Megachurches' Christmas shows are theatrical lures
by: DAHLEEN GLANTON Chicago Tribune
12/25/2007 12:00 AM
SAVANNAH, Ga. -- During the Christmas season, thousands of people take a pilgrimage to a 52-acre site on the grounds of the Savannah Christian Church to experience the birth of Jesus in a make-believe Holy Land.
They take a boat ride across a massive lake into Bethlehem, where they mingle with the townspeople who greet them with fresh water, fruit and assorted cheeses. Roman soldiers on white horses lead them along a lighted path, where they encounter the three wise men with a live camel resting at their side. They look on as the archangel Gabriel appears at Virgin Mary's home and tells her that she is carrying a child. They watch an evil King Herod, who plots to kill the newborn. Finally, they arrive at the manger, standing close enough to touch the crying baby Jesus.
The dazzling journey provides spectacular entertainment for visitors for just $5. But there is a bigger payoff for the church that puts on the production. At the end of the hour-and-a-half trek, pastor Cam Huxford stands on a stack of hay in front of the group and extends an invitation for them to attend services at his church.
In an age of megachurches that thrive on huge congregations that sometimes number 20,000 or more, elaborate Christmas productions that can cost $1 million have become a valuable marketing tool. Gone are the days of angel costumes made of white sheets and tinfoil halos. With the proliferation of megachurches, holiday pageants have gone Hollywood.
The Cirque du Soleil-styled production at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., features live "angels" swinging from the ceiling like acrobats, a professional violist and a mist-filled stage. The "Imagine Christmas" program is expected to draw 95,000 people this year and is broadcast on a local television station on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The $1.3 million Christmas pageant at First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., featuring pyrotechnical displays that light up the stage, is choreographed by professional Broadway producers.
Every year, megachurches strive to outdo the year before, putting on elaborate interactive productions with live animals, period costumes and professional sets and lighting. With such large congregations, there is no shortage of volunteers. In many cases, the actors are church members, as are the stagehands, directors and set designers.
The programs are an attempt, church leaders said, to give back to the community while spreading a spiritual message.
"Christmas has become so commercial now that people are upset to say 'Merry Christmas,' " said Huxford, whose production, "The Journey," requires more than 1,000 volunteers, about a fifth of the 5,100-member congregation in Savannah. "This event reminds people of the true meaning of Christmas -- God's love for all people."
Willow Creek, which first presented the "Imagine Christmas" program last year, aims to entertain, something officials acknowledge the public has come to expect. But it is no different, they said, than what Jesus did to attract large followings -- performing miracles in public like feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.
"In today's world, the church must compete with movies and even restaurants for audiences. Everybody wants to be entertained," said Susan DeLay, who handles public relations for Willow Creek. "People who might not go to church might come to see a Christmas pageant, and if we can share Christ through this, then yeah!"
Some religious experts said such extravaganzas are mostly about drawing people in to fill the thousands of stadium seats in those massive sanctuaries on Sunday mornings. In doing so, they rely on a new advertising technique known as experiential marketing, which essentially takes the fo cus off a product, which is not unique, and places it on the experience, which can be one of a kind.
"It has nothing to do with the Christmas message. . . . It's selling a sensation, an experience," said James Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida. "What competitive churches understand is that you are not going to sell your service on the basis of doctrine because it's all the same. When people go to church they . . . want to know if there's a good show. And often that's not coming out of doctrine, it comes from music, theatrics and the sound system."
In 2005, the last year for which numbers are available, there were 1,210 Protestant churches in the U.S. with weekly attendance over 2,000, nearly double the number that existed in 2000, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Most of them are clustered in fast-growing states such as California, Texas, Florida and Georgia, and they bring in an average of $6 million a year, according to a survey by the institute.
Though megachurches deny that they are in competition for members with smaller, more traditional churches, the lure of bright lights and theater has had an impact. According to Twitchell, author of "Shopping for God," small country churches are closing at a rate of about one every eight days.
"They can't say they're in the business of shutting down the corner church because that's not very Christian-like. But that's exactly what they are doing," said Twitchell.
While the megachurch phenomenon began thriving in the 1970s, pageants and religious theatrics became popular in the U.S. in the early 20th century, according to religion historian Jeanne Halgren Kilde. During the 1920s, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple in Los Angeles presented plays in a 5,300-seat auditorium-style temple as a means of spreading her "Foursquare Gospel." Other evangelicals began picking up on the concept.
"Now we've become such a visual culture that we expect things to happen this way. Megachurches have set the standard," said Kilde, author of "When the Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America."
Twitchell said the staging of elaborate Christmas pageants comes naturally for megachurches.
"These are operations that are in show business. They have state-of-the-art jumbo video screens. They have rock-concert-quality audio," he said. "If you go to the services, you are not sitting on pews, you are sitting on cineplex movie seats."
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