Back in the day (1980's) my parents got real churchy, or I should say more churchy. They were already pretty hard core catholics and my brother and I went to catholic school we made all the holy days and then some, prayed at home (rosary and all), had tons of Heavy ancient catholic reference books and lots of paperback books on theology, bios on 20th century catholics, and all the religious artifacts and nick knacks about.
They got into the more evangelical side of things and they brought my brother and me to all of their conventions, services, and seminars. There was much good that came out of it and despite being very uncomfortable with it the whole things was pretty low key and the money side was more like passing of the plate after an AA meeting than what is going on in the mega church world, although there were plenty of t shirts, tapes and books to be had for the right price.
My brother who was much more cynical and kind of an asshole, used to remark that the people that showed up to these things were a bunch of losers and were generally fat to boot (he used much harsher language). The point was is that these were people who were in need of a pick me up and it was ok to be poor, fat, unattractive, lazy, unsuccessful, submissive, and have a history of poor life choices because god still loved you and everything would be ok in the afterlife. It was a way of opting out and not taking responsibility in the worst of cases.
These were people in search of a fix, a quick fix if we are being honest. It doesn't really matter whether we are talking about salvation, lowering your handicap, losing weight, stopping arthritis pain, taking hebal medicine, pyramid power, getting that can't miss fishing lure, Amway, or hiring that up an coming college football coach. There is always some con that gets you to believe that success will be yours if you just do buy these things or follow this little known formula.