Houston ramble: Lakewood Church

We scratched another one off our Bucket List yesterday with a visit to Lakewood Church, something we had intended to do for years now but never got around to.  Its style does not represent our family's mode of religious observance, but it's such a remarkable local phenomenon that it's absolutely worth experiencing at least once. 

I hadn't been inside The Summit since Michael Jordan's last game against the Rockets, the highlights of which are embedded here in case you'd like to review that event and the facility in which it transpired - the dear-to-our-hearts old sports facility that subsequently underwent an astonishing transformation into Lakewood Church:

What finally got us off the fence of "we'll visit Lakewood someday" and actually out the door on a Sunday morning was this how-to article published in the inaugural issue of a great new magazine called Houstonia.  I really like reading content of that type because it gives me a sense of what to expect and how to execute the logistics without going so far as to be a spoiler. 

And yes, it's helpful to learn in advance how to execute the logistics when assembling with a mind-boggling sixteen thousand church congregants - the thought of getting entrained in all that is pretty darned intimidating. 

My husband and I had wondered how on earth a basketball arena could ever be transformed effectively into a mega-church, but it works surprisingly well.  The engineering behind the Summit conversion is absolutely remarkable.  The more you stare at it, the more you realize what kind of unprecedented vision the architects had to have possessed in order to pull this off. 

When I saw this on the monitors, I couldn't help but reflect on Houston's impressively low unemployment. 

Like Houstonia recommended, get there early so that you can get a floor seat.  And then prepare yourself for the type of experience that only Houston is capable of generating. 

And with that, I shall follow Houstonia's measured example and say no more. 

Hope everyone had a great Mother's Day yesterday.