Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Megachurch
43,500 weekly attendance
Posted on 08/27/2013 11:53:37 AM PDT by NYer
Megachurch. Two young ladies. Both had left the Catholic Church. Both were now attending “megachurches.” We had a good chat together. I wanted to understand their reasons for why they left the Catholic Church for a megachurch.
Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Megachurch
43,500 weekly attendance
I was at the bank and somehow I got into a spiritual conversation with two Hispanic executives that worked there.
When I asked why they exchanged the Catholic Church for the megachurch, they gave me a number of reasons:
Although these two ladies didn’t articulate it explicitly to me, I could tell that they were very proud of their new churches. I could also discern in them a surprise that I am so “spiritual” and yet I am very excited about being Catholic. They assumed the “with it” people were leaving Catholicism for the bigger and better and deal.
I asked them what they miss about being Catholic. They replied with two answers:
I asked both about the Eucharist: “Don’t you miss the Eucharist?”
This question didn’t phase them one bit. “Oh we still have communion. They pass out little crackers and cups of juice. I like this better because I thought drinking from one big cup is icky. Spreads germs.”
“But in the Catholic Church,” I replied, “we believe that the Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Jesus?”
I may as well have said, “Don’t you know that there are Martians in my back pocket.” She was unaware that the Catholic Church taught this. No idea.
This, my brothers and sisters, is the crux of the problem. These girls were raised as Catholics, but did not know about the Eucharist. They did not know that the Eucharist is God. They did not understand the Holy Eucharist is the center of the Catholic tradition.
So when they compare our ho-hum Catholic music and pedestrian sermons to snazzy well produced musical productions and highly polished bulleted sermons from handsome professional speakers…where are they going to go?
If they had believed that the Holy Eucharist is truly the Lord Jesus Christ, then they would have stayed. This is the task of the New Evangelization if there is going to be one. Can we communicate the mystery of Eucharist. If we fail in that, everyone is leaving the building.
Godspeed,
Taylor
PS: I don’t mean to suggest that having the Holy Eucharist is an excuse for bad music, bad vestments, bad architecture, and bad sermons. The Eucharist is like a precious diamond. It deserves a platinum setting…not a plastic setting. We can’t say, “Well, we have the Eucharist – so you’re forced to stay and have a miserable experience every Sunday.” We can’t keep the sacraments hostage to mediocracy.
PPS: With 1 billion strong, the Catholic Church is the real megachurch!
Pope Francis at Rio de Janeiro
3 million people
They are told they do not have enough faith or they are not giving enough to the huckster.
You think the Bible is idolatry?
I think Osteen is planning on keeping Catholic traditions of Bingo, Wedding annulment payments and financial indulgences.
I’ve done these threads before, I think I will pass on this one.
I can see how someone who only has prayer can think prayer is synonymous with worship.
Read the Mass someday. It is true worship. The offering of the One Perfect Sacrifice to the Father.
Dulia is not latria.
If holding a parade for someone is worship then we all worshipped our soldiers after WWII.
LOL!!! I must have missed this verse, then:
O most blessed and sweet Virgin Mary,
Mother of God, filled with all tenderness, Daughter of the most high King,
Lady of the Angels,
Mother of all the faithful,
On this day and all the days of my life,
I entrust to your merciful heart my body and my soul,
all my acts, thoughts, choices,
desires, words, deeds,
my entire life and death,
so, Catholics believe that if i pray to vishnu I’m not worshiping a false god?
I know we blame the Church and sometimes rightly so but part of it is that they are not listening.
I know a couple, life-long Catholics who got taken in by a very charismatic, fly by night church and then they tried to tell us how the Catholic Church isn’t Bible based and they never heard scripture at Mass!!!!!!!!!
Where were they? I know they were there cuz I saw them! How could they not hear? How could they not see? But they didn’t. “There are none so blind....”
I am active in my church, I do a little of everything but I think the most important thing I do is pray. We need God to work in their lives, to open their hearts and their minds to His Word.
Too many people want religious entertainment. They want the easy path. They want to be told that their choices are the most important, that once saved, they are saved forever. They don’t want to do the hard work of actually following Jesus, they just want to believe and let it go at that.
Yes, that is exactly what we believe. That’s why i so clearly stated so in an earlier post.
Ok, now that that is done, if you have any questions grounded in reality come on back.
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
I used to describe it as the "money" quote from Jerry Maguire: "show me the money". Now that reference is too aged, so I describe it in 3 words: It's Never Enough.
Those 3 words apply to everything we do, whether in our church, our marriage, our friendships, our work, etc.
To me, God speaks to us in a loving way to do our best, to never quit.
I remind my students that it's not easy to be a Catholic...it's hard work. It's not enough to merely go to Mass once a week, or to give up something during Lent...it's never enough.
Speaking to your post, I love teaching the Old Testament, because it's at the heart of our traditions. How can one appreciate our faith without knowing the important men and women of the Old Testament?
For example, a sizable percentage of the First Readings are from the Book of Isaiah. Why? What makes him so important? That's just one of the lessons we teach during the year.
What an unusual experience, it sure flies in the face of reality and the facts. In real life they arrive Catholic.
Neither!
Kind of like choosing between anthrax and smallpox.
I’m not trying to troll it up. If prayer is not worship, where is the line drawn? I know from study that the bible forbids communication with the dead, and states that christ is our one and only mediator. I do not know, nor have a researched what the Catholic faith believes. I didn’t know if spirit worship was okay with the RCC as long as it was for request and not adoration.
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Someone on FB posted a link to a site which discusses tv “ministers”. I went to it and read some of the articles. One was about how osteen charges for getting seats close to him. Others were about how one needed an upgrade to his chopper and one needed his plane repainted. Made me nauseated. I had already seen through some of their donations for windfalls schemes. These numbskulls are getting wealthy from vulnerable people.
So true that. They were pretty good at slaughtering God's prophets back in the day.
Other than methodology and a few new rules, little has changed in that regard.
Well stated Longfellow! We, each of us, must take the light of Christ into our Hearts to beat back the darkness of evil. We are his Body on earth.
Our Father comes to us by appealing to our intellect. We must be voracious in our hunger to pray more, learn more, give more and evangelize more.
BE BOLD, BE CATHOLIC!
That doesn't make the Trinity an easy doctrine, but basically you understand that love tends toward unity, and if your ARE absolute love ("God is love") -- your Trinity-Unity is absolute --- goes beyond anything a human mind can fathom.
They can spell "encyclopedia," too, and find Chattanooga on a map of Tennessee.
Not that hard, really.
But you need to be taught.
“Many people forget the value of Apostolic succession.”
Extra-Biblical.
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