Nothing spurs repressed Catholic shame quite like a Christian band performing guitar solos — the musical embodiment of hubris — at 10 a.m. on a Sunday.

This was the scene at Eagle Brook Church’s location in Wayzata High School on Sunday. They host three services a day, all of which start with a live band. 

Walking into a megachurch — how Eagle Brook describes itself, with a profound lack of self-awareness — one would expect a charismatic leader to take the stage and capture the room, perhaps even doing a bit of crowd work. But not at Eagle Brook. 

Once the band departs, the theater-esque TV on the stage of the Wayzata High School auditorium flicks on to a brief intro video reminiscent of a mediocre sit-com you could catch on 45TV if you fell asleep watching the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament. The message of the day: “Take Back Your Family.”

After some “Mike and Molly” related PTSD takes hold of you, the pastor takes the stage, but not in your building. Instead, you are treated to a livestream of a sermon taking place at a different location in Lino Lakes. All 12 Eagle Brook locations show the one sermon taking place.

Eagle Brook made headlines recently when they threatened to sue the city of Plymouth after the city had decided that the church would not be allowed to construct a facility in a residential area. The original decision came on the back of concerns about traffic, a lack of tax revenue, the removal of green spaces and general public distaste for an Evangelical obelisk in their backyard.

Who knows why they would build a movie theater that can sit thousands just to watch a livestream of a different church. You’d think an email chain and Chromecast would do the trick, right?

Over 3,500 Plymouth residents signed a petition stating they wanted no part of the church in their neighborhood. The new facility would be just down the road from their current home at Wayzata High School in the backyard of a residential neighborhood. 

The Plymouth city council met with Eagle Brook’s lawyers on Jan. 9 in a closed meeting to discuss potential litigation. 

After the threat of suit, the city council held another vote, and Eagle Brook was granted a new nest. The new resolution would include landscape adjustments, aesthetic changes to the design of the church and a second entrance to the parking lot to account for the 685 planned parking spaces.

If they hadn’t come to this agreement and a civil suit transpired, how much cause for concern would there have been?

“I don’t think the church would have won that lawsuit,” said Timothy Johnson, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. “But the city doesn’t want to be involved in a lawsuit like that.”

Whether or not the lawsuit would have gone in favor of Eagle Brook, a case of this nature would not only be needlessly expensive but would also exacerbate the existing polarization in Plymouth.

“This is not a normal [church where] you might have a couple hundred parishioners, this is a church that has thousands of parishioners,” Johnson said. “That’s where people were getting upset because the church would be so big and take up so much space.”

These are large issues for a community, especially considering there could be over 600 cars piling out onto a residential street three times a day every Sunday. Past that, one must consider the ramifications of what is being preached.

Plymouth resident and author Betsy Moore lives right next door to the land Eagle Brook church will occupy. Moore identifies as trans-neutral and worries about the impact a gender-non-affirming organization like Eagle Brook will have on their community.

“Seeing the harm that is done for the mental health of those that are questioning that vary in those faiths that are non-affirming. It just breaks my heart [that anyone is] told, ‘I love you, I just don’t like you,’” Moore said. 

Eagle Brook has put out sermons talking about LGBTQ+ issues in which they preach that anyone who does not conform to the classic Christian view of sexuality and binary gender has an affliction that they must, in one way or another, suppress.

“While it will trigger my own issues, seeing them out my back window, my consolation is they won’t be in the high school,” Moore said. 

While they come from a position of “love,” the church’s message is that those who do not conform to the classical understandings of gender and sexuality must work against their identity to be accepted fully by God.

If you thought this resembled conversion therapy, at least ideologically, you would not be totally off base.

Antiquated assertions on identity aside, these beliefs do not constitute a good enough reason to prevent the church from building. At this point, there is little — if anything at all — that can be done about the process going forward. People have the right to believe what they want and should be allowed a place of worship, this is inarguable. 

Anyone who believes that the church should be barred from building due to their religious beliefs, no matter how archaic they may seem, is acting irrationally.

That being said, whether the church should be built in a residential zone is a different question entirely, and we haven’t even gotten into their tax exemption yet!

While it is, at its core, a religious institution, the differences between Eagle Brook and your average congregation are readily apparent: the band, TV, multi-million dollar facilities. These are not the attributes of a humble institution simply looking to build community and spread the word of God, this is a business. 

They sell coffee and books at their locations, encourage donations into the range of thousands of dollars per household and brought in almost $58 million last year in total contributions.

Executive Pastor Tyler Gregory noted in their 2023 Annual Report the $51 million in contributions to their general fund “fell a little short” of their goals. 

Eagle Brook is the McDonald’s of religious expression. The only difference is that McDonald’s pays taxes. It is clear that the primary purpose for expansion is monetary, the church boasting online that their new facilities can triple the size of a congregation.

People’s religious freedoms should not be infringed, and places of religious worship should not face taxation on principle. But a self-proclaimed megachurch making eight figures a year and branching out into property development? That is no longer just a place of worship, it is a faith factory scraping every dime it can out of its community and giving little back.

Let them build their building and worship as they please — it is their right. But, at the very least, they should be taxed for it.