I was mid wisdom lit paper when I remembered that if I hadn't posted in a while, I must have forgotten to blog about CROWNED! (I know you've been dieing to hear what I thought about it)
I was a part of an 8 girl group who drove up to Birmingham on Friday, April 1st for the CROWNED event at the Basement. Pretty much since my sophomore year I've been hearing about how amazing this place is, so I figured this was a good time to see what its all about.
As we walked up to the building, the crowd of women was growing larger and larger outside the doors. The Basement plays "first come first served" in the worst way for seats in the room. They open the doors at the very last minute possible before the event begins. After being greeting by gorgeous, perky women with name tags, we walked toward the music at the door. It was the instrumental version of "California Girls" by Kati Perry. The secular music continued as we walked into what was labeled the "theater," not to be confused with a sanctuary where one worships God or finds a safe place from the things of this world.
They massively under estimated the number of women who would attend the event; there were enough seats for half of us, all of which were saved by the time we made it inside. My group found a spot against the wall in the back and sat on the floor behind the chairs.
The event opened with three girls dancing to secular music on the stage in Victoria's Secret T shirts. These three girls stayed on stage for the "worship" portion, except there wasn't a band and they didn't actually sing into the microphones. The DJ played portions of really popular worship songs sung by mostly women, except the version of Kari Jobe's "Healer" was a man singing.The DJ played a verse and a chorus worth of a song and abruptly moved onto the next song.
After the musical portion, a man came on stage to introduce the speaker, Matt Pitt (yes, a male speaker at a women's event). He got the kind of introduction a rock star might get at some kind of awards show. He walked on to the stage as women screamed and worshiped him. The praises for this man, who changed his life from being a druggie to being a "christian" were a little too much for me. Pitt had three points to his talk. 1. you are SPECIAL. (That means you shouldn't have bad self esteem). 2. You are UNIQUE. (That means that you shouldn't compare yourself to other women because, well see #1) 3. You are ROYALTY. (I think his explanation had something to do with God, but I didn't really get it). There was no scripture referenced. There was very little mention of God or Jesus. At one point, I thought he was holding a Bible, but it turned out to be a converse high top...which he used to tell us that even though we are princesses, we don't have to have glass slippers, some of us have converse "slippers."
It was "therapeutic deism" at its finest. It was all "hands in the air" (they told us to), "Christianity is so great, its always just like this: easy, happy, and fun!" There was no disclaimer telling girls that as Christians we still have struggles...as a matter of fact we are supposed to be persecuted for our faith.
After Pitt was done, there were more bits of songs. I knew some of the girls in my group needed to get back, but I felt like we needed to talk about everything we had experienced, so we left early. We discussed our thoughts over food at Cracker Barrel. Before sharing my own thoughts, I asked for theirs. Most of the girls were on the same page as me, but a few felt that they really needed the experience there. I thought that was awesome. We talked a lot about what we could gain from the message, and I added some scripture that I thought might help support Pitt's message.
All in all we had a great time. Our little group from Huntingdon bonded over MASH for most of the night and spent the night at my apartment. As far a fellowship goes, I don't think we could have had a better event, but as far as being educated in our faith, I think we might have lacked something.
In case you have been to the Basement and had a very different experience, please let me know. I would really like to know if this event was different than their normal weekly service. I hope that our experience was just a fluke. I would love to hear your opinions though!
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