The latest religious phenomenon to hit the US is one that is being viewed as the most significant since the advent of televangelism in the 1980s, writes Oliver Poole
An advertisement for the Saddleback Church invites congregants to attend “God’s Extreme Makeover” – a revival of Christ in their hearts named after the latest television fad, in which volunteers undergo plastic surgery.
Leaflets at the door to the main hall proclaim “You Can Bring Your Coffee Into Any Venue”. Children run around in baseball shirts proclaiming that they are part of God’s own squad. The thousands inside are able to sing along to spiritual songs – not traditional hymns – from the words on giant karaoke screens suspended above a light rock band.
This is the United States’ latest religious phenomenon. As Americans like going to shopping malls for all their consumer needs in one spot, so self-styled “megachurches” are the fastest growing form of service in the country.
…At Saddleback’s 11.30am Sunday service there is talk of love and togetherness. The pastors wear microphone headsets and chinos, use slang in their sermons and certainly avoid anything that resembles “thee” or “thou”.
The multi-ethnic congregation is made up of nominal Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. They are taught that through God they are victors not victims, and no one is called a sinner.
Aping the popular self-help books popular in the modern age the approach adopted is “Jesus meets the power of positive thinking”.
Eddie Gibbs, a professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary, has described it as a conscious process to “remove every obstacle that keeps people from coming into the Christian Church”.
[Full Story]
Unfortunately the obstacles removed might also be the Cross. The last thing we need in the U.S. is to be affirmed and taught the watered down theology that has been so prevalent since the 1960s. The world has made more inroads into the church over the last century then the Church has made inroads into the world. There an no chapels in Starbucks, but there are now many Starbucks in mega-churches. Coffee cup holders in the pews of church “venues” might be conducive to worship, but is it worship of God or materialism? Detachment is required to follow the path of perfection and when the church and a shopping mall are ascetically equal are you on the narrow path? I have very mixed feeling on this since I am glad that people are trying to follow God and attending these churches. Unfortunately I believe it is Christianity with training wheels with no plans to remove the wheels later on.
11 comments
My family is involved in a church like this: they sell hot dogs during the service and have removed all of the old hymns. But more importantly, the preacher tries to preach more “acceptable” sermons that don’t drive away sinners.
In my mind, this is simply changing God to fit fallen man. I liken it to cafeteria Catholicism and believe that it leads to a shallow, lifeless faith that could be destroyed by the smallest suffering. Hopefully this won’t occur at every protestant church (of course, it could lead to the end of protestant churches).
God bless,
Jay
I go to a church that has cup holders, a lite rock band, and sings choruses from large screens. There are occasions when I am reminded that I am in an auditorium not a sanctuary. This leads to concerns that we may be encouraging a gospel-lite. Other times (most times) I am very much aware that I am surrounded by people who’s lives have been changed and they are on the road to the City of God, – some for many years, some with maps still glossy and new.
This I know; I spent many decades in traditional Protestant churches where the saints were often times indistinguishable from valleys of dry bones with not a rustle of wind to be heard. They served a God etched in stone and paint every bit as useful as any self-help book at your favorite bookstore.
The purpose of church, any church, is to assist the Holy Spirit in the reclamation of your spirit for God’s delight. You, I, we must always be on guard against treating the sacred as common. While so doing we must take care to honor God in whatever circumstance or venue He chooses to reveal Himself.
The popularity of megachurches is one of the best examples of America transforming God rather than God transforming America.
It appears Americans care as deeply about where their religion comes from as they care about where thier cheap petrol, cheap clothing, or cheap coffee comes from!!
At the root of this is the exaltation of the self as the determiner of “saved”. That is the sensation of faith causes a person to be saved, what the person actually has faith in becomes irrelevant.
My major problem with the entire “We Shall Remake God In Our Own Image and Pay No Heed to Our Sins” culture so prevalent in today’s society is that it’s instant-gratification. It feels good immediately. But I’ve found also that that’s pretty much where it ends, is inside the mega-church.
It’s beautiful to feel connected to God, and to feel God’s love, so I’m glad people are at least after God somewhere. But it’s also exactly what Kevin here calls it: “Christianity with training wheels.” Christianity’s ultimate goal is to promote the notion that we’re all called to be saints, that we’re called to be “other Christs.” Now, we can’t get very far as spiritual beings if we sin against the Holy Spirit by denying our sins for what they are. We can’t reach our fullness in Christ if we don’t tackle our own personal imperfections, i.e. our sins.
