Church Finally Achieves Total Behavior Quotient Sufficient to be The Gospel

At year 20 of its life cycle, Taycan Church of Newport Beach has finally achieved a total behavior quotient such that it can reliably rise above the charge of hypocrisy and represent itself as the hope of the gospel in the world. 

In a bold move that pushes the church beyond theology and into the deepest areas of cultural need, Taycan Church has been tracking the overall behavior quotient of their church for 20 years, believing that Christian behavior has been so bad that the world cannot hear the gospel. 

Said pastor Jerome Stevenson, “Jesus told us to peach the gospel at all times and sometimes use words. We finally realized that what matters is not what Jesus did as a dry point of historical reference or declarative theology, but what is happening through us now. How have our hearts and hands changed as a result of experiencing Jesus? Most Christians make the gospel unbelievable by their lives.”

The pastoral team of Taycan church has developed a detailed missional algorithm that tracks tithe contributions, time spent in devotional activities, service activities, church attendance, care for the planet and disenfranchised groups, along with various other good Christian behaviors, and then measures for negative behaviors like greed with money, rage driving, racism, drinking alcoholic beverages too much on weekdays, watching bad things on electronic devices, failing to recycle, and so on. The system then assigns a value for each parishioner. The aggregate score must then rise above the minimum score that pastoral experts have established for "generally good secular behavior." And Taycan church has finally risen above the minimum score. 

"Now what Jesus did can finally make sense to the watching world," said pastor Stevenson. "Jesus inspires us to be our best selves, and at Taycan at least we are finally seeing the difference he can make." 

Critics have noted that some of the reason that Taycan's total aggregate score improved over the past 20 years is that the truly sinful people left the church for churches that teach the old understanding of the gospel, but that is merely unsubstantiated speculation. Pastor Stevenson is confident that his church has by all metrics improved to the point that Jesus is alive and well in the superior collective of Taycan Church. 

Multi-Site Megachurch Discovers How Awesome Youtube Talks Are

Chicago, Illinois

Digital Wonderland Church (DWC) of Chicago recently announced a bold new direction. Already a multi-site megachurch, it became apparent to the pastoral leadership that there is a lot of great preaching on YouTube, and indeed most of it is better than the preaching within Digital Wonderland Church.

"I don't know why it didn't occur to us sooner," explained Executive Pastor of Cultural Sensitivity and Discipleship, Francis Stevenson. "For the longest time we were churning along with modest growth fueled by frustrated small-church folk leaving their sham churches for ours, but we think this new direction will surely bring in some mega-numbers so we can fulfill our mission of opening up digital cafe churches all over the land."

According to William "Smitty" Smithers, Pastor of Demography, modern consumers of digital media are looking to the Church to give them exactly the same thing they are familiar with everywhere else. Apparently multiple studies have shown that people today like to watch stuff on screens, and they also like music, especially if it is fun or moving, so long as they don't have to engage something that causes perplexity or personal accountability. They want professional excellence in a warm and welcoming, but not personality invasive, environment.

That discovery, apparently altogether unknown to the rest of the oblivious churches in the land, got the staff of DWC together to embark upon new optics for 2020. The 180 person team at DWC came together and brain stormed--more like Brain Tsunamied--ways to reach this technologically superior plugged-in culture. They were in unanimous agreement that the best way to reach people lost in superficiality is to become equally superficial.

Pastor Smithers continued, "We plan to find excellence out there and then bring it to our people via digital media! We want witty comedian pastors, shocking vignettes, moving stories, montages, voice-overs of various scenes, Ted Talks, etc. We can stitch these together each week to provide our people with the cutting edge of Christianity rather than trotting out some frumpy no talent from some midwestern seminary.”

We asked Pastor Smithers a few questions:

1. Could this change make pastors obsolete, since people will see that the church is becoming a place where vaguely "Christian" inspiration is cobbled together from various online sources, which of course they will learn they can do on their own or with friends?
2. Is there really a need to travel to the satellite digital church when people can solipsistically view a screen anywhere, including those times of deep meditation on the porcelain throne? Or they can also view the screen in small groups at home, and so why the need for crowds and parking lots?
3. Surely tithe can be prorated down, since thousands and potentially millions of people would be supporting the same worship bands and a select few celebrity pastors, correct?

