107. 巨型教会

朱莉·罗伊斯在宾夕法尼亚州韦恩斯伯勒镇长大，她的青春岁月大多是在当地一座教堂里度过的。

Growing up in the town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Julie Royse spent much of her youth in a local church.

那是间小教堂，大概就一百五到两百人，牧师很棒，是我们家的朋友，大家彼此都认识。

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

随着年岁增长，罗伊斯更深地投入福音派基督教信仰，但她发现许多新兴教堂与她成长的那座截然不同。它们规模庞大，足有百倍之巨，运营方式更像企业而非宗教机构。

As she grew older, Royce became more involved in the evangelical Christian faith, but she found that many of the newer churches weren't like the one she grew up in. They were enormous, a 100 times the size, and they were run more like businesses than religious institutions.

我走访了一家又一家教堂，发现它们流程高度程式化。牧师的布道极具娱乐性，却很少真正讲解经文。过去的牧师是仆人与牧羊人，现在更像企业CEO。成千上万的人来教堂，他却连任何人的名字都叫不上来。

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 is 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.

罗伊斯注意到的现象，是过去几十年在美国上演的更大故事的一部分。当许多小型社区教堂艰难维持时，新型超级教会已然崛起。其中一些每周出席人数以万计，由明星牧师和董事会管理，礼拜仪式配有现场摇滚乐队、烟雾机，有时甚至更夸张的舞台效果。

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.

这是密苏里州某座16,000人超级教会活动的片段：重金属音乐通过扩音系统震响，坦克碾过舞台压碎一排汽车，人群陷入疯狂。'现在为您呈现的是——由无与伦比的杰斯诺恩驾驶的坦克！'对某些人而言，这些超级教会是社群建设的典范。

Here's a clip of an event organized by a 16,000 person 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. I present to you the tank driven by none other than just no end. To some, these megachurches are a master class in community building.

对另一些人来说，它们是从信徒身上榨取金钱的机器。无论如何，其数百万美元的预算常引人侧目。那么这些钱都流向何处了呢？

To others, they're a machine for extracting money from the faithful. Either way, their multimillion dollar budgets often raise eyebrows. So where does all that money go?

许多基督徒根本不想让教会受到国税局的任何监管，但这导致了一种情况：一些超级教会年收入高达3000万、4000万甚至5000万美元，却完全无需承担任何责任。

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 megachurches that are making literally $30.40, $50,000,000 a year, and there is zero accountability.

这里是《魔鬼经济学》广播网络，为您解读日常事物的经济学。我是扎卡里·克拉基特。今天的话题是超级教会。在美国大部分地区，随处可见各类宗教机构。据估算，全美约有37万座宗教场所。

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crackett. 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.

其中绝大多数是基督教各派别的教堂，且规模普遍较小。普通教堂每周约有60名参与者。但过去几十年来，涌现出许多超级教会。对此现象最有发言权的莫过于斯科特·图马。

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.

我是哈特福德国际大学宗教社会学教授，同时担任哈特福德宗教研究所所长。

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

图马研究超级教会已有三十余年。

Fuma has been researching megachurches for more than thirty years.

上世纪五六十年代，教会运作模式相当标准化——相似的礼拜仪式，相同的赞美诗。而超级教会源自六十年代耶稣运动带来的新范式，那种催生了嬉皮士的开放精神，创造了一种更轻松、更另类的教会运营理念。

In the nineteen fifties and sixties, 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 sixties and a kind of openness that spawned the hippies. It created a relaxed and different perspective on how to do church.

这些新兴教会用舒适座椅替代硬质长凳，以轻柔摇滚取代庄重圣歌。

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

因此，人们觉得这是一种与众不同的东西，不是祖辈们那种传统宗教。这对六十年代末、七十年代出生的年轻婴儿潮一代尤其具有吸引力，于是这种形式开始蓬勃发展。

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 sixties, seventies, boomer kind of people, and it just started to grow.

图马对巨型教堂的定义是每周线下出席人数超过2000人的教会。他估计美国约有1800座这样的教堂，其中有些规模甚至远超这个数字。

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.

在这1800座教堂中，约有100座能容纳1万人或更多。

Out of those 1,800, there's about a 100 of them that have 10,000 people or more.

其中一些教堂拥有超大型设施，每周可聚集数千人。

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

如果你看过乔尔·奥斯汀的休斯顿莱克伍德教堂，那个场地能同时容纳约1万5千人，那里曾经是休斯顿火箭队的主场。

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.