Kevin, Jeff.. I used to know a Jeff Miller…
Sorry, Jeff 🙂
I will start this by stating that I share some of the concerns of those posting here about these churches. I see them first hand where I live. It isn’t that there is much really bad theology, it is that they are DEVOID of theology. That said, I have mixed feelings because I see the good they do in peoples lives.
While I am disappointed that not all share my own love for the Catholic Church, I know folks who NEVER attended church in their lives who are making it to these “training wheels” mega-churches. I live about 2 miles from one that was mentioned in GWB SOTU address LAST year. My wife and I breifly considered going there until they mentioned that “oh … by the way, we offer marraiges, baptisms and communion by appointment or as special non-Sunday services.” We were looking for something entirely different and had been considering Catholicism during the few years prior. God willing, my wife and I will be received into the Church this Easter.
Our prayer should be that those that end up in these doors are truly seeking the right something and not free coffee and a good look at all of the young girls in tight skirts. That said, if coffee gets me in the door and 15 years later I find the mass, then I have to think that coffee was something God intended for me.
I find the longer one remains a Christian the more theology matters. I attended a Billy Graham spinoff right out of college that defined a creed some 25 years after the church was founded. It mattered to the older generation of that church. Of course them problem then becomes that of bad theology vs. good theology and by the sales of self hep books repackaged as “Bible based” or “God centered,” we know there is a LOT of bad theology running rampant in US churches.
Its a sticky thing I prefer to leave to God and in the capable hands of intelligent apologists. His salvific grace is capable, even in the most unfriendly of environments, of changing lives forever. Getting a little milk when you “think like a child” makes you yearn for the full meal when you think like an adult. We all still think like a child in some way or another … but we all can remember a time when we thought even less like an adult. I want to think less like I child. I want the meal.
they may be crazy, but at least they’re crazy for Jesus?
I’d rather see people in *a* Christian church than no church at all. If they have left the Catholic church for a mega/emerging church, then we need to ask ourselves ‘why?’ – they didn’t leave for no reason at all.
perhaps they leave the Catholic church for churchmalls because they wanted to be entertained by their religion rather than fed by it.
I’m not a Catholic, so keep that in mind as you read this.
The church I attend is hardly a mega-church (Park Street Church in Boston,MA), but we do have evening services which feature contemporary praise and worship music along with all the repetative choruses and power point slides that go along with that. I usually attend the morning service which uses a pipe organ and an old-fashioned hymnal, but for the last two weeks I’ve been attending the morning and the evening service, and last night, I really noticed how “fleshly” the evening worship was. The band was trying to work us up into an emotional state – and they succeeded. Sure it was fun, but I think that these sorts of worship services can get you only so far. God wants us to come to him full of the Holy Spirit, not on the basis of working ourselves into some particular emotional state.
At some point, it is going to have to be about “who God is” and “who you are” and the relationship between the two which leads you to worship, rather than a band which rocks. I think the theology embedded in the classic hymns contains a lot more meat about our relationship with God than the typical modern praise song. When was the last time you heard a contemporary praise and worship song about God’s triune nature?
Of course this isn’t always the case. Some hymns are insipid and some modern praise and worship songs have a real depth to them. But these are the outliers. The hymns have stood the test of time, so the bad ones get dropped by the wayside.
I was born a Southern Baptist but was received into the Church two years ago. I can tell you from my own personal experience why some people are leaving the Catholic church and going to Mega-Churches and Protestant churches. In every parish I have gone in, no one says anything to me. I barely get an acknowledgement when I enter and when I leave. When I visited the local United Methodist church one Sunday, more people actually spoke to my wife and I in that one visit than in three years of attending Mass. We had someone bring some bread to our house the next day and send us a card thanking us for attending. These churches are FRIENDLY. Even if the theology of these churches are suspect. They make you feel like you belong. In the Catholic church I’m attending now, which is in a town of around 6,000 that I moved to a few years ago, if you’re not from one of the twelve or thirteen families that make up the majority of the church membership you can forget about ever ” belonging.” At church functions you get to sit by yourself with your family. When kids from other families have birthdays and play days, yours will not be invited. You will of course have to make sure and give money to the church and “volunteer” when the yearly Sausage festival rolls around. But friendship, kindness, a sense of belonging to a church family? Forget it.