I’m not saying your eternal soul is on the line - but it kinda is.

Not in the sensationalist sense, but in the is-the-lobster-aware-it-is-being-boiled sense. Are we aware of the effects our enveloping circumstances have on us?

The culturally popularized first-world Christian church has engineered immersive emotional spaces that convert spiritual intimacy into consumerism for the low, low price of heart, incarnate love of the spirit, and one, gently used soul. The question we have to ask, as we must always challenge the church: “Is it the right thing to do?”

This investigative performance study will review Hillsong Worship’s live performances - tethered to Hillsong Church - as an exemplar cultural standard. Drawing specific references from a live compilation, we will analyze how they construct their spaces and consider the theological consequences that emerge from those choices.

This is not an exercise in church-bashing; rather, it is a careful diagnosis of an undercurrent concern and an exercise in encouraging awareness. Furthermore, it is a caution to the first world church, for she is so susceptible to the temptations of the goddess consumerism, and that susceptibility does not always parade its flags of war - sometimes it comes like a thief in the night, draped in excellence and presenting as a successful event.

Before we dive into the meat of it, we need to first establish our potatoes - aka our surrounding circumstances. To define our terms and establish the conditions where this immersive experience takes place. Primarily, we are talking about the first-world, commercialized church. The churches where people have prayer requests for new iPhones, conveniences, and relief from the burden of choice. The churches we are not talking about are the small house churches in the refugee camps where five kids take turns sharing one flip-flop. Humble churches where contentment and connection to the divine are not options to be selected but the very heartbeat of those communities. This distinction is crucial as we walk the razor's edge of condemnation and conviction. We are looking at those popular churches that host larger-than-life Easter services and have yard signs planted every hundred yards, as is archetyped by Hillsong.

But what makes something popular? Some theorists, such as Riadh Ladhari, argue that popularity consists of homophily, emotional attachment, and credibility. These operate as the structural conditions in which churches that follow the Hillsong model seemingly thrive. Hillsong’s global footprint exemplifies this triad: the innate brotherhood created by the nature of Christian culture, the emotional attachment or buy-in to any sort of religious sect, all this reinforced by Hillsong's international presence and subsequent success.

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This popularity also functions structurally by the appeal of “keeping doors open” - or, in its more extreme cases, prosperity signaling. It reshapes the logic and intention across megachurch spaces by its example. Furthermore, one could conclude that “monkey see, monkey do” and that the correlation must equal causation; correlation being curated aesthetic space with the goal of engineering a specific emotional or spiritual outcome. Then those aesthetics - appearing to have a positive correlation in attendance and popularity - the heartbeat of keeping any institution surviving - must root back to its aesthetics. This is an issue as old as C.S. Lewis's - if not significantly longer. In his book Screwtape Letters, he advocates for the dismantling of church shopping. This “shopping” structure falls prey to consumerism's most basic definition: sell people something they want to buy or consume. Hillsong is doing this work down to their merch. But, according to Lifeway, church closures have consistently eclipsed openings from 2019 to 2026. Even Hillsong itself has closed 11 of its 16 campuses down in the United States, which complicates the assumption that manufacturing spectacle has been enough to maintain attendance and, moreover, the health of a church and perhaps even the power of the divine. The immersive aesthetic experience incentivizes consumerist tendencies by the former, whether consciously or not.

In order to critique these immersive experiences, we must first define immersion. In Frankenstein terms from Josephine Machon and Punchdrunk, immersion - or immersive theatre is the experience of being submerged in an alternative medium where all the senses are engaged and manipulated— where active participants share a deep involvement in the activity within that medium.  Every element of stagecraft – from the set design to the lighting, sound, and even smell – works together to tell the story.  Blurring the line between performance and reality, this type of theatre encourages strong emotional and physical responses from the audience. Moving through the space and directly engaging with the environment and performers, they experience a heightened, personal engagement with the narrative. To sum this up within the lens of the first world church, we will call it immersive methexis. A haptic immersive religious experience where the audience participates in the ritual from the role of an audience member.

While there are drastic elements of immersion, it is the intention of the immersive space to create the desired effect.

To zoom in to zoom out - the first world churches operate within this immersive framework, and we see that from Hillsong's example. Hillsong (and by the trickle-down effect of popularity - first-world churches as a whole)  create immersive methexis experiences, which are not the first to do so; they just have sparklier technology. Even Gothic churches created beautiful, immersive architecture that awed at the glory of the divine. Those spaces were and are intentionally curated - down to as inconspicuous a detail as the fall of a shaft of light.

Both Punchdrunk and Hillsong (and contemporary churches alike) curate a sense of spatial immersion - but the intention behind the creation of those communal spaces has a drastic impact on the output. The spaces being made are not neutral, but rather inform theology and belief. The room, curated to look like a serial killer's lair, is not going to help convince you that the character in the room with you is a safe person.

So what does it mean to worship in a space that is emotionally engineered? - It is not that they're manipulative spaces, but they are spaces engineered with the emotional output in mind. That is a slippery slope. Especially, if one is thinking more about the output and less about the purpose - that might even be narcissism. When it comes to sacred spaces, there have been too many historical incidents where someone has favored the output over its purpose, and that purpose being transformative change and to serve God and make Him known. Engineering any space to make that happen on purpose is an advanced form of manipulation, and it renders the power of God down to something as reductionist as spectacle and digestible enough to be consumed - cutting out the most magic of immersion: awe.

As we analyze Hillsong's spaces, we notice a myriad of immersive devices. We could talk about the stage architecture, how Hillsong has cited that they intentionally create 360-degree spaces to fully immerse their audience, LED panels, and how they're creating artificial spaces, smoke and haze, emulating sacred incense and ethereal liminal space, and even the emotional arc structuring or set list structuring. But, for the sake of this moment, we will continue our conversation on lighting - picking up from the Gothic period and traditional architecture example.

There's ample research available on the creative, cognitive, and even sexual outputs of dim ambient lighting in a dark room. Which is intriguing, as one observes that in every single clip of Hillsong’s worship compilation, the audience is in darkness, only offset by the brilliance occurring on stage. I am curious if we are aware of the effect it is having on our audience?

The effect produced in these spaces does not remain spiritually neutral - it intersects with consumer logic. Consumerism, in its simplest definition, sells something people want to buy - in the case of churches, redemption. These churches seem to dig their heels in deeper into their independent world creation by offering theme park-level experiences with coffee shops like”Holy Grounds” and merchandise available for purchase. Hunter and Maflessen remark that immersive environments “attempt to selectively promote positive emotions only.” Which we find all too common in comforting the first world. The immersion in this is an almost theme-park approach that produces a consumerist audience in its congregation and forces them, by no fault of their own, but rather improper shepherding, to ask, what can I get from this?

This is the very antithesis of the Christian church's purpose, which is to serve and even die to self. This consumer mindset is reshaped by the immersion practices that they're implementing. They have converted sacred experiences in their novelty into a manufactured physiology that hangs on the hat of this very concept of: I want to experience transformation, healing, or in some extreme cases, superiority over others because of said faith. Packaging and selling what is meant to remain mysterious. The concern is that, by attempting to be too much of the world in the "in the world but not of it"  scenario, we are manufacturing the physiology of sacred experiences in lieu of submission to the incarnate spirit, who has the supernatural ability to do what we merely attempt through smoke machines and LED panels.

We are manufacturing rest and emotional response instead of letting the divine, the source of rest, provide it for the heavily laden. Are we forcing God's hand, and are there consequences to that? When immersive spatial engineering assumes the role of catalyst, the line between facilitation and substitution thins out all the more. Moreover, the consequence is not damnation by lightning design, but rather a gradual formation that conditions audience members and congregants to equate emotional intimacy with divine presence. Then, if there is an absence of spectacle, do we equate that to an absence of God?

The question is not whether immersive sacred spaces are permissible. The question is where the boundary lies between sacred immersion and commodified spectacle.

Is it as simple as the mercy of “there's something for everyone and it is our job to hold up a mirror and let conviction take its natural course”? Of course, we can continue to church shop Much to Wormwood's delight - but that would be a misstep of the fable. Or is the Christian church doomed to fall prey to its separatist beliefs of what worship should look like over the recognition of honoring God - which is the function of the form in the first instance?

Accountability must then become the answer. We have to draw a hard line between creating sacred worship spaces with the divine and an immersive divine passing spectacle. Worship assumes intent, and that intent demands a methodical approach where a heart inventory must be implemented to ensure caution is used. We must be wary of what spirits we are ushering in. Are they spirits of transformation or consumerism? Because spectacle can be transformative, but its function is not intended to create eternal change.

So, in the most practical of ways, what do we do with that? I propose that we should have different levels of accountability for churches. Part of it is that there is honor in using one's gifts to cultivate a beautiful space, but the hard line in the sand comes down to intent. Is your intent like Punchdrunk to create remarkable worlds - or is it to transform? Without awareness, churches risk drifting toward soulless spectacle with good intentions. The road paved with excellence may be gradually leading us to a distorted heart.

​With that awareness in mind, we have to ask ourselves, deliberately: What kind of audiences are we creating? Spectators? Consumers? Participants?

If immersive work, such as Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, has taught us anything, it is that neither the environment nor the outcome happens by accident. Punchdrunk's intricate details are not a mere coincidence. Every moment of good immersive theater is thought through, and shouldn't churches be held to that same standard of intentionality? The question is not whether immersive design,with its trimmings and trappings, are powerful. It is whether the power is stewarded with ample consideration.