但巨型教堂规模已发展到许多都拥有多个分址，有时甚至跨越不同州份。

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

他们可能有一个能容纳两三千人的主会堂，同时还有附属的分支会众点。

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

根据图马的估计，约95%的超大型教会属于福音派基督教，其中许多鼓励会众扩大信徒规模。

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

他们外出传福音，想为耶稣赢得更多人，但超大型教会并非要求信徒外出拯救他人，而是说‘把更多人带进教会’。重点确实在于招募。我们调查中至少50%的人表示，他们相当积极地试图吸引他人加入教会。

They go out and evangelize. They wanna win more people for Jesus, but megachurches are not asking their people to go out and try to save other people. 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.

随着教会发展，会众规模本身就成了营销工具。这有点像门外排长队的夜总会往往能吸引更多顾客。

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.

当你驾车经过街道，突然在周日早晨看到车流和成百上千辆停放的汽车时，这很抓人眼球。规模一旦做大就会保持，因为人们好奇‘城里来了什么马戏团’。

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 gonna stay big because people are interested in what circus came to town.

超大型教会还投入资源建设吸引人的设施，最大的那些运作起来几乎像个小城镇。

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

如果是个43人的教会，可能没多少活动项目，儿童托管也简陋，唱赞美诗或许还走调。但若去15,000人的教会，会有多支乐队，数百个适合夫妻和子女参与的活动。

If you're a church of 43 people, you're probably not gonna have many programs. You're not gonna have a good nursery for the kids. You're singing hymns maybe a little off tune. But if you go to a congregation of 15,000, you're gonna have multiple bands. You're gonna have hundreds of programs that both you and your wife can do, your kids can do.

甚至可能拥有完整的体育设施。这是一种更迎合寻求者、以消费者为导向的信仰形式。

You might even have an entire sports facility to work out. It's a much more seeker friendly, consumer oriented faith.

对大型教会而言，吸引更多人加入不仅关乎传播福音，更是维持运营的关键。部分大型教会通过附属收入渠道获利，比如对体育设施收取会员费、举办会议，或在现场商店出售基督教主题商品。拥有15万全球会员的Hillsong教会发行了超100张专辑，音乐版税收入达数百万美元。

For megachurches, 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 a 150,000 global members, has released more than a 100 albums and has made millions of dollars in royalties for music.

不过大多数大型教会的主要收入仍来自捐赠。

At most megachurches, though, the bulk of the money comes from donations.

基本上，他们96%的收入来自会员捐献、奉献、什一税和会费。人均年捐款中位数约为1800美元。

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

Thuma指出大型教会年度预算中位数为550万美元，相比之下普通小型社区教会仅约12万美元。当然，前者需要覆盖的运营成本也高得多。

Thuma says the median megachurch budget is $5,500,000 a year. That's compared to around a $120,000 a year for your typical small neighborhood congregation. Of course, it has to cover a lot more overhead.

大型教会约50%支出用于员工薪资福利；建筑运营、水电、房贷、保险等约占20%；20%用于活动策划、材料和教育；剩余10%通常用于传教和慈善。若收入550万，基本全数支出。他们通过扩建或创新传教方式来践行信仰。

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.

与传统教会可能产生盈余并建立永久捐赠基金的模式截然不同，大型教会的财务运作更具动态性。

It's a very different model compared to a traditional church that might have a surplus and then create an endowment because they wanna be here forever. The megachurches function in a much more dynamic financial two: way.

最大型教会收入远超500万美元。德州湖木教会由明星牧师Joel Osteen领导，曾报告7900万美元年收入。俄克拉荷马生命教会每周有8.5万信徒参加，据称收入近乎翻倍。根据《国内税收法典》501(c)(3)条款，所有教会不论规模都享受免税待遇，且拥有特殊豁免权。

The largest megachurches pull in much more than $5,000,000 Lakewood Church in Texas, headed by the celebrity pastor Joel Osteen, once reported $79,000,000 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 five zero one c three of the Internal Revenue Code, churches, regardless of size, are designated as nonprofits. And what's more, they enjoy a special exemption.

与其他非营利组织不同，他们自动豁免向美国国税局提交任何申请的义务。因此他们受到的监管审查和申报要求要少得多。是否真的向国税局申报完全取决于他们自己。

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 wanna file with the IRS or not.

大多数非营利组织必须每年提交990表格，详细披露收支明细，比如高管薪酬。而教会若不愿意，则无需公开账目，这引发了一些伦理质疑。

Most nonprofits have to file an annual nine ninety 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.

我无法想象在其他任何组织或行业里，我们会期待零问责制，并指望人们纯粹出于善心而不从中牟利。

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.

接下来请听：朱莉·罗伊斯始终清楚自己想从事宗教工作。获得广播新闻学位后，她在顶尖基督教媒体公司穆迪广播网担任全国节目主持人。她在此工作十余年，即将成为基督教广播明星。

That's coming up. 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.

我曾主持一档名为《争议上线》的节目，讨论教会内部争议话题，邀请持不同观点的人士就各类议题展开辩论。

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.

