page_title: Megachurch
section_title: Current conditions and statistics
hierarchical_section_title: Megachurch / Current conditions and statistics
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Lakewood Church worship, in 2013
context_page_description: A megachurch is a church with an unusually large membership, who also offer a variety of educational and social activities, usually Protestant or Evangelical. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant Christian church having 2,000 or more people in average weekend attendance.
  The concept originated in the mid 19th century, continued into the mid 20th century as a phenomenon, and expanded rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s; it is widely seen across the US in the early 21st century.
context_section_description: In 2010, the Hartford Institute's database listed more than 1,300 such Protestant churches in the United States; according to that data, approximately 50 churches on the list had average attendance exceeding 10,000, with the highest recorded at 47,000 in average attendance. On one weekend in November 2015, around one in ten Protestant churchgoers in the US, or about 5 million people, attended service in a megachurch. 3,000 individual Catholic parishes have 2,000 or more attendants for an average Sunday Mass, but they are not called megachurches as that is a specifically Protestant term.
  Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide. In 2007, five of the ten largest Protestant churches were in South Korea.  The largest megachurch in the United States is Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, with more than 40,000 members every weekend, and the largest megachurch in the world is South Korea's Yoido Full Gospel Church, an Assemblies of God church, with more than 830,000 members as of 2007.  
  Victory church had 15 campuses and 80,000 members in the Philippines in 2015 and is global megachurch. Jesus is Lord Church Worldwide is a global megachurch based in the Philippines with 5 million members in 60 nations.
caption: Lakewood Church meets in a former sports arena with seating for 16,000.
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