Joseph P. Daniels is an economics professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He co-authored a paper that presented an economic model of “religious investment” to explain how seeker-oriented megachurches attract and keep members.

Bill Day is a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and associate director of its Leavell Center for Evangelism and Church Health. His areas of specialization include evangelism and church growth.

Sandra Barnes is a professor of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., whose research interests include the sociology of religion. She is the author of The Black Mega Church: Framing and Addressing HIV/AIDS and Poverty in the Age of Health and Wealth Theology.

Kimon Sargeant is vice president of human sciences at the John Templeton Foundation in West Conshohocken, Pa. Sargeant likens megachurches to shopping malls in his book Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way.

Robert Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, where he studies civic connectedness, social capital, and religion and public life. He is author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again and Bowling […]

Irwin L. Morris is a professor in the department of government and politics at the University of Maryland at College Park. He co-authored an article titled “A Mighty Fortress: The Social and Economic Foundations of the American Megachurch Movement.”

Elmer Towns is co-founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and dean of its School of Religion. Towns is a longtime church-growth expert; he provided one of the earliest tallies of super-large churches, determining in 1969 that there were 16 congregations with 2,000-plus weekly worshippers.

Read a Sept. 17, 2003, Forbes magazine article on entrepreneurial and marketing activities of megachurches.

Read a Feb. 6, 2006, Christian Science Monitor article about the rise of megachurches.