We’ve all see them — churches where attendance numbers mirror a Saturday night in Tiger Stadium. They usually speak really “dope” dialects when talking about their cooler-than-your God and dress like it’s always casual Sunday. You can see their pastors on television — preaching the prosperity gospel to droves of hypnotized have-nots. Guitars rightly replace pipe organs — and emotion replaces common sense.Megachurches, as they’re called, have become increasingly popular in recent years. The largest church in America, Lakewood, currently accommodates the faith needs of 43,500 attendees each week. And while Joel Osteen, pastor of the church, has absolutely no ministerial training, the man sure can sell himself, his books and his feel-good theology of ignorance. But while there isn’t anything really wrong with supply and demand in the religious world, notice needs to be given to the luxuriant structures that have come to typify the modern megachurch. Not too far from LSU’s campus, a mansion for God on Highland Road currently nears completion. The cost of Healing Place Church’s awe-inspiring structure? A whopping $36,232,121. But wait — for this enormous amount of money we get beautiful landscaping, a spacious lobby area, fountains and of course, a coffee shop. The current colossal building doesn’t have all of the above, so naturally a bigger and better house of God was necessary. And while the money was donated for the specific purpose of constructing this behemoth basilica, one cannot help but wonder what else $36 million could have accomplished — aside from temporarily solidifying HPC’s status as Baton Rouge’s premier place to go and meet the American Jesus for coffee. One could do any of the following with $36 million dollars: Feed 480,000 children in Ghana for a year, build 1,440 schools in Tanzania, buy 180 million pounds of rice at wholesale cost, give more than 1 million starving children a Plumpy’nut malnutrition treatment, sponsor more than 1 million children through World Vision for a month, pay one year’s tuition for 288,000 school children in Tanzania through Village Schools International, send 3.6 million Kisii water filters to Kenya, buy more than six billion bananas for the poor or supply 20 million 5×7 tarps to Haiti. Any of the aforementioned beneficence would change the world for countless lives. But in place of these potential philanthropic miracles, we now have yet another mansion built for Jesus’ followers — which doesn’t really go along with the whole “afflicted” motifs of early Christendom.In addition to this incongruity, it should be noted there is no such thing as a Christian church building in the Bible. Each of the 114 references to the ekklesia, or church, in the New Testament never once describes a building. And while one can’t necessarily condemn or conceal the vast amounts of pagan ritual that transgressed into Christian liturgy and practice — including the church building — I just can’t imagine Jesus of Nazareth ever promoting a building over charitable deeds. In all honesty, Healing Place Church is one of the greatest charitable organizations on the planet. And while I do not agree with much of their theology, or lack thereof, they have done much good in the world. But that which has been done in the past does not overshadow the present waste that is their new Christian coliseum. To whom much is given, much is required. And for $36 million, I believe God expects more than just an earthly hot spot for generation X coffee drinkers and their hipster parents seeking solace from a hurting world of trapping desk jobs and lost tennis matches. Perhaps in place of altars, pews, steeples and lavish ziggurats — we might one day again see a Christianity that does not “conform to the patterns of this world.” Rather, this non-religious faith would bear witness to the immaterial, atypical words of Jesus. A congregation without a $36 million dollar Jesus stadium would be better for it, as would the needy the world over.
Andrew Robertson is a 23-year-old religious studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_arobertson. 
 
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Contact Andrew Robertson at [email protected]