Starving for Pizza

I didn't just go to any church. I went to the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church in Memphis, TN.

First of all, I didn't go there with any malice in my heart. I went there out of genuine curiosity. I knew 2 things about this church before I went in. The first was that they are obviously against secularism. This isn't surprising since they constructed a 72 foot tall replica of the statue of liberty holding a bible in one hand and a cross in the other. The other was that this was a predominately black church. This isn't surprising since they constructed a 72 foot tall replica of the statue of liberty holding a bible in one hand and a cross in the other.

Here's the story:

I arrived at 11:10, service started at 11:15. After I parked the car, I had a moment of panic. I nearly left. I started to put all of my junk in the glove box. While I was doing that, I was reminding myself that I am parking in a church parking lot and that I didn't need to do that. Who would break into my car in a church parking lot? I mustered my courage, got out of the car and pressed the lock button 2 times. The car answered with a reassuring chirp.

The church is huge. It is more like a complex than it is a church. It was so big that when I got to the door it wasn't apparent where I needed to go. Thankfully, there was a greeter that gave me directions to the information counter and a hug. She told me that I should ask for Rhonda and that she would get me to where I needed to go. Since there wasn't much time remaining before the service started, Rhonda apologized that she couldn't give me a tour of the facilities and pointed me towards an "usher ministry" to get me seated.

I have been in a lot of churches, but I have never seen a church quite like this. First of all, it resembled a theater more than a church. To be specific, it was a thrust theater. The stage extended out into the audience. You might think I am being unfair and purposely trying to belittle this church by describing it as a theater, but it was devoid of any sacred artifacts save for one wooden cross above the choir. That struck me as odd since everything else was done in such a grandiose fashion. There were no religious statuary, no stations of the cross, no kneelers, nothing except one wooden cross. The pulpit didn't even have any religious symbols. Instead it had a golden church logo.

I have never been in a church that had a mixing board, "security ministries" (they wore gold badges), a six man camera crew and 5 enormous concert size screens. The only thing they were missing was lighting. It actually would add a lot to the service if they could throw some spotlights, or different colored lights that they could dim and some gobos on the stage for ambiance. I've been thinking about writing to the Apostle Williams to make this suggestion.

If you include the orchestra and balcony levels, I think the church would easily hold around 3 or 4 thousand people. There were only about 600 people there and about half showed up 20 minutes late.

The congregation was predominately black. I say that because I was there. If not for me, it would have been 100% black. The service started out right away with singing. A woman from the choir descended down to the stage with a wireless microphone in hand and did about 30 minutes of extemporaneous speech and singing with the band following along. "Praise Jesus.. if you love Jesus, say amen." I'm sure you get the picture. The crowd was dancing, and singing along or holding up their arms and amening along. One thing to note was that the band was really good. It really was interesting to see how they followed along with what the singer was doing. There was definite synergy. They were really top notch. Another thing I found interesting was that people would come and go through out the whole service. It was kind of weird.

Once the "music ministry" was over, one of the pastors had everyone sit down. He welcomed the visitors to the church and asked them all to stand. I obviously didn't and I'm glad I didn't because a group of about 10 ushers descended on all of the crowd with information cards that needed to be filled out (don't forget the back!) and envelopes for tithes. The pastor was sure to point out that once you get your membership number, you can get a 10% discount from all of the member businesses that advertise next to the bookstore.

The band started back up again. They weren't playing really loud; they were just kind of playing in the background. I don't know how to explain the pastor other than stereotypical black minister. "thank you Jesus, thank you jeeeeesus.. oh thank you Lord". The pastor then talked about all of the great things that God has done in everyone's lives and how we owe everything we have to the Lord. This segwayed into the importance of tithing. All of jumbo screens displayed the different verses in the bible and he went on to explain that God needs your first harvest. All God wants is 10%. He'll make sure that you can live off of the other 90%. He'll let you keep that. What happened next was truly amazing. He asked everyone to hold up there tithing and offering envelopes! He thanked Jesus again and an usher on the end of each row passed a basket down, everyone dropped their envelopes in and all the money was collected in about 15 seconds.

The next thing on the agenda was multimedia announcements. This is what most people call commercials. They had about 10 minutes of commercials that they played on the screens. Everyone was really excited about the all night prayer vigil. They really were, it was surprising.

After that there was about another 15 minutes of singing. The choir was really good! At this point I was wondering how long this mass was going to last. Nothing of substance really happened so far. I also wasn't sure what was going on. People were still coming and going like it was a baseball game. I was half expecting people to come back with popcorn or a giant foam hand.

An hour and 15 minutes into the service, a different Pastor arrived and started the sermon. It was on sin. My favorite part of the 1:15 long sermon was his demonstration of how Satan poisoned humanity with sin.

The pastor said that Satan was smart, and that he knew that the only way to infect all of humanity with sin was to get to the original man. To illustrate his point, the pastor took off his jacket, picked up a knife and cut an apple in half. He took out a seed and held it up and said that he could start an orchard if he were to plant this one seed. The next thing he did was to take out a syringe and inject the seed with "poison". He then said that if he were to now plant this seed that all the following generations of trees would be infected with poison.

About half way through the sermon, the guy next to me passed me a note. I opened it up and he wrote his name, telephone number and email address. I didn't know what to do; it freaked me out. The only thing I could think to say was, "thanks."

Besides what I already wrote above, there were several things about the service that struck me as bizarre:

• There were no ritualized prayers. There were no monotonous chants of the Our Father.

• The clergy dressed in real nice suits, they didn't wear the typical vestments.

• Everyone hugged each other, except for the guys of course. This church makes no qualms about denouncing "homasexuals". We exchanged offerings of peace with our neighbors two times.

• The church goes to extensive lengths to welcome and greet visitors. They also had a visitor's reception after the service where they had free refreshments. I did not go. Something tells me I didn't make a mistake.

• The church takes the position that women are inferior to men and that they should be subservient to their husbands. The congregation seemed to be 80% women. The pastor made certain to point out that Eve was tricked into eating the apple and that Adam did it willfully knowing that it was wrong.

I will freely admit that I am glad that I went. Unfortunately, I think I left with more confusion about the place than when I went in. I didn't have a bad time, the time really flew by and I was impressed with the eloquence of the Pastors. They really were crafty orators and rhetoricians.

Despite obvious problems, I don't think that this church is bad for the community. I know a lot of people in Memphis have real issues with this church. Something tells me that they could have impacted the community in a more positive way if they would have put the money they collected back into the community rather than constructing a mega church with a $260,000 statuary in front. But maybe they never would have raised the money they did had they not built on a grand scale. Like the pastor said, "it's to God to judge."