Hillsong Church has apologized to the New South Wales government after a now-deleted video emerged showing tons of teens attending their youth camp dancing and singing maskless in close proximity, violating the state’s strict Covid-19 public health orders. The singing and dancing were not during worship time, but rather a concert and DJ show.
Wow I’m so glad Hillsong Youth got to enjoy their youth festival yesterday and dance/sing without masks whilst everywhere else has to stop because of restrictions???? @ScottMorrisonMP@Dom_Perrottet ???? pic.twitter.com/X4O5fBlhy2
This revelation led Premier Dominic Perrottet to explain that he was “completely shocked” by the video. In NSW, public health orders ban singing and dancing at music festivals, hospitality venues, nightclubs, entertainment facilities and major recreation facilities, with churches being given an exception for worship – but not for this.
South West Health Minister Brad Hazzard explained, “While the order does not apply to religious services, it does apply to major recreation facilities and this event is clearly in breach of both the spirit and intent of the order, which is in place to help keep the community safe…”
In response to this, Hillsong issued a statement on their website, noting:
These camps have a Christian focus and include worship services. Over a three-day duration the percentage of time spent singing is minor. However we regret giving any perception that we were not playing our part to keep NSW safe and we sincerely apologise to the community at large. Our heart is for people, and loving and caring for all people is at the core of our church.
We have since spoken to NSW Health and received instruction to cease congregant/student singing and dancing during the services that occur on the campsite and have immediately and willingly enacted that instruction.
(Capstone Report) Another win in Will McRaney’s quest for justice. 4 straight defeats for NAMB & Kevin Ezell. Will the NAMB trustees stop these humiliations?
The North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) got more bad news in its attempts to avoid discovery in the lawsuit filed against it by Will McRaney. On Wednesday, January 12, 2022, federal court for the Northern District of Mississippi denied NAMB’s request for summary judgement. In rejecting the motion, the court said that it was not time to consider summary judgment—it should wait on discovery.
NAMB and Kevin Ezell lost all those bids to delay or avoid discovery.
According to the court order,
“The Defendant has filed this motion months prior to the completion of discovery, a fact pointed out by the Plaintiff, who requests pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure….
Either David Platt’s speaking fees are ridiculously low, or he just really likes to partner with questionable characters within the Christian world. Perhaps it’s a little of both? How else can you explain his perchance to travel the country and speak at seemingly every Christianish conference that throws an invite his way?
We wrote about his last two ones here and here, and now we have the worst one yet, with Platt speaking at 2022 Send Conference.
The Send Lead Pastor Summit, billed in conjunction with decidedly charismatic Azuza Now, was conceived in 2011 when, according to their promo material, “The Lord spoke to the leaders of The Call through a group of YWAM (Youth With A Mission) missionaries that a shift was coming that would give birth to a new sending movement, as a beginning fulfillment to their years of prayer and fasting.” They further note that:
We believe the only way to see nation-wide impact is through uncommon collaboration. That’s why Circuit Riders, Lou Engle Ministries, Youth With A Mission, Lifestyle Christianity, Christ For All Nations, Jesus Image, Dunamis Movement, Crazy Love, and many others are uniting together to form THE SEND.
We have YWAM and its subsidiary Circuit Riders, who focus on reaching high schools and universities with an emphasis on intense, fully immersed missionary work. They accept missionaries and volunteers from all denominations, including Roman Catholic, and are all charismatic.
Lou Engle is the founder of the “Azusa Now: The Call. Engle emerged from the Kansas City Prophets and Latter Rain movement, and was a senior leader of IHOP (International House of Prayer). Engle’s Azusa Now signs and wonders revival was inspired by dreams, visions and extra-biblical prophecies, and he also welcomes Roman Catholics into the mission.
Christ For All Nations is the massive organization formerly led by Reinhard Bonnke and now By Daniel Kolenda, who has claimed to have personally led more than 22 million people to Christ, as well as as having performed tons of miracles, including healing cancer, blindness, deafness, paralysis, regrowing limbs, and the like.
Jesus Image, led by Michael and Jessica Koulianos, frequently collaborators with Benny Hinn and are run-of-the-mill hyper charismatic/ you must receive the second bapstim in the spirit sort of ministry. They do, interestingly, have a bizarre statement of faith about God and the Trinity that raises a few eyebrows.
