. And what's more, they enjoy a special exemption.

[Scott Thuma]

Unlike other nonprofits, they're automatically exempt from needing to file any application with the irs. So they're subject to far less regulatory oversight and fewer filing requirements. It's up to them if they really want to file with the IRS or not.

[Zachary Crockett]

Most nonprofits have to file an annual 990 form which discloses a detailed breakdown of revenue and expenses, like the compensation of top executives. Churches don't have to open their books if they don't want to. And for some, that raises ethical questions.

[Julie Roys]

I can't imagine any other organization or any other industry where we would expect there to be zero accountability and that people, out of the goodness of their heart, would not enrich themselves with that money.

[Zachary Crockett]

That's coming up. The Economics of Everyday Things is sponsored by SurveyMonkey. Look, we get it. You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that. And if you're like most people when it comes to AI, you're impressed but have a few concerns. But what if AI was used not as a tool to replace people, but as a way to help understand people better? AI from SurveyMonkey is designed to do just that, from crafting the perfect survey, which is harder than you might think to analysis that digs deep finds patterns and surfaces trends quickly. SurveyMonkey's powerful suite of AI capabilities makes it faster and easier than ever before to get insights from real people, helping you make confident decisions for your business. Try it [e-mail] Economics.

[T-Mobile Advertiser]

For years everyone thought Verizon had the best network because they did. But now the best mobile network in the US is T Mobile. T Mobile's network has the most advanced 5G with more towers and their signal reaches further than ever. So you can text an insta talk and say, you won't believe where I am.

[Zachary Crockett]

T Mobile is the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by Ooklev Spring Speed Test Intelligence data 1H2025CT mobile.comnetwork the economics of Everyday Things is sponsored by Acorns. Did you know that your money could grow on its own? No, it's not magic, it's compounding. That's when your money makes more money and then that money makes even more money. Acorns makes it easy to give your money a chance to grow. Acorns is the financial wellness app that helps you invest for your future, save for tomorrow and spend smarter today. Acorns makes it easy to start doing more with your money. You don't need to be a finance whiz. Acorns puts your money into an expert built portfolio to make sure you're investing wisely, not wildly. And it's an all in one easy to use app. Sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment. Join the over 14 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com economics or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier 2 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. View important [e-mail] Economics Julie Royce always knew she wanted to pursue religious work. After she got a degree in broadcast journalism, she landed a job as a national host at Moody Radio Network, one of the leading Christian media companies. She spent more than a decade there and was on track to become a Christian radio star.

[Julie Roys]

I had this program called up for debate where we would debate controversial topics within the church and I'd get people with different perspectives on different issues.

[Zachary Crockett]

In her role, she also got a glimpse of the inner workings of megachurches and she began to question some of what she saw.

[Julie Roys]

This whole I call it the Evangelical Industrial Complex, where it's a business, and these businesses, they're all interrelated and they're all feeding off of each other. And because of that, they don't hold each other accountable.

[Zachary Crockett]

So Roy's left Moody and started the Roys Report, an online publication that does investigative reporting on megachurch scandals.

[Julie Roys]

Our tagline is Reporting the Truth Restoring the Church. A lot of people think that when you report even the bad behavior or misconduct of church leaders or churches, that you're out to destroy it. And really, the opposite is true. I mean, scripture says that the kisses of an enemy are profuse, but it's actually the wounds of a friend that are really meaningful.

[Zachary Crockett]

Roys says that megachurches aren't just bigger than traditional churches, they're fundamentally different.

[Julie Roys]

It used to be that a pastor was a servant. You spent your life helping people and living in the parsonage, which is usually a very, very modest house next to church. What's happened in a lot of these mega churches is you have a celebrity pastor at the top, and a celebrity pastor has become the brand. You get put on a stage and people worship you and they think you're the best thing since sliced bread. They give you a big salary along with all sorts of perks.

[Zachary Crockett]

The definition of a megachurch, 2,000 plus weekly attendees, is fairly broad. Many of them don't have this kind of celebrity pastor at the helm. But as Scott Duma points out, the size of the church itself can introduce complications.

[Scott Thuma]

The religious leader, in whatever size, congregation, has a distinctive role in society. But with the megachurch, that's amplified. This person is leading an organization of thousands of people with all this excitement and energy and success that creates not only a significant amount of spiritual authority and power, but also kind of personal authority and power.

[Zachary Crockett]

Megachurches often have an organizational structure that aims to keep these powers in check.

[Scott Thuma]

In a healthy megachurch, you have a division of labor and also a division of some power. The pastor is sort of the CEO and the person who preaches most often. But then you also have a role that's more administration, that's often an executive pastor who takes care of the functioning of the buildings and the programs. And then you also have a board that may be made up of people internal to the congregation, but also some people external to the congregation.

[Zachary Crockett]

But this can change as a church grows.

[Scott Thuma]

The more the pastor becomes that celebrity person or that charismatic authority person, the board ends up functioning oftentimes as a kind of yes, board, whatever you say, senior leader. And sometimes in that structure, that's where Things can go wrong quickly.

[Zachary Crockett]

Julie Royce has reported on numerous scandals involving megachurches. She says in some cases, churches have had black budgets or executive accounts that are unknown even to many senior members of the church. She's found instances of pastors using millions of dollars of the church's money for personal things like clothing, cars, hunting trips, and even college tuition payments for their kids.

[Julie Roys]

You have people embezzling the church's money. This is why there just has to be checks and balances within churches. They're sinners. I mean, just like everybody else.