在此职位上，她也窥见了巨型教会的内部运作，并开始质疑所见所闻。

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

这整个被我称为'福音派工业复合体'的体系，本质是商业行为。这些企业相互关联，彼此滋养。正因如此，他们从不互相问责。

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.

于是罗伊斯离开了穆迪，创办了《罗伊斯报告》，这是一家专注于调查报道大型教会丑闻的在线出版物。

So Royse left Moody and started the Royse Report, an online publication that does investigative reporting on megachurch scandals.

我们的口号是‘报道真相，复兴教会’。很多人认为，当你报道教会领袖或教会的不良行为或不当行为时，你是想摧毁它，但事实恰恰相反。圣经上说，敌人的亲吻是虚伪的，而朋友的责备才是真正有意义的。

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 perfuse, but it's actually the wounds of a friend that are really meaningful.

罗伊斯指出，大型教会不仅仅是规模比传统教会大，它们在本质上就有所不同。

Royce says that megachurches aren't just bigger than traditional churches. They're fundamentally different.

过去，牧师是仆人。你一生都在帮助别人，住在牧师住宅里，那通常是教堂旁边一间非常简陋的房子。但在许多大型教会中，情况变成了有一位明星牧师站在顶端，这位明星牧师成了品牌。你被推上舞台，人们崇拜你，认为你是自切片面包以来最棒的东西。

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 the church. What's happened in a lot of these megachurches 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.

他们给你高薪，还有各种额外福利。

They give you a big salary along with all sorts of perks.

大型教会的定义——每周出席人数超过2000人——相当宽泛。其中许多并没有这种明星牧师掌舵。但正如斯科特·图马所指出的，教会本身的规模可能会带来复杂性。

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 Thuma points out, the size of the church itself can introduce complications.

无论规模大小，宗教领袖在社会中都有独特的角色。但对于大型教会来说，这种角色被放大了，这个人领导着一个数千人的组织。伴随着所有的兴奋、能量和成功，这不仅创造了巨大的精神权威和力量，也形成了一种个人权威和权力。

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.

大型教会通常设有旨在制衡这些权力的组织结构。

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

在健康运作的大型教会中，存在劳动分工和权力分配。牧师类似首席执行官，是最常布道的人，但还有负责行政的角色，通常是执行牧师，管理建筑和项目的运作。此外，还有一个由会众内部成员及部分外部人士组成的董事会。

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.

但这可能发生变化

But this can change

随着教会发展。当牧师愈发成为名人式或魅力型权威人物时，董事会往往沦为应声机构，对资深领导言听计从。这种结构中，事情可能迅速失控。

as a church grows. 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.

朱莉·罗伊斯报道过众多涉及大型教会的丑闻。她指出某些教会设有连高层成员都不知晓的黑色预算或高管账户，曾发现牧师挪用教会数百万美元用于个人消费，如服装、汽车、狩猎旅行，甚至子女大学学费。

Julie Royse 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.

有人挪用教会资金。这正是教会内部必须建立制衡机制的原因。他们也是罪人，和其他人并无不同。

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.

但许多大型教会牧师无需依赖隐秘资金就能过上优渥生活。美国所有教会牧师薪资中位数约5.6万美元，而大型教会的明星牧师收入可达其数倍。该职位还常享有完全合法的额外福利，利用教会享有的慷慨税收优惠。电视布道家肯尼斯·科普兰据传通过教会及子公司拥有多架私人飞机，辩称其为规避商业航班恶魔的必要商业支出。教会通常还设有牧师免税住宅。

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.

这些牧师住宅本应是简朴的住所，但《休斯顿纪事报》与三一基金会2021年的一份报告发现，德克萨斯州有超过二十处价值至少七位数的牧师住宅。其中包括新光基督教中心教堂拥有的一处价值1250万美元、30间卧室的复合住宅。报告估计，该教堂牧师艾薇·希利亚德及其他居住在此的教会官员每年节省了超过15万美元的房产税。有时很难将牧师的私人收入与他们管理的机构区分开来。据报道，乔尔·奥斯汀在德克萨斯州湖木教堂的职位上没有领取薪水，但他的布道书籍据传为他赚取了数百万美元。

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 7 figures. That included a $12500000.0.30 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.

图玛表示，将大型教会的宗教收入与其他活动所得分开同样困难。

Thuma says it can be equally hard to separate a megachurch's religious income from the money it makes through other activities.

许多大型教会拥有庞大的地产和多项活动，这些并不完全属于宗教活动范畴。如果他们运营日托中心、学校或体育联盟，且人们需支付会费才能加入体育联盟，这真的算是宗教活动的一部分吗？

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?

