Ada Bible Service

Today I went to Ada Bible, which is located in Ada Michigan. It is considered a "Mega" church with over 6,000 members and 5 services -1 on saturday and 2 on sunday at the cascade campus and 2 at the North Campus all preaching the same thing. The sermon saturday at the cascade campus is recorded and replayed at the 2 services at the North Campus. The church got so big that it had to make a saturday service and just this summer open another campus on the north side of town. The most unique thing about Ada Bible is that at each service at the Cascade campus you can either watch the whole sermon and music "live" or go to a video venue. 

The concept of watching a sermon on a video may seem odd, and it seems odd to me, but it has become more acceptable in this day and age of television. We can sit in front of a television screen for hours on end, so a sermon at church is nothing new. I don't think that this concept could have been pulled off years ago, but it is now more acceptable.

Today I went to the cascade campus at 11 o'clock with some of my 2nd Bolt friends and we went to the "live" viewing. The idea of watching the sermon on a video screen did not appeal to us.

The sermon was very interesting to all of us. The sermon was on Proverbs and all of its "wisdom advice." We looked at 5 verses that talked about how to work. The sermon did not talk about anything "religious" or "spiritual" but rather that we should all work hard. Each verse that we looked at seemed like they could have been spoken to us by our parents or grandparents and did not seem appropriate at church. It also talked about managing our finances which is nearly irrelevant to all of us who give all of our money to Calvin anyways.

At the lunch table we all started talking about why they would give a sermon about working hard. Yes, everyone can use a sermon about working harder and we can all work harder, but is that really something that should be preached? Not only that, but it is a 4 week series on it. After much discussion we weren't sure if Ada Bible was conforming to the empire and giving advice that the people want to hear, or if it is part of the kingdom because it is in the bible.

Ada Bible does a lot of things right, but it is changing the standard for all Christians, giving sermons in mass numbers and losing the "church" aspect. It seems that community is lost at Ada Bible, but I don't know how they would fix it.