My disgust with Point of Grace is absolute.

Not only do they present (And "present" is the correct and accurate word, it is nothing deeper than a presentation) a service each weekend utterly devoid of spiritual meaning or depth, but they honestly believe these church services are reaching people; seeing themselves as innovative and fresh evangelists in a sea of stale and boring Des Moines-area churches. (I worked there, I was asked about "visual hooks for this series" and heard phrases like "We'll just tie this video into the sermon with some verse from Proverbs." on a regular basis.)

And nothing could be further from the truth.

Point of Grace fancies itself a "seeker-sensitive church", and it's methodology closely follows many of the other openly seeker-sensitive churches that exist around the nation. The philosophy goes like this: people are tired of long, boring, uninteresting church services filled with fire and brimstone preaching. Therefore, we should change the services to be more exciting: we'll add moving lights and dramas and a rockin' band and bling...oh Lord, there will be bling. I have no problem with any of this. In fact, I think it's a good thing that the church has finally realized that in order to reach those who wouldn't ordinarily come to church, they have to redefine what a church service should look like, ratchet up production values, and do things that look cool. Your church service looks like something out of Cirque du Soleil? That's cool - I like Cirque du Soleil. Do stuff that looks good, it'll only enhance the message as long as it's presented appropriately. By the way, God likes bling - if you don't believe me, go to Google and type in "horsehead nebula" into the image search. He created all this stuff around us, and the church should be doing stuff as cool or cool-er than Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group and Stomp are doing. That's not the problem.

The problem is the message.

You know, the part that people are there to hear. The part where they hear that there's a God who loves them, but also a God who hates sin and cannot allow it in His presence, and how they will go to a place of eternal torment for rejecting Him. The issue is that while, on paper, Point of Grace has this orthodox Christian message, and will even tell it to you if asked directly, in actual practice they de-emphasize many parts of that message in the services. In all my time at Point of Grace, I rarely heard about the wrath of God; the God presented at Point of Grace is a pretty cuddly guy who just always loves us. It seems a lot of megachurches are doing this these days, Kimon Howland says:

_In sum, seeker churches introduce seekers to the Christian message by presenting the exclusivist theology of evangelicalism in the friendly guise of an egalitarian, fulfillment-enhancing, fun religious encounter with God. As a result, seeker church pastors make orthodox theology less offensive and more civil for a pluralistic society. Seeker church proponents do not abandon the "Gospel truth" but repackage it in a kinder, gentler format. They maintain the evangelical emphasis on the importance of faith in Jesus Christ but subtly transform the reasons why one should pursue such faith. . . . The promise of this-worldly peace and fulfillment supplements, perhaps even supersedes, the eternal consequences of one's personal response to Christ._1

Point of Grace tends to replace teaching from the scriptures with an idea, then they find verses to support this idea, and teach from there. Instead of teaching "Children obey your parents, for this is right", they'll do a series on child-rearing, and throw in "Obey your parents" somewhere in there. I don't have a problem with per se, pragmatism demands that the church teach about things relevant to it's congregation. The issue is that so often, POG goes lesson "cherry picking", choosing only lessons that are soft on the ears, and then going through and editing with more concern for the time constraints of the service than the content of what they're teaching to the souls who fill the 972 seats of the main auditorium every weekend.

And the cotton-candy preaching isn't the only beef that I have with them - I've mentioned several times their utter lack of integrity in dealing with finances, coupled with the fact that they constantly focus on money. They get board members to stand up and say "We're doing great things! Lots of great things. So, uh, we need money for those great things. So, if you want us to keep doing things that are great, we'll need you to open up your pocketbooks and bless the church yet again.". (I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist. Potentially offensive video here.) And when the church runs into financial problems Jeff just downplays the problem, issues a statement about the closing of the Ankeny campus via video while he was in the building, and continues to ask for more money. And therein lies my biggest problem with POG: its lead pastor.

Jeff Mullen is a coward. He is utterly without integrity as a lead pastor - he will not get up in front of his congregation and tell them the truth about the church's financial situation. He won't ever reveal his salary - he knows it would cause an uproar. He's so completely frightened of appearing fallible that he does whatever he can to weasel out of responsibility for any unpleasant action.

And the worst part?

I am no better.

I am the same kind of coward, a coward who refused to speak up when things around me were going wrong. I refused to speak out against Jeff using the church services to sell his CD, even though I had severe moral misgivings about it. I didn't say anything when I was told to order the $500 microphone "that Ed Young uses" when our finances were in shambles. I remained silent when Tim Yates was almost fired for starting his own business on the side. I didn't speak out when I found out that Tom Allen has a vehicle allowance when he lives three blocks from the church. I said nothing when we all watched a video in an all-staff meeting that was probably the most anti-Biblical "Christian" teaching I've ever sat through. And most shamefully, I didn't say a word when I left the church out of disgust - I stood there and continued to sell the idea that the only reason I was leaving was so that I could go to Nashville.

I can't even bring myself to tell my church the real reason why I left. My disgust with myself is absolute.

Who am I to criticize them?

Exit, stage left. Sparks

1. Howland, Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way, 99