Would Jesus Go to a Conference in Reno or Las Vegas?
Monday, May 6, 2013 at 12:57AM I’m at a church conference at a hotel by San Francisco Bay. Yeah, I know, poor me. The fancy swimming pool and bay view are right outside the ballroom where we’ve gathered for worship and passed resolutions on immigration reform and divesting from fossil fuels.
For decades this same annual meeting of 120 churches took place down the coast at Asilomar, a beautiful, cozy, coastal YWCA conference center, redwood Art Deco buildings and vast beaches. Sadly, Asilomar has become trendy for corporate events and out of our price range. So we found a cheaper and more flexible package for our 350 attendees at a Sofitel hotel that caters to the Silicon Valley tech crowd.
Sofitel Hotel San Francisco BayYes, it is cheaper to go to the fancy hotel in the French luxury chain. Our planning committee researched various options in our region and found only one place even cheaper than the Sofitel. That would have been the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nevada. I went to a church meeting once in a hotel/casino in Las Vegas, but we couldn’t stop talking about how weird it was to walk through the gambling floor packed with slot machines on our way to sessions about church growth – I doubt we would go back to the gambling state.
Which of course begs the question – what would Jesus do? Pretty obvious actually – he’d go to Reno, or Las Vegas. He’d be hanging out with the low paid workers in the casinos, the prostitutes on the street, the undocumented workers in the hotels, the alcoholics at the gaming tables. And the school teachers and bankers. The folks.
Going to the cheapest place would also help us be better stewards of our resources, saving money for mission rather than spending it as we are here on feather beds and TVs with 2 French channels and $7 croissants.
Asilomar, where we met for decades, is a made-up word meaning “refuge by the sea” (asylum de la mar.) When our church group met there we snuck out to walk under the mysterious cypress trees to the wide wild beaches. We felt a kinship with the place’s creation story, how Phoebe Hearst, made rich by the Hearst mining and newspaper fortune, hired the young Julia Morgan, first American woman graduate of the Beaux Art architecture program in Paris (whom the family later engaged to design their Hearst Castle), to build a simple camp for young single working women to get out of the cities for a weekend respite.
The Sofitel Hotel, where we are meeting this weekend, has a rather different mission; to give people a sense of French luxury and style in hotels around the world. Here’s how they pitch it:
"Step into the sleek sophistication of Sofitel San Francisco Bay. The perfect mix of French elegance and California charm it surrounds you in an ambience of eclectic chic infused with contemporary artistry and welcomes you with an awe inspiring view."
Please join us for a Magnifique stay in San Francisco where you will be treated to a unique combination of modern decor and traditional French art de recevoir.
Life is Magnifique in San Francisco.
(Is the translation just bad, or intentionally cute – “the perfect mix of French elegance and California charm it surrounds you”? And the bad capitalization – life is Magnifique? The poor staff all wear T-shirts with “Life is Magnifique” on the front and I could buy shirts and cups likewise branded.)
The creation story for the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno would be about the heritage of rough and ready mining towns (Nevada produced a silver bonanza as California did gold) encouraging or at least tolerating lawless behavior. For many years Nevada was the only state with legalized gambling and the most liberal divorce laws. People would fly there for the weekend to do both – get free and get rich. Or not. Lots of sad stories there. This history is the source of the iconic phrase about Las Vegas, Nevada: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Ie, come here, be bad, never get caught. At our church meeting in Vegas we tried to turn that around, “What you learn (about church growth) in Vegas, don’t let it stay in Vegas.” I don’t think it was very successful.
Circus Circus, RenoBut our churches in Reno and Vegas are actually growing, and new churches are forming. The Reno church folks said they’d love to host our conference. They remind us that the residents and workers live there not to escape reality, but to live real lives. It’s not an asylum by the sea (or the desert), nor is it pretending to have a Magnifique ambience of eclectic chic.
I think I’ll be advocating for our church meeting to move to the Circus Circus, Reno. Early Christians had their faith tested in the Roman Circus. How would we do?
Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter
Reader Comments (1)
Deborah, this is such a great reflection on Northern California Nevada Conference annual meeting sites. I treasure our years convening at Asilomar. Dunes, pines, cypress, fog, waves were all close at hand. The wild beauty of Asilomar always helped me re-group in the middle of the sometimes exasperating, often exhilerating, work of our wider church. Thanks for reminding me of this unique and formative place in my life.