I’ve had my eye on this “church” ever since they bought the building Kohls vacated, tore half of it down, and rebuilt a big box to replace the big box retailer that was there. This really is a Big Box Church. I use ‘church’ in the broadest sense that can be used. There is not one single thing, object, or art in the movie theater auditorium indicating this is a sanctuary, a holy place, a refuge. No altar, no cross, no pulpit, no lectern. It did have the markers of today’s nondenominational churches. Huge screens, big band, big sound, and lots of light action. They had the markers of Big Evangelical too. Many pastors almost all of them interchangeable with the Big Kahuna. But then something curious happened.
Oh that’s right I didn’t tell you. This church started in 1996 in Edmund, OK and that’s where the mother church and pastor are. This is your one church with many campuses. It’s hard to find info, but it seems it’s a spin off from a Swedish Protestant group formed in the late 1800’s. I could find no mention of them in Mayer’s Religious Bodies in America or 3 other non-Lutheran books on U.S. denominations. The most info I found was on Wikipedia which warns you that the article may rely on sources too close to the subject. That’s good for me. I want them to tell their own story – as you millennials and Narrative critics like to say. The first line in the article describes the Evangelical Covenant Church as “a Radical Pietistic denomination”.
This is a new “mission” start so they may be doing things differently. They start by frontloading your experience. They have a throng of people waiting in the latte lobby cheering you on. This is what Lutheran fundraisers do. They first get some big donors to create the feel of a bandwagon that you’re missing if you’re not giving. (See FOMA was a thing even among Boomers).
Back to Life.Church. They cheer, they clap, they hoot you into auditorium that as as dark as a movie theater, as loud as a rock concert, and with as many roving spotlights as Hollywood’s red-carpet. The music proved that 60’s rock doesn’t die.
They were baptizing their first 13 converts. They had 3 feet deep backyard pool set up stage right. They make it plain baptism is symbolic of death and rebirth; it’s something you do for God; and it’s a show. I found info on the ECC that while they practice believer’s baptism they do sometimes baptize babies. I can’t imagine that’s true of these folks.
The sermon was delivered via video from Edmund, Oklahoma by the founding pastor. It’s intensity bordered on fanaticism. It was decision theology, holiness theology, pietistic, and emotive. He actually succeeded in getting people in the audience of Austin, Texas, whom he can’t see or hear (because this is simulcast to at least 6 locations) to respond to him, to repeat things, raise their hands.
Though I could find no mention of anyone’s theological training, the Altar Call was more intense then in the 1977 Baptist Church I attended for a while with a girl I went to college with. Life.Church’s Altar Call rivaled the one I witnessed as a teenager in ’72 at an inner city where Nicky Cruz preached. In fact, Life.Church ministry model is very similar to David Wilkerson’s model. They don’t identify as Pentecostal, but they could and should.
They say they will do anything short of sinning to win someone to Christ. They had an offering and even spoke of it which is unusual for nondenom’s and evangelical’s. But then he says: we realize that someone here may not even have money for food or shelter. If that’s you, “Go ahead and reach in the bucket and pull out any of the loose bills.”
But that wasn’t the only curious thing that happened. The rock songs were about Christ and Him crucified. Yes, there was a lot of telling God and Jesus how much you loved, cared, believed, etc.. But whereas most of the songs in the nondenom’s and Evangelicals mention God but not Jesus and don’t praise Him for His substitutionary sacrifice, this rock band did, clearly. And the sermon was distinctively Christian, and it took on the sin of living together; the sin that many confessional Lutheran pastors seem okay to live with and not preach against.
In the Old Testament, you had the prophets of Baal whom worshipped him and you had the High Places where the LORD was worshipped. Do a concordance search “high places” and you’ll see how they were the thorn in the side of the godly kings of Judah. Only a few ever removed them. More typical is 1 Kings 15:14 (NASB77), “But the high places were not taken away; nevertheless the heart of Asa was wholly devoted to the LORD all his days.” And 2 Chronicles 33:17 (NASB77), “Nevertheless the people still sacrificed in the high places, although only to the LORD their God.”
Conclusion: I would sooner close down the contemporary worship churches of WELS and LCMS that I have attended, then I would remove this high place.