[Zachary Crockett]

But many megachurch pastors don't have to rely on hidden funds to make a good living. In the US the median salary for a pastor across all congregations is around $56,000. Celebrity pastors at megachurches can command many multiples of that, and the job sometimes comes with other completely legal benefits that take advantage of the generous tax permissions enjoyed by churches. The pastor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland reportedly owns several private jets through his church and its subsidiaries. He's justified them as a business expense necessary to avoid demons on commercial flights. Churches also often have a parsonage, a tax free home owned by the church that can be used by the pastor. These parsonages are intended to be modest dwellings, but a 2021 report by the Houston Chronicle and the Trinity foundation found more than two dozen parsonages in Texas worth at least seven figures. That included a $12.5 million, 30 bedroom compound owned by New Light Christian Center Church. The report estimated that the church's pastor, Ivy Hilliard, and other church officials who lived there saved more than $150,000 per year in property taxes. It can sometimes be hard to disentangle a pastor's private income from the institutions they run. Joel Osteen reportedly draws no salary from his post at Lakewood Church in Texas, but his books based on his sermons have reportedly earned him millions. Thuma says it can be equally hard to separate a megachurch's religious income from the money it makes through other activities.

[Scott Thuma]

A lot of these megachurches have large properties and multiple activities going on that don't exactly fall under what might be considered religious activities. If they're doing a daycare or they have a school or they have a sports league and people have to pay dues to get in the sports league, is that really part of their religious activities?

[Zachary Crockett]

One potential cause for this conflation is that at megachurches, religion and consumerism are sometimes intertwined. And some pastors preach a doctrine called prosperity gospel. It's a theological viewpoint that wealth is earned through faith and that riches might indicate God's favor. Here's the pastor, Kenneth Copeland, during a sermon in Washington, D.C. the money is.

[Scott Thuma]

The carrier, and you water it with.

[Zachary Crockett]

Your praise.

[Julie Roys]

And it will.

[T-Mobile Advertiser]

Harvest.

[Julie Roys]

A lot of the people that give to these prosperity preachers are people that are on a fixed income or are poor. They think if you plant a seed that you will get back much more. And so these people are basically giving their money, thinking they give $100, they're going to get a thousand back.

[Zachary Crockett]

Scott Duma says that some level of solicitation is necessary to keep megachurches operational. He's done survey work that shows the average donation size decreases as a church grows. In other words, there's a diminishing return for each additional congregan.

[Scott Thuma]

The larger the congregation gets, the weaker its influence and pressure on the individual. And that's true of any grouping of people together. If I had a heart attack, I was standing in a group of five people. At least one of those is going to jump to my aid. If I'm in a group of 50 or 500 people, everybody goes, well, it's somebody else's problem. Mega churches have to talk about money because they know that without pressure, their people are not going to give as much. So it's this really catch 22. If they don't talk about it, they're not going to get the money. If they do talk about it, then they're going to get criticism about. That's all they talk about.

[Zachary Crockett]

The financial scandals that emerge each year have made many of today's megachurches more cautious about optics.

[Scott Thuma]

As the megachurch model has matured, I think it's learned what it should be doing and how precious its reputation is and, you know, putting in those checks and balances and guardrails to make sure that they don't lose that important standing in the community.

[Zachary Crockett]

Many megachurches choose to work with an oversight body called the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, or ecfa. In addition to that, Thuma estimates that around three quarters of megachurches willingly submit to an audit by an external or independent cpa.

[Scott Thuma]

Oftentimes, they may have their audit statements on their websites. They welcome some challenge by the people who are within the congregation, but it's only three quarters, right? It's not all of them.

[Zachary Crockett]

None of the churches mentioned in this story responded to our request for comment. But for what it's worth, the independent evangelical Christian organization Ministry Watch tracks America's largest ministries and gives them a grade for financial transparency. To get an A, a ministry must have a 990 tax filing, an audited financial statement and membership with ECFA. In the most recent report, only around 40% of ministries in the database were awarded a grade of A. More than a quarter of them received a D or an F, including the institutions run by Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland. Of course, a lack of transparency doesn't necessarily indicate wrongdoing. And even though the bad behavior tends to get the most attention, Duma says there are good things that megachurches contribute to America's religious landscape.

[Scott Thuma]

They're still drawing young people and they're still growing. A lot of these things that the megachurches do, like have clean bathrooms and good coffee and a hospitality team that welcomes people. Those things any congregation could do, no matter what their size. I think there's a lot to learn from them.

[Zachary Crockett]

Julie Royce has found a different kind of church to attend.

[Julie Roys]

I'm in this tiny house church and it's wonderful. I look forward to it every week. Nobody's sitting there giving us a 30 minute lecture. We're opening the scriptures and we're all discussing it and we're being edified by the insights of everybody else. Evangelical to me is a church that has always stressed having a personal relationship with God, believing in heaven and hell, that your faith should be acted out in the way you live your life. None of that has changed. But what church looks like for me has changed a lot.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Rapson and Dalvin Abawagi.

[Julie Roys]

We're supposed to have one celebrity. That's Jesus, right?

[Zachary Crockett]

The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.

[Commercial Announcer]

Stitcher.

[Julie Roys]

If.

[Zachary Crockett]

You could hear love, what would it sound like? Son, can we talk about your drinking?

[Scott Thuma]

Yeah, Dad, I think we should.

[Zachary Crockett]

Helping those closest to you think about their excessive drinking. Maybe that's what love sounds like. [e-mail] an OHA initiative.

[Commercial Announcer]

They say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. At Amica Insurance, we know what matters most to you and we work even harder to protect it. Together. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs. Amica empathy is our best policy. Call 877-41-America for a free coverage review.

[Zachary Crockett]

Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change your receipt. Did the sausage McMuffin with egg.

[Scott Thuma]

Extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee.

[Zachary Crockett]

$5 only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.