In my limited experience however it does not happen. Not to pick on the Pope, the leader of the largest early Christ based religion, but in terms of wealth he is the leader of the religious wealthy. The Pope controls billions.

The Popes golden robes are made of gold thread, not exactly a symbol of putting money lower on the list than other values, Christian values or not.

The Mormon Church, Billy Graham, the list goes on where Christ Centered religion ends, and a question of monetary greed begins.

I had an uncle who worked for a famous radio and television evangelist in the fifties. My uncle helped route donation letters. Only donations over one hundred dollars solicited a response from the Evangelist, and that was a thinly disguised request for more cash. This evangelist may or may not have been typical for his time and perhaps today.

I can not wonder why people turn from organized religion when leaders of Churches have bankrolls large enough to fund small countries.

Our blogs for example. If we both suddenly started having one hundred thousand readers a day, I may start looking to monetize my blog. That would be an expectation perhaps.

For your blog however, it gets a little sticky because monetizing a blog and spreading the word are hard to say in the same breath.

I think what people want is real small time religion where small groups of people meet and share with each other. I believe that would interest people more in organized religion than what we currently have for choices.

If one person firmly grounded in their [Christian] beliefs, you have the makings of a church or at the very least a small congregation the same beliefs.

If the first congregation is successful, or becomes to large, another will start up. As they each continue farther from the initial startup faith becomes less important than profit all too often.

What happens too often is money gets in the way. Not a fault of any belief system, rather the basic emotions inherent in any successful endeavor.

Thus my capstone comment. As much as we would wish it were not so, I can not think of a single church that has been in operation for any amount of time where the focus does not start shifting to money.

I imagine you view the same process in a different light?

I am atheist, but I wasn’t always. I am one of the people you refer to who was turned off by the church itself and began to question my beliefs which eventually led to my atheism. I’m not sure what the church can do about people like myself, because I can assure you that no amount of church re-vamping is going to change my feelings regarding the existence of god. But I do think that creating more churches like it sounds like One Church will be can only help keep the dialogue open.

Is God any less comfortable being a daily part of someone’s life and home than sitting in the Church on the corner waiting for the lights to turn on and the doors to open?

Bringing spirituality back into organized religion will bring a revival of the participation of organized religion. Until that happens, I do not forsee any changing of the numbers.

I view organized religion as small to big business depending on size, not as a primary capstone of faith and belief.