Saddleback Church City

Going to Saddleback Church was like going to Christian Disneyland. Saddleback made Vatican City look like a retirement community. I've never seen anything like it. They have multiple parking lots so people are shuttled in on buses. There are multiple "houses of worship", but they all watch the same sermon on TV. Babies literally get bar codes when their parents drop them off because there are so many of them - they don't want to lose any! Can you believe it? I asked one family about it and they gave us their parent-copy of their child's bar code. Saddleback is so big that they have multiple satellite churches around Southern California that also watch the sermon on TV, but have their own live worship band. In fact, we ended up going to one of these satellite churches in Irvine on accident when we were trying to find the main big Saddleback Church. It was kind of small and I knew it was the wrong place. So, we had to get up and ask the usher where the Saddleback MEGA CHURCh was? She gave us really crappy directions and we found the mega-church right when it was ending. Sadly, Rick Warren wasn't there. I was really looking forward to seeing him in his Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops. It was quite disappointing.











No, I'm not a super-duper evangelical Christian. I went to Saddleback as a kind of research project. I'm writing my Master's Thesis on the Christian Right in America and their influence on political elections. I've read so much about Saddleback, I just had to go visit it in person. I really don't know what to make of this so-called "mega church". I mean its bigger than a mega-church it's like a church-city. On one hand I think it's great that so many people go to this church and that it's so laid back and they have so many styles of worship (each of the different worship buildings had a theme - for example, the hard core rock tent, the singles tent, traditional-fall-asleep-with-your-eyes-open tent, etc. They even have a cafe where you can sit and enjoy coffee during church if that's how you prefer to worship). But, part of me is just can't shake how extremely weird it is. I mean I really felt like I was at an amusement park and not a place of worship. Maybe I'm just getting conservative in my old age, who knows. Anyhow, if you ever want a free shocking experience I highly suggest you go to Saddleback Church, but make sure you go to the one in Lakeforest.