hillsongs - the next installment
As the comments in two weeks have gone beyond 500 comments - here is the new thread..
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Signposts is the personal website of Phil and Dan McCredden. We are involved in leadership at Northern Community.
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Recent entries
January 19th, 2007 at 8:58 am
I worked in Market St. Was he a rep at Manly?
January 19th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Yep and then he wet in to MArket St to work as a rep with the health fund that was set up. I was recruited by Bernie Kely when he was at Manly and then went and worked with him at Willoughby. Tod and Jake were at MAnly along with a whole lot of other Christian guys/girls, many of whom who were from CCC I think
January 19th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Did you know Steve Lewis? He was a good friend of mine. Lovely guy.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:27 am
The name sounds familiar
January 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR5Ak-J_OpY&NR
Have a look at this choice snippet from Benny Hinn. Scary scary stuff.
January 19th, 2007 at 11:50 am
The Jesus Circus.
http://www.planetshakers.com/church/citynews/citynews.htm
January 19th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Omigosh,
Look at how much pressure Pringle places his pastors under at the Christian City Church International Conference in the States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngYnDD_f1gw
Can you imagine having to stay that enthusiastic & pumped all the time? & the bollicking you’d recieve from Pringles chief whips if you couldn’t.
This could be a deterrent-training video for young ppl wanting to train as a Pentecostal Preacher instead of a mainstream denom (they may be duller, but you get to keep your mental health).
And those who were around CCC in the 90’s - note Steve Bullen, formerly Youth Pastor at Oxford Falls, now Senior Minister at CCC Atlanta Georgia without the curly dark locks he had 10 yrs ago. Guess the Pringle-esque pressure has taken it’s toll on him.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Long time lurker, reluctant poster.
However, I have a PP story I was reminded of yesterday whilst spring cleaning. I came across a brochure for a conference that PP was the speaker at, accompanied by Chris O’Brian. It was in a regional city in Australia.
I encountered PP at a gathering of Christian leaders, assembled to hear this great man. We all gathered and enjoyed lunch together, until at a predetermined time two limo’s that were hired by the sponsoring church whooshed up to the entrance and the door was opened for our luminary. He looked every bit the metrosexual man, which was in stark contrast to the assembled bunch of fashion victims.
His address to us was largely about the position which the church ought to have in soceity, and I remember him waxing lyrical about how we should be a storehouse that banks come to for loans, an authority which governments come to for advice on policy etc. It was a very Old Testament’ish view of the church as a physical kingdom all powerful and wealthy.
After the talk there was an opportunity for people to purchase his book on leadership and mix with the great man. Within a short time he turned to his right hand man and I instructed him to get him out of there.
The entourage then exited into limo’s and whooshed back out the driveway.
Out of curiosity I attended the seminar the following morning by O’Brian on worship leading. After a bizarre lead up which included praying as loud as you can, in tongues, in unison - he practised a little bit of Holy Spirit ‘Hide ‘n Seek “there’s someone here who has got a pain in…..”
His primary rationale in terms of worship leading was that the worship leader needs to follow behind the senior pastor, cos he’s the guy that God is bringing the blessing through. His job was too serve the SP, cos that’s where the mojo was.
My feelings afterwards was that the notion of humility exists within that sub-culture only with respects to how followers should behave towards the Christian celebrities. The theological assumptions behind PP’s teaching on the church seemed to be a curious mix of cut ‘n paste Old Testament notions mixed in with a heady overdose of power.
We’ve gone from Jesus who had no place to lay his head to the modern day Christian superstar leaders who have no place to park their limo’s.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
“Long time lurker, reluctant poster.”
I’ve been thinking we need to have a ‘long time lurker…reluctant poster’ day..along with an ‘if the senior pastor found out I was lurking here I’d be dead meat’ day…to flush out all the church people who’d be shot (with the love of Jesus) if it was known that they agreed with anything on Signposts.
“at a predetermined time two limo’s that were hired by the sponsoring church whooshed up to the entrance and the door was opened for our luminary.”
Standing up for Pringle when he enters the room…..limo’s….what is going on with Australian ‘Christianity’?
Would you be game enough to name the ‘limo church’?
