Finding Grace in Midtown Atlanta
God forbid a woman prays aloud in front of a man — at age 10 the gender inequalities expressed within the private Christian school I attended bothered me. It seemed so demeaning, not being able to pray aloud when there was a man in the room. That was the version of church I didn’t like. The kind where religion lived inside a school full of mean girls and boys who told me I needed to shave my legs. Where there was no music accompaniment in chapel — it was all a cappella — and the lesson is all about keeping our purity. Because if we so much as kiss for too long we’re going to hell.
There was no such thing as “grace,” and condemnation was their favorite way to preach the gospel. It’s no wonder I became one the 31% of people ages 13–29 who left the church they grew up in.
But like the Prodigal Son I found my way back.
When I ended up at Baylor University in Texas, I witnessed the part of Christianity I never got to see — the part in which being a Christian was cool. There was actually music, and it was good. The kind of music that revolutionized the Christian music scene in the 1970s, with electric guitars and poetic lyrics. When a women stepped on stage to preach a sermon — and it was catered to discussions related to my life stage like mental health, parties and alcohol — I knew this was the version of Christianity I wanted to be a part of.
Having experienced contemporary Christianity at Baylor within small and mid-sized churches, I wanted to find something like that when I moved to Atlanta. Pew Research Center claimed Christianity is still the most popular religion for 18 to 29 year-olds, but the number has been decreasing for decades with more people switching to religiously unaffiliated. There were lots of churches to choose from, from neighborhood house churches to steeples hanging Pride flags outside. The best idea to find grace in Atlanta? Go with the numbers, and that meant megachurches.
Passion City Church
Passion City Church was the first stop because it’s one of the most popular churches in the area with their chart topping worship band. It’s a genuine megachurch. I anticipated a church of mega-proportion, being Passion City Church is one of the several megachurches in Atlanta with over 2,000 people in attendance on Sunday morning. The sheer amount of people surprised me, I felt like walking into a concert arena.
Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas but Atlanta challenged them with this old box store turned church, complete with an overflow parking lot. This wasn’t what I thought church could look like.
“Megachurches are a contemporary anomaly,” said Russell Huizing, a contemporary Christian theologist. “But the number of megachurches worldwide significantly increased in the latter parts of the 20th century.”
An anomaly that’s clearly a success for the Atlanta Christian. According to Pew Research, 76% of adults living in metro Atlanta call themselves Christians. At this single service, there’s hundreds of people. Then consider the more populated 11:45 a.m. and 5 p.m. service. That’s only one location. Like most megachurches, they have several locations, each with equal attendance rates and a booming online attendance as well.
I found a seat next to a couple that looked friendly, and ironically their last name was Friend. When asked about what’s appealing for them in this massive space, he said, “Our kids love it here. And we try to attend every week. Key word — try.”
But it doesn’t seem like anyone would notice, I think to myself. No one is talking to anyone outside of the person they walked through the door with. This is church where if you decided to sleep in on a Sunday, no one would know.
So when I decided to move on and try out another church, no one even noticed.
Buckhead Church
The next Sunday, I attended Buckhead Church. I pulled up in my old scratched Toyota alongside G-Wagons and questioned whether I was wealthy enough to attend. I went in anyway.
Despite the fancy cars everyone arrived in, I was shocked by the attendees’ Sunday best. Casual attire is one of the major benefits to attending a megachurch because there’s so many people, your outfit choices can’t possibly get judged by your grandmother wearing her pearls. No constricting ties for the men or uncomfortable heels for the ladies. But Buckhead Church took casual to the extreme.
Lululemon leggings and New Balance sneakers were part of the unsaid but socially agreed upon dress code. I even spotted a young woman in a short tennis skirt and an oversized Ole Miss hoodie. What happened to Sunday best?
When the lights dimmed and the worship band came out, they were excellent. And as Keelie Blount, who claimed herself as a frequent megachurch attendee, said, “It’s like most churches these days, the music is just incredible.”
But when my introduction to the pastor was from a screen rolling down over the stage and a projector showing a livestream from another location, (in this case, one of eight locations in Atlanta) it felt impersonal, less intimate. As if I’d get the same out this experience if I chose to stay home in my sweatpants.
I attended all these big name churches with songs written for the Billboard Hot 100 in gospel music, with pastors who’ve reached celebrity status selling their bestselling book in their resources section. But on average, 5 million people attend a megachurch on Sunday morning across America. People are finding grace in these places, but it’s not the version I was looking for. And I ran out of hope. This distant, performative aspect of Christianity didn’t feel right. I’m not alone in this feeling.
T.M. Luhrmann, an American psychological anthropologist , had this to say about the megachurch service: “The smooth quality of a Sunday morning performance at a megachurch… The goal is to make members of the audience cry, or at least move them. But once you realize that the music has been selected to induce these emotions, it can feel like cheating.”
I thought about the recent Asbury revival, an event that got Christians and mainstream news to cover the event. During a regularly scheduled chapel service in Asbury University located in Kentucky, a “revival” happened. A miraculous peace that swept the congregation that lead to a two week long session of prayer. Classes were cancelled, the word spread rapidly and people were coming across the country to be a part of it, to witness the incredible peace that fell over that space.
Stephen A. Seamands, a professor at Asbury said this about the revival: “The atmosphere is serene, deep and at times rather quiet.”
This is the opposite of what I’d experienced at a megachurch, where everything was timed out so perfectly they didn’t allow the time for revival to happen. They sang “Jesus, show up in this place,” but don’t allow the time to wait around and see. After 10 to 15 seconds, it was time to close out in prayer and move on. The clock timer turned red, and it’s a mad dash outside. In and out in a perfect hour of worship.
Grace Midtown
I had to try something different, so I went to Grace Midtown. A small church just outside of Georgia Tech’s campus with a weekly attendance of 150 to 200 people. The experience here felt so much more intimate. The group in front of me was greeted by name, and waved to people across the room.
There were no big stage lights, no overhead lights at all, thanks to the massive windows flooding in the natural morning light. They had technical difficulties — something the megachurches might have had too, but their tech and media teams were employed by the church, legitimate professionals who know exactly how to mask the mishaps. Whereas with smaller churches like Grace Midtown, the tech team is all volunteers. People who are learning.
“I used to go to the megachurches,” said Shelley Sebastian, a regular Grace Midtown attendee. But it was just too big. It’s so much more personal here.”
It wasn’t just that the pastor was physically there, or even that they sang the same songs that the megachurches did — you felt seen. After going there for several Sundays, people I sat next to remembered my name and invited me to lunch after the service. They even asked if I wanted to join their house church, a version of church that’s a return to what Christianity looked like when Jesus walked the earth.
“The Church, throughout the vast amount of its history has been made up of smaller congregations,” said Huizing. These mega versions of church are a recent phenomenon, but in Atlanta, there’s hundreds of churches tucked down neighborhood streets, all choosing to stay small and intimate with their gatherings.
“Megachurches historically have been stronger at the evangelism/making disciples but weaker in the maturing of those disciples,” Huizing continued. “Smaller churches have been strong at the maturing of disciples but have a smaller reach than megachurches.”
When I was a new believer, megachurches like Passion City Church, Free Chapel and Buckhead Church would’ve worked for me. But Huizing put into words an abstract feeling of mine, that I was simply craving something deeper. I wanted that personal relationship. And that’s one of the ideas that the church was founded upon — a personal relationship and experience.
Megachurches may be the trailblazers in making national headlines and reaching the ends of the earth, but the small local churches are reaching the people in their backyards and neighborhoods. I found my grace, within the smaller churches where the congregation knows one another by name.
