Last night I attended a concert by one of the biggest worship bands on the planet. They had a tour stop in a local church not far from here.
I have long loved this band, finding great inspiration and encouragement from their music and from their passion and commitment to Christ. I fully expected a powerful experience, with the kind of wild, reckless, reverent joy they are known for, and I was not disappointed.
The building was absolutely packed with people with the same desire to get free, sing out and connect with God together. There were more expressions of awe and surrender in that place then I have seen anywhere. It was life-giving, exuberant and electrifying.
Then, about three-quarters into the night, the director/pastor of the team, asked the band to leave the stage and instructed everyone to sit down so that he could share some words from Scripture and a message with us. This is nothing new, in fact it was quite expected at such events. However, the message itself, kind of baffled me.
“We want to see stadiums around this country filled with young people hungry for Jesus!”
He repeated this a dozen times throughout his nearly hour-long message.
“We want to see stadiums filled…”
While that in itself was rather off-putting on its own, the oddest thing about this emphatic directive, was that each time it was mentioned, it was followed-up by a plug for the band’s big worship event in New York City later this Summer. (Volunteers had met us at the door handing out white rubber bracelets with the event on them, and a promo video had been shown earlier in the night).
“Wait…”, I thought to myself, “…you have 4,000 passionate, engaged people, (mostly teenagers), here together to worship and acknowledge God’s presence, and you’re promoting another show, hundreds of miles and several months away?”
The speaker was charismatic and clear and seemingly sincere about the ministry’s love for Jesus and heart for His people, but the message itself seemed a little like a fast-food sermon, designed to get people pumped-up and screaming, (which it sometimes did), yet at the end, I was confused as to what we were getting all worked-up about.
“God wants to change your schools and your community and this nation and the world!”, he would begin to yell at various times , (which invariably brought a roar from the thousands assembled). And just when you started to feel he was about to really bring home his message about how God wants to bring such revival, he threw in another mini-commercial for the bigger concert in the Summer he wanted us to promote and attend.
The event, it sounded like, was the answer. That was what God wanted. That was where we were being pointed. That was the end.
By the close of the message, the overwhelming point I received from his 60 minutes of storytelling, preaching and exhorting was this: God wants to change the world, and he wants to do it through rock shows.
Never once during that hour did I hear anything about love for the poor, compassion for the hurting, about lives of sacrifice, or forgiveness or service or purity or humility. All I heard was that God wants people to gather in stadiums and rock out for Him, and then those people would go and change the world, (just because).
I know this is not what this pastor and this band believes, by any means. I believe that they love God completely and care deeply for His people. I just felt a little cheated, maybe a little disappointed that thousands of teenagers present were being given the message that God is in the big and the loud and the noticeable. He is where the stage and the lights are. He is there in the event.
When I read the Gospels, and look at the life and ministry of Jesus, I see the invitation to surrender to self, to live humbly and reverently and others-centered. I see a Kingdom that is moving, like yeast through dough; quiet and relentless and nearly unnoticed, but moving just the same.
I see Jesus saying that he does want to change the world, but that He wants to do it from the inside-out, giving His people new hearts to see the lost and the hurting and the marginalized, and the power to love the unloveable right there in small, subversive acts of love that cannot be publicized or promoted.
Though the band came out again and closed with a set as beautiful and breathtaking as you can imagine, I left the event last night, wishing that people heard a little more about that God; the One who wants revival, not through audacious displays and packed stadiums, but through transformed individuals, and Kingdom communities doing the hard work of daily obedience, when the lights and crowds are gone.
