Christopher Atwhistle  was a good preacher.  From a very young age he had wanted to preach, but it was important to him to preach only the true teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles.  He spent a considerable amount of time not only reading scripture, but also other ancient documents and historical studies so his preaching would be as honest and as close to the real teachings as possible.  Soon, Rev. Atwhistle had his own church.  It was a very small church, but he was happy with it because he knew he was teaching honestly.  
    One day, while attending a conference of Christian preachers he met and talked to a well known minister, Dr. Joe Wright.  He found he started to like Dr. Wright and became friends with him.  Unfortunately, Dr. Wright operated a megachurch with several thousand members and getting hundreds of new members a year while Rev. Atwhistle's church only had a hundred or so members and added less that a dozen a year.  This never bothered Christopher before, but as he found himself being around preachers like Dr. Wright more and more, he began to think differently.  
    Rev. Atwhistle began to wonder if it was really all that important to be totally honest in his preaching.  Perhaps he could change one or two things to make people like his church more.  After debating it for a while and watching Dr. Wright's church grow and grow, he decided to do it.  He changed a few things to make his church be more what people wanted in a church even though it meant compromising the true teachings.  It worked!  In a short while his church had nearly doubled in size.  He decided to do it again.  He tweaked and bent a few more teachings to make them more acceptable to people, and again his church doubled in size in a few months.  
    Rev. Atwhistle continued working on making his church more acceptable to the average person and continued to have success at it.  In ten years time his megachurch was just as large and wealthy as Dr. Wright's.  So what if the things he now preached bore little resemblance to the original teaching of Jesus?   At least he had thousands of members, a mansion in the best part of town, and a Rolls Royce and that's what really mattered, right?

note: this tale is fiction and Rev. Atwhistle and Dr. Wright are fictitious characters.