I thought Reinventing American Protestantism was really interesting case study. Compare to the church I visit, and other stories that I heard about church, the “sandal church” sounds much more fun. It looks like going concert and have community.

The story of pastor reminds me the pastor from “Born again: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church”. The people, not just pastor, in that movie had experienced the fall out of life at some point and turned into religious and have personal relationship with God. However, different from those in “Born again”, the way of sandal church is more suited to the people and period. What I have felt about that film was that it is not right way to attract people (well that film was in 1987 so that make sense). And the sandal church, I thought, is inventing new style of religion that attracting people in this period (maybe not including old people or people who like traditional way). As they said in presentation, they are successful because they fulfill the needs of people. The church I visited was diminishing the size because there is not enough people attending. They were discussing about what to do about that, and maybe they need to invent something like sandal church (maybe not exactly something since one of member of that church was complaining about loud music playing in other church) to get more people in church.