January 19th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I don’t see why you couldn’t name the church….I mean he turned up in a limo ..fully in public for all to see.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I just watched that clip from the CCC international conference. It just makes me cringe - so yeah baby, so aaaawwwwwesome, so fake.
A question regarding Planetshakers - what are people’s take on them? I know some teenage kids who are at their conference in Perth right now. I expect them to come back from it ‘fired up for Jesus’, which is a good thing, but I’m just wondering about the teaching that they are getting.
January 19th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I did a ‘cub report’ a few weeks back on my visit to the Planetshakers church in Perth..in particular it was a Wednesday night meeting of Lakes CLC in Northbridge.
The young people went out of their way to make an old fart like me feel welcome.
However they were being force-fed a lot of shit from the youth pastor about how good it would be to be rich and the importance of being ‘awesome’…..the usual crap from these churches.
Great young people slowly being corrupted….. is my take on Planetshakers.
And it’s run by a generation of young leaders who were themselves corrupted in the 80’s and 90’s.
So the corrupt culture of false teaching is pretty firmly entrenched.
One of the icky things about Planetshakers at the moment..is the pressure on one of their leaders to ‘be an example of being awesome’ while they’re dealing with cancer.
I haven’t posted much about it, but I’m watching with interest how the church culture deals with something that’s ‘like, wow, hard, man’.
January 19th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Lance it was a Rhema church, and for the actual conference they placed orange cones out the front of the church so that the limo’s could park directly out front after picking up PP from his hotel. When I say limo’s, I don’t mean stretch limo, it was two sedan cars that were hired, if I remember correctly they were Fairlane’s.
Suffice to say a normal car owned by a church member would not have done the trick, or God forbid a people mover.
When you get to the level that PP does you don’t do what ordinary people do.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I’m going to the drive in tonight with my beautiful Belinda to watch De Javu
January 19th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I tried to say that twice - baut Big broither wouldn;t allow me - duplicate coment detected - YEAH I KNOW!
I’m going to the drive in tonight with my beautiful Belinda to watch De Javu
I’m going to the drive in tonight with my beautiful Belinda to watch De Javu
Didn’t I just say that?
Such a long road to drive down for such a lame joke!
January 19th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
“Pastor Danny Nalliah
Pastor Daniel, better known as “Evangelist Danny,” was born in Colombo the capital of Sri Lanka in 1964. At the age of twelve he knew that the Lord had called him into ministry, when Pastor Frank Houston (from Australia) prophesied over him in Colombo in 1976…..”
http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/biography/
January 20th, 2007 at 9:31 am
email him here
January 20th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Found a blog (http://emergentno.blogspot.com) where the Crystal Cathedral is hosting a conference ‘Changing Methods…Consistent MissionClassic…Contemporary…Cyber (Emerging)A mentoring symposium for the generations…A defining moment for the faith.”
Interesting Brian Houston is down for one of the acts. I haven’t heard Brians name in the mix as an emergent church leader, I wonder if there is another Brian Houston out there?
January 21st, 2007 at 1:55 am
thanks all for your responses to my earlier post…it has been encouraging. I think to successfully overcome (such a hillsong phrase) i really need to invoke the support of my wider support networks. Of course, telling Christians that you are struggling with key tenents of faith can be difficult, but praise God I have some good friends who can deal with that.
Off topic, and maybe worthy of another thread: can anyone justify for me Luther’s seemingly arbitrary abidance to certain ecumenical councils over others? It just seems to me so much of what we have believed is so arbitrary…
January 21st, 2007 at 11:59 am
Reve’s cub report on Joyce Meyer @ CCCOF
Sat 20th Jan 2007, 6pm
So i turn up right on 6pm & the car park is chockerblock full, the car park “ministers” one of whom i know waving people in the direction of side streets. After a couple of minutes i park in a dirt track on an unsealed road down behind the church. When i finally reach the entrance on foot i am told the auditorium is full & that i’ll have to go into the “overflow” room “but don’t worry, they have big screen simulcasts in there & you can still see Joyce”. I ignored this, & stood up the back of the auditorium with a number of others (we stood the WHOLE service).
