Secrets of the City

I think to lump all the big churches into one big zealous mass is just as bad as lumping all the bloggers into one. There are lots and lots of churches who have a platform of pro-peace, anti-war, tolerance, etc. Heck, I love Veggie-Tales for my kid even though I’m agnostic, because they have themes around peace, love, and anti-materialism (seriously – I just got one last week at Target with a whole theme against stores like Target). Remember that a lot of them people manning shelters, painting houses, and helping out those in need are organized by their church group. My favorite charity in the world is Heifer and their main support comes from churches buying huge “arks” of animals. I think it’s pretty tough to be loudly anti-way in a huge church where a bunch of members have family serving in the war.

In Rachael’s defense, I know that she’s a church-going citizen, so I think she’s criticizing the church from the inside, if you will. She’s only “lumping together” zealots.

thank rex. and nina – perhaps my blog wasn’t quite clear. in fact, i know for a fact there’s great church organizations out there, and i belong to one of them. what i meant to say is the megachurches, as a stereotype, seem to package christianity in a perfect world cult-like manner. the chior is perfect. the pastor (and his family) are perfect. the congregation is perfect. it’s all a little too stepford for me (based on my experiences). i’ve done a lot of church shopping. and for the record, i ADORE veggietales and used to do marketing for them so i’ve seen, like, all them a hundred times and dig the messages. and i’ve also donated to the wonderful heifer project as well, my great aunt gets chickens every year.

The “stepford” remark and the “pastor (and his family)” remark are perfect indicators: the previous pastor of the Grace Church was disgraced by having an adultress affair become public. My wife sang in a choir at a chuch in Wayzata where the pastor and his family were “perfect” — well, at least tried to appear to be. He was actually a lechorous, chauvinistic, cruel to his children bastard. My wife was so appalled at his behavior, she quit the choir, as did a friend of hers.

My real point: I agree with Rachael. All too often these megachurches, especially the congregational ones (which means the pastor is the chief interpreter and arbiter of God’s word; there is no Pope or nationwide Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, etc. council of ministers who agree on a general doctrine and keep each other in line), are cult-like and contain packaged religion — not real Christianity (or other religion, for that matter).

And yes, my family is a member of a large Catholic parish in Minneapolis.

Reading Jim Walsh’s piece is horrifying to me. Thousands of middle-class and upper-middle class Minnesotans, mostly suburbanites, mindlessly drinking in this evangelical drivel which makes it sound like we are in the Crusades again. Unless one is so crazed as to believe the USA can single-handedly wipe out all the “infidels” or believes in the “Left Behind” scenario and is convinced they themselves won’t be left behind, there’s no way this kind of thinking is reasonable in a world with over a billion non-Christian Chinese and over a billion non-Christian Indians, and a whole lot of Muslims, to say nothing of the Christians who don’t believe the war in Iraq is a bright idea. If these people obtain complete control of the USA, America will indeed become an evil theocratic empire, and what “we” accuse the Islamic extremists of, we will have become. They will be right.

my tolerance for monotheism is near zero, but i do have a thing for theology. what screws me up about these megachurches is that they don’t seem to have any. maybe walsh just skipped over the boring bits, but is there anything like an actual church service happening here? readings from the old and new testaments? hymns? a liturgy? a sermon that’s actually a sermon (as in: about something difficult in scripture) and not a gop fundraiser? for all the pissing and moaning about the nation needing “real christianity,” what kind of church is this that doesn’t really require anything of its flock but to show up, watch the show, shell out a little, and vote its way? that’s hollywood logic, that’s BABYLON baby.

I have never really understood the mega-church mentality. For those of us who were raised Methodist (the religion of GW, strangely — it’s a big-tent religion), one of the main purposes of going to church is to strengthen your relationship with God, to get closer to God. But apparently mega-churchers don’t want to get, you know, too close. Jumbotron close is close enough.

Feeling that even my father’s church (Hennepin United) is rather large, I have to admit that I’ve never sat in on a mega-church service. I can’t imagine that one would feel that they were a part of anything any more than they are a part of something at a Vikings game. True, you are a part of the great wall of noise, but Matt Birk doesn’t need you. You are not connected to Matt Birk, not part of Matt Birk’s community. God, to me, is more important than Matt Birk. If I’m going to church, I want to feel that I am close to God.

Great post. I’ve been thinking a lot about churches like these and how much they annoy me.

Reminds me of a great quote I heard on the Dawn and Drew show Podcast. Dawn said, “I’d rather not go to heaven, if it’s going to be full of born again Christians”. These are the people she was talking about.

An old roommate and I used to go on Sunday morning field trips to various churches in the area, just to experience the variety (and sometimes horror). If you want to visit a mega church, this one’s a real eye opener. (Tech website, too)

Sorry, the link didn’t show:
http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com