Is This Christian?

I’ve just returned from a 3 week trip to Sacramento, NY, and LA. My parents live(d – just moved to Ohio) in Sacramento so we spent a number of weekends there. When Sat night rolls around the same question comes up, “So where are we going to church tomorrow?” I have a lot of friends at a church in Davis but their service is at 9.30 – sorry that’s a 45 min drive for me and I’m on vacation. Our favorite church to worship at, which we did attend for a summer while I was in between pastorates is UCC – but that’s also in Davis and 45 min away. So last Sunday we decided to check out large evangelical megachurch in a Sacramento suburb (I’m trying to give a very vague description b/c really my intention is not to slam anyone). This area has seen a boom in megachurch growth. Why so? Couple of factors stand out – cheap, available land, a lot of rich babyboomers, and a socially and politically conservative, largely Caucasian, suburban culture.

When I lived in Chicago I visited Willow Creek a couple of times and I’ve visited megachurches in Korea that dwarf anything that the US can come up so I’m familiar with such institutions. This church had the large campus, shuttle service, cafe, highly organized childrens ministry, ministries galore for each age group, etc. While we dropped Micah off in the Kindergarten room a TV monitor was broadcasting the worship. What we saw was something one might see on American Idol – a rock band on stage with flashing lights. Sarah laughed, “Is that the high school worship?” “No, that’s the adult worship,” I replied. So we entered a huge auditorium to listen to this rock band lead us in worship. I remember at one point the worship leader saying, “This isn’t a performance, this is worship” but I couldn’t help think that one says such things out of a guilty conscience.

After announcements the Pastor got up and gave a fairly lengthy sermon. His sermon was peppered with jokes, a video showing a commercial just for laughs, his own triumphs and failures of faith, inspirational stories of the faith of others. Not surprising. What really bothered me was the content of the sermon and its overall genre. There are many genres of teaching in the Bible: prophetic critique, proclamation, exposition of Torah, wisdom teaching, epistolary instruction, etc. and I recognize that these are culturally conditioned so one ought not to necessarily replicate them today (try walking around naked for 3 yrs like Isaiah). I wonder though if infomercial and motivational speaker falls within the genre of gospel preaching. Essentially that’s how the pastor communicated and the people responded to him. He even would oftentimes leave the last word out of this sentence and the audience would complete it just like you’ve seen on infomercials for the Magic Bullet.

His message had 3 main points to it that were overtly Christian. My problem though was how he appealed to Scripture and the lack of over-arching narrative. I told Sarah afterwards, “He didn’t need the Bible. He came up with the outline and then appealed to prooftexts to support his points. He could have quoted non-Christian writings, teachers, philosophers and maintained his same outline.” Now you may think that Bo the professor is being overly critical but my concern is how the pastor models reading the Scripture for his people. What does such sermons teach the congregation on the role of the Bible in their lives? Similarly the outline was not attached any Biblical narrative – God’s mission with/to his people, Israel’s story, Christ’s life, death, resurrection. What underlying narrative was operational? Me, my life, my sense of purpose, my potential to do better, my opportunity to gain happiness, my means of finding fulfillment. Now the answer given to all of this was God. But my narrative is just assumed to be operational. And who is this God and what is he like? In my teaching I find many of my students puzzled by any Scriptures which advocate fearing God (unfortunately for them there are a ton both in the OT & NT). I wonder what God they have grown up with in the church. Now this is a seeker sensitive church and this was just one Sunday so I recognize that it would be unfair to judge the whole ministry by one service. There are many wonderful things they are doing locally and globally that I think are quite commendable.