Megachurches and Theologies of Consumption :: Religion Christian

Last weekend, while go to Lexington, KYs Southland Christian Church, I received an invitation to attend a suffering Mans After-Tax Dinner. Located on a 115-acre plot that occupies a stretch of the rapidly disappearing farmland between Lexington and Jessamine County, Southland forget host the gala, which includes a catered meal and a performance by the Dale Adams Band. On the churchs website, an announcement for the event asks, Did you brace to pay when you filed taxes? This months Gathering is designed to help you to forget your IRS woes.1 The After-Tax Dinner go forth minister to those still reeling from the April 15th deadline, and, with any luck, it will foster solidarity among Southlands flock, the majority of whom are members of the tax bracket whose wallets ache most seriously after just having rendered unto Caesar the money that belongs to him. Southland Christian Church, one of several hero-worship centers in the United States that has earn ed the moniker Six Flags over Jesus, is Lexingtons largest megachurch. With a each week attendance of 8,000 people and an operating budget that supports a staff of over eighty members, Southland far exceeds most U.S. congregations in basis of financial resources and social clout. In recent years, popular and scholarly studies have attempted to situate the megachurch movement within a broad cultural context. Although the majority of these analyses dispute the precise definition of a megachurch, most tick off these multiplex sanctuaries from smaller worship communities by using the same criteriai.e. weekly attendance, campus acreage, annual budget, etc.that megachurches themselves draw on to represent their own success. 2 However, the perfume of a megachurch is not its large buildings, but rather the theology of breathing in that informs its programming.3 In this way, a megachurch ethos has infiltrated even the smallest congregations in the United States and has helped to s olidify Christianitys inextricable connection to consumer capitalism. To those who see megachurches as symptomatic of a flaw Christianity, market-minded church growth confounds one of the faiths oldest dualities, the contradiction of subsisting in the world without conforming to its ways, as Paul puts it in Romans 12. Megachurches at once reject the world and participate in it by seeking to win the lost and wow the consumer at the same time.