9
level of frequency that they attend church either on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Furthermore, this data does not account for the proportion of congregational members
who could viably participate in church activities. For example, a congregation of twenty
members is designed theoretically to allow every member a chance to participate in some
formal capacity such as serving on a church council, holding membership on a
committee, participating in the education program, or serving as a lay minister. In
contrast, a megachurch consisting of a few thousand parishioners limits the number of
people that can hold formal leadership roles. At this time, we lack both the theoretical
and empirical evidence to reach a consensus regarding whether smaller congregations are
more likely to foster civic skills than megachurches. However, the size of a congregation
is an important variable to consider because conventional wisdom suggests that larger
churches typically have a larger administrative and financial resource base than smaller
congregations to engage in civic engagement activities (see Cnaan 2002, 105-6).
Furthermore, although Olson theorized that free riding occurs less in smaller groups
(Olson 1965, 28), we do not know whether free riding presents a greater problem for
larger rather than smaller churches.
We concentrate our attention on determining whether the level of free riding
results from the type of organizational arrangements that comprise religious
denominations. Although the literature downplays the organizational problems that
threaten the stability of a congregation, anecdotal evidence often suggests that some
churches are weak organizations whose main priority is to keep their doors open to the
public. Some churches struggle weekly to pay their bills and the salaries of hired
professionals. Their leaders also encounter difficulty in recruiting members to volunteer
Convention