This Cool Church Will Teach You To Love Guns And Jesus So Hard

We're kinda old, so we weren't being forced to go to church when all these cool Bro Down With The Lord type churches were ascendant. Man, we are pissed. Now Jesus is all manly and muscular and shit, and he totally would love to go hunting and fishing with us, and he'd share our deep and unquenchable desire to fondle semi-automatic weapons. All of which is why we are totally moving to Joplin Missouri to go to Ignite Church, where they tended to the flock by raffling off two AR-15s for Father's Day.

On Father’s Day, men were given the an opportunity to put their names in a hat to win one of two AR-15 rifles. Each father was eligible to submit a ticket for himself and a ticket for each of his children he brought to church with him. An additional ticket was given if a man brought his own dad.

Wait a second. What if you love guns but are not a dude? What if you love guns and are a dude but not a dad? UNFAIR. Because we were really looking forward to caressing the Black Rain Ordnance AR-15, which the Ignite pastor called "the Lamborghini of guns." Seriously, trot on over Black Rain Ordnance's webpage and check out their sweet-ass peace-loving Jesus things like silencers, which you totally need for hunting, right? or maybe fishing?? Manly Jesus could probably tell us.

No matter. A few weeks at this brotastic house of worship and we will be SO PUMPED UP and we'll probably just know all about guns and cars and other cool dude stuff just by osmosis.

To lure [men ages 18 - 35] in, Sunday morning services start later (10 a.m. and 11: 30 a.m.) than many churches, the rock music is loud, the black-and-green color theme is almost reminiscent of a video game system, and the pastor has tattoos and a short mohawk.

“We’re not trying to put on a show for anybody,” Mooneyham said. “We’re just dudes.”

Just dudes! That love guns! And rawk! And fuck yeah Jesus!!

And in case you're wondering, guns and loving guns and murder have been around since the beginning of time and the AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle because Jesus wouldn't say that, duh.

"I despise the term ‘assault rifle,’” Mooneyham said. “Whoever coined that phrase has to be misinformed. The appearance of things — I think that’s our story as a church — don’t let the appearance of something stop you,” he said.

He also referred to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. “People are crazy, period. Murder has been going on since the beginning of time. The first murder recorded in the Bible was with a rock.”

Silly us. We always thought that one of the key takeaways of religion was that people could transcend their base nature and maybe sorta NOT GO MURDER PEOPLE with rocks or guns or anything really. Clearly we grew up in the wrong church.

[ Joplin Globe / Raw Story ]