Crossroads, the Reckoning

Saturday evening I made good on a promise made a week ago. I again found myself in an old HQ building across the lateral in Oakley and again found myself confronted with an airport terminal.  Kiosks and all.  The Saturday night crowd was much akin to the Sunday morning folk.  I felt quite overdressed wearing jeans with a button up and a tie.  This time around, thankfully, I had the prescience of mind to grab a cup of coffee with a splash of cream from the coffee kiosk.  The lauded coffee of Crossroads was to be mine.  I also came prepared with a bit of paper and a new pen.

Unfortunately for me the pen was for naught and the coffee initially too hot for the sipping.  The notes I attempted to scribble concerning the sermon are bordering on illegibility.  The auditorium (it is more a sit down concert hall than sanctuary) is far too dimly lit for proper note taking.  The weekly program hand outs are little help as well- containing no information relevant to the service though I dared not attempt to read it in such a dark place for fear of damaging my eyesight.

It seems to me as though the entire point of the production is not to teach as much as to entertain and provide a lifestyle.  Glamor and glitz.  Theater seating.  A dearth of information.  About a third of the way through the service I was finally able to taste the delicious coffee.  "

Oh hey, it's that guy from last week.  Brian Tome, I believe.  I wonder what he has to say," I thought to myself while blithely stirring the coffee with a rocking motion.

What little I was able to gleam from my notes tells me that the service focused on Revelation, that old fallback of American Christianity known colloquially as 'End Times'.  How we Americans love our end of the world scenarios.  The service, however, was a very unique take on this idea.  No word or whisper of the dreaded R word, Rapture.  No mention of pie in the sky when you die.  No, this Revelation message was actually both less and more painful.

It was financial.

The entire push of Mr. Tome's sermon was on "God's physical agenda."  The idea that Christians should put their money where their mouth is and donate time and money to the church.  A noble pursuit.  Sadly, the nobility of the message was tainted irreparably with a five minute interview with a poor soul who sold his car so that he could start tithing, as tithes will surely come back hundredfold or more in God's great blessings!

I honestly felt like leaving at that point.  The idea of a man down on his luck selling his transportation so as to give homage to a wealthy church and its staff rubs me the wrong way.  Strong soul that I am, I stayed through the service and found myself back at home a scant bit wiser and a good deal more caffeinated.

It seems to me that Crossroads promotes a broken, Starbucks version of the religious experience.  Superficial community, over roasted beans, decidedly apolitical and amorphous.  I recall hearing it said, once, that the man who stands for everything stands for nothing.  As much as I might loathe the crazy churches of the Christian Right, at least those people stand for something.

Perhaps I am the broken one.  Unable to understand the appeal of places like Crossroads.  The fake veneers, the full ensemble band, dressed down pastors, coffee and dim lighting, all of it seems hollow and empty and commercial.  So completely commercial.  So empty.  Bland.

A part of me hopes that I am wrong about this.  So it goes.

Twenty-Seven Seconds

 I found myself in a church on Mother's Day.  Not the church I have been frequenting at the request of a friend over on the west side but a larger facility out in Oakley.  Crossroads is a 'megachurch' in truth, a place with over 2,000 regular attendees.  You can tell.

Walking in was as daunting and disorienting as finding yourself in an unknown airport at the edge of the world.  The lobby was large and open, filled to the brim with people milling about, queued up for coffee, congregating around kiosks and seating areas, and going about their Sunday business. I considered lining up for coffee myself.  I love a strong cup of fresh coffee and perhaps some caffeine to properly energize my brain would make the service easier to follow.  Unfortunately the line was quite long and time a luxury.  It was Mother's Day, after all.

A bit before noon, right on time for the final service of the day, I confidently strode into a dark hallway that led into the main auditorium, no coffee in hand.  Dark as a movie theater already rolling trailers, I fumbled my way to an aisle seat towards the back of the first level.  It was a bit impersonal and surreal.  On stage there was a young man dressed in thirties attire at a desk with a typewriter.  Suspended from the roof there was a thin wispy banner of cloth upon which the words of a song were projected.  The band playing the song was one of the better church bands I have seen in some time though they only played the one song.  The man at the typewriter left the stage and the pastor came on stage.

The message, presented in plain, frank speech, was a continuation of the Easter series.  He presented the message of Christ's resurrection jumping around in scripture from gospel to epistle.  Emergent churches seem to love their epistles most of all.  At the end of the service communion was offered and I quietly slid out the back door to see if I could ask any questions and then beat traffic.  Sadly, the newbie kiosks were no longer manned.  I wandered for a bit in vain hope of being greeted by a friendly local or finding some yet unknown truth of the Crossroads and then exited when the small ember of that hope faded neath' the ash.

A barista friend of mine recently told me about hand pulled shots of espresso.  The ideal shot, he claimed, takes around twenty-five to twenty-eight seconds to pull well.  The best shots?  Twenty-seven seconds.

I think I'll try again this coming weekend.  I'll grab a coffee and be a touch more proactive in my questioning.  I'm a poor believer if anything and am used to churches and such centers being the ones to reach out and greet the newcomers.  Such a large place seems to lose a bit of community in the hustle and bustle.  A place like Crossroads seems to grow based on production values and retail religion.  Fashionable.  Marketable.  With that in mind I'll try again for a friend's sake and grab myself a shot in the dark.

This time I'll be counting seconds.