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.

This Christmas Middle Class American Struggling Along Without Extreme Luxuries

Indianapolis, Indiana

Local everyman James Reynolds is a man of modest means and modest needs, at least he was until he became aware, through technology, of literally all the lifestyles of all the people in America. Now James, whose job and lifestyle are better than 95% of the people who have ever lived upon the planet earth in the entirety of its history, is feeling a growing discontentment. Even though he does magical things every year like eat good food, travel more than 10 miles from his home, experience pleasures that most people in human history have never experienced like Belgian ale, and never struggle to merely survive, still others apparently live better than he does.

Just the other day, a social media post made it clear that some other acquaintance of James' got to go wine tasting in Tuscany. Another friend just bought a sports car. Still another got a home in Vail, another some designer clothes, and another a boat. James realized that these people's lives are clearly so far beyond his as to make him hold his many blessings in contempt, as he should! He deserves all that they do. They are no better than he is. Why should they get all these things and he should be so impoverished of human experience. What really is the difference between some poor orphan who always wanted a plushy toy for Christmas and finally is given one by some generous benefactor and poor James?

This Christmas, James feels entitled to see his life as empty and unfulfilled until he gets what he has always wanted since the last few posts of his social media friends. As a man of simpler tastes than all those materialists, all he ever wanted was a Brunello Cuccinelli cashmere sweater. Well, also a single bottle of Chateau Petrus. Okay, he is a man of simple tastes and also just wants to have one Porche in his life. Clearly compared to so many these are modest needs.

Astronomer Warns that Universal Cooling a Greater Threat than Global Warming

Glasgow, Scotland

Astronomer Dr. Edmund Sorensen led a minor break out session at this years climate summit. With multiple speakers and advocates warning that we only have a few years before the earth will be uninhabitable, all because of plastics and SUV’s and airplanes, Dr. Sorenson’s warnings seemed a bit anachronistic to most of the attendees.

"People seem to forget that while the planet is warming, and going through various fluctuations of temperature in this tiny neighborhood of our solar system, the universe is cooling!" insisted a passionate Dr. Sorensen. "It's like everyone has forgotten the second law of thermodynamics! Given a wide view, we are totally screwed! If you think a degree or two in North America is a problem, wait until the sun burns up all of its fuel. What are you going to do then? You fools are side-stepping a bike only to be smacked in the face with a bus!”

Dr. Sorensen acknowledged that it isn’t likely that this cooling, at least in our solar system, will occur in the next twelve years, like the boiling of our oceans and the demise of Venice, but it will come after all of that! And no one will survive it. In closing, Dr. Sorensen said, “All the arrogations of human intervention are futile in the grand scheme. Human reason itself is wholly accidental to the universe, a vapor, nothing! Ah, but don’t forget to recycle. Morons!”

Many of the comment cards of Dr. Sorrenson’s talk complained of him being a sad little man, and also that he was clearly a racist.

White Christian Cisgendered Heterosexual Male Loses Nobel Prize After Winning It

Stockholm, Sweden

The Nobel prize awarding committee has made an enormous mistake. In its foolish enthusiasm, the committee awarded the Nobel prize for medicine to Dr. Carol Johnson, a pasty white cisgendered Christian male devil, who also happened to cure cancer. They prematurely awarded Dr. Johnson on the basis of his work alone, seeing as how curing cancer is fairly impressive. But then a heroic researcher at the organization discovered who he is, despite his girl name.

In a statement, the Nobel Prize Organization acknowledged that in the past it awarded the prestigious honor based on work that substantially advanced medical science and improved the human condition. But for too long medical science has been dominated by Euro whiteys. Just google it and you'll see staring back at you faces of oppression and privilege (with a few token exceptions).

A spokesperson for the organization said, "Curing cancer is nice and all, but advancing intersectionality is even better. We just wish cancer had been cured by a left-handed transexual paraplegic black zim/zer from Detroit. It just goes to show you how deep our prejudices go that we can't find one."

When asked whether Dr. Johnson's cure for cancer might help all people and not just his own people, whoever they might be, the spokersperson said, "That is exactly how they keep the rest of us down. They make it seem that they care about all of us, but we will no longer be duped. We must rise above this system that would make us slaves to the oppressor. We now know that while it seems Dr. Johnson is giving us a gift; in reality, he is giving us shackles of obligation that we, for far too long, have been compelled to acknowledge in our contrite aquiescence." After her statement, several voices in the background were heard to say, "Amen!" 

Woman Committed to Gluten Free and Organic Food, Eastern Meditation, Hemp Kombucha, and Lymphatic Drainage Massage Dies at 47

Sausalito, California

Lilith O’Hara led an exemplary life. She walked daily, ate only gluten free and absurdly expensive organic food. She faithfully practiced yoga and pilates and hiked the Sierra Nevada. She strutted about confidently revealing an eerily thin frame of approximately 3% body fat, utterly expunging any trace of femininity from her body. But for Lilith, this was not a problem, because she was androgynously beautiful to herself. She was still single at 47 because she intimidated men and women by her overall excellence and severe beauty.

According to authorities in Mono County, California, Lilith was out hiking on Sunday and encountered a bear and was eaten alive, the bear not being one of the California vegan bears. 

Lilith's death might be considered ironic to some with an overly inflated sense of irony, but really her death is merely a poetic demonstration of the beauty of the circle of life. 

Austinite Worried Heaven Won’t Be as Awesome as Austin

There is a city set upon a hill, a land flowing with craft beer and whisky, a utopia where Teslas abound and where the bodies and the beards are sculpted with an attention to detail that people in cities like Oklahoma City or Topeka or Fresno give to basic human survival. High paying jobs in technology abound for the deserving alphas that swarm to the farmers markets with their dogs, whose lives are immeasurably better than most of the members of the human species.

Twenty-eight year old mega-church attendee and software developer Boone Higgins boasted that Austin is the perfect city. “When I graduated from San Jose State, I was worried that I wouldn't find another place like the Bay Area. I had heard Austin was a sanctuary city for single young semi-Christians, but it turns out that this place is utopia. There is so much to do and see and buy, and there are so few unintelligent or unattractive people, and also virtually no children. I love it!"

As to Austin's reputation for materialism, Boone said, "The people here are rich, but in an authentic distressed-designer-jeans wearing kind of way. They are also environmentally conscious and spend their money in ways that love and respect the planet, like buying overpriced Yeti products. They give a generous minuscule amount to their mega-churches that don't seem to need it. They buy electric vehicles and solar panels and live on the lake, where they can commune with the divine in the simplicity and beauty of nature, sometimes on their boats. They don't build roads so that the trees can give us fresh air and hiking trails, which of course leads to miserable traffic, but who cares? I work in tech and live downtown and telecommute most days."

When asked whether Boone not only didn't want Austin to change, but that perhaps he didn't want to change to learn to appreciate something deeper and truer and better than Austin, like heaven, Boone responded by looking confused for a few seconds, and then sheepishly muttering, "that's deep," and then shuffling away to ponder this over a Thirsty Goat IPA and tacos.

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."