To all of this Pastor Smithers only blithely responded that, "It is certainly not perfect, but neither is ignoring the cultural trends in our musty churches with pipe organs and hymnals and bad performances. We have to meet people where they are in order to lead a small percentage of them to sit for a weekend seminar explaining the Christian Faith to them. We are building a massive church to find the Church within the church, within the church. "

A fine point indeed.

Pastor Raises Un-Obliviousness to Theology in Radical Sermons

Sacramento, California

Local aspiring mega-church pastor Chad Simpson is venturing into some treacherous territory by attempting to raise un-obliviousness to theology at Expedition Church of Sacramento, California.

"Un-obliviousness" is a strange term, and when asked about why he isn't simply trying to "raise awareness" of theology rather than "un-obliviousness," pastor Chad said, "Christians today are like baby lambs, very easily spooked. We didn't want to carry on some sort of aggressively organized campaign to solve the overwhelming ignorance that exists in the church regarding the crucial doctrines of the faith. That would scare them off. We still want them happy in their relationship with Jesus and don't want to change our emotionally comforting and emotionally stimulating services. We are only occasionally, for a few subtle seconds, helping our people see that theological ideas exist out there and that some Christians find them important and even defining of the Christian faith. Think of it as an experiment. We are only taking baby steps here."

The format of this radical step is for the pastor to drop in a key theological term here and there, within the flow of the sermon, as if he were some seminary professor for a few seconds. After the term is presented and loosely tied into the flow of the sermon, the pastor will then quickly return to his normal charismatic storytelling and jokes and self-help and kitschy moralism, using the Bible as a spring board of course.

When asked why he would even bother to do this if the theological content is to be so quickly subsumed into the noise of modern life and the general demand for fluffiness, the pastor replied, "While it is true that our primary mission is evangelical, our pastoral staff wanted to try something different than simple evangelism and service projects and rock style worship. We thought we would spice things up a bit by doing some things to engage the minds of our people. Obviously it is a deep dive when we talk about things like depravity or regeneration or election or the Trinity for a few seconds--appropriately supported by visual graphics of course--but we are committed to helping our people see if the mind and the faith have anything at all to do with each other. Don't get me wrong. We aren't crazy here. We will only do this so long as it doesn't harm the numbers that fuel our tithe revenue. Our goal is modest. If we can help just one Christian become un-oblivious to theology, then that probably is a win."

Progressive Church to Have Vegan, Pescatarian, Gluten-Free Pot-Luck

Bolder, Colorado

In an effort to more fully reverence the planet and create sustainable pot-lucking practices, Infinite Sustainability Church of Bolder, Colorado recently held its first "Mother Earth Potluck."

After the service, in which congregants praised various deities in various languages in various ways, like some great jazz concert to every imagined deity, including a group vowing silence in reverence to the "unknown god," the community of Infinite Sustainability joined together in feasting and pharmaceuticals. There were many dishes for the community to enjoy, but some of the favorites were:

1. Lentils on a bed of grass and julienned Lebanese cedar. This was paired with a mulled hemp wine.

2. A mini pot of CBD infused compost with succulent earthworms.

3. For the pescatarians, a live minnow stew in a seawater broth with picked kelp.

4. And for dessert, the curdled secretions of the Himalayan mountain goat, sprinkled with candied crickets over a gluten free mound of organic coconut flour.

One of the community members, Zoe Earthrider Smith, said of the event, "It is beautiful to see so many people of different races and sexual identities and religions come together to the glory and beauty and pleasure of Mother Gaia.”

Unfortunately, one of the vegans inadvertently partook of the fish stew and had to be ceremonially purged, which is something like a biological exorcism too frightening to describe here.

All in all, the event was an enormous success, so much so that planners are already excited about next month's potluck, in which they hope to double the attendance to twelve.