The fact that Platt feels completely comfortable in such an environment, speaking alongside them with nary a rebuke or word of caution to be found, ought to lead the reader to surmise that any biblical discernment he claims to hold to be seriously, seriously wanting, and he’s not to be viewed or regarded as a trustworthy leader or teacher.
(Christian Headlines) Parents at an Illinois elementary school are expressing concern after the local school board approved a new extracurricular club for children that will be led by members of The Satanic Temple and held in school facilities.
According to WQAD, the so-called “After School Satan Club” was approved by the Moline-Coal Valley School District Board of Education on January 10. The club will hold meetings at Jane Addams Elementary in Moline, Illinois, beginning at 2:45 p.m. – immediately after school – on January 13, February 10, March 10, April 14 and May 12. It is open to children in first through fifth grade, although students first need permission from a parent.
The Satanic Temple calls itself the “primary Satanic religious organization in the world,” even though the group itself is atheistic and believes in neither a literal God nor literal Satan. Instead, the Satanic Temple venerates the biblical Satan as a symbol of “defiance, independence, wisdom and self-empowerment.” It rewards “Devil’s Advocate Scholarships” in the amount of $666 to multiple grades, including to elementary students.
According to flyers, the After School Satan Club meetings will include science projects, puzzles, games, craft projects and a snack. The flyer also says that children will learn benevolence, empathy, personal sovereignty…
Former SBC President J.D Greear’s Florida church plant, Summit Church Naples, has fired one of their main pastors and ‘Directing Elders’ after he admitted to stealing from the offering plate.
Former Pastor Jim Hines was busted stealing from the bustling megachurch during the Christmas Eve service, and he also admitted to taking money back in 2018, according to the Roys Report, who revealed:
“According to Summit’s statement, Hines was first accused of taking cash during an offering count in 2018. “That charge was taken seriously and Jim was put on leave,” the church said. “At that time, he denied the accusation and ultimately it could not be confirmed.”
However, the statement adds that Hines “was seen violating one of our protective policies” on Christmas Eve. This led to Hines “being caught stealing $1,000 from an offering. He also has admitted to stealing when he was initially accused in 2018.”
We have reached out to Summit Church for clarification on whether or not he was being put under church discipline as a member who would remain with the church, and will update this post accordingly.
Speaking with chief-enabler Steve Shultz on episode 58 of Steve and Kat:
Shultz: “The question is, is God’s hair like pure wool as described in Daniel 7:9? Kat said she touched it, could she run her fingers through woolly hair?”
Kerr: Now I need to make a slight correction, which I rarely do. White AS wool. It did not say it was wool, It is not wooly. He was talking about you know, that was something he could equate to back in that day. …But God’s hair in no way is it wooly, Jesus’s is not wooly. It said it was white as wool. They couldn’t have anything else that they could at that day, think of to compare it to.
His hair was alive when I touched it. Like shot into my arm, it shot up my spiritual body. And I’m always…Somebody had painted a painting of a horse , believe it or not, with other colors mixed in it. But when I looked at that picture, I saw the face of God in it. And I don’t want to equate him to look like a horse but like the mane on the horse was the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen on a horse. That literally- I don’t think they realize that they painted what was imposed over that.
It looked like the face of God. I mean his eyes are flames of fire- real flames of fire, but his hair. (God the) Father’s hair is longer than Jesus’ hair. It’s beautiful. His beard is amazing. But life is in every part of his being, and when I barely touched the strands of his hair, right now I’m having goosebumps thinking about it. Life was in his hair.
It was like moving, not moving a lot, but it was moving because it was life in it. It was the whitest white I’ve ever seen. Light was coming from. I’m sure that’s why they tried to describe it (when John) said white as wool. It’s about the whitest white I’ve ever seen.
And again, because the father can do what he wants to, he can either let all of the glory come from him where you see nothing…but maybe images of eyes or the shape of a head. He has so much glory pouring from him, but he really wanted to establish to me, he has a body, his arms, his legs, his torso, even though he’s got the spiritual body, it’s real, it’s very real. And he’ll reach out, he’ll hold you when you get to heaven. If he lays his hand on you, sometimes he’ll just walk behind me and lay his hand on me, I get so undone.
