There are seven venues,” Community Lutheran Church pastor Ralph Supper explains, ducking into the largest, which guest preacher Jay Bakker filled to over-750 capacity this morning. “We identify as Lutheran ... but we don’t care who comes.”
It’s now late afternoon, and in an angular meeting room across the hall, Supper greets familiar and unfamiliar faces alike as they rapidly fill the seven white, round tables and three park benches in what he calls “our coffee-house set up.” A screen projecting nature-oriented computer images and a draped wooden cross rest in front; a table piled with Bakker’s Revolution Church tees—“Religion Kills,” with a red hand grenade; “Destroying Religion,” featuring a yellow handgun—rides the side near the free beverages. Everywhere there are stickers, novelty rolls of caution tape, white votive candles, jeans, tank tops, pink hair, piercings and tattoos. About half the crowd is grandparent-aged, and even at the scheduled 5:30 starting time, they’re still flooding in. The back walls slide away into pockets, more chairs and tables are placed, and the space instantly doubles in size and number.
After two songs by an acoustic duo and an introduction by Supper welcoming the “tired, weak, drunk ... whatever we are,” Bakker takes the microphone. Slightly balding and nasal, with a plaid shirt and horn-rims, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye gives a brief history of his life and that of his Revolution. His sermon, delivered mostly off-the-cuff and punctuated by jokes, is simple: Grace and unconditional love.
“Growing up, I got saved every other week,” he recalls. “Then school would start. And beer was everywhere.” But Romans 3 changed his life. “All fall short of God’s glorious standard. We need to remind ourselves and each other that we don’t have it all together.”
“Mm-hmm”s and “That’s right!”s punctuate his pauses, leading up to a condemnation of Christian hypocrisy.
“God’s told us who to vote for, what music to listen to, who to hang out with, who to worship ... If God voided his own old laws, well, he’s going to reject all our own man-made traditions.”
He’s talking about the homeless, and about homosexuals, bad patriots, Darfur, AIDS, good tippers, and railing against those who persecute and exclude in the name of Christ. “One day we’re going to look back historically and see we’ve made some pretty poor decisions,” he concludes, to swelling applause.
He’s surrounded by well-wishers immediately, but random groups coalesce throughout. Snippets of both a squealing “We love you, Jay!” and a mock-scoffing “... punk rock! I saw The Cure in ’78!” float out into the hallway.