>>13953446A church is a large, bureaucratically organized religious organization that tends to seek accommodation with the larger society in order to maintain some degree of control over it. Church membership is largely based on birth; typically, children of church members are baptized as infants and become life-long members of the church. Older children and adults may choose to join the church, but they are required to go through an extensive training program that culminates in a ceremony similar to the one that infants go through. Churches have a bureaucratic structure, and leadership is hierarchically arranged. Usually, the clergy have many years of formal education. Churches have very restrained services that appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions. Religious services are highly ritualized; they are led by clergy who wear robes, enter and exit in a formal processional, administer sacraments, and read services from a prayer book or other standardized liturgical format. The Lutheran church and the Episcopal church are two examples.
A sect is a relatively small religious group that has broken away from another religious organization to renew what it views as the original version of the faith. Unlike churches, sects offer members a more personal religion and an intimate relationship with a supreme being, depicted as taking an active interest in the individual's everyday life. Sects have informal prayers composed at the time they are given, whereas churches use formalized prayers, often from a prayer book.
According to the church-sect typology, as members of a sect become more successful economically and socially, they tend to focus more on this world and less on the next. However, sect members who do not achieve financial success often believe that they are being left behind as the other members, and sometimes the minister, shift their priorities to things of this world. Eventually, this process weakens some religious groups, and the dissatisfied or downw
