Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
I Come Not to Praise the Megachurch

I Come Not to Praise the Megachurch

Last updated on: September 3, 2015 at 11:08 am by Tony Woodlief

I Come Not to Praise the Megachurch 2015-09-03T11:08:37-07:00 Tony Woodlief

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The church may have begun as a non-spiritual entity, a business of some sort that was judged insufficiently profitable. Maybe it was one of those sprawling climate-controlled storage facilities, for example, the kind assembled from pre-fab insulated concrete forms, crafted not for enlivening souls but for storing up the treasures that have no place elsewhere.

But likely it was intended as a church from the beginning, a box, yes, but a box whose utilitarianism is a testimony befitting the Horatio Alger genesis tale of the modern American church: We began in a warehouse; we began in a living room; we began in a movie theater. In the beginning we sat on borrowed semi-circled folding chairs and read the Word from our soft well-worn leather-bound Bibles and the Word was with us and the Word was us.

A utilitarian exterior makes good Christian sense, because man can live no more on bricks and mortar than bread alone, and a competent preacher doesn’t need flying buttresses and gargoyles to pursue the modern business of soul-saving.

Besides, a spare exterior frees up cash for the Yamaha Rivage PM10 live sound console that looks like it was stolen from the bridge of the starship Enterprise. It helps you buy, rather than lease, the SPL Passeq passive equalizer and Concert Fidelity 080 preamp, essential so you can weaponize the sound and pass it to your Sennheiser KA40 compact Class-D, which cannons it at three hives of JBL VerTec line array speakers, each with a dial capable of going to eleven and blowing the scuppered PVC membrane roof off this joint.

These are supplemented by EV QRx series trap boxes adorning the aluminum and black non-slip plywood stage that looms where our primitive forbears once stacked icons, and above which hovers, like a cloud of fire, custom truss-work rigging implanted with multi-colored LED banks, their formidable luminosity augmented by 1000-watt GE PAR64 cans, the really heavy firepower, for when people need reminding the kingdom of heaven is motherfucking nigh, that they’d better sit up straight and attend to a trinity of Draper 240-inch projector screens, each targeted by a Panasonic PT-DZ21KU 3-Chip DLP projector hurling 20,000 lumens of holy fire and emblazoned with convicting verses, and framing these screens an angelic host of luminous curtain walls glowing royal mauve and heavenly ultramarine.

There are these shimmering color displays, and a short walk away from these squats a copse of rubberized metal stands to pedestal the Fender Stratocasters and Taylor acoustic six-strings which serve the plentiful, beatific, lip-quivering, faces-ever-upturned worship team, all of them, even the guitarists between chords, with right hands raised to the cricketed roof and to God who resides above it. All of them but the hunched and slow-writhing drummer, who with closed eyes thumps coated double-ply Mylar heads almost erotically, with an occasional twitch, like any second he may cut loose and beat the ever-loving hell out of these drum heads, secure in the knowledge that the God who crumpled Jericho with trumpets surely won’t mind the noise, especially coming as it will from behind the modesty of a Plexiglas cage.

But no, the drummer remains bent and tenderly thumping, the world’s most patient Tantric lover, and when his comrades have not half but all their palms stretched to the matte-black truss-work, he will tease the quivering Zildjians with his stick tips to yield a gentle godly crescendo, the signal for the preacher to stride onstage in tailored jeans and blazer and untucked dress shirt that is always a different color but which never clashes unpleasingly with the digital phosphorescent mauve and ultramarine, a comforting priestly garb for his bejeaned and summer-skirted parishioners.

And he will proclaim some things about God that he really does believe, from gelled-hair to clutched Bible all the way down to his Skechers’ rubber soles. He will tell you things that make you feel less terrified, or furious, or just plain indifferent when you ponder God, and for this earnest effort plus the earworm choruses, people throng for three shows on Sunday and two on Saturdays, which proves the business model works.

It works, and the church grows and grows and grows, and it gives a lot of people a feeling that is something like hope, for at least a little while.

And the thing is, this feeling is more than they get from anything else in their lives, no matter how much we are inclined to deride their faux warehouse and their preacher’s faux hawk and their concert seating and their Hallmark sentimentality, all of which are maybe more an indictment of us than them, because whatever it is we think we’re offering, not a soul in this modern-day ark chose it, and if your girlfriend, say, wants a dimwit with a muscle car more than you, sure, you can make fun of the dimwit and his environmentally irresponsible transportation, but what the hell, exactly, does it say about you, that he’s the superior choice?

A man could do worse to this world than the simple Jesus-loving preacher who makes people feel less terrified or furious or indifferent. A man could do far worse, in fact, and many of us do. And this is a conundrum indeed, because if heaven were this church, some of us would rather go to hell, yet for many people it is a kind of heaven, or the closest they know how to get.

And here are we serious Christians saying we believe Jesus about the kingdom of heaven being here, but if it’s here then we probably ought to act like it, what with all that turn the other cheek and give your brother the shirt off your back stuff, and my God, can you imagine ten million people suddenly doing that?

It would be better than a concert, better than a light show, so uplifting, in fact, that the big-box preacher might say let’s cut some windows in this coffin, let’s let the light in, because it’s brighter than ever out there, like ten million dulled bulbs suddenly lit up, and do you see, do you see, this is what I’ve been telling you: it really has come, it truly is here.

Tony Woodlief lives in North Carolina*.* His essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The London Times, and his short stories appeared in Image, Ruminate, Saint Katherine Review, and Dappled Things. His website http://tonywoodlief.com/.

Previous Post

September 2, 2015

The Embarrassed Samaritan

Next Post

September 4, 2015 For the Newlyweds

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: In Revelation, there are ten elders seated around God's throne.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE