23 :: Victory Church - Midtown

Today I worshiped at Victory Church - Midtown, here in Atlanta. I've been staying with Jonah while he gets ready to start school tomorrow and I decided to see what churches were close by. I found a church online that had a great website. I had an incredible Sunday and I can't say enough good things about this place. Victory Church is a fantastic congregation.

The main campus of Victory Church is based in Norcross, in metro Atlanta. I attended service at the Midtown campus, which was a smaller location that is one of the satellite locations of this church. The Midtown service is held at a co-working facility. This means that the church spins up at the co-working facility on Sundays and more or less has the entire place to itself. Then, come Sunday evening, they break everything down and the facility returns to its non-sacred use as a co-working facility.

I came early and spent some time with the people assembled there while the earlier service was still going on. I also wandered around and took pictures.

Here are some of my pics, the last one being the countdown to the beginning of the 11 am service:

When I first got there, I was greeted warmly by a young woman named Sarah. She was born in South Korea, grew up in Southern California, went to school at the University of Chicago, and now has ended up living in Atlanta. She described her journey of faith in each of the phases of her life and said it had really been important for her to be in a multi-racial church - which Victory Church clearly is. Sarah was nice enough to introduce me to  Andrew Momon, who, along with his wife Kendra, is the co-pastor of the Midtown site.

While Sarah and I were talking, I mentioned that Jonah and I had visited Stone Mountain Park on Saturday. Stone Mountain is a great place with a questionable legacy and problematic social themes. One of its attributes is a carved mountainside with a depiction of Jefferson David, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Sarah mentioned that Victory Church and many other multi-racial congregations around Atlanta had gone to the top of Stone Mountain for a prayer vigil. As I asked more about that, Sarah told me of the history where a Methodist minister in 1915 who had taken a group of white men to the top of Stone Mountain to burn a cross, providing a theological blessing to the modern Klu Klux Klan. [link]

She described the prayer vigil as "breaking the curse" that had been put on the location based on this event in 1915. This story was so beautiful - a groups of Christians of many races, all coming together to participate in spiritual warfare on one of the key topics of modern American life. This was the story that helped me see that I was in exactly the kind of congregation that I can deeply identify with.

A picture of Stone Mountain that I took

Here I am with Sarah:

The  service hadn't even started, yet I had a very solid understanding that I was in a special place.

When the band cranked up, the music proved to be excellent. The band performed many songs, including "Run to the Father." This has become a favorite of mine since I heard the band at Freedom House perform it a couple of months ago. Great tune!

Here's a video and some pictures of the band cranking out some great music:

As positive as my experience had been, the sermon proved to be the thing that really bowled me over. It was given by a new pastor, a guy named Johnson Bowie. It was one in a series of sermons called "Explicit." The sermon was fed in via video from the Norcross campus.

Today's sermon was about... pornography. 

It was an extremely powerful sermon and put forth the idea that pornography is making us pay a deep price at both an individual and a societal level. In addition to the damage being done by pornography, the sermon put forth the idea that there's an attendant trend in society called "porn culture" that is equally destructive. The term "porn culture" refers to all of the things that live outside the boundaries of pornography but draw people into pornography. In essence, these things are two sides of the same coin.

The banner for the sermon series

It was a very powerful subject to hear a sermon about. This is not generally the kind of content that people want to wake up and hear about on a Sunday morning. It's difficult stuff, no doubt! Check out the picture below and open it up to its larger version... these are some pretty sobering statistics to read.

~ More young people will say that not recycling is bad than will say the same about viewing pornography.

~ More than half of teenagers have received an explicit text message (sexting) and nearly half have sent one.

~ Pornography is now above financial stress as a primary reason for divorce.

And on and on.

In addition to the statistics that were challenging, there are moral and theological themes that must be considered when talking about this social problem.

On a purely moral dimension, it is a good thing when people put value on valuable things. Sex is a valuable act in that it can be a deep expression of love, can bond two people together in profoundly loving ways and (most importantly) it generates new life. Taking something of such significance and cheapening it into a commodity in the way that we have... it's really a form of tragedy and a sign that our society is not well in some key ways.

An additional moral dimension is what is done to women in the pornography industry. Not only are an inordinate number of woman exploited, and even trafficked, in the process of producing pornography, but the nature of pornography now is increasingly focused around content that demeans woman and glorifies violence toward them. Put simply, more Americans than ever watch rape as a form of entertainment.

One theological precept that was brought up in the sermon is that of imago dei, the idea that within each of us dwells the image of God. If we do violence to each other, including the violence that is the foundation of pornography, then we are doing violence to the image of God that dwells within each of us. Thereby, we are doing violence to ourselves and to God Himself.

The way Pastor Bowie said it was great - "You cannot claim to be pro-life and also use pornography."

I had never heard such a thing before. I thought it was bold to call out the evangelical community on their pro-life stance while not more aggressively taking on the life-destroying impact of pornography.

Boom.

Here are some pictures from the sermon:

I had never before considered the idea of "porn culture," but everything Pastor Bowie mentioned made me realize how much of society acts as a gateway into pornography itself. He gave one example where Amazon sold tee shirts - for girls aged 2 to 16 - that had some pretty shocking words on them. 

I had never heard of the thing that he mentioned, so I did some research on what he said, and it all checked out. Learn more at [this link].

Porn culture. 

The image of God within us. 

Putting value on valuable things. 

Revering life by revering both women and men in their divine totality.

My mind was simply reeling from all of it. A really, really important sermon that left me with so much to think about. Candidly, I can't believe more churches don't broach this subject. 

They need to, in my opinion.

After the sermon, Pastor Andrew came on stage in Midtown and spoke in an accessible and vulnerable way about the struggles life has for all of us, including himself. He was calling all of us to be better and move higher, to help each other within the Body of Christ and to keep our eyes trained on the Lord. He asked the married couples in the room to take accountability for helping each other see how to do better in the face of their mutual struggles. Every marriage has those, that is for sure. It was beautiful and touching.

The band cranked out another good song or two, then we were dismissed by row in a slow and phased fashion. I had the chance to tell Pastor Andrew how much I enjoyed the service and how powerful it was. He thanked me by name and told me to come back whenever I was in Atlanta.

And you can be  sure that I will do exactly that. As I looked over my shoulder in the parking lot, I liked what I saw and felt thankful for what I had experienced at this exceptional church.

If you're from Atlanta and happen to wander across this blog - it doesn't matter if you are a believer or a seeker or not even sure what you are - I highly recommend that you check out Victory Church. It's a place that is making an impact. You can enjoy great music, connect with awesome and friendly people, as well as have your mind challenged and expanded in a way that will impact you for both time and eternity.

Like I said earlier - Boom.

Thanks to everyone at Victory Church for an amazingly powerful service today.