Local Megachurch Experiments With Multiple End Times for Services

Dallas, Texas

Escalade Church of Dallas recently announced that it would experiment with various end times for its 3 services on its 6 campuses.

The martyrs may look down on Christians in America with disgust for not being able stay until the end of a simple church service, one hour out of 168 each week (which of course ends up being longer than an hour, which is why this program was developed in the first place), but the martyrs also don’t understand about the church parking lot. Escalade Church is confident it has solved this major customer service issue.

The new system will involve color coding in the seats. Blue chairs near the front are for those truly committed to staying for the whole long hugely demanding hour, or more. Red chairs in the back are for those who elect to leave during the prayer prior to the last worship set, which is a full 10 minutes prior to the final dismissal. Green chairs in the middle are for those who elect to leave at the beginning of the second song of the last worship set.

Church spokesperson Amber Bishop provided the elegant rationale for this groundbreaking innovation:

"This is a win/win for all involved! Congregants who wish to spend ten or fifteen minutes more at church are freed from the distraction of the heathens leaving for the best seats at the buffet or the sports bar, and the staggered dismissal program mitigates traffic in our already packed parking garages. Our pastors will be able to gauge the spiritual maturity of the congregants by their tier of seating, which also means that various discipleship programs can be developed to inspire those in the green and red seats to sacrifice 10 or 15 more minutes each week in deeper commitment, which is exactly what Jesus meant by 'taking up our crosses and following Him.'"

We asked Amber about all the late arrivals equipped with Starbucks cups who also wanted to be seated in the red section, to which a pensive Amber replied, "That is a great question. Hmm.... We need to have an optics meeting about that as a staff, but perhaps we can have staggered starting times as well. It is just a thought. But obviously we will need better coffee if we hope to have people actually worship the God of the universe on time."

A Few Modest Suggestions for Making Your Megachurch Truly Mega!

There are so many people trapped in small or medium sized churches, where there is bad music and bad preaching and bad lighting and old people who might ask you things about your life. But thank God for the megachurch!

I've been thinking that these megachurches are not quite creative enough, or professional enough, to really bring in the mega masses. They have done some things, like abandoning doctrinal complexity, Biblical doctrines like hell and sin, intellectual depth in the faith, church discipline, accountability, real community, art, architecture, cultural engagement, Christian history, and the like, but they are perhaps not taking this thing seriously. Here then are my suggestions for making the local megachurch truly MEGA:

1. Food delivery during the service:

Clearly movie theaters have figured this one out, and there is no shame in acknowledging what people want. I know it is not like the church to rip off an idea from the secular culture, but this one could work! Jesus did after all feed the five thousand. We are only, as Sheldon puts it, "Imitating Christ." A question may come up regarding the wait staff. Since we all know that true Christian service and ministry takes place during Sunday services, then clearly expanding service opportunities only helps Christians grow. Serving sliders to the saints can be a Christian ministry! Problem solved!

2. Recliners:

This is another idea ripped off from theaters, but it is another amazing idea. No doubt recliners would be especially helpful for those rare instances when the pastor bogs the sermon down in some irrelevant theological or biblical point. The recliners could be sufficiently wide so as to keep a safe distance from all the strangers in the building, enabling each believer to experience Christian worship in solipsistic bliss.

Perhaps it would even be helpful to create multiple aisles that are only 2 recliners wide so no one has to step over anyone, and everyone has an aisle seat.

3. More technology:

Churches are always about a decade behind in technology. More people can be won to the Church if they see it is current with the times.

For example, many megachurches have, due to their mega-ness, expanded to multi-campus formats, where they have some onsite elements and some "projected" elements, such as the preaching. Churches like this have already discovered that television-addicted people love to have a jumbo-tron in their church, capturing the worship players and the pastor in various "shots" and moving from scene to scene, especially if the various players are attractive or charismatic or interesting. Why not use holographic images to capture the pastor from the remote site? Why not have a snappy dialogue between the holographic pastor and a witty side-kick at the various remote sites? We love celebrities, and it would behoove the multi-site church to do more to centralize the importance of the pastor. And holograms are awesome!

