Life.Church South Tulsa has kicked off their At the Movies campaign with a Super Mario Brothers theme, decorating the church and crafting a sermon based around the adventures of Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Princess Preach, and various other stray Koopa that may make it into a sermon illustration.
It’s not a one-off for the 85,000-member, seeker-sensitive, multi-site-based Oklahoma church that has 40 locations, but rather something they do every year. Led by Craig Groeschel, the pastor and lead visionary who is an awful preacher and habitual scripture- twister, and who recently launched the metaverse for the megachurch, their promo material explains:
At the Movies is an annual summer event at Life.Church. We decorate our lobbies in our favorite movie themes and invite friends and family. During the experience, we show snippets of popular films, and Pastor Craig creates a message based on themes from the film. It’s one of our most popular and fun series, and we look forward to it every year.
Church goers are treated to drinks, bags of popcorn, and other movie theater confectionaries. Everything about the service screams that this is all just a show- an offering to Baal on the altar of entertainment. We have not been able to get our hands on the sermon yet, but it amazes what a church believes it must do to attract and retain visitors, as if Christ is pleased with the gimmickry of exegeting a Hollywood film or video game.
When the bible is not enough, nothing is ever enough.
