Vintage Jesus - My experience with the plastic fantastic Christ

My first encounter with the Mars Hill Church was a few years back. I received a postcard from them. Pictured was a bottle of wine with an old Gothic font that read "Vintage Jesus". Over the weekend I had my first interaction with Mars Hill...

I was a bit groggy when I awoke, late, and began to rush around in order to be ready when my sister arrived. It was Easter Sunday and while the clouds hung heavy with raindrops we prepared for what I thought would be the typical service to commemorate the resurrection.
My sister was late in her arrival, but that didn't stop me from getting coffee on the way, nothing better than seven shots of espresso to jolt you into a day. We wove our way across the city in a diagonal pattern. Everywhere we went the roads were starting to swell with rain run off.
When we reached the intended location we found that parking was a problem. After circling through neighborhood street, we finally were able to stow the car about four blocks from the facility.
The outside of the building was fairly nondescript. A gray exterior surrounded what appeared to have been a warehouse of some kind. There were young families unloading outside the main entrance in order to avoid getting the children wet.
The foyer was full of women mulling about in vibrantly colored dresses and men standing uncomfortably in suits with well placed ties. It seemed as thought the majority of those in attendance were 30-something families. Children were running all about like mice in a grain field. I nearly crushed a smaller child when he darted underneath my foot while I was fighting my way to the seating area.
The main foyer was much as it would seem from the outside. The ceiling was exposed and ducts ran overhead painted the same color as the walls in order to lessen their impact. Attached to the ducts or bolted directly to the ceiling were many large flat screen televisions bearing down over the congregation. There were rows and rows of folding chairs arranged so as to provide four aisles through the room. In the center of the room there was a sound booth with multiple people bustling about.
The stage was a world unto itself. There were flowers on one side with a white backdrop. The other side supported a large number of instruments more commonly found at a rock concert than at a church. In the center of the stage was a large, probably about 12 foot tall, white plastic cross. It bore down on the room with a sort of artificial authority that only plastic can provide.
My father and step mother were holding our seats in the center row just behind the sound booth. We were able to speak only briefly before the event began.
A group of musicians came onto the stage and began playing. I'm not exactly sure what it was but none of the music they played seemed appropriate for church, now matter how many times "Gloria"'s or "Alleluia"'s were sang.
The pastor delivering the sermon came onto the left side of the stage and began his message by discussing the Apostle Peter. His faced beamed out across the room from each of the televisions in a way that made it difficult to look at his actual presence and not the produced transmission. However it was not long before I realized what was going to happen.
The sermon quickly took a tone of denigration towards anyone who was not "born again". He maliciously attacked the Jews for making a pilgrimage to the burial site of Abraham. He ignorantly attacked the Islamic faith for believing in a man whose earthly remains remained on earth. He condescendingly attacked Buddhism for mourning the death of the Buddha. He told us all that in order to find salvation we must be "born again" (a term used close to 50 times in his sermon) but then left no answers as to how to achieve this goal other than "let Christ in". For about twenty minutes the pastor went between empty promises of salvation for nothing and assaulting non Christian faiths with grossly misinformed facts.
Luckily, or so I thought, the sermon was not terribly long. He wrapped up the scene and the band reemerged onto stage right. In the area where the pastor once stood a large baptismal pool was moved into place. A different pastor came out to announced that it was time for baptisms and invite anyone in the audience who was moved by the sermon to come forward for instant salvation. They began with a long line of people queued up back stage and the band went into a haphazard melody of songs. A few minutes into this a light show began behind the band. Just when I thought that it couldn't get anymore superficial the smoke machine kicked in, leaving a hazy fog to cover the cross which was now being displayed in an almost Technicolor rotation of light.
The baptismal fount was more like the line at a fast food restaurant. As soon as one person completed taking a set of vows that was hidden to the audience the next person was already in the pool. They must have done over 40 baptisms in less than 15 minutes. I couldn't help but think of it more as a sideshow than a religious ceremony.

During this time they were also providing communion. This was the most blasphemous thing of all. There were stations set up amongst the aisle with people distributing the Eucharist. When people around me returned with their sacrament it was not what I had expected. The small piece of bread symbolizing the flesh of the savior had been dipped in the wine symbolizing the blood, greatly increasing efficiency at the cost of nearly destroying what should be a most sacred act. I had no idea that this kind of iconoclasm could exist within a supposedly Christian church.
The service ended and we left questioning where we should go for lunch. In what was probably the most fitting of all ends we ended up at a bar called the 4 B's where we ate pub food and played Buck Hunter.
Now I'll end with a question...I have long realized that organized religion is not what was intended for me, but at what point did we start giving up the true values of Christianity for this sacrilegious, quick fix, easy answer, institutionalized hate?