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If you travel on Atlantic Boulevard with any regularity, you’ve probably been caught in the traffic jam this church causes when it lets out. Shortly after its construction in 2002, the Harvestdome — the church with the big globe out front — hit local airwaves (on WJXT) and later garnered nationwide syndication on BET. Now they’re going international, via Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is filming a conference featuring Bishop T.D. Jakes at the church
in February.
During what feels like a Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, video screens flash “APPLAUSE” and “SCREAM.” Ten or so
studio musicians lead the crowd in an hour-long, nearly deafening medley that moves seamlessly among gospel, R&B, soul, funk, even dancehall styles. The Harvestdome choir, comprising about 100 swaying, clapping singers, is the most animated I’ve witnessed, and during a song welcoming me, four girls twirl streamers in a sort of interpretive dance.
The Dome takes this category, no contest. People are literally running down the aisles. One parishioner sprints across the stage. Two ushers have to restrain a woman who is shaking and stomping the floor. Some worshippers rattle tambourines while they sing, and a few bust out nightclubready moves. At one point, a singer asks the members to spin until they’re dizzy. And when the screens flash “PUMP HIM UP,” nearly everyone throws up their hands to raise the roof.
Three-and-a-half hours into the service, Pastor R.J. Washington asks his people to lay their “tithes and offerings” at the feet of
a blind woman, a Russian girl suffering indistinct pain and a member with a bone fracture. The implication is obvious: Their healing depends on our giving.
Washington’s delivery is ear-piercing. He screams, brings it back down to a whisper, then suddenly screams again. He shakes his head and his hands, and at one point crawls on his knees.
Blame it on a bad first impression: seeing a hooked-up, chromed-out Hummer H2 in the “Pastor’s Parking” space. In a sermon that smacks of materialism — one Washington claims God laid on his heart in 1995 — he says that any suffering caused by the devil will yield a “double blessing” from God — a bigger house, nicer car, career promotion. “Apostle” Washington actually specifies the perks, and the crowd goes wild. Toward the end of the sermon, he reflects on how he
passed up a career as a Major League Baseball pitcher, at a time when he was rubbing shoulders with MC Hammer and Emmitt Smith, because God called him to preach.
Joining the ranks of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Jacksonville-born Washington declares 9/11 a product of America’s sin. He also asks us to pray for those ensnared in “lesbianism and homosexuality.”
Brief but bold: Washington says he’s not going to Hell, but the unsaved are.
I’m given the “VIP package” — a special parking space and an invitation to dinner with the pastor and “First Lady” April Washington. Three members hug me loosely during the greeting, and one holds her Bible so that I can read along, but I don’t get the warm feeling some of the other churches offered.
Though the church claims to be multiracial, the congregation is overwhelmingly black. It’s slightly more diverse than Bethel Baptist and Shiloh Metropolitan, however. The flock includes many teenage believers and seems to attract the hip-hop crowd.
Before the service, the church airs commercials for its basketball team’s next game ($3 admission) and income-tax classes at its “School of Knowledge and Wisdom.” The Harvestdome has a gym, a bowling alley and a huge, steel globe onstage that revolves throughout the service. In the restroom, an usher squirts soap in your hands and gives you paper towels, and there’s an extensive selection of colognes and a tub of mints.