Sunday, October 1, 2017

Hipsters and Young Adults in NYC Find Spirituality in Pentecostal Megachurch

According to a Patch article I read online, C3 Church Global is opening its 4th "city church" in Brooklyn, in a music school during October. C3 Church Global is a megachurch with 470 pentecostal parishes and hundreds of thousands of followers around the world. They are media savvy.
The church is not without controversy......."The megachurch rakes in millions of dollars annually and is led by a charismatic pastor from New Zealand with close ties to religious leaders with convictions for embezzling from their congregations."
But it seems young people from parts of hip Brooklyn and Manhattan don't mind the controversy, they are being "fed" spiritually and are led by "pastors with trendy haircuts who lead sermons that resemble rock concerts to hoards of hand-waving hipsters clad in fedoras and their best flannel shirts.
Oh well......what can the  Catholic Church do? The Catholic Church has a lot to offer people in every age group but how this megachurch made inroads in Brooklyn and other parts of NYC just like that, kind of puzzles me.
In Florida, I know of a Catholic pastor who goes "undercover" to Protestant megachurch services. He wants to see what's going on there, what they are doing and what the appeal is. He is sometimes recognized because he is a well known and very respected figure in the community. But he goes anyway and he learns a lot by observing and taking part in their services. I think its a great idea. He has a massive building campaign going on right now, he's building a huge community center, in his parish, with a cafe in it, among other modern amenities. He probably saw something similar in the megachurch he visited.
Well, maybe that's what religious educators, evangelizers and pastors should do in Brooklyn and the Archdiocese of New York.  Go to the prayer services being held at these megachurches and find out what hipsters and young adults find so appealing and why they are compelled to go on Sundays to a megachurch. The Catholic Church has to start thinking out-of-the-box.....Now!
NJA