It's Friday, December 12th.

I'm Tara Jean Stevens.

And here are this week's headlines from the Heaven Bent Universe.

Texas Mega Church goes Broadway.

Ladies and Jess, this is the moment you've waited for us.

I'm switching in the dark and Show, but it's not.

This is what it sounded like this week at the Preston Wood Baptist Church Christmas concert.

Prestonwood is a megachurch in Texas. It has 45,000 members and about 17,000 people who show up on a weekly basis.

And this Christmas concert looks exactly how it sounds.

The gift of Christmas is how it sounds.

The gift of Christmas is part Broadway, part Vegas, and it runs almost two hours.

There's elaborate staging, lighting, and costumes.

There's a 50-piece orchestra and nearly a thousand people involved in the cast and the choir. And the highlight seems to be the living nativity scene with flying angels and live

animals like sheep, llamas, what else did I see? Zebras? Camels?

Like most American megachurches, Prestonwood catches a lot of heat for having large-scale spectacles like this,

especially at Christmas when more humble Christians would like to see money spent on something

like this spent on the poor instead. But from a statement on its website, Preston Wood says that,

quote, at the heart of this production is the simple story of Christmas, the manger, the shepherds,

Joseph and Mary, the Christ child, and the glorious hope we have in our Savior.

Tickets, by the way, are still on sale for Preston Woods' run of the gift of Christmas.

They range between $20 and $70.

Canadian Christians Fear hate crime charges.

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