Going to a mega church

Since I have moved back to Iowa City, I have been a wastrel with respect to church going. But last Sunday after going out to breakfast I saw this "mega church" and was curious. So I cajoled my kids into going inside and checking it out.

I knew I was in for something different when I saw some guy in bright clothes directing traffic in the parking lot. Lots and lots of cars and I wondered if mine was the only one with an Obama bumper sticker. As we walked in, there were these people standing behind some sort of booth. It reminded me of a movie theartre and I wondered if we would need to buy tickets. (Really it was "family check in" for sunday school). The first part of the service was all music. There was a band on stage that played some rockified hymns. I liked some of it but wished they did not modify the lyrics of an old hymn--it just did not sound right. My youngest son thought it was way too loud. This music part lasted for a long time.

Finally the minister comes out and does his spiel. The guy was good. He moved. He shaked. He made some jokes. He made some good points as he discussed the dangers of idolizing wealth. (Personally I think we can read more into the "consider the lilies...." stuff than he did, but you can't expect everyone to be a hippy). But he did some weird things too. At one point he refered to the crowd Jesus was talking to as "christians" and even said these 'christians' were being persecuted by "the jews." He seemed not to care about about chronology, making it sound as if the pre-conversion Paul was hanging around at the Sermon on the Mount, ready to strike. As we walked back to my car I talked to my kids about this and decided to back and talk to the minister. I just chatted briefly and he was nice but it was apparent that he did not think it was a big deal. In the sermon he also tended to pick bible verses out of the air without context. So he is talking about Luke, and more or less sticks to the text there and then BAM its some random quote for Daniel just thrown in to spice it up.

Another thing which my kids noticed was that, while there was coffee and ice water.. none of the other typical post-chuch yummies were there (that we saw anyway, it was a big place)