Las Vegas Has a Few Lessons For the LCMS

By: Rev. Jack Cascione
Billions of dollars of new construction in the past five years show that Las Vegas is now marketing and cashing in on tradition, art, history, and culture.

If anyone has their finger on the pulse and direction of American taste and culture trends, it is Las Vegas that knows what sells.

While in Southern California, my wife and I drove 280 miles across the desert to Las Vegas, a place we have never had the opportunity to visit.  At 3:00 pm on Thursday, February 6th, 2003 the streets, with escalators and elevated walkways over the eight lane strip and palm-treed median, were packed with tens of thousands of people.

After doing a little local research, I learned that the buildings now under construction on the new strip are focused on one idea: high rollers, high roller condominiums, hotel rooms, restaurants, etc.  Last year, Las Vegas casinos took in 17 billion dollars.

Having grown up in New York City and traveled to Venice, Florence, etc., I was amazed at the scale, size, and breathtaking beauty of new casinos like the Bellagio, Venetian, Caesar's Palace, and Paris.

These casinos are among the largest hotels and building complexes in the world.  They have 3000 to 5000 rooms, 100-store shopping malls; exclusive
shops featuring imported fashions, jewelry, and art; convention centers, theaters, gardens, fountains, canals, statues, paintings, art galleries, fabulous atriums, exhibits, and, of course, expansive areas for gambling. The entrances to the Venetian and Bellagio rivals anything to be found in Europe.

Currently, the majority of LCMS District Presidents are promoting the Church Growth, low-roller, theater seat, bare stage, and empty warehouse look. Meanwhile, Las Vegas, the town noted for sleaze, is now presenting itself as a thing of beauty, style, and class.  Things do change.  They are bringing in families.

Current architectural trends in LCMS Church buildings are copying the styles of Baptists, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart.  The Council Of District Presidents, (COP) has staked the Synod's future on the praise band.  By comparison, these new LCMS Church Growth buildings make the rather austere LCMS facilities of the past 100 years look ornate.

A Las Vegas bum stepped up to my car at the end of the exit ramp off the highway, nodding his head and pointing to his sign that read, "Why lie?  I need a beer."  He turned if over and it read "Budweiser."  That's more honesty than we get from the COP and the CCM.

Art and architecture are only reflections of philosophy and belief. Tasteless buildings; services void of content, vacuous repetitive lyrics, the appeal to emotionalism, and theologically immature preaching are the stuff of low rollers, fads, short attention spans, and self extinction.  The COP has dumped the treasures of historic Lutheran theology, liturgy, music, hymnody, and art, for contemporary tent rallies.  Whom the god's would destroy, they first drive mad.

Every building is a thing of this world.  Every building is vanity.  The only comparison between Las Vegas and the LCMS is that Las Vegas now loves art, culture, music, tradition, and history, and the LCMS does not.  In fact, the COP despises these things and encourages the most shortsighted, tasteless, opportunistic LCMS clergy to enroll in PLI and learn how to exterminate every vestige of Lutheran culture, tradition, and history.  At the same time PLI, presents itself as the champions of the entrepreneurial spirit.  In other words, PLI teaches that less is best.

The LCMS Church Extension Fund has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to build architectural kitsch.

Wisdom is justified by her children.  Who in the COP will admit or even understand that Rev. Larry White, and Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas have erected a new church building that is most appealing to American taste?

If you haven't visited or worshipped in Our Savior, it is worth the trip to Houston.  Our Savior presents an amazing array of paintings, statuary, sculptural relief, architecture, and historic Lutheran worship and is, as they say, packing them in.  Get there early or you may not get a seat. White is proving that buildings can be effective tools for evangelism.

On Thursday night, with tens of thousands of rooms, Las Vegas was sold out. They mysteriously "lost" our reservations at the Stardust.  After an hour, the travel agency found us a room at the Imperial; room 711.  We walked into the elevator.  Only two buttons were pushed on the elevator: 7 and 11.

Now, let's not get pietistic about gambling.  Yes, I did gamble.  People waste money and spend it on entertainment, restaurants, movie tickets, gasoline in their boats, sporting events etc.  I put one dollar in a machine at the Bellagio.  Unlike many stories I've heard about people who went to Las Vegas, I lost my buck.

Is that collection plate for missions on Sunday any better than a Las Vegas slot machine?

The COP knows how to blow a 100 million a year in LCMS mission money and has little to show for it.  Gambling is a lot more fun than supporting hundreds of mindless District Presidents and District Executives while the Synod cuts missionaries.  Fire the District staff and save souls for Jesus.

The Lutheran pietists who think gambling is a sin should reexamine the word "hypocrisy."  Gamblers know that playing the slots is not an act of worship, but what does God think about lay people who aren't concerned about the souls who never benefit from their mission dollars?  Perhaps they expect God to say, "Well done good and faithful lay people who supported the fat bureaucracy."  Las Vegas doesn't have exclusive rights on sin and there is no immunity from sin in the church pew.  It was the clergy who hollered for Christ's death, not the hookers and tax collectors.

I was amazed at how serious the gamblers were.  One man, with all the intensity of a traditional worshipper, hit at least 300 dollars on one number at the roulette wheel and didn't flinch.  I whispered in my wife's ear that he just won, because she didn't understand what the stacks of chips meant.  When experienced gamblers won at the slots or the tables, they didn't jump up and down or get excited.  They were almost stone faced and just kept playing.  Why are so many of the COP trying to make LCMS worship services and emotional experience?  Serious people aren't emotional fanatics.

We thank God that we are saved by faith in Christ alone; however, we do have to worship some place.  Most church buildings are a statement of what the worshippers believe.  We can only conclude that the Church Growth buildings and what goes on in them, now so popular with the LCMS and the current Synodical President, are nothing to write home about.

The gellata at the Bellagio was as good as any I've tasted in Italy.  The gellata confectionary and its location along the marble promenade overlooking the Roman garden and pools were exquisite.

If the COP has been to Las Vegas they certainly have not understood it.

February 12, 2003