“[Multitudes of American evangelicals] are more enthralled with their clever methodologies and ingenious ‘contextualizations’ than they are with the gospel itself. Honestly, they seem at times to love their own flamboyance far more than they care about lost souls.
At least Rob Bell was honest about what he was trying to do. He openly called himself a “performance artist.” But let’s face it: the typical Noble/Furtick/EdYoungJr-style shtick is nothing more than bad performance art, too. The recent Code Orange Revival was promoted by garish floor gymnastics that looked like a poor imitation of something from Cirque du Soleil. Virtually all Mark Driscoll’s major gaffes are products of a mind that has been overexposed to movies, rock concerts, cage fighting, Chris Rock, and whatnot. Even the Elephant Room, heavily promoted as a rare moment of candor and tough questions, turned out to be carefully scripted and strictly controlled so that no opinions were harmed during its filming.
A lot of what’s called ministry these days is mere spectacle….[Read entire article at the Pyromaniacs blog]
