Megachurch Pastor makes things worse

This is one of those amazing things where someone says the wrong thing and then makes it worse by trying to explain why what they said wrong was the right thing to do. From The Blaze article entitled Millennial megachurch pastor says Christians criticizing him ‘might know a different Jesus’

First on the TV show The View he avoided answering the question on abortion. Then on twitter, he gave a pretty good answer. Which if he had said on The View would have not caused any problems with other Christians. Then in RELEVANT magazine he explained how he could not answer the abortion question from a non-Christian until he told them about Jesus. Which is somewhat strange as in monotheists religions  (Jews, Christians, and Islam)have no problem assigning abortion in the sinful camp. His conclusion was:

“A lot of Christians that don’t know who we are say things like ‘You’re a coward’ and ‘Truth is truth’ and ‘You need to speak out,'” he revealed. “I just say, ‘I think me and you – first of all – might know a different Jesus.’ I think I did what I would always do, which is try to get to know a person. To me, I’m going in there with the intent of pointing to Jesus and hopefully speaking a language the world can understand.”

Did the world understand? Did he really even point to Jesus? Not really, simply answering like he did on Twitter would have been far better. It would have been far better to admit under the pressure of live TV he did not answer well, instead of trying to demean fellow Christians.

View image on Twitter

Lentz initially clarified his position after the backlash, and on Twitter said, “Recently in an interview, I was asked direction if abortion is sin. I did not answer the question directly for a number of reasons and that has caused some confusion about our stance as a church on this matter.

“I do believe abortion is sinful,” Lentz wrote. “Our prayer is that we can continue to help and love those that deal with the pain of regret from personal choices, rather than cast further shame and guilt on those already carrying so much and create a church that can teach people how to form convictions based on God’s word, that will be the driving force in all their decisions.”

He concluded, “I will continue to point people to Jesus, above all else, every opportunity I get. The story of God’s redemptive grace, available to all, is the best news available.”

View image on Twitter

Entertainment will replace religion!

Today I heard an interesting comment which I will repeat as a truism before I give the full context of the quote. “…[E]ntertainment will replace religion." Probably the most profound words Pete Townsend of “The Who” ever spoke.

As I was thinking about the last couple of posts on this blog, the controversy over women’s ordination, my position that the separation of clergy from laity is wrongheaded and the last post on Simple churches the statement that entertainment will replace religion really resonates with me.

When I think about what would be the main problems with a simple church versus the contemporary style of Christian churches my objections to the simple church seem to be mainly about our entertainment at church.

Here are some of the things a simple church meeting will not have:

-Good modern worship live singing and musicians (or even hymn singing as it can be very uncomfortable in small groups unless the folks really enjoy singing).

-Polished sermons

-Skits or plays to illustrate the sermon

-Entertaining young peoples programs.

That is not really a long list but it is likely, the sermon and the music the two biggest draws of the modern church. In the Adventist church it is so powerful that you generally have only half the number of people at Sabbath School that you have at the church service.

No doubt there are very legitimate elements of the larger contemporary churches, most importantly for the family is that there would be other young people that are the age of our children. For me that is probably the biggest problem with the simple church movement. Unfortunately I don’t see a way around that very large problem and that bothers me because I think many of our other problems could be helped by following the simple church format.

The other problem from the Christian outreach position is that entertainment has already replaced religion for a large portion of the Western World. That realization, even though most of us never articulated it like Pete Townsend did, has inspired such things as Mega Churches. A church to go and be entertained while still maintaining a religion connection. The problem comes when the people leave the church, they often don’t have a good connection with their fellow church members because after all they only sit together and they rarely talk of anything meaningful in their lives. But you certainly don’t need to be part of a Mega Church for that to happen it is just as common in the 100 member churches. When we don’t have the connection to the other believers in our church it is difficult to have that connection with our neighbors who don’t have our religion in common with us.

Here is Pete Townsend quote in context from the VH1 StoryTellers series description:

"Pete Townshend": One of rock's most revered songwriters, Pete Townshend performs and talks about how many of his compositions for The Who -- including such standards as "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Behind Blue Eyes" -- were originally written for "Lifehouse," a failed film concept. "The story ... is simply a time when technology delivers on its promise," he explains. "The promise of technology has always been that entertainment will replace religion."

You can see the clip here

I don’t think that in reality the promise of technology was ever for entertainment to replace religion but it may well be the end of result. Hopefully technology will also be used to aid religion but we will likely have to deal more and more with the vast array of entertainment that makes religion seems so boring. After all entertainment has trumped political knowledge for quite some time; most Americans knowing more about entertainers their about their political representatives and certainly knowing more about entertainment then the political issues they should be aware of. With many unfortunately getting their political advice from entertainers with little thought to what the facts really are. So we are at the point where entertainment is taking over the world and we have to decide what we as Christians intend to do about it as we deal with our fellow believers and the non believers.

Megachurch wants publicity no matter what

Here is an excerpt from Yahoo News, LA megachurch hopes to win Super Bowl ad contest The ad is for Doritos’ but it is based upon the mockery of the Resurrection of Jesus. Apparently this megachurch is populated by twenty-somethings who like to make short videos and have little understanding of Christianity or of the attacks against Christianity. Mainly the attack that says Jesus faked His death, there was not real resurrection it was just a hoax.

Here is the description of the video which you can watch here, from the AP story at Yahoo News:

“The tongue-in-cheek ad opens on a funeral scene and then cuts to a young man alive in a closed casket. His body is covered in Doritos and he is watching the Super Bowl on a tiny TV while chomping on chips as mourners sob outside. Two friends, who are in on the prank, snicker that by faking his death, their friend will get a week off work and an endless supply of his favorite snack.

But the man gets excited when his team makes a big play and jostles the casket, which tips over to reveal him inside with a pile of crushed chips.

After an awkward pause, his buddy jumps up and nervously exclaims to the shocked assemblage: "Aaaah! It's a miracle!"

Actually the Aaaah part is more singing reminiscent of Hallelujah.

So will this bring the gospel to people? Or bring people into this megachurch? Likely not but it does serve to bring disrepute on Christianity, the religion that opponents claim is a hoax. But then again I have yet to find a megachurch that offered really good teaching on theology so what could we expect. It seems to me that even the Liberal Christians like Bishop Spong though they don’t believe in the historical resurrection would have more respect for the concept than to make it a correlate with a hoax. Or even attempt to hear someone say the hoax idea of being trapped inside a coffin for even a day with only a salty snack and a TV is the act of a genius.

But it made news and apparently to some that is the point of life.