Church by the Glades in Coral Springs, FL, an 8000- member Southern Baptist megachurch, continues its celebration of all things fleshly. 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, as well as performed Kendrick Lamar’s N95, only cleaned up and sanitized for church audiences, removing the curse words and racial epitaphs for a sermon illustration.
Now, as part of their worship service earlier today, immediately after a rendition of Hark the Herald Angel Sing, demonstrating how creative and relevant they are, they perform a modified version of Bow Wow Wow’s I want Candy with a Willy Wonka theme, seamlessly interchanging between “Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth” with “I know a guy who’s tough but sweet. He’s so fine, he can’t be beat. I want candy. I want candy.”
This is not part of the sermon illustration, but rather is purely meant to entertain, with the senior pastor and Chief Entertainer David Hughes previously explaining that they are a “hyper-creative church”, and they embrace a “whatever it takes” mentality in order to “entice a lot of families to come check out our church.” He reveals after the show:
Welcome to this… I don’t know what to call this anymore. I really don’t. The team does such a great job. Give it up for our creative people, if you would-thank you guys, for making this so much fun.
I guess technically we’d call it a service, it’s a worship service, that’s kind of short for worship service, a service, our Christmas service. But it’s an experience. It’s a Christmas experience. It’s now an event. In fact, I love my friends who don’t do church a lot, the last few years they say, “David, what time are your Christmas shows? What time of your Christmas shows?”
And it used to be I try to reframe that “no, it’s actually a worship..-” Guess what? It’s a show. Yes. Welcome to our Christmas show. And if you’re deeply spiritual that offends you, like we shouldn’t have show. No. We should have a show.
The church should have a show- every weekend we should have a show. I’ll tell you why. For my super spirituals right now, don’t log off, because Jesus promised and Matthew’s Gospel that anytime two or three or more would gather in his name, he would SHOW.
Note. The I want Candy song was abbreviated, leaving out these lines:
I go to see him when the sun goes down
Ain’t no finer boy in town
You’re my guy, you’re what the doctor ordered
You’re so sweet, you make my mouth water
I want candy
I want candy
Hey
Candy on the beach, there’s nothing better
But I like candy when it’s wrapped in a sweater
Some day soon I’ll make you mine
Then I’ll have candy all the time
I want candy
I want candy