Another use of technology would be something like a video "mash-up" Sunday, where the creative director could be given freedom to produce a slick and humorous mash-up of various online videos that would inspire and encourage and entertain the faithful.

Another idea would be a partnership with Amazon.com to provide drone service to the congregants blissfully ensconced in their recliners during the service. We have busy lives, and it is difficult when one is not in church to remember to go online to purchase the pastor's latest leadership book, or the latest Hillsong album, or other church "merch," like the latest celebrity Christian's kitschy "Christian principles" book.

4. Extended daycare/Sunday school:

These megachurches, with their one whole hour of teaching the most rudimentary Christian stories and Bible passages to children, need to do more to shape our young people to be good Christians (meaning basically nice, moral people). Now one might think that parents have some responsibility in this, but they are not trained in theology, nor do they study the Bible, because it is hard and time-consuming. Megachurches could step into this problem and provide an all-day Sunday "life-on-life," "relational," "relevant" event for the young people, perhaps complete with interactive Bible-like games, and share-circles, and also taco trucks. All of this gives more church exposure to young people and gives the parents much needed rest on the Sabbath, and all for the price of their extremely generous tithe gifts to the church.

5. Music that melts your face, and your heart:

Now because you appeal to minds by grabbing emotions, the music is everything!

There absolutely must be a rock concert style of worship music, loud enough and awesome enough to crush out the sound of the amateur congregants and to make their singing (if they even try), like their recliner, totally solipsistic. And is it too much to ask for smoke machines, theatrical lighting, and good looking (or at least cool looking) people? Perhaps we can thrown in a few Abercrombie shirts, fedoras, skinny-jeans, tattoos, and sculpted beards. We want people saying they come to the church for the music because it makes them feel good and the people are relatably cool, and also accessibly cool.

Is it really so difficult? All one need do is go to a Hillsong United concert and find the musicians in the congregation most closely matching them in talent and appearance and then do that! They don't even have to write songs! In the name of all that is holy, it would be better to play videos of Hillsong than to trot out some no-talent group of homely musicians on a Sunday morning.

(Now that I think of it, this one is already mostly in place in most megachurches. Well, then, if you want a mega, then go and do likewise!)

6. Luxury boxes and helipads for big donors:

Can we be honest and face the fact that churches do a lousy job of giving proper honor to their big donors. They usually only give them seats on the board or general sheepish deference, but if churches provided them with luxury suites complete with amenities, then surely retention rates would increase.

Of course the other problem for our biggest donors is the circus that is the megachurch parking lot, or parking garage. Some of God's sheep, let's recognize the fact, are a little more sheepy than others. At the very least the church could put in preferred parking and plug-in stations for Tesla's.

7. Sponsorships:

Megachurches have exposure to multiple thousands of people each Sunday. It seems foolish for an organization that already brings in so many donor dollars to leave streams of revenue on the table. The pastor could do a brief humorous spot for Chick-Fil-A, for example. He could say something towards the end of the sermon like, "I know I've been preaching for awhile now and you must be hungry. Perhaps you should go out for a nice lunch at, say, Chick-Fil-A! Oh wait! You can't! And you know why? That's right, my flock. It's because they love Jesus!"

Or you could imagine the pastor wearing a Word Publishing tie and saying, "This sermon brought to you by Word Publishing, the Word behind the Word." It's a sentence. Still plenty of time for the pastor's self-help coaching based loosely on the Bible. No one would publish a popular blog without ad revenue. It's time to start making some real cash for your church that can be reinvested in the mission of spreading the good news of how Jesus helps us achieve our dreams.

Please remember that these are just recommendations, from someone whose seen a mega or two in my day. Not all churches will have the resources to make a go of all this, but surely steps and stages are better than business as usual. Remember the great commission, where our Lord said clearly, "Go into all the world and make casual consumers of all nations, teaching them to observe some of what I told you. And lo, I will be with you most of the time (when I'm not vacationing in Tuscany)..."