Also, the more extreme sects occasionally have developed corrupt, rigid authoritarian leadership structures. Unhampered by normal societal checks, such corrupt leadership has led to disastrous results, amply illustrated, for example, in the murders and crimes perpetrated by the members of the Church of the Lamb of God. Anti-cultists draw their image of destructive cults from extreme sects as well as from those groups more normally labeled cults. Just as there are not really so many cult groups as are frequently reported in the press, cults also lack the huge membership often credited to them. If such alleged membership, reportedly in the millions, existed, every neighborhood would have visible cult centers.
Most cults have only a few hundred members and spend most of their energy just surviving.
Thus, in those several hundred groups which have become prominent during the last decades, a total of 150,000 to 200,000 would be a more reasonable membership estimate. One cannot, however, measure cult statistics solely by membership. It must be noted that many times the number of members have had only a brief period of cult involvement. Over ninety percent of those who join an alternative religion leave it within a few years. Even larger numbers of individuals, in the process of examining a religious group, participate in some activity but never join.