In the Name of the Sneakers
Carefully, I inched past the waving, sobbing teens, around the eight-foot-tall amp toward a spotlit man onstage. I held my phone as close to him as possible and snapped a picture. A few other people were doing this as well, but I believe I was the only one taking a shot of the man’s feet. The picture wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. I sent it to a teenager I know with a caption: “Recognize these shoes?”
An answer flashed back: Nike Air Presto, Off-White. They were about $900 retail. “Where are you?”
I texted back, “Church.”
Specifically, I was at Hillsong Church, an evangelical, Pentecostal megachurch that started in Australia in 1983 and now has ministries on six continents. According to Hillsong, over 100,000 people throughout the world visit one of its churches every
