it’s a city we all know and love - big sky country, as the locals call it, houston stays at the top of my list of beautiful american resort destinations. or not.
houston’s draw for me centers around one thing - adam kuhlmann. i holed up at his place for 2 or 3 nights and am eternally grateful. i have to report that he beat me at darts (probably because he cheated, but i’m not sure how yet), and is still as intelligent as ever. i was treated to a number of fine meals and even an art museum.
but the highlight of this trip has to be joel osteen. adam’s girlfriend is a good, christian girl and in the course of making fun of this (in a good-hearted manner, to be sure), we stumbled upon joel as a topic of discussion. it wasn’t long before we dared each other to go to his houston-based church, lakewood. sweet.
honestly, it was ridiculous. we’re walking from the parking garage to the church and the crowd gets bigger at every turn. i use the term ‘church’ faily loosely because the actual building is much closer to a stadium than a church. we get inside and we’re making our way to the cheap seats when an usher spots my camera and asks if we’re “first-timers.” we admit that we’ve never been here before and the usher tells us she can get us good seats down by the stage. floor seats. score.
she leads us into the labyrinth, down elevators, through secret hallways, past the ritual sacrifice rooms and finally opens the door onto the floor of the church. i’m not exaggerating when i tell you it was like walking into a rock concert. laser light show, pounding music, screaming fans - it was all there. our guide pushes through, taking us closer and closer to the stage. we end up 3 rows back, stage right maybe 15 feet from joel himself. i’m so giddy i’m shaking.
the singing (i believe the technical term is ‘praise) continues for some time before joel’s wife, victoria, gives a quick story. she tells us she dialed a wrong number and happened to have a conversation with the person who answered. amazingly enough, the person was in dire need of prayer and victoria was only too willing to oblige. it seems that perhaps that wasn’t a wrong number after all!! doesn’t god work in such mysterious ways?
anyway, the service was quite entertaining; joel’s a fine public speaker and everything is catered to those with short attention spans. beautiful people were all around us although it was a refreshing change of pace to see a fairly mixed group, racially and socio-economically. although i think it would a little difficult to find anything controversial or even disagreeable in joel’s “message” that 2007 is going to be a year of victory and preaching the power of positive thinking.
after the service, we wandered by the bookstore. we had time because it takes a while for 8,000 (typical attendance) people to leave a parking garage. if what we saw that sunday was representative at all, joel is making more money than he knows what to do with. he runs his church like a business, and it surely is a profitable one. the church considers you a member after 3 services, but you only have to buy 2 books to make it all the way into heaven.
frankly, i don’t think it’d be worth it.
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