We had to wait at least half an hour before Joyce came on because, beforehand we had to sit through an “offering” (not for Joyce, that came later, just a normal one). This of course would happen again at each of the three sunday services, tomorrow. Four sets of offerings in less than two days! Also we had to endure an audio visual newsletter instructing us to go straight to the Art Longe afterwards to admire Pringle’s work.
Then, “Dr Increase” featuring at tomorrow services jumps up to give a preview & tells a joke about a man who jumped off a building and committed suicide, twice (nope, im not joking).
Then, Pringle acted surprised when Chris Pringle insisted that the “curator” of the Art Gallery bring up one of Pringles artworks on stage. The artwork was nothing more than a different variation & colour of the Pringle cross series (a stroke one way, then another) on different colured backgrounds. Chris had to let us know that it was an honour to own an original piece of artwork on your wall reminding us that Meyer had one of Phil’s works. What they didn’t say was that to you & me Phil’s work was $600 plus but he GIVES his artwork away as gifts to fellow megachurch pastors.
Then Meyer comes on, firstly stating that she’s asked for a Rocking Chair to be placed on stage as a prop and where was it? And then implied she was disgruntled that the text of the scriptures she was mentioning (which were few) were not being placed up on screen under her face. She then criticised Sydney Channel Ten for removing her early morning TV show saying she did not believe them when they said it was the least watched show in that timeslot.
And how did she look? The terms that comes to mind are
“Pterodactyl with make-up on”
“face you could strike a match on”
“a slimmed down Bronwyn Bishop”
“large white staring eyes staring out of a Jack-Palance saddlebag face”
get the picture?
Despite this, there were still the wolf-whistles & cheers of encouragement as she actively displayed the “stones” on her belt & the shapeliness of her buttocks (no, i’m not kidding). Must have been hard on Chris Pringle who’s arse seems to get bigger every time i see her (she’d never make it as Houston wife). That would be nasty & uncalled for if these churches didn’t set the standard for “God’s beutiful people” that they themselves can’t adhere to - would never dream of saying something unkind like that unless it was to expose a hypocrisy.
And here are the gems of wisdom we recieved from Meyer, written verbatim at the time:
“im like a spiritual hog, I’m gonna get everything i can!”
“stop waiting for life to get simple, YOU get simple” (like CCC congregants needed encouragement ;O)
“Im here, if you like me GOOD, if you don’t, take it up with God, i don’t wanna know”
“sometimes i get a word from God so deep, i have no idea what he’s talking about” (we bet!)
“Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape”
“The Church is an intensive care unit for messed up people”
“In a choice between life & death, choose life” (thunderous applause, thanks Joyce, phew! i was struggling with that one).
“send your soul on vacation”
and finally…. wait for it, my personal fave (drumrolls please)……….
“All your soul is, is your MIND, YOUR WILL & YOUR EMOTIONS, that’s all it is” (oh yes, she did)
A few other curious observations.
1. I saw only one single person i knew, & even he was someone i met AFTER i stopped going there. Not one single person & I was attending there semi-regularly less than ten years ago. Draw you’re own conclusions from that.
2. There were two distinct groups of attendees & the differences were most visible in the dress of the girls. The first group were wearing below-the-knee floral dresses & dress shoes, almost looking mormonish or Amish, the second group were wearing hpister pants, mid-riff tops & designer thongs. Talk about a contrast! I’ll leave it to you to decide which were the vistors from mainstream denom’s who’d travelled hundreds of miles & which were the locals.
Finally, we got an opportunity to donate to Meyers ministry & buy her product, i could see Pringle getting fustrated because people were starting to leave (including me) the moment Meyer finished. I guess he was thinking that the amount Joyce got would have a direct bearing on whether the speaking network-circuit would lead him back to Meyers church in the States.
Anyways, there you have it. Meyer is at Hillsong today, someone else can fill us in on that.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Comprehensive, attentive to detail, colourful.
It achieved the objective of having the reader feel like they were right in the room with you.
A great cub report.
January 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Emblazoned,
Just been having an interesting discussion with hubby, who is generously accusing me of being agnostic. My answer was “Why can’t I live a paradox?… there seem to be so many in life… Why can’t I believe and still have doubts about utlimate truth?…. Why can’t I lose my religion and still believe?
Hope you at least see the point to what I am posting.
