Casa de Dios

June 6, 2010

My first visit to a megachurch occurred today. Our group visited Casa de Dios, which offers four or five services, each with two to three thousand attendees. Having never visited a megachurch before, I have very little to compare it to. I would hazard a guess that it was less of a foreign experience for me (having regularly attended “contemporary” evangelical churches with congregations between 400-800) than for others, but it was still very different, for reasons other than it being entirely in Spanish. To begin with, though the worship style (clapping, contemporary music, worship leader, etc) was fairly mainstream for me, there was a fairly jazzy lights show and a fog machine, which I felt changed the whole experience from a legitimate time of worship to a highly stylized production. Evidently it was quite effective, for by the end of the worship time, there were quite a few people crying and/or shaking uncontrollably. Whether this was a result of the “production” or stemmed more from the Latin American penchant for greater religious expression than North America, I do not know.

The way in which the congregation gave back to God was also different from any previous experiences, though several of the CASAS students said that it was fairly normal in their home churches. At Casa de Dios, ushers stood in each section with a bushel-sized basket and first the women, then the men were invited to come and deposit their tithes or offerings into the basket, all the while accompanied by upbeat praise-and-worship music. I really think I almost prefer this method – it is more of a public thanksgiving than quietly passing the plate.

The biggest difference that I observed was in the content of the sermon, which today was on the Good Samaritan. Fairly innocuous text, right? The pastor started by giving a general overview of the story and by delving into the original Greek of several words, which I have always appreciated. Then he somehow managed to segue into an extensive discourse on the Health and Wealth gospel (I must’ve been spacing out a bit on the transition). The Health and Wealth gospel, touted by such successful North American evangelists as Joel Osteen, essentially states that one can “force” God to bless them with health and wealth, if they uphold a certain series of expectations. For those who have taken Patty Shelly’s course, it would be similar to an individualistic Mosaic Covenant or Deuteronomist Theory of History, in that blessings are manifest when the individual obeys God, and judgment/illness/loss of prosperity occur when a person fails to follow God’s commandments. In my view, the pastor taught that we are to bless others so that God will bless us, that we are to offer our tithe so that God will in turn grant us more money, and that we are to serve others so that God will shower us with blessings. While there is certainly scriptural backing to each of these concepts, it is not the dominant reason that one ought to bless, give, and serve. The way it was presented, blessing, giving, and serving seemed more of a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves, which I feel like they ought to be. I strongly disagree with this point of view. To me, service is an act of worship, more so anyway than a way to garner more of God’s blessings. However, the congregation seemed to be a big fan of the message, and I guess sometimes that’s all that really matters.

I would not argue that what I have written is an overly simplistic and possibly somewhat inaccurate view of all that transpired this morning. However, it is the best I can do at this particular juncture, with my current knowledge of Latin American religious expression.