One pastor runs his church service as an evangelism-show to attract and convert non-Christians to Christ. A crowd comes to watch the show each week, like a broadway play, and some do come to Christ.
Another pastor from another generation runs his church as a Christian teaching session with his people arrayed facing him in pews with notebooks and bibles in hand. Helping the Christians to live, what he thinks is a life more like Christ. And some do mature and act more like Christ over time.
Both churches attract the people who agree with the pastors vision.
Both pastors serve the Lord with a clean conscience.
The older pastor publicly criticizes the younger (all but naming names) for putting on a show. But the older doesn’t realize he’s been putting on a different sort of religious show for a slightly different customer his entire life.
But both pastors are usurping the lord’s authority among his people. By the simple fact that they “run the church” and dominate the meetings even with the full blessing of their congregation. They dominate with their vision for how church should be and with the exact happenings of the well engineered gatherings. Both pastors are performing they just are adapted to different crowds.
Both pastors are men of integrity, have good motives, love God and people.
Neither thinks the way Christian meetings were held on the NT like in 1 Cor 14 apply to modern churches, for unknown and unspoken reasons.
It bothers me to hear church leaders criticizing their younger peers for doing better what they taught them to do by example.
I read an article by the leader of the Christian band Skillet . He was criticizing worship leaders for explaining why they no longer believe in God.
Him criticizing other worship leaders for voicing their loss of faith. Reminds me of an older pastor criticizing a young pastor for drawing a bigger crowd by using the same techniques he’s used for a lifetime …only better. The young guy sometimes just do it better. It’s a natural evolution of their worldly way of doing church. The kids just do it better, don’t criticize them, just begin to do it the Lords way.
I remember as a child an anti-smoking commercial a young boy yelling back at his father “I learned it by watching you.”
Similarly, “Worship leaders” which are not even really a thing from scripture, using their celebrity to voice doubt publically is sort of the natural evolution of entertainment-church mindset.
Entertainment church leaders need talented entertainers, not apostles and not necessarily even Jesus followers. Just musical talent and the desire to put on a great looking and sounding show.
Of course some of them will use their influence to pull people away from the Lord. Were they ever really with Jesus or just playing the part you provided for them? Didn’t you see that coming Mr. Skillet? Godless things devolve, they decay, they erode and are undone even at church.
The movie The Greatest Showman can tell a story of Jesus Christ. If you’ve seen this movie then imagine with me that the showman is Jesus Christ himself. His show is not a dance or a song or a eloquent speeches of man’s wisdom.
The show is his bride bearing his image, trampling satanic powers and the audience is the principalities and powers, the wicked authorities in high places. Jesus Christ is putting on a show of his high and supreme glory and love , his mercy, his power as he takes back his creation. As he builds a new humanity and a new world.
Ephesians 3:10 “so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church (the congregation/ the ecclesia) to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”
The ecclesia, the body of Jesus Christ is the greatest show of all time put on for all history by God himself.
If you’ve not seen it I recently (2018) watched The Greatest Showman. The movie is performed mostly as a musical and there are many great songs to go along with the themes of the movie. With these posts I will uncover the story of Jesus according to a few of the songs of The Greatest Showman.
I have learned that Jesus Christ can be found in every movie, and in most songs. But every once in a while a movie is absolutely filled with him if you are willing to see him.
Jesus is hard-coded into the creativity of us all, we all are displaying him and telling his story… whether we realize it or not. To me this seems particularly true in this Greatest Showman musical with Hugh Jackman.
Never Enough
Before you watch this video forget the storyline of the actual movie and read this:
Imagine the bride of Jesus Christ, the most beautiful women to ever exist, singing of her love for the man who awoke her from the sleep of death “you set off a dream in me” Jesus gives us his real life. “Getting louder now can you hear it echoing?”.
In this video the stage is the earth, the audience is the principalities and the powers, the high rulers in wicked places and the men and women who are loyal to them.
Nothing but him is enough for her. Extreme passion and love and drive for him and only him, this is the nature and personality of real bride of Christ.
But the bride is only focused on her groom. “Towers of gold are still too little.” All the wealth and fame of the world are at her disposal, offered to her but is as nothing to her compared with him. “What good does it do us to gain the world” yet lose Jesus? She realizes this as she sings about and for her Lord, her groom.
Jesus is mesmerized with her as waits off stage waiting to join her as even his biggest critics are silenced and mesmerized at her passion and love for him.
The truth is… only the ecclesia, the called out ones, the bride of Jesus Christ is really qualified to sing this song. Now watch this video below with this in mind.
English