MEGAchurches

One of my classes required me to go to a Megachurch (a church with 2,000+ regular worshippers) and write a paper on the experience. Here is the first draft that I would love to hand in because it gives a true account of my feelings on the subject, but is I fear, slightly too sarcastic. The final draft will be much, much more dull.

Apologies for American spellings and vocabulary, I have to use them in papers.

Feel free to grade me in the comments:

I knew that Calvary Chapel was going to be a posh church because whilst cycling there I was on the receiving end of many a catcall. Remembering that I was going to church I resisted retaliating lest I have to wash in holy water before being able to enter.

When I stepped into Calvary Chapel I felt as though I was on the set for a TV chat show instead of in a church, the converted warehouse was decorated to look like the sea side, offices were disguised as beach huts, there was a sea and beach hut mural on the walls and the “stage” had many beach related props from surf boards to barbecues. Even the seats were beach themed, instead of pews or seats they were benches painted white with a stripy cushion. There was even a camera pointing towards the stage. It couldn’t have looked less like a church if it had tried. The only thing that reassured me that I had not stepped into the wrong room was the worship music playing and people embracing each other and praying together. If it was designed to relax people it was not working for me, but then I was not there out of my own volition.

I arrived early due to bus times and sat in the back and kept myself to myself. The benches (not nearly as many as I was expecting) slowly began to fill up, but it was only when the lights dimmed, and a man sat down at a grand piano and a woman stood behind a microphone that people really began to fill up the benches and they quickly filled.

The opening sequence was carefully orchestrated, at first the man and the woman sang duets and praised the Lord by themselves and bit by bit we were encouraged to join in with them. The pianist was very good, it would almost be worth going to the service just to hear him play and the time quickly passed. Lots of people were clapping and raising their hands. Just before they finished the pianist gave a short sermon and got the stewards to come and collect the tithes and offerings. He prayed that the Lord would encourage people to put in lots of money and effectively guilted people into putting lots of money in. There was no exemption for visitors and from looking around it was clear to see that they made a lot of money from these collections, the women’s restroom was nicer than I have seen in hotels, it was spacious, had a couch, had a tiled floor and was very tastefully decorated and was a world away from the restrooms I’ve seen in other churches.

Following the offering there were several announcements, after which everyone clapped. They contained two other requests for money, one for Operation Christmas Child, where people fill shoeboxes full of Christmas presents and they get sound to children living in extreme poverty all over the world. They were very proud to have made it easy for everyone this year by having a stall at K-mart where you could get absolutely everything necessary for the shoeboxes. They also asked people to buy a big bag of candy for $5 for Halloween, although I failed to understand exactly what that benefited besides rotting children’s teeth and encouraging obesity.

The sermon followed next and it was part of their sermon series on successful marriages and happy families, they even had a banner hanging up saying “I want a better marriage” and there were various pictures of happy families hanging from the rafters. It centered on good parenting, and in particular being a good father, it began with some facts and figures about evangelical children today that the preacher interpreted in a very black light, but I thought was in fact very good, for example only 4% of evangelical young people believe the Bible to be the inspired and infallible word of God, I would say that it was good that they were thinking for themselves and realized that the Epistles were letters, not divine inspiration, as is a considerable part of the Bible. Clearly they are fundamental in their view of Christianity and I don’t get on well with fundamentalists. After he had finished scaremongering and talking about how evangelical parents can prevent the horrors of a morally relativistic child he moved on to reinforcing the sexism present in some parts of the Bible. He argued that most advice that the Bible gives about how to raise children was aimed at the father and therefore fathers should play a more active role in the upbringing of children. Now I agree wholeheartedly that fathers should play a larger role than a lot do, but I would disagree strongly that they should play the main role, parenting should be an equal partnership. He used lots of Bible verses to prove his point and topped it all off with a video of a happy family from the congregation talking about good parenting and how women should play the main role during childhood and the father take the leading role during adolescence, so basically they were encouraging that throughout their upbringing the children are alienated from one parent. Sounds like sound advice to me.

The service finished with some more music and an encouragement for struggling fathers to come forward and be prayed over. They also had a communal prayer during which the preacher asked all parents having a difficult time raising their children to put their hands up and be prayed for, a lot of hands immediately shot up and so the preacher resorted to “and I pray Lord that you be with those at the back, you know who they are,” etc. Then abruptly as it had started the service ended, exactly one hour after it had begun.

During that time I had only had contact with other people once, when the preacher instructed us all to greet one another. So I think I got off lightly, I really didn’t want to explain my religious beliefs to a stranger and even less wanted them to try and convert me. I left as quickly as possible, after a quick trip to the ridiculously posh restroom.