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LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, May 9, 2002: Southeast Christian Church is an example of a new breed of magachurch — a full-service “24/7” sprawling village, which offers many of the conveniences and trappings of secular life centered around a spiritual core. While unusual for America, it is similar to the temple towns of India, and represents the impulse of humans to live in a spiritual environment. In this American version, it is possible to eat, shop, go to school, bank, work out, scale a rock-climbing wall and pray there, all without leaving the grounds. These churches are no longer simply places to worship, they have become part resort, part mall, part extended family and part town square. In Glendale, Arizona, the 12,000-member Community Church of Joy, which has a school, conference center, bookstore and mortuary on its 187-acre property, has embarked on a $100 million campaign to build a housing development, a hotel, convention center, skate park and water-slide park, transforming itself into what Dr. Walt Kallestad, the senior pastor, calls a “destination center.” The churches have even become alternative employers. At the Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston, a McDonald’s will open this month. Part of its goal is to provide jobs for young people and create a controlled, protective setting for kids. By making it possible to inhabit the church from morning to night, cradle to grave, these full-service churches can shelter congregants, said Dr. Randall Ballmer, a professor of American religion at Barnard College, from “a broader society that seems unsafe, unpredictable and out of control, underscored by school shootings and terrorism.” This lengthy article goes on to discuss the pros and cons of these new communities including tensions between church and state that have arisen.

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