Church by the Glades in Coral Springs, FL, is the embodiment of instituting worldly entertainment in the pathetic hope of catching the attention of wayward goatlings and luring them into staying. During their Christmas service, the 8000- member Southern Baptist megachurch continues its celebration of all things fleshly with an aviation/ passport/ flight-themed Christmas service.
Known for their extravagant attempts to keep their members entertained, in the past few months alone, they played a cover of Run D.M.C’s sleazy and sexual song Walk this Way in church, performed Kendrick Lamar’s N95, only cleaned up and sanitized for church audiences, removing the curse words and racial epitaphs for a sermon illustration, put on a Willy Wonka Christmas worship service’ and put on crazy ‘Baby Shark’ mashup during service, replete with smoke and canons!
Pastor David Hughes, wanting to highlight the “movement” theme he sees in the Christmas story, tells congregants they should “frame up” the Christmas story against the backdrop of their financial and relational struggles.
How do I make (the Christmas Story) personal? Anybody here going through like, a really serious problem this time of year? Set of problems-it’s financial or it’s relational, you got this stressed out situation your kid uh you know, it’s a health issue, you’ve lost something or someone….why don’t you kind of frame up the Christmas story, this is the story we love we know so well, against the backdrop of your problem?…And I want to tell you this; God as we see in Christmas is really, really good with problems.
He reiterates that “embodiment of the Christmas story is God is with us, God is with you” as you struggle with your addictions and dysfunction, and that “God is really good at dealing with problems” like the virgin birth. He notes that because he was able to solve the problem of the virgin birth, he can solve the problems in your life.
Because the birth of Jesus was based on ‘movement’, his church service featured interludes like this:
