Prize Pumpkin

Competitions for the "largest pumpkin" produce some amazing results. Last year, for the first time, the winning pumpkin weighed over a ton. It broke the record not only for largest pumpkin, but also for the largest fruit humans have ever grown.

It goes without saying that prize pumpkins are tasteless and inedible. They're only grown for their size; every other quality (including all those for which pumpkins are normally grown) is sacrificed to that single purpose.

The "evangelical" distortion of Christianity puts the Church in the same game. A Church whose goal is "saving souls" easily adapts a fleshly criteria of success: how many souls ?

There can only be one "world's largest church" but thousands of others share that criteria. Every city has its big church trying to be a bigger church, and maybe even a mega-church. To the extent they buy into the "evangelical" delusion that success is a matter of size, these might be called "Prize Pumpkin" churches.

Jesus' has a different criteria: whether His church has "lost its savor," become tasteless. If so, He says, "...it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." (Matthew 5:13b)