That’s understandable: BCOG is one of the most exciting, ambitious endeavors in Chicago comedy today. Descoteaux and a cast of nine satirize a Sunday church service—something the majority of Americans, regardless of creed, probably have experienced at least once. And after only a month of original weekly shows, it’s looking like the best thing to happen in town since the Late Night Late Show.

Everything is here in the faux house of worship, infused with extra comic conviction: Pastor Dave delivers inspirational sermons, lambasting sinners for not taking the Bible as pure literal translation (past topics include keeping slaves, the unholiness of acne and adopting foreskin as sacred currency). Miss Cindy Sunday leads the congregation through hymns with lyrics like, “This is the Best Church of God, the only church God goes to.” The remaining actors sit among the audience as community members and help with portions of the service, like Brother Henry’s End Times Report on everyday harbingers of the impending apocalypse. The morning’s interrupted only to pass around the collection plate—often. And when we say “morning,” we mean it: Church starts promptly at 10:30am.

The most striking thing about BCOG is just how real it feels. That’s because we’re witnessing the fruits of a few months of cast research. Once Descoteaux had his crew (selected from a pool of more than 70 based on comedy skills, diverse religious beliefs and an openness to questioning said beliefs), he led them to a different ceremony each week—everything from full-on Catholic mass to a 30-person evangelical group in a hotel conference room. “I always knew the church as this big, mysterious monolith, to which there is much more than we’ll ever know, so don’t try to understand it,” says Descoteaux, who was raised part Catholic and Jewish and now considers himself agnostic-slash–borderline atheist. “As we attended these services, we realized…there is no monolith, no mysterious force that can’t be understood by humans, at least as presented by the bureaucracy of these various religious denominations. There’s no one way things are done—there’s no such thing as sanctified.”BCOG drives that point home with absurdly extreme depictions of rituals, performed in churchgoing suits and dresses. In the recurring Savor the Savior segment, the audience is invited to feast on the “nonmetaphorical flesh and blood of the Lord” (i.e., charred meat and red wine). Descoteaux also claims they’ll be baptizing the cast’s babies at a future service and adds that an actual animal sacrifice is very much on the table, as it were. The goal is to engage people in dialogue; Descoteaux plans to start weekly Bible study groups and expand the comprehensive website (bestchurchofgod.org) to include a discussion forum. All this is sure to expand BCOG’s loyal cult following.

“I’m amazed by the response we’ve gotten from people who call themselves devout and later say, ‘I thought the show was hilarious; I’m definitely coming back. P.S. that one segment was way over the line and horribly offensive,’_” Descoteaux says. “The funny thing is that it hasn’t been the same segment yet. One person was upset that our fake Jesus meat was blessed by a fake janitor. They would have been okay with it if it had been blessed by a fake priest.”

Join the Best Church of God Sundays at 10:30am. Amen.