What a church. Saddleback Church, of Rick Warren-Obama fame, was quick to join my list of must-see churches in SoCal. And I was not disappointed. The campus would put some small liberal arts colleges to shame--it's a behemoth. To begin our day, Mom and I raced down the 5 South this morning to get there with some semblance of timeliness and were only about five minutes late. We buzzed into a parking lot with a sign about visitors and jumped on a shuttle to the worship center.
The first discussion I heard on the shuttle was between a father and his teenage daughter. I overheard starting at about the time the father was explaining "You can't be Christian in China because it is Communist." His daughter: "what happens to them?" The father paused a moment... "They go to jail." She then replied that she was glad to be in America, where we can believe whatever we want. So while that is not, persay, true (to my knowledge yes the Chinese government regulates religious institutions and possibly also believers who do not toe the government's line, but jailtime is a bit much. From what I found online, a fine is the worst of it.), it did encourage my new exploration of religious faiths, for better or for worse.
Jogging off the shuttle, we noticed people lounging on lawn chairs directly outside the building, while (Christian) rock music blasted. That was, as we learned later, where you could "worship from the suntan area." Oh California. Entering the Worship Hall, the drum set was overpowering. Ricardo Sanchez on vocals and rhythm guitar, plus his band of drums, bass, lead guitar, and backup singers were rocking out hardcore. Awesome. I love it already. We make our way up into stadium seating and appreciate the view, trying to calculate how many people were in that hall (we guessed about 2,000).
And I could have picked a slightly better picture, but this one shows the drums on the big screens and I'm a sucker for drums.
The pastor this morning was (tragically) not the infamous Rick Warren, but the still excellent Teaching Pastor Tom Holladay. His sermon began with a discussion of financial situations and how they can tough. He moved on then to "Five Secrets To Contentment," the topic of the day. We learned that contentment must be learned and is not settling for less. "Give up or gear up." He quickly endeared himself to the audience by discussing his wife and kids. The message of perseverance was a good one, as well as the idea that comparison is the "#1 enemy of contentment." He showed, on the huge screens above his head, pictures of cars and ice cream to illustrate his point. Throughout the sermon, the ushers for the stadium... I mean worship hall, had their heads constantly on pivot, standing and surveying the audience, for what? I do not know. Holladay continued, encouraging us to "keep our lives free from the love of money." His use of technology continued with an adorable video of a dog chasing an ATV. At one point, the dog laid down to wait for the ATV to come back, and mom plus approximately 1,200 people in the audience went AWWW. The moral of the video was that we need to be careful of what we are chasing. Whether the dog caught the ATV of not, both options were not great for him (apparently "he should be chasing a female dog!" -Holladay). We should not pursue things that we don't want because we compare ourselves to others. He encouraged an often re-evaluation of our goals and to find what is really worthwhile in our lives. After a long discussion of such excellent morals and things to strive for, he then veered into how Christ will give us strength to do these things. Sitting there watching the masses, I felt that at that point, it wasn't Christ who gave me faith and strength to do things, but, well, to quote my dear friend Ben Simon, mass movements. Seeing two thousand people inspired to change their lives for the better and do things to make themselves content and to help others... is inspiring. Inspiring of faith. Perhaps that is what humanism is after all. Taking responsibility as humans to do right by ourselves and others. But enough of my own personal revelations.
The sermon ended with a prayer, during which all of the ushers left to man doors and the rock band re-emerged. One last song, as gorgeous as all the ones at the beginning (I forgot to mention the service technically began at 11:15am, but the pastor didn't show up till 11:35am--20 minutes of standing and clapping to great music!), this time Ricardo sang the last verse and chorus in Spanish! How terrible that my year of Spanish only allowed me to pick out "fuimos" and "grace a su amor." Regardless, it was a great touch, and surprised me a bit in that I often imagine conservative Christian ideals to coincide with the english-only movement. But I now know better than to presume.
The end of the service brought on stage the only female to speak into the main mic, a woman who told us that all of our needs could be filled, right there at Saddleback--something along the lines of "want to pray--we have a prayer table, want to be inspired--we have an inspiration table, want to be baptized--we have clothes for you and a beautiful heated pool: we are a full service church." Yes, like jiffy lube. And little did I know, she was not kidding! The campus includes: info booths, 2 ministry offices, 3 huge tents for "smaller" services (but still huge), a grill, a deli, a "refinery" which included a basketball court, more theaters, and a large eating/meeting area, a cafe, two baptism pools including waterfalls, a skateboarding park (I kid you not), and a huge children's center. I was utterly blown away by the vast amount of resources, especially for kids. Things like free tutoring and games after school were totally the norm. I saw why thousands of people were members of this incredible institution.
The baptism pool right outside the entrance to the worship center. The much larger pool was a couple blocks away.
You thought I was kidding. The skatepark.
On our way out of the worship center, I grabbed a "Saddleback Church Cares!" brochure, which listed the support groups. While some looked awesome and so necessary (Hepatitis C, Grief Support, Early Retired with MS, and Breast Cancer), the open share groups made me a little dubious. Yes, there was one for Anger (men and women), and one for Sexual Addiction (men and women). But why was Love & Relationship Addiction (women)? And Financial Issues (men)? Of course only men deal with finances. Just like women are the only ones with love and relationship addiction! Oh, gender stereotypes, how you pain me.
Overall, I was highly impressed by Saddleback. Spit n' polished, the campus was gorgeous. Palm trees, waterfalls, the feeling of being on a tropical island was unavoidable. Ushers kept worship highly ordered, with half a dozen wheelchairs lined up by the aisles, and a decently diverse worshiping community (not all white and fewer old people than some might expect of Orange County--though again this was the 11:15am service, not the 9am). Even the decor of the building was perfect, with the pastor seemingly speaking before where a fireplace might go in a ski lodge, with indoor wintergreen foliage. With good messages of how to achieve contentment and a rocking live band; the sexism and attention-to-detail on such a massive scale (think Disneyland) were the only things that I found slightly unsettling. But I got to witness my second (and third) baptism in just a month! Perhaps I will return someday to try to catch Pastor Rick speaking. But for now, I've had my fill of megachurches. This pic was from inside the refinery, to the upper level where we couldn't go cuz we aren't high schoolers:
I am quite jealous that you got to go. I'll make it there someday!
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