When Jonny Rocket proposed to his girlfriend, Charity, he wore lederhosen. It was SHECtoberfest 2004, a non-alcoholic counterpart to the beer-centric Oktoberfest, and 700 people milled around the gymnasium of Missoula’s South Hills Evangelical Church (SHEC) as Jonny dropped to one knee.

Charity, herself wearing a dirndl and pigtails, said yes.

“I just nodded like a big geek,” she said later.

The engagement wasn’t the only milestone in Charity and Jonny’s relationship to take place at SHEC. They met there, too.

Charity is not alone in meeting her partner at Missoula’s biggest church. In fact, she’s not even the only one in her family. Her younger sister Emily Bourassa, 19, met her husband Cody Smith at Holy Grounds, the coffee shop that serves lattes to churchgoers before the service begins. They plan to marry in May 2007.

“God’s at the center of who we are together. It’s pretty awesome,” said Emily.

Meeting a partner at church is an old story. But as churches continue to swell with larger congregations and provide more and more services to parishioners besides preaching, the opportunity exists for more and more relationships will be born within the church walls.

Those walls are getting larger, according to a study by the Hartford Institute of Religious Research. In the five years between 2000 and 2005, the number of churches with a weekly attendance of over 2,000 people doubled to over 1200 nationwide. Associate pastor John Lumen estimates about 1,600 people typically attend one of SHEC’s three weekend services. That’s short of the “megachurch” label (according to HIRR), but those numbers make SHEC the largest religious institution in Missoula and the third largest in the state.