Posted on Monday, June 8, 2015

Did You Watch Lifetime’s All-New Docuseries ‘Preach’ on Friday?! My Recap…

Hello World,

I did. My answer to the question in the headline of this post…smh…“Preach” is a visual representation of why some people are turned off by preachers and by extension Christianity…Don’t get me wrong…The show is entertaining…the same way an old-fashioned circus is entertaining complete with little people, giants, bearded women, conjoined twins, etc. This “docuseries” could be an opportunity to showcase female preachers, who are still not wholly accepted in the Church, speaking truth to power. Instead these female preachers use over-the-top antics and quips reminiscent of Jim Bakker (before he went to prison), Jerry Falwell and other evangelists of that ilk…

Below is a breakdown of the prophetesses, which is how they are addressed on the show, and what happened on the show…

Dr. Belinda C. Scott is the first prophetess shown the in the docuseries. She is the co-founder and co-pastor of New Spirit Revival Center Ministries, Inc., in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and apparently, the most prominent of the four prophetesses featured on the show. She corrals the three other prophetesses in order to have a deliverance service by the end of the show. She seems to be the most balanced of the four, and she comes across as sensible and empathetic. She has also done well in her ministry it seems. Her home, which is shown a few times, is large and luxurious and appears to be on a sizable lot as it is not near any other homes…

Adorned with a long blond over black hair wig, Dr. Taketa Williams says she has been known as the “Beyoncé of the Preaching World.” I don’t know about that, but I must admit her coral blouse that was long-sleeved on one side and short-sleeved on the other was giving me life…She co-pastors the Impact Christian Center in Columbus, Ohio…

Prophetess Linda Roark must be Lifetime’s answer to Pastor Paula White. She is a white woman with suburban mom blonde hair and blue eyes and claims she is known as the “Blue-Eyed Soul Sister.” With her loud, raspy voice, she says it has been said that “she may be white, but she preaches like she is black.” Roark, who is co-pastor of World Commissioned Church in Hamilton, Ohio, admits she has a past as she used to frequent bars and smoked weed…

Dr. Belinda’s former protégé Prophetess Kelly Crews, who is also white, is the only single prophetess…Like Dr. Belinda, she also comes across as balanced, which is maybe why not much of her story was revealed in this first episode….Kelly Crews Ministries is located in Bedford, Ohio…

And here is the twist about “Preach.” Each of these four prophetesses have protégés who are being mentored by the women…

Dr. Belinda’s mentee is Hadassah Elder. With her box braids in a huge bun, she looks more like Beyoncé than Dr. Taketa…No shade…Well, maybe a little… Her back story is pretty interesting…She grew up in the Muslim faith, and her mother is not trying to understand why she is now a Christian and wants to become a prophetess…Plus, her mom doesn’t understand tithing…Hadassah says her mother asked her, “Why do you tithe when you don’t have anything?” A fair question although I believe in tithing although it is not mandated according to the New Testament….Also, Dr. Belinda is teaching her how to “lay hands” so that she can do so during the deliverance service…Hadassah compares learning how to “lay lands” to getting your first pair of red bottom shoes…Okay? Really?

Like her mentor Dr. Taketa, her protégé Rebecca Hairston, a single mother with three girls, is also looking forward to learning how to “lay hands” like Dr. Taketa in this first episode…In preparation for this “laying hands” lesson, Dr. Taketa takes Rebecca to a gun range?! Where dey do that at? I guess in Ohio. Dr. Taketa says target practice is a good tool to learn how to harness the power used in “laying hands.” “In order to handle power, you have to focus,” Dr. Taketa says…Although Rebecca has three daughters, she hasn’t seen her middle daughter in four years…It wasn’t told why that is the case, but I guess that will be addressed in future shows…

Prophetess Linda’s protégé Angel Pound , a former drug addict who used to dance in clubs, comes across as a little touched…She declares that no witches, warlocks, demons, etc. will come against her mentor during her watch…I know that we Christians believe in demons and evil spirits, but her declaration made me feel some type of way…During one scene, she goes to her home and discusses her mentor with her husband….She tells him she isn’t going to watch TV and is going to fast and pray…In the next scene, she is shown praying loudly while on her knees in one room while her husband is the next room listening to her pray and looking a little puzzled…

To be honest, I really don’t remember much about Prophetess Kelly’s protégé Stacey Williams, who is newly married and pregnant…I guess more will be revealed…

The Deliverance Service…

Let me go ahead and admit something about myself…I don’t attend a charismatic church…If you come to my church, you will not see folks falling out or “laying hands”…It’s not that I don’t believe in “laying hands” because “laying hands” was mentioned in the Bible and falling out in front of Jesus and everybody is sometimes necessary when you are going through…But I’m just not all that used to that…And that is what folks are doing during this service…The prophetesses, along with their mentees, got to laying hands and folk fell out like it was hot in there…The mentees, particularly Hadassah and Rebecca, are scared to try it because they’ve never done it before…But they apparently learned their “laying hands” lesson because the whole room seems to have fell out in this episode…

Like I said, Preach was entertaining but not necessarily the best representation of female preachers…

What y’all think? Are you going to watch?

Any thoughts?

Posted on Sunday, May 24, 2015

Josh Duggar v. Bill Cosby and the Differences Between Liberal Christians & Conservative Christians

Hello World,

I get it. I really do. This visceral impulse to defend Josh Duggar who recently admitted and apologized for molesting young girls when he was a teenager. I felt the same way when I first scanned a singular article in which Bill Cosby was accused of being a serial rapist…In fact, below are my exact words from November 2014 blog post “What Would Jesus Do About Bill Cosby?”

