‘Corporate churches’: the Wal-Marts of
Christianity
by Kate Peerman, THG News
We as American’s need to realize that sometimes bigger is
not always better.
Last September, Forbes Magazine ran a story titled
Megachurches, Megabusinesseshttp://www.forbes.com/2003/09/17/cz_lk_0917megachurch.html that describes
the largest churches in the nation as corporations where pastors act as
chief-executives that use business tactics to grow their congregations. The
largest of these churches according to 2003 data, Lakewood Church of Houston,
Texas, has over 25,000 members attend each week.
As capitalists, we can admire how these churches have grown
over the years into the huge corporate-like entities they are today. There are
well over 700 megachurches today (having more than 2,000 members), up from just
ten in 1970. By using conferences and the media, pastors continue to draw in
more and more members, which means big-time profits when it is time to pass the
collection plate.
There is still a question about megachurches that is still
unanswered: Are they better than small, community-oriented churches?
Being a curious member of a small Catholic church, I wanted
to find out the answer to this question for myself, so I attended a service at
one of the top 10 largest churches in the country, Southeast Christian in
Louisville, Kentucky—just a stone’s throw from my home in southern Indiana. I
was amazed and perplexed by what I would find.
When I drove into the parking lot of SE Christian, I didn’t
see what to me looked like a church—it looks like a place where a computer
company would have their headquarters.
The building itself is a huge structure, with the outside
mainly covered in glass, like you would see on skyscraper. There were several
parking attendants working the high volume of traffic coming in.
When I entered the front door of the church, it reminded me
of an airport terminal—it is a few stories high and very plain, with a series of
escalators that take the faithful to the different levels of seating. These are
needed because the church holds about 9,000 people in what looks more like a
basketball arena than anything else.
The service itself was like many Christian services, only
much more polished. The salesman (preacher) seemed to me like he was putting on
a performance by telling jokes and being very charismatic. I wondered to myself
“Where did this guy come from and how much dough is he making?” You could see
him close up on the big jumbo-tron that has screens facing every direction.
This is where they put the words to all the songs, so they don’t have to have
9,000 hymnals in the aisles.
The only other thing that stood out to me about the service
itself was when several people got baptized. They all came out, dressed in
their robes, ready to be submersed. This was done with assembly-line
efficiency. They would walk into the baptismal pool, get quickly dunked, were
passed a towel, and then headed out the back door, never to be seen again. It
only took about a minute or two to dunk a dozen believers.
It wasn’t until after the service that I found out that the
water is heated—wouldn’t want to go through any discomfort on account of your
faith.
Once I got out of the horrible traffic jam that ensued
after service let out, I was driving home, contemplating what had just
transpired. Is this the future of Christianity? Will churches like SE
Christian create huge religious monopolies, forcing small churches out of
business?
If the answer to those questions is yes, then fifty years
down the road, when my husband asks me if I want to go to church with him, my
answer will be a definitive “No!”
