A new survey on U.S. Protestant megachurches shows they are among the nation’s fastest-growing faith groups, drawing younger people and families with contemporary programming and conservative values. The number of megachurches, defined as having a weekly attendance of at least 2,000, has doubled in five years to 1,210. The megachurches have an estimated combined income of $7.2 billion and draw nearly 4.4 million people to weekly services, according to “Megachurches Today 2005.” The study, released Friday, based its findings on 406 surveys from megachurches. It was written by Leadership Network, a nonprofit church-growth consulting firm in Dallas, and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which did a similar survey in 2000. Leadership Network’s clients are large churches in the U.S. and Canada looking to grow or maintain growth with new ideas and methods. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research is part of the nondenominational Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. “When you add up all that megachurches are doing from books to video to the networks of connection across the nation, you can’t say this phenomena of more than 1,200 megachurches is anything but really one of the most influential factors of American religion at this point in […]