2 /5 Caitlin Elliott: Really thought the entire setup very odd and gave the vibes of franchised retail chain mega-church, in that the main campus in South Tampa just broadcasts Aaron Burke’s service via live feed on a massive projector screen, instead of having the location pastor creating and having his own service that follows the weekly theme. I was expecting the location pastor to have written and thought out his own service, but all he did was stand up, introduce himself and then pull up the live feed of Aaron preaching from South Tampa. It just feels very impersonal, takes away the importance of the location pastor’s duty and connection to that local congregation, and gives me the feeling that location pastors are just empty figureheads with diminished purpose, like a McDonalds franchise with a store manager while Aaron as the self-important “CEO” pastor, gets absolute authority. It makes it seem that Aaron doesn’t condone location pastors having their own creative control, that maybe he’s a bit of an authoritarian over the entire chain of locations, and/or that all locations are just loud speakers and additional seating for the main south Tampa campus which is really antithetical to what I value in a local church. Some people might love this setup but I find it severely lacking.