I’m talking about on the earth, sometimes he will come and just visit and briefly and then leave. And he actually did that in the Old Testament. So it’s not a strange thing….but his hair it’s extremely white. It’s kind of long. It is wavy, but like I said the waves of his hair. And I just was so undone just to be even near him. Near him throne
A new conversation between Daniel Yang, Director of the Send Institute and Dhati Lewis, the President of Send Network with the North American Mission Board about “Repairing Disparities in American Church Planting” has proven to be very interesting, with Young donating much of the time to defending and making a case for reparations and why White Churches need to give reparations to Black Churches until Jesus returns.
We wrote about the Send Institute just recently, the openly egalitarian think-tank which partnership between the SBC’s North American Mission Board and the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, after their chief missiologist promoted new missions apologetic that minimized ‘doctrinal precision. (There’s much more to be said about this organization and the support that the Southern Baptist Conventions is giving it, off the backs of Cooperative program dollars, and it will be a topic of further investigation.)
Daniel Yang explains:
There’s a basic foundational principle in reparations that we can’t ignore. And it’s very theological too. Duke Kwon, Greg Thompson, they wrote a book giving a biblical rationale for reparations...I want to use the word ‘reparations’ because 1) It is provocative in the questions that people bring up are, ‘well, why would we want to contribute towards reparations if those who committed the wrongs were from 200-300 years ago?’
The second objection, typically is well, ‘reparations isn’t impractical, because when do you stop, when you stop, when you stop reparations?
How do we actually now begin to reinvest our strategies and our resources in a way that no longer creates harm? So case in point, let me say this. When we talk about church planting models, you know, I am not against launch large, I’m not against house churches. But if the bottom line is always ‘how do we plant financially sustainable churches that are sustainable in year three, four, and five?’ Which I think is a worthy goal. But if that becomes the blanket goal for all of our church planting, by the very nature of that- you make this point that you made earlier- urban churches will almost always fail, according to that metric, because you have different dynamics.
In kind of more urban areas, specifically the more disadvantaged areas, you’re gonna have folks who can’t give as much. You have folks who can’t buy buildings, you have folks who can barely pay the rent, but you’re also going to have gentrification coming in.
So gentrification is driving up the cost of doing business, the cost of doing organizations and churches in a particular city. And so if your strategy is, is by and large, on average, you know, ‘every church has to be sustainable, like 3, 4, 5 (years), just by sheer definition, the numbers of churches that are in those areas, you’re always going to have- those churches are never going to be the center of your network. They just never will be. They’ll be an add-on, they’ll be like this, you know, department, they’ll be this stream, but they’re not going to be the center.
There’s nothing wrong with churches with more resources subsidizing a church plant that has difficulty surviving by itself for months or even years. Not at all. But the motivations of why this is being done matters, and for Yang, White Churches with money needs to “repair disparities” Within black Churches as an act of repentance and in order to right 300 years of injustice, and the repairing will never end.
And so if we don’t get to the actual pragmatics of “what does reparations look like,” which for some people, and this is my third point, and then I’m done. When we think about repairing disparities, this is not an initiative, this is not a one-time payment, this is not a strategy.
Repairing disparities is an ongoing posture.
“How long do we have to do this?” For as long as it takes. “How long do we have to do this?” Until Jesus comes. Until he comes to restore.
There’s a sense in which we continue to repair until we really work towards a kingdom ideal. It’s not a five-year initiative, it’s not a 10-year initiative. There may be some initiatives that you may define, within a time, a scope of time, but in terms of that actual repairing disposition, it’s a posture. Like, this is what we’re gonna do this for a long time.
We’re going to figure out how to plant churches, meaningful indigenous churches in areas that may never benefit us as a network. Like we never, we may never get the payback system from these churches., and we gotta be okay with that. And we may be giving twice as much to those churches that we are to suburban churches. But by disposition, we’re going to be okay with that.
There’s nothing wrong with churches with more resources subsidizing a church plant that has difficulty surviving by itself for months or even years. Not at all. But the motivations of why this is being done matters, and for Young, White Churches with money needs to “repair disparities” Within black Churches as an act of repentance and in order to right 300 years of injustice, and the repairing will never end.
