Mega churches
March 24, 2006T’s job involves programming and installing point of sales systems for restaurants and other hospitality type places. Lately he has been working on installing a rather large system in a local non-denominational church, what I would call a mega church. This has gotten me to thinking about mega churches…
Mega churches, to me, seem to be those that spend a lot on themselves. This particular church is building an auditorium for about 4500, capable of being expanded to double that. It has also built a complete cafe that seats about 150 people. Its youth rooms feature multiple flat panel tvs, a smoothie/light snack bar, video games. There is essentially a teen dance club as part of the youth area. It has a gift shop. A giant sound system, multiple screens, highly technological system in place for use in the auditorium. They have coffee kiosks like mini Starbucks’ outside the auditorium after services.
Is that what Christianity should be portrayed as? Seems rather the opposite of who Jesus was. I don’t mean that churches should be poor and scraping by but it seems extravagant to be spending so much money on that kind of thing- and not only that the cafe, the coffe, the teen snack bars all charge for the product (they would have to in order to keep going). What about the story of Jesus throwing the market stalls/sellers out of the temple and off the temple grounds and his anger about the idea of selling products on church ground?
The church I attend is large, yes, but they do not seem to be intent on becoming some sort of over-the-top mega church. They definitely want to increase the number of people attending and becoming interested in Christianity and turning their lives over to Christ but they don’t seem to be intent upon doing it through technological prowess or the “coolness” factor. To me, commercialism does not belong in a church and makes a church seem rather hypocritical.
I know what you mean. Those mega churches creep me out. But I am an Episcopalian and they have oodles of money too…. it is just hidden in the background and the traditional church buildings that we don’t think of as being extravagent…
I used to go to a really poor church and almost all the money went straight to the folks in the neighborhood who needed a hand. Problem was we didn’t have many resources and the leadership was all one man. His strengths as well as his weakness drove the program.
These types of *churches* sort of shout the, ‘Six Flags Over Jesus’, theme. Reminds me of the Laodician church in Revelation 3.
“Six Flags Over Jesus” Exactly!