You might be thinking, "Alright, AJ, is nothing sacred? You even need to tear up a church?" Well, the answer is, maybe.
I think there are certain entities that you need to be able to trust- your church, your doctors, your parents,. . .you know that they have economic needs to survive and perhaps even thrive and you never begrudge this if it's being done in an above-board fashion, but profiting off of disingenuousness is IMO disgraceful. Hence this review.
Not far from my home, Lake Pointe opened a satellite church. One weekend, some neighbors and I decided to go. Given that our area is somewhat youthful, the bulk of services are contemporary, and I have no complaints about this.
We walked in, and very conspicuous were the membership office and a store for Christian merchandise. We walked into the chapel area and were seated. The main pastor gave a two or three sentence welcoming message and then got off stage. We then had a half-hour concert of a cover band playing contemporary Christian music. Following this, a screen dropped down and an associate pastor gave a half-hour sermon via televised live feed wherein he posthumously maligned the founder of Popeye's Chicken for not living a good life and then told us how to live a good life and passed around a collection basket.
After church, my neighbor and I walked out and thought about what we'd just seen. A pastor was at his new church and instead of giving the sermon, he let an associate pastor do so. The pastor felt it was good Christian principle to assault the character of a dead person who couldn't defend himself and he assaulted him for his capitalistic life from the comfort of a media and sales center labeled a church. The rock band was outstanding and covered a few of the songs better than the original artists, but I didn't feel that I gained anything by going to this service that I couldn't have gotten by listening to a half hour of KLTY and watching a half hour of a fire and brimstone televangelist.
After service I went to their website. It seems that about a third of the website is dedicated to asking for donations and tithing. They have a video on the website- in the video they comment on how they intentionally left their Baptist affiliation out because they didn't want people to have misconceptions about them. After viewing their website and sitting through a service, all of which seemed about as low key as a weekend getaway sponsored by a time-share condo sales team, I don't feel that I left with any misconceptions.
If you attend this church, I mean no disrespect to you, your beliefs or the beliefs and practices of anyone affiliated with this church if they feel that their experience brings them closer to God. However, if I was trying to introduce a wayward cynical friend to Christianity, this is not where I'd bring him or her.
EDIT: I've had time to think about my review, and while I detest the commercialism of some churches and this church is definitely not for me, they do offer a number of support and study groups and they DO perform alot of outreach to the poor. So, give a 2.5, which is up from my original one. Again, no intent to offend any of this church's supporters. read more