Grace
January 21st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Grace required you’d love a book by Brennan Maning called the Ragamuffin Gospel - I’m just reading it now and it says something similar somewhere - anyway it’s a great book so far
January 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Many thanks, Lance!
January 21st, 2007 at 6:49 pm
“If no pieces of reality are missing from the picture, if all the dimensions are integrated, you will probably be confronted with a paradox. When you get to the root of things, virtually all truth is paradoxical.” (M. Scott Peck, page 62, “The Road Less Travelled and Beyond”.)
If you’re wrestling with paradox, you’re getting closer to reality.
January 21st, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Grace Required,
I believe I know exactly what you are talking about. It’s a crazy world.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
“i just got back from seeing joyce meyer preach at oxford falls church. she was amazing. i went by myself cos i didn’t want to miss out (she’s my favourite preacher!) but it took quite a while to get there. i didn’t get into the hall until about 540pm and it was due to start at 6pm. the church was massive, but i, and about 300 other people didn’t get a seat! so we had to sit in their over flow room. (can you imagine a church so crowded you have to put the extra 300 people in another church building??)
and did i mention it was a 1.5 hour drive for me to get there? don’t ya love sydney? you can drive essentially in a straight line for 3 hours and still be in sydney.
so, i didn’t get to see her in the flesh, but i did get to watch her on tv with lors of other people. she spoke about choosing to focus on people’s positive aspects, not the things that drive you crazy.
amongst other things, but that’s what i came away with. and i’m very sad chanel ten has taken her 4am show off the air. she said that the people at chanel ten told her they were taking it off cos it wasn’t getting many viewers. i can’t imagine any show getting many viewers at 4am. however, i have just discovered her pod casts on her web site, so suck on that, chanel 10!!
in other news, i got my hair cut today and i’m getting it dyed on monday. hoorah!!”
Jo, single, female, 28, Sydney.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=90683011&blogID=219719607
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 am
from jo’s ite on myspace - right at the very top is this line -”"I’ve had it with these mother f*$#ing snakes on this mother f^*@ing plane!”".
A bit unusual for Joyce fans.
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:32 am
Thanks Reve for the excellent cub report on Joyce Meyer. Very enlightening and amusing! My husband drove past CCCOF at about 5pm Saturday night and says he has never seen so many cars lined up around the place so I’m not surprised you had to stand. Just amazing to me that people would travel so far and put themselves to so much trouble for such sub-standard preaching. Thanks again, it couldn’t have been fun sitting through all that…
Re your comments abouts Chris Pringle’s arse. I was only thinking the other day about how disturbing all that Bobbie Houston teaching on fat chicks really is. For example she says: “If I carry weight I feel like a retard … How are you going to do anything to surprise your man when you need a hydraulic crane just to turn over in bed?” Does anyone else think that these kind of ideas and teachings are outrageously out of step with what we as Christians should be thinking and saying. Not to mention what we as a society we should be telling young women?
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
At the risk of becoming a Signposts pariah, I used to quite enjoy watching Joyce Meyer… if I had to breastfeed at some ungodly hour it was preferable to watch Joyce than advertisements for the “abdoer”, the “mega memory package” and assorted other products from Danos Direct.
And dare I say… I think her popularity has something to do with the fact she addresses real life issues most of us face… rather than edifying but not necessarily immediately applicable bible teaching. For example… what she suggests in Jo’s description is actually a pretty good strategy for dealing with people who drive you crazy… trying to focus your attention on their strengths and not their weaknesses… rather than ruminating over and over about all their annoying traits. And let’s face it… everyone has to deal with annoying people at some stage or another.
She’s actually not a bad case study for preaching in an engaging fashion. Queen of the pithy one liner.
She’s tainted with WOF and prosperity stuff, but provided you have a brain to start with it’s easy to ignore those bits… and it’s not nearly as much a focus on her shows as the excruciatingly bad other preachers that channel 10 used to show. The Copelands are awful… BH’s sermons have no apparent relationship to the bible apart from verses that are completely out of context… Benny Hinn seems ludicrous… and they used to occasionally broadcast some psychopath from America “proving” current events were prophesied in Daniel and Revelation… truly bizarre.
I await the hail of stones.