Editor’s note. Transcript lightly edited to remove copious amounts of the word “like’ and “you know”. Full video can be seen here
In the signs of the times showing the frequent vapidity of modern evangelicalism, 30% of Evangelicals want their pastor to be preaching deeper and more in-depth sermons, according to recent study by Grey Matter Research.
The study asked protestants what they wanted to change about their church in 14 different categories, including sermon length, style of music, amount of political messaging, level of racial diversity. They found among other things:
8% said they wanted sermons to be longer
18% said they wanted more traditional music
22% wished for fewer sermons with political messages
7% wished their congregation was smaller (26% wanted it larger)
62% wanted more outreach to the community
According to Mark Dreistadt, CEO of Infinity Concepts
“The most surprising insight was that 30% of evangelicals want more in-depth teaching than their church is currently providing. This demonstrates an opportunity for pastors to go deeper into the Word of God. This is good news at a time in our culture when biblical literacy is so low — there appears to be a desire among evangelicals to deepen their understanding of biblical truth.”
A group of 25 pastors, pastrixes, prophets, and prophets have gone on a hunger strike in order to protest what they view as racists and discriminatory voting laws. Members of the advocacy group Faith for Black Lives, started the strike on January 6, the anniversary of the “violent insurrection” at the Capitol building, and will last 11 days until Martin L. King, Jr. Day on January 17, with the hope that their public display will influence Congress to pass voting rights legislation. According to their press statement:
One year after the violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws impacting the right to vote, specifically targeting communities of color. States enacted laws to reduce early voting, restrict access to absentee ballots, and seize control of non-partisan election administration official functions.
In addition, extreme partisan gerrymandering threatens our access to equal representation in state and federal elections for the next decade.These fascist attempts to subvert our democracy through voter suppression and nullification will succeed unless Congress passes the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We are swiftly approaching midnight for democracy and we must act before it is too late
On January 6th, I and 24 other faith leaders including @CornellWBrooks, @TraciBlackmon, @RevDrGould began a hunger strike for voting rights. We will continue until at least MLK Day to call on the Senate end the filibuster & pass legislation to protect the sacred right to vote. pic.twitter.com/MKeo1WESys
Rev. Stephen A. Green, Chair of Faith for Black Lives, remarked:
“As faith leaders, we are called to speak truth to power and to raise the conscience of this nation through moral resistance. This moment requires sacrifice and a deep commitment to radical love in action in order to redeem the soul of this nation and protect our democracy. Through this hunger strike we hope to press upon the United States Senate the moral imperative of this moment.”
One Pastor of note that is participating is Jamal Bryan, who is the head of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a 25,000 member megachurch in Georgia formerly led by the disgraced and scandal-riddled Bishop Eddie Long.
The rest of the participants, who do include a couple of people who are not clergy, include:
Rev. Stephen A. Green, Chair, Faith for Black Lives, New York, NY
Rev. Traci Blackmon, Associate General Minister, United Church of Christ, Washington, DC
Rev. Cornell William Brooks, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, Director, William Trotter Collaborative, Former President/CEO, NAACP, Cambridge, MA
Rev. Dr. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, Pastor, New Birth Cathedral, Atlanta, GA
Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, IL
Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, Pastor, Friendship-West Baptist Church, Dallas, TX
Rev. Dr Cassandra Gould, Executive Director, Faith Voices, St. Louis, MO
Rev. Dr. Lanel D. Guyton, Presiding Elder, Brooklyn-Westchester AME District, Brooklyn, NY
Pastor Timothy Findley, Jr., Pastor, Kingdom Fellowship Church, Louisville, KY
Rev. Mary Newton, Pastor, Lee Memorial AME Church, Fort Washington, MD
Prophet Bryce Graham, Anointed House of Prayer Ministries, West Palm Beach, FL
Lest one wonders why these pastors have never gone on hunger strikes for something like protesting abortion and the murder of half a million black babies a year, it’s because the majority of them are progressive and are pro-choice, and that thought would never cross their minds.
On this episode of Polemics Report for January 8th, 2022, David digs deeper and adds some context to Josh Buice’s letter describing Pray’s Mill’s exit from the SBC, and talks about the Babylon Bee’s gospel failure with Elon Musk. In the patron portion, we discuss the disease of pragmatism in the SEND network and the dumpster fire that is Christian music.
