Jesus preached from atop hills, in boats, in marketplaces, and anywhere else where people would listen. The venue wasn’t important. It was his message that was. It was his “good news” that drew the crowds. Since then, it takes a bit more than good news to pack a Christian church.
Photographer Joe Johnson has shot a series of images from the inside of empty mega-churches, currently on display at Gallery Kayafas in Boston. Cate McQuaid reviewed the exhibit for the Boston Globe, writing:
Johnson visited Southern and Midwestern places of worship that welcome at least 2,000 parishioners. He went when they were mostly empty. His stunning and provocative images of the mammoth churches lay bare the cogs and gears that create their spectacle-driven services. With all the sets, smoke machines, light effects, and huge plasma screens, the churchgoing experience has ironically turned, in places like this, into something resembling a heavy-metal concert or a Las Vegas stage show, complete with stadium seating.
Photo: Joe Johnson, courtesy of Gallery Kayafas
Johnson’s photos capture the modern mega-church in all of it’s high-tech, visually spectacular, goose bump inducing glory. In one photo, a video camera, pointed upward, stand below as a brilliant flash of lighting is projected onto the ceiling. Another shows a control desk, with a slew of production gear, overlooking the huge fuchsia-carpeted stage and three mega-tron monitors.
The relatively new phenomenon of the mega-church, with it’s ’stimulate the senses to pack the seats’ approach, isn’t really all that new. Churches have been using eye-candy to supplement, or even create, the religious experience for hundreds of years.
St. Michael's Church, Luxemborg, 1688
San Augustn Church, Manilla, 1570
Impressive, beautiful, stunning, even awe-inspiring – but is it necessary? Could the money that it takes to build these churches be used for other things? Sure, it enhances the experience of the congregation, but if the “life-saving message of the gospel” that is preached in these churches is so powerful, the venue should be secondary.
It makes you think: would mega-pastors like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes draw 20,000 congregants each week if they preached in an abandoned warehouse?
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