In part one of this series, we highlighted how Carl Lentz tries to “uncool” himself and his Hillsong church in America.
The ‘forked tongue’ of Hillsong and the ‘genuine’ Carl Lentz (Part 1).
In this article, we hear a different story. You will hear Carl Lentz launch a protest against ‘boring’ churches. What does he want his church to be? How does he want people to see his Hillsong church? Either cool, uncool or mutual?
“Let’s do everything we can to make it a cool, fun, enjoyable experience, you know. “
Carl Lentz wants people to see his church as a “cool” church. And how is it cool? According to Carl it’s full of “lights and … cool stuff.” Hear him say it yourself.
So which Carl Lentz do you believe? The Carl that wants a cool church or the Carl that doesn’t care what church what looks like (as long as it isn’t cool). These new breed of leaders, like Carl Lentz, have no problem misleading their audience.
TRANSCRIPT
“Christians need to open their eyes a little bit. Because I feel like, you know I heard some guys say, ‘why do you need all the lights and all the smoke, and all the stuff, you know.’ And I said, ‘when’s the last time you went to a concert?’ You know, I just saw Kanye West have a concert, he had a hover craft, he was floating. The roof came off at Maddison Square Garden.
Like we are so behind the times.
And I don’t think like why not use whatever we can? Like, we don’t think that God moves because there’s smoke machines, we don’t think our moving lights are what brings in the atmosphere. We have moving lights, why not use them? That logic to me is like someone saying, ‘watch a movie standing up’. Okay cool, but can I watch it sitting down? Like if you have stuff in your church that’s going to make people’s brief experience, we get one little slither of time together on a Sunday. Let’s do everything we can to make it a cool, fun, enjoyable experience, you know. If we were in the third would, if we were in an underground church in China, the context is different. But, I’ll tell you this, I’d make sure our candles were as bright as we could make them. So if you were in America, and use certain things let’s use it. But I just don’t like people getting over analytical with that stuff, raging against the machine that doesn’t exist. There is nobody in the Hillsong family of churches that believes atmosphere, you know, is what gets it done. You know atmosphere is a part of it, we don’t have any illusion that our lights and our cool stuff is the thing that brings in the presence of God. It’s not true. But we do we have an honour and a right and we have the privilege to give our best, no matter what the context.”
Source: Carl Lentz, A Theology of Atmosphere in Church | Hillsong Leadership Network TV, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMTjE_BCFU, Uploaded by Hillsong Leadership Network TV at Dec 6, 2016. (Accessed 07/07/2017.)
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Categories: Hillsong