I suspect that a lot of people wish that College Church could offer everything it does now and be a fourth of the size it is. People would like to have everything we offer and at the same time have the church be around three hundred. If people don't see something they want this week, they're not going to return the next. Our society is much more competitive today than it was forty years ago. More farmers have failed in the last twenty years, for example, than failed during Depression years.
Failure is a product of increasing competition.
Another cause of competition among churches is the success of ecumenism. Until the mid-sixties, the focus in churches was on what was distinctively different about them. I'm convinced people took that literally. But when it comes to the worshiping community, cooperation does not work. The spiritual journey of the individual is developed best within the confines of a single worshiping community.