Oh Saddleback

As a preface I’m not a huge fan of big churches. You get over about 1000 people and I start to wonder how ministry will get done and how it can be helpful for the people in the congregation. I know that things like small groups have developed but I’m still a little skeptical. But I have a strong saying that I won’t knock something ‘fully’ till I get down and experience it for myself.

So 4 of my friends packed into a car and drove down to Saddleback to see the purpose driven church in all its splendor and people. I was not disappointed, but I was also surprised at some of the things I saw that made me take a second look.

Before I talk ‘programming’ I just need to comment on how beautiful the church campus is. I didn’t take my camera but I’ll link stuff after people post up some pictures. We basically called it the Disneyland church because EVERYTHING has a theme down to fish tanks, lockers, video games, and even a brewery type of feel. The landscaping has waterfalls, beautiful gardens, pathways and rocks that pipe sound from the main service (oh yes … they were singing). The main ‘worship center’ was basically a warehouse that you didn’t realize was a warehouse until you looked closely. Everything was pretty masked in terms of function vs aesthetic (Don’t ask me where I picked up the aesthetic piece but I did it at Bel Air Pres. too). Everything felt very Orange County and was rather impressive.

So after hearing the rocks cry out (which was kinda weird in the sense that they should only do that if no one is singing praise to God), we went in and heard the sermon. In an auditorium of about … 2k people, the topic of the day was the Nicene Creed (no I can’t get away from them.) and the interesting thing was the polarity between what was taught and what we saw happen. The Nicene Creed is centered around a ‘We believe’ as opposed to an ‘I believe’ structure, and the sermon continued on with a message about being within a connected group of people and becoming relationally active within the context of the church.

Here’s where it got fun, people watching …

So the sermon ends, and about 5-10% of the people get up and leave outright. Now in fairness (and my mom pointed this out) I don’t know if they were going to stations, or just leaving to go home, but a noticeable number of people just got up out of their seats and left. And we still had an offertory and announcements to do. Then in a final plea the preacher (Doug Fields just fyi) asked the congregation to meet some of the people around them. And meet they did, in line to get in line to get to their cars to get home. Moses couldn’t have parted them no matter how much he wanted to. So the five of us just sat and watched this congregation walk out and maybe another 5% stayed around to just talk.

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As we were walking to the main worship center we passed a number of ‘tents’ that had alternate styles of music and then would pipe in the sermon from the main worship center. And we joked a little at the fact that we were attending the ‘consumer church.’ For as much as that is a true statement, what I will take away from the trip down is that the pastoral staff is aware of it, knows about it, and is desperately trying to figure how to build relationships, community, and intelligence about the Gospel message. This fact alone is what I took away from my trip. Not the glitz or the glamour or the ‘themes’ of each area … but that this monster of a church is trying to figure out how to drive this monstrosity of a ship they have built and not run aground for the sole purpose of teaching Christians how to follow Christ, and live in community. I think I left that day with a much more sympathetic ear, and a much more open heart rather than my normal setting of ‘cynicism.’

God help them.