A megachurch in Alabama held an open house recently to celebrate its launch of a six-dome entertainment center that is worth $26 million, not to mention, parts of its facility are far from the Bible or Christianity. Faith Chapel Christian Center, near Birmingham, completed its 137-acre project in 2013, all of which was funded by the offerings and tithes of more than 6,400 churchgoers. It is located in a shanty area where most residents have a low income.
“We believe we can really meet the needs of the community. It will bridge people from the world to the Kingdom,” said leader Michael Moore, author of the book, ”Rich is Not a Bad Word.”
Among several other amenities, the facility features a basketball court, a 12-lane bowling alley, a banquet hall, a fitness center, a café, a dance club as well as an adult smoke and alcohol free nightclub.
“People may not want to come to a church, but they’ll come to a bowling alley. People have needs other than spiritual needs. There’s a need for safe, clean, uplifting, family-oriented entertainment,” Moore explained.
According to him, the open house was meant to announce the launch of the six-dome facility called “The Bridge” to community members and to inspire other churches to build similar structures across America.
“Now we want the world to know. Our church wants to be an inspiration,” he explained.
Clearly, not everybody is pleased with the structure being presented in the context Moore has been trying to pass it off. David Whitney, who is a pastor with Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Pasadena, told the local media that utilizing entertainment to attract the lost is nothing but an unbiblical way of preaching evangelism.
“I think it would be a misuse [of funds]. Mainstream Christianity in America is already oriented at entertainment being its primary focus. ... To take evangelism and to say, ‘Well, evangelism also has to be entertaining’—which it sounds like what they’re doing—that we’re not going to be able to evangelize unless we entertain them, [is a gross error],” he said.
He also explained how the Church is not supposed to draw the world through its doors but go out to the world and preach its gospel instead.
“That’s a mistake that’s been made for maybe a century now. We are to go and tell, not to tell them to come in here and hear the message in the church [building]. The church is for the worship of God, for building up of the saints, for making disciples and training them so they can go into all the world and preach the gospel. ... The gospel is an offense. The cross is called in Scripture an offense. It’s not a message that’s going to entertain people, or a message that will be pleasant for them to hear. It’s going to convict them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,” Whitney stated, noting that even Jesus regularly took the gospel into the public square through preaching.
Whitney also said that he would have been more supportive of the project had it been the endeavor of a local Christian businessman rather than that of a religious institution.
“Bricks, bodies and bucks seem to be the measure most churches use of their success.In the Scriptures, I don’t find that at all... Contrast that with the first Church that owned no building and often met in the catacombs,” he said.
Photo Credits: Christian News
