religioUSA is the blog of four UPenn students who spent their last two spring breaks visiting large evangelical churches across the South. Last March they made a stop at South Florida megachurch Christ Fellowship. After grabbing prime seats down front . . .
The lights suddenly cut out and a quiet piano melody took over the space. A chorus filed on to a set of risers, and a band got set up in front of them. Words like "HONOR," "GLORY," and "REACH" flashed across two enormous screens to the sides of the stage. The service had begun.
As the musicians finished up their act, though, I noticed that I had to make a concerted effort to keep my focus on the live action taking place right in front of me. Yes, I had a phenomenal view, and yes, there was really no other logical place for me to rest my eyes without turning my neck, but I could not keep my focus on what was happening directly in front of me. The two huge screens (and the camera/production crew of at least 20) were doing a fantastic job of keeping my attention focused directly on their handy editing and intercutting; in all honesty, watching the TV version of church is a hundred times more exciting than watching church in person, kind of inverting the way that a live concert is much more fun than watching the over-produced DVD.
When the head pastor took the stage and started a short sermon about the church's recent trip to Israel, he also made sure to mention the value and importance of baptism to the mission of Christ Fellowship. After a brief introduction and background story, the screen cut away to Jose (a church member who was about to move from Palm Beach Gardens to Virginia) hanging out with another church official in a nondescript black room. They each said a few words, and then WHOOSH - Jose was dunked, and the crowd roared with applause.
Only as the cameras cut away and shifted their focus to the onstage action did I realize that the whole production had taken place directly above the stage in the previously hidden baptistry. The camera cutting away did not immediately line up with the change of lighting (the baptistry was directly above the stage and had been lit up for the occasion), so for a second, the illuminated baptistry was startlingly clear between the two screens.
What struck me about this was the fact that I had no idea that the baptism was going on right in front of me; it could have been happening in some different part of the church, or in another building altogether for all I knew. Instead, it was right above the stage I had jockeyed so hard to get a good view of. In a service where the pastor made sure to mention the presence of simultaneous webstream broadcasts on the church's website and on the other campuses, it seemed as though the major emphasis was on the power of technology to spread the sermon as far as possible. There are even whole areas devoted to showing just a broadcasted image of the sermon; it's like going to the movies, but instead, it's church. It sort of changed the experience of physically being inside the church, and to some degree, we were just members of the live studio audience.
You can read more of their impressions of CF here, here, here and here.
I note that the writer is part of the younger demographic that's supposed to be impressed by multimedia razzle-dazzle. Could it be that it's the boomers and busters who really dig this stuff? Not to say that megachurches don't draw a lot of young people. They do. Every Sunday morning I watch hordes of Bible-toting students walking by our little brick church to attend the local campus of CF several blocks away. I'm sure there are lots of good reasons for this (teaching that's more relevant, hipper music, age affinity, a more casual atmosphere), but could one reason be that this way of doing church is all these kids have known? For a generation that's grown up in the food court it must seem entirely normal. Once they marry, start having families, and push on into middle age I think something more organic and multi-generational, more rooted in centuries of church history will be more appealing.
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