Summertime is ‘Church at the movies’ time for many seeker-sensitive and biblically illiterate churches, and the usual blockbuster films are prime pickings: Mission Impossible, Transformers, Super Mario, and even the newest ‘Barbie’ film. These PG and PG-13 films are all ripe for industrious pastors to pluck ‘life lessons’ out of and to uncover the ‘spiritual truths’ out of Bowser singing ‘Peaches’ or Optimus Prime ‘transforming’ into a new creation.
This is where churches decorate the entire building (or at least the lobby and sanctuary) with movie-themed accouterments, hand out popcorn and drinks, and in the case of Barbie week, ask congregants to come to church dressed in pink, where if they wish, they can do a Barbie-themed photoshoot.
It’s all so pink.
And of course, the requisite sermons. Unfortunately many of the churches will not stream them as they use so much copyright material with the video clips they show, but inevitably some get through.
This church's Barbie sermon is particularily cringy, especially when she busts out the dolls. The only thing worse than a male pastor preaching on Barbie is when a pastrix does it. pic.twitter.com/OnDcBRsgel
Here's another church doing the Barbie sermon, relating Barbie's existential crisis to our own, where we ask ourselves "I know there's got to be more than…having diamonds and having brand name bags" pic.twitter.com/dhVuFQoWj8
Summertime is ‘Church at the movies’ time for many seeker-sensitive and biblically illiterate churches, and the usual blockbuster films are prime pickings: Mission Impossible, Transformers, Super Mario, and even the newest ‘Barbie’ film. These PG and PG-13 films are all ripe for industrious pastors to pluck ‘life lessons’ out of and to uncover the ‘spiritual truths’ out of Bowser singing ‘Peaches’ or Optimus Prime ‘transforming’ into a new creation.
One church has upped the ante, however. Blessed Hope Community Church is a contemporary, non-denominational Christian church in Webster, NY. They make a point of saying they meet Sunday morning in a movie theater with comfy reclining chairs and advertise that if you attend their church, you’ll experience “authentic caring people, exciting, upbeat music, messages that are relevant to your life, and even movie clips on the big screen!”
Led by John R. Wurzbacher, they’ve done sermons on The Flash, Transformers, Gran Turismo, and the R-rated Oppenheimer, which, according to reviewing sites, has “several sex scenes with partial nudity, including long sequences with bare breasts.”
They’re not the first time to do a sermon series on R-rated films and Tv shows. Perry Noble and his new megachurch ‘SecondChance Church’ did one on Game of Thrones a few years back.
They also won’t be the last to do one on Oppenheimer, as Liquid Church is likewise planning to preach on it in August, where they’ll explore ‘faith in film’
For the church service, Wurzbacher has his congregants watch the trailer for the film and then asks them whether or not they experienced regret, relating Oppenheimer’s regret at building the atomic bomb to people’s regrets at saying unkind words or eating food that gave them food poisoning. Curiously, when he preached this sermon, the film didn’t even come out yet, and he cautions them, “Now I’m not suggesting that you necessarily go watch this film, especially for the fact that it’s rated R.’
Then why not just preach from your bible?
Church does sermon series on R-rated 'Oppenheimer' film, relating Oppenheimer's regret at building the atomic bomb and killing 200,000 people to people's regrets at saying unkind words or taking out bad car loans. See story at https://t.co/Nrtz2sQ1oopic.twitter.com/m3gsK7jPm2
Mark Driscoll’s Trinity Church has started putting out promo material for an upcoming 8-week sermon series, with the disgraced pastor putting out mailers and billboards informing potential attendees that “The same God who heats up our valley wants to heat up your marriage” and “Married couples: has your bedroom become your bored room? We’re here to help”
The mailers and billboards link to the church’s website, informing them that the sermon series is based on a new book by Driscoll called Real Romance, Sex in the Book of Songs.
Driscoll famously preached a controversial sermon in 2007 on the Songs of Songs, in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was scrubbed from the internet but not before being captured.
In it, he went into graphic detail on the vagina, urged wives to dance and strip for their husbands, said refusing to give a spouse oral sex is a sin, and told a story about how a man started coming to his church after he insisted in a bible study that the wife repent of withholding oral sex from him.
“We had a woman like that in our church. She became a Christian and her husband was not a Christian. He hated the church, wanted nothing to do with the church. She kept browbeating him about Jesus: “you need to get saved, you’re gonna burn in hell” (and) he had no interest in that.
And so finally I was teaching a class on sex and she said “oh, so oral sex on a husband is what a wife is supposed to do?” I said “yes.” She said “my husband’s always wanted that but I’ve refused him.”
I went to 1Peter 3, I said the Bible says if your husband is not a Christian that you are to win him over with deeds of kindness.
I said so go home and tell your husband that you were in a Bible study today and that God has convicted you have sin, and repent, and perform oral sex on your husband and tell them that Jesus, Jesus Christ commands you to do so. The next week a man showed up at church.
Driscoll's infamous, scrubbed 2007 sex sermon in Edinburgh, Scotland, where commands women to give their husbands oral sex, saying it is sinful not to, and how a man became a Christian after his wife repented of not giving it to him sooner. pic.twitter.com/YtUt0PJDdV
As far as we are aware, he has never publicly recanted, retracted, or apologized for it.
There is no word whether or not this new series will have similar admonitions and marital advice.
Driscoll’s Mars Hill Ministry imploded in 2014 after his elders accused him of being arrogant, crude, bullying, harsh, and overbearing. Rather than stay and submit to the ignominy of church discipline, Mark took his ball and went home, resigning and starting a new church in Arizona (the 1000-member Trinity Church) that notably does not have elders who can reign him in and keep him in check. His lack of elders is not for lack of prospects, but rather is being done to avoid accountability and accumulate maximum control, and where his better angels have transformed into crooked and decrepit demons.
It was only a year ago that nearly 40 elders who once worked at Mars Hill Church and served alongside Mark Driscoll during the most tumultuous years of his career released a public statement outlining their dismay that their former leader has continued his abusive tactics at his new church; calling on him to step down and to enter into a process of conciliation with those he abused.
Though Driscoll was once more or less sound and orthodox in the faith, being a leader and key figure in the Young, Restless and Reformed movement of the late ’90s and early 2000s, he drifted more and more towards false teaching and embracing heretics.
