CHARLOTTE, NC — Megan Stiles, 28, a lifelong member of Harvest Ridge Church, told her small group last Tuesday that her experience at a recent Taylor Swift concert was “honestly more powerful than any worship service I’ve ever attended,” a remark that triggered an emergency meeting of the church’s worship committee within forty-eight hours.

The committee, which convened Thursday evening in the church conference room, emerged two hours later having approved the purchase of a $2,400 atmospheric haze system, a supply of friendship bracelets for the greeting team, and a pilot program involving synchronized light-up wristbands for Easter Sunday.

“We heard the feedback and we’re responding,” said worship pastor Colton Reeves, 33, who attended the meeting wearing a lavender blazer he described as “Eras Tour-adjacent.” “If the world is offering a transcendent communal experience with production value, we need to at least match the fog output.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just said the lighting was better. Now they’re installing a truss system above the baptistry.”

Stiles offered the above comment, adding that she has been asked to consult on the church’s “atmosphere strategy” despite having “zero qualifications beyond owning a denim jacket with sequins.”

Senior pastor David Koh, 56, told reporters he supports the upgrades but drew the line at the youth pastor’s suggestion to replace the offertory with a friendship bracelet exchange. “We are a house of worship, not a stadium,” Koh said. “That said, the fog machine does make the altar call hit different.”

At press time, Reeves had submitted a budget request for a confetti cannon labeled “Pentecost Enhancement Device.”