Church Corporations

I take issue with how super-huge places of worship are organized and run. I am a respectful skeptic anyway, but that's beside the point. Here are some things that I noticed on a recent visit to a mega-church.
1. The walls are plastered with advertisements of the church itself. The marketing posters of upwards of five satellite "campuses" are floor to ceiling. One can't miss the giant helicopter pad centered on at least one poster. Among the poster were several displaying the technology spread that they use to broadcast the services. The control rooms looked like something out of NASA.
2. Some campuses are either movie theaters or are rigged to be like movie theaters. People sit in auditoriums watching digitally beamed-in televised version of the sermons. How is that different from watching it in your own livingroom--since it's on network TV anyway?
3. The gardens are absolutely exquisite. Right out of a magazine.
4. The 20-or-more-foot-banner spotlighting the recent giving campaign: I nearly dropped my punch (see #5). I want to say that the highest level indicated on the banner was in the 80-something million dollars, but they were sitting at a modest 60-something million dollars as of last count. Almost there...almost there...Let's keep up that momentum, people!
5. Spectacular punch: the wedding punch was the best I've ever had. Absolutely delicious. Seriously. I kept tasting it to see if I could reproduce it later.
6. Coffee shop in the church: I might go there if they served the punch on Sunday mornings! HA! Don't forget the workout facility, bowling alley, sports courts, expansive school,
7. I just looked at their website and there is really an online guide to baptism. There are two different links for tithe-ing, donating, pledging, whatever you want to call it. Actually there's a third link for planned giving--I guess for estate planning? Oops, there's another link for donating called "worship thru giving." There's even an online budgeting tutorial to see just how much you can give, I mean worship. They recommend 10% of one's income, but you should prayerfully consider being part of the "tithe plus" column of the chart, giving/worshipping upwards of 20% of the income. Puleeze. I wonder if you get coffee discounts with that. Maybe then you'd get the secret punch recipe. There's even a cheat-sheet giving chart for kids. The excel spreadsheet wouldn't load. It suppsedly gave more formulas to help you prayerfully decide upon an amount.

I just read over my words and I sound completely cynical. I am sure that plenty of people are devoted and literally and figuratively buy into this church's teachings. Perhaps they know something that I don't. That's quite possible, I guess. I, personally, just don't see the attraction. Other family friends attend the same church and absolutely love it. Great. I value their friendship wholeheartedly. I hope their respect for me, despite the fact that I do not attend this corporation of a church, matches my respect for them despite the fact that they do attend. Does that make sense? One of the most wonderful things about this country is that we have this right to our personal religious beliefs. We even have permission to not have religious beliefs. I do completely respect the fact that others may not share my own personal ones, and hopefully that feeling is mutual.