造成这种混淆的一个潜在原因是，在大型教会中，宗教与消费主义有时交织在一起。一些牧师宣扬名为‘繁荣福音’的教义，这是一种神学观点，认为财富通过信仰获得，富裕可能象征着上帝的眷顾。以下是肯尼斯·科普兰牧师在华盛顿特区一次布道中的话：‘金钱是载体，你用赞美浇灌它，它就会带来收获。’

One potential cause for this conflation is that at megachurches, religion and consumerism are sometimes intertwined. 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 DC. The money is the carrier, and you water it with your praise, and it will harvest.

许多向这些繁荣福音传道者捐款的人是靠固定收入或贫困人群。他们认为如果播下一颗种子，将会收获更多。因此这些人基本上是抱着‘捐出100美元，就能拿回1000美元’的心态在奉献。

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'll give a $100, they're gonna get a thousand back.

斯科特·杜马表示，一定程度上的募捐对维持大型教会运营是必要的。他的调查工作显示，随着教会规模扩大，平均捐款金额会下降。换句话说，每增加一名会众，边际效益递减。

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 congregant.

会众规模越大，对个体的影响力和压力就越弱。这在任何群体中都适用。如果我心脏病发作时站在五人中间，至少会有一人出手相助。如果在五十或五百人中，大家都会想‘这是别人的问题’。大型教会必须谈论金钱，因为他们知道没有压力，信徒就不会奉献那么多。

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 gonna jump to my aid. If I'm in a group of 50 or 500 people, everybody goes, well, it's somebody else's problem. Megachurches have to talk about money because they know that without pressure, their people are not gonna give as much.

这真是个两难境地。如果他们不谈论这件事，就拿不到钱；但如果他们谈论了，又会招致批评，说他们只会谈论这个。

So it's this really catch 22. If they don't talk about it, they're not gonna get the money. If they do talk about it, then they're gonna get criticism about that's all they talk about.

每年曝光的财务丑闻使得当今许多大型教会对外界观感更加谨慎。

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

随着大型教会模式的成熟，我认为它已经明白了应该做什么，以及声誉有多么珍贵，并且建立了相应的制衡机制和防护措施，以确保不会失去在社区中的重要地位。

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.

许多大型教会选择与一个名为'福音派财务责任委员会'（ECFA）的监督机构合作。除此之外，图玛估计约四分之三的大型教会自愿接受外部或独立注册会计师的审计。通常，

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. Oftentimes,

他们可能会在网站上公布审计报告。他们欢迎会众中的人提出质疑，但这只是四分之三的教会。对吧？并非所有教会都这样做。

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.

本报道中提及的所有教会均未对我们的置评请求作出回应。但值得一提的是，独立福音派基督教组织'事工观察'追踪美国最大的宗教机构，并对其财务透明度进行评级。要获得A级，机构必须提交990税表、经审计的财务报表，并且是ECFA成员。在最新报告中，数据库中只有约40%的机构获得A级评级，超过四分之一的机构被评为D或F级，包括乔尔·欧斯汀和肯尼斯·科普兰运营的机构。

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 nine ninety 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.

当然，缺乏透明度并不一定意味着存在不当行为。尽管不良行为往往最受关注，但图玛指出，大型教会对美国宗教格局也有积极贡献。

Of course, a lack of transparency doesn't necessarily indicate wrongdoing, And even though the bad behavior tends to get the most attention, Thumma says there are good things that megachurches contribute to America's religious landscape.

它们仍在吸引年轻人，并且持续发展壮大。这些大型教会所做的许多事情，比如保持洗手间清洁、提供优质咖啡、设立接待团队欢迎访客，任何规模的会众团体都能效仿。我认为有很多值得向他们学习的地方。

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.

朱莉·罗伊斯找到了另一种类型的教会去参加。

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

我加入了这个小小的家庭教会，感觉棒极了。每周我都满怀期待。没有人会给我们做三十分钟的枯燥布道。我们一起研读经文，共同探讨，每个人的见解都让我们得到启迪。对我来说，福音派教会始终强调与上帝建立个人关系，相信天堂与地狱的存在，信仰应当体现在你的生活方式中。

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 thirty 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.

这些核心从未改变，但教会对我来说的呈现方式已大不相同。

None of that has changed, but what church looks like for me has changed a lot.

这里是《日常事物的经济学》，我是扎卡里·克拉基特。本期节目由我和莎拉·莉莉共同制作，杰里米·约翰斯顿负责混音。我们得到了丹尼尔·莫里茨·拉普森和达文·阿巴瓦吉的帮助。

For The Economics of Everyday Things, I'm Zachary Crackett. This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Rappson and Davin Abawaji.

我们本应只拥有一位名人。那就是耶稣。对吧？

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

这里是怪诞经济学电台网络，揭示万物隐藏的真相。Stitcher平台。你好。

The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything. Stitcher. Hi.