Saddleback Reflections...

This last Sunday, seeing as I was down in the land of Disney, I thought a trip to the church version of the Magic Kingdom would be in order.

I had a hard time deciding between the Crystal Cathedral and Saddleback, but in the end, picked the safer and decidedly less-creepy Saddleback. I know, I know... that's not a nice thing to say. But I tell you- there's not a Robert Schuller around that doesn't seem slightly creepy to me, whether the Robert Schuller who founded the Crystal Cathedral as a Drive-In church or the the Robert Schuller who has currently taken over the pulpit there... and though I've had no contact, I'm just going to go ahead and assume the Robert Schuller who leads the Cathedral's "emerging" ministries and who will most likely some day ascend to this hereditary post.

Anyway, the patriotic medley with the local drum corp, the raising of the 80 foot American flag (the "world's largest flying American flag), and the gun salute in honor of Memorial Day pretty much drove me in exactly the other direction... I think I might have had a bit more "fun" there, but at this point a cynicism overload is not what my system needs.

So we went to Saddleback.

While I'm sure there are other routes to Saddleback, the one our map took us on and the most convenient is actually a toll road. $2.25 to get on, $.50 to exit, and another $2.25 to get back home. $5 just to get to church!

Exiting the toll road, it was only about 100 yards down to Purpose Drive (no kidding!) and a turn onto the Campus. And if you think references to "Disney Church" are out of line, let me just plead inability to keep my thoughts from running in that direction when the entrance so clearly sets one up to think that way.

All in all, let me say this before going any further- the experience was a mostly positive one. More people talked to us than I imagined would, but mostly in passing and mostly people with name tags. But Saddleback has clearly gone out of its way to train greeters and I guess if you have to have them, having kick-ass greeters beats having half-assed ones any day of the week. They particularly engaged our kids which was cool.

The campus was clean, the kids rooms extremely confidence-building (about 4 classes each for kids both Jack and Jane's age- you could just pick which one). Each had about 15-20 or so kids sitting around tables, coloring, playing legos, doing other activities. Far from the Lord of the Flies scenario that many kid's rooms/ministries devolve down into...

There are a variety of venues on offer at Saddleback:

Everything from hard rock worship to hula worship.

We went to the big house, wanting to avoid the video sermon... and got a video sermon. Apparently Video Venue fever has Saddleback not only creating venues on its own campus, but spinning them out over the city. Rick was preaching from a high school somewhere across town. After a few minutes of very earnest worship music (the crowd may not have been into it, but man- every extremely attractive person on the stage was selling it) we got the announcement that there was a problem with the video feed and we'd be watching the tape of Rick from the previous night's service. A spiky haired guy with a guitar did the special music thing, followed by the announcement that Hey! The video feed was working and we'd be joining Rick in progress. So, mid sentence, there was Rick on the 5 big screens at the front. (They have two big screens on the side, and then three big-but-not-as covering a speaker array in the middle of the stage).

Rick's message was out of Acts 1:8, and he wanted to talk about the universal mission that every person gets when they become part of God's family. He specifically stated he needed to avoid the individual mission (because that would be different for everyone) but wanted to focus on the corporate one.
And then, after a great point that we are called to be God's witnesses, not the Defense or Prosecuting attorneys, things kind of moved into a full-blown Saddleback commercial. For Rick, in Acts 1:8 parlance, my "Jerusalem" is my county. And Saddleback's goal is a purpose driven church in every city in all the counties around Saddleback. How? By church planting? No, silly. Through "campuses and venues." The idea is that Saddleback itself will  beam its teaching into schools, community centers, whatever- throughout the whole LA area.

Next, "Judea" is Southern California. Okay- now we must be talking about planting churches, right? Well... Rick went on here to talk about all the small groups Saddleback has spread all over Southern California. It was cool to hear about the number of non-English speaking groups- Farsi, Afrikaans, Arabic, Korean, etc... But again- it was all centered around what Saddleback is doing.

My Samaria is "People who are different from me." And again- I appreciated the opportunity to hear what Saddleback is doing to reach the many, many different cultures and even unreached people groups in SoCal, and the goal to have a witness in every culture, but... The message left me wondering what my part in the universal mission of the body of Christ was (the whole premise of the sermon). The only thing I can conclude, from the direction and content of the sermon is that my part is to support Saddleback in starting new, focused venues that will reach all the people and places of Southern California.

A confession here- I don't get Warren's preaching. The whole methodology of stringing together snippets of different verses from different translations to serve the movement of my outline just leaves me cold, and worse, I think it teaches and forms in a community of people a really poor way of handling Scripture. It's not a series of fortune cookie slips all bound together in convenient book form, though someone nurtured on this kind of preaching could be forgiven for thinking so...

I'm glad for Saddleback in a lot of ways- I appreciate the way they have pushed the church in America to think about the poor in Africa (particularly in regards to AIDS). I appreciate the vast number of people they have told about Jesus and baptised and are now nurturing (by making them run the bases!).

But... the whole thing, while a pleasant enough experience, left me a bit underwhelmed. Jack loved running around the campus, climbing on the rocks that we only later realized was a replica of Calvary complete with roll-away tomb. The band outside playing Tom Petty and Led Zepplin was cool, the ATM was convenient, the Cafe inviting. I can imagine with the skate park they are building next to their new student center (bigger than many church buildings) would be a teen paradise... a haven from uncool parents and other adults I'd prefer not to deal with.

Was it the extreme segmentation? You know "traditional" people over there, hard rockers over there, hula aficionados  over there... Yes, but no. Every church ultimately has that, just by virtue of who they are and who they appeal to and don't appeal to. One could argue that at least Saddleback collects them all onto the same campus.

Mostly it was the whole vibe of church as a place, not a people. Church is this campus that we've put so much dang effort and money into. Church is also the messages we beam into the school auditoriums of those less-privileged folks who don't live in comfortable commuting distance. It was the insistence on extending Saddleback's reach and influence throughout the southland rather than simply planting other churches. It was the fact that I wanted to hang out a few minutes longer to catch a bit of the hard rock service, the fact that I had trouble remembering where we parked, and the realization that for me at least, the whole experience seemed to put distance between me and God, not bring us closer.

The streams of people leaving the auditorium during the final worship song seemed to be feeling the same thing. Otherwise, I think they would have sat still rather than filing out of the bleaches for their cars... I guess to avoid the traffic and get on with their days.