Recently my friend Emily told me she visited a church so big she needed a map to get around. Coming from a relatively small church that meets in an elementary school, she was astounded at this sprawling church campus. The facility housed a restaurant, coffee bar, lounge, escalators, and multiple worship spaces, each with high-tech sound equipment. In the lobby massive concrete columns rose up three stories into a glass atrium and sunlight streamed in to illuminate the hip and modern architecture. But the strangest thing, she said, was that this colossal building, filled with largely affluent congregants, sat in a crowded urban area in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. As far as she could tell, no one from that neighborhood was present. The church reminded her of a cruise ship docked in a third world country! The walls even had round, fishbowl windows, driving home the cruise ship effect.
It’s a funny idea to ponder: a church that looks like a cruise ship. However, many American churches resemble cruise ships in more ways than just their architecture. People who attend ”cruise ship churches,” much like cruise ship passengers, often come to be entertained and catered to by the staff. Very little is expected of these church attendees.
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