S.F. Chronicle: The Church, "A Giant, Cheesy Self-Help Seminar"
In yesterday's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Mark Morford expresses some of his views of Protestant megachurches and pastors:
...the bizzarre parallel universe of conservative Christian megachurches, those giant ultra-bland heavily shellacked stadium-size fluorescent nightmare warehouses that are still flourishing, more or les, simply because many of them are now dramatically diluting the fire-and-brimstone religion stuff, muting all that thorny theology and eschatology and even the right-wing intolerance (or, rather, carefully burying it, to be fed to you slowly, bit by bit, especially around election time) and replacing it with something resembling, well, a giant, chessy self-help seminar.With skits. And dance numbers. And a food court. And day care. And an iPod lounge. Self-esteem building exercises...From what I read, this seems to be the modern megachurchly direction: minimize the dogma and melodrama and speaking in tongues, maximum perkiness and nonddenominationalism and piles of happy sanitized self-help schmaltz. In Jesus' name, naturally.And best of all, your kids won't have to avoid these pastors [reference to a discussion of Catholic priests earlier in the column], because, by and large, they're not really pastors at all. They're CEOs, businessmen, and salesmen and lifelong hucksters, and you can rest assured most have never really studied deep theology or been to any sort of seminary in the first place. Great.It's true. Most megachurch leaders these days are, apparently, merely serious business pros, have had no real religoius education at all, no intellectual experience studying the world's various belief systems or the deeper issues of soul and faith and meaning, save for that "Selling Jesus to the Masses on DVD" weekend seminar at Harvard Business School Extension....as old churchly structures break down and any new "churches" are forced to dilute and open wider and try to at least pretend to be more inclusive and less intolerant in order to draw a wary crowd, could this be some of the cosmic groundwork for a much more potent, long awaited spiritual upheaval the mystics have hinted at for millenia?
This excerpt is, I think, a fair representation of how many non-Christians perceive the church here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And, this excerpt/perception is one of the reasons why I feel called to proclaim the gospel and help build up and serve a different kind of church here on the highly unchurched, skeptical, secular San Francisco Peninsula.If you're a regular reader of this blog, I'd appreciate it if you'd consider regularly praying for me and the rest of the leadership at Central Peninsula Church as we seek to lead a church that loves and reaches not just the mere 6-7% of "churched" people on the Peninsula, but the 93-94% of people here who have yet to truly encounter the gospel and a gospel-centered church community.Such prayers are the beat of my heart and I'd love it if many of you would begin to pray such prayers along with me. Only through persistent, humble-hearted, gospel-soaked, God-glorifying, Jesus-trusting, Spirit-empowered, lost-loving, kingdom-driven prayers will this Peninsula begin to experience a significant transformation.