The Living Conflict; Soup Kitchen; Fellowship Church

I just posted new author Daniel Burnham's "The Living Conflict" on The Brew. It's a look at the continuous conflict for anyone who believes in Christ.

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There’s nothing like serving in a run-down, grimy soup kitchen to get your mind off your own depressed, narcissistic self.

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Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX

Saturday night I went to this church with my friend Trent and his wife, Sarah. We do this periodically to see what all is out in the DFW area. We both have our own smaller churches that we’re committed to but enjoy experiencing other churches and then discussing them.

So we thought we’d tackle the mega-churches, which is why we went to Fellowship, perhaps the largest mega-church in DFW, or possibly Texas. Ed Young is the pastor, but he was on vacation this week. We’re all naturally cynical, having gone to Bible school and having experienced what we would consider to be ‘real’ church at our smaller congregations. We tried to be fair, but we couldn’t get away from being skeptics.

The best way to describe it may be to just write about some glimpses.

I visited the restroom and was treated to “Now is The Time” by Delirious? playing through speakers. I thought, it’d been a while since I heard them.

There were five Grapevine cops in and around the church, watching the crowds or directing traffic.

The kid’s wing of the church was a friggin’ amusement park, with a Sea World-lookin walkway, classrooms entrances that looked like rollercoaster waiting lines. There was a fifty-foot tall enchanted castle with a waterfall flowing down the middle. There was enough sensory overload to hook a kid, and drive them to bug their parents until the parents brought the kid back.

The worship service used only one familiar song, while the others seemed to be just ways for the worship team to perform. And did they ever. It was a slick production and impressive. At the beginning of the set, the worship leader, who looked like a mix between Prince and Seal, said, “Look around you at the beautiful people all around you.” This was the lead in to have everyone greet each other.

The spookiest part was as we were leaving, and had Silversun Pickups playing was we left the parking lot. A song played and the lyrics started off like this:

“So much for the light show
pissing on while pissing off
sucking in a smokescreen
selling of a loose knit dream”

It was hard to not compare the lyrics to what we had just experienced. That was trippy.