I admit that I first came across an article in which the author alleged that Cosby had coerced several women to have sexual contact with him about three weeks ago. I quickly scanned the article but dismissed it an Internet hoax and or outright hogwash because Bill Cosby is Dr. Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable to me. And everyone in my generation knows that Dr. Huxtable is a noted obstetrician, husband to wife, attorney Clair Huxtable née Hanks and father to their five children.

And I ended my blog post with these words:

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.

Chile, won’t He do it? Yes, He will…If you parade yourself around as having no faults, sooner or later, God will let everyone know that you are like the emperor with no clothes on: just a regular ole human being just like the rest of us…And I’m not saying the Duggars of “19 Kids and Counting” think or thought they are or were perfect, but many of their fans sure seem to think or thought they are or were…And for the record, I’m still struggling with this whole Bill Cosby thing…

I get why many conservative Christians heralded the Duggars as an example of all that is good and perfect…

They live in middle America…For some reason, middle America seems to the base of “family values.”
They are Republican.
Michelle Duggar is proud and vocal about being a submissive wife. Her husband is unequivocally the head of the household.
They have 19 children which harkens back to a nostalgic time when the United States was primarily agrarian, and many children were needed to help farm the land. (If you didn’t have slaves.) Birth control is not an option.
The children are homeschooled so they are not tainted by the government-run public school system.
They believe in courtship not dating.

Those are just some of the most salient reasons why I can imagine the Duggars are so appealing to conservative Christians. I am reasonably sure there are other, less obvious reasons, why they have such a large fan base.

Liberal Christians, conversely, see these qualities differently…

“Family values” or values in general can be found in all of America.
They are mainly Democratic or somewhere in the middle.
Egalitarian marriages are more appealing.
A large family is not necessarily criticized, but a small family including one child or two children is fine too.
Public schools are not shunned.
Dating with respectful boundaries is appropriate.

I realize I’m generalizing here, and a lot of these qualities are on a continuum. And the truth is that I am somewhere in between myself. But what I want to say to my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ is this:

At best, the Duggar parents have been hypocrites in allowing their daily lives to be broadcast without revealing the full truth of what transpired in their daily lives. At worst, they have been co-conspirators in their son’s crime by not adequately dealing with the issue. According to a Washington Post article, the two supposed authority figures who we were responsible for counseling and or admonishing the then teenager for his actions were later accused of sexual crimes themselves!!!

So how are we, conservative Christians and liberal Christians, supposed to deal with this? Particularly when those who don’t like Christianity for a variety of reasons or those who are hungry for Christ’s love but just don’t know it yet are looking at us to see how respond?

My answer is this verse…

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away. Isaiah 64:6

None of us are righteous – conservative or liberal – in God’s eyes without His grace and mercy and the blood that Jesus Christ shed for us. All of us are sinful. But what we cannot do is use this verse to excuse away our unrighteousness. To do so would make a mockery of Jesus Christ who suffered on the cross so that we could be reconciled to Him. I hope the Duggar family uses this painful revelation as an opportunity to right the wrong that was committed.

Any thoughts?

Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2015

Should Beyoncé and Jay Z Have Bought a Converted Church Mansion?

Hello World,

Word on the street is that BeyonZ other known as The Carters allegedly bought “La Casa de Castille, a hulking, 13,292-plus-square-foot Spanish Baroque-style converted church mansion in the heart of New Orleans’ Garden District,” for approximately $2. 6 million according to Variety magazine. The building was once known as Westminster Presbyterian Church and was constructed in the 1920s. “The altar is now the dining room, and the master suite, replete with sitting area, two-room bath and a dressing area, is located on the third level in what was once the choir loft.”

Am I the only one that sees this purchase as sacrilege?

I remember when I first heard that Third Baptist Church in Atlanta would become the House of Blues for the 1996 Summer Olympics held in the A, I was aghast that what was once a house of prayer would now become a venue for the blues…Even James Brown had a problem with performing there according to this article on augustachronicle.com. In fact, a tent had to be erected in the venue’s parking lot in order for him to perform…”I’m having a little problem with the church,” Mr. Brown said Wednesday in an interview from his office in Augusta. “We’re going to play in the yard. I’m going to do my singing and dancing in a tent.”

Following the games, the House of Blues was renamed The Tabernacle although it continues to operate as a venue for a variety of musical acts. I remember discussing my feelings about this issue with a musical artist. I was also sharing about my faith with this artist and declared that I would never cross the threshold the Tabernacle because the house of God had been converted into a secular music showcase. (And to be clear, I do listen to more than Christian and or gospel music, but I don’t think every venue is for every artist.)

Well chile, I made a hypocrite of myself when a Christian friend offered me a free ticket to see Jill Scott at the Tabernacle. I’ve been a fan of Jilly from Philly since her first album and someone gave the opportunity to see her free too? I told my Christian friend about my apprehension, but she assured me that it would be alright with God although my spirit didn’t exactly agree…When I walked into the mammoth former church house, which used to have a membership of over 3,000, I could see how it used to be a church. The pews had been removed and the stage replaced the altar area, but other than that, the construction looked similar to what it must have been when it was a church. And wouldn’t you know it that as I was getting my groove on, I saw that very same musical artist that I had told that I would never go into the Tabernacle much less party up in there…It was a ministry failure…And that wasn’t the last time either, I went there for two more concerts: one for Erykah Badu and one for Lauryn Hill. I figured that since I had already been there once, what did it matter if I went there again and again? (By the way, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill are pretty much at the top of my list for my favorite artists of all time…)

So fast forward to 2012 as I was preparing for the launch party of my book “After the Altar Call: The Sisters’ Guide to Developing a Personal Relationship With God.” I tried to have my party at the Museum Bar, another converted church building here in Atlanta, because I thought it would be cool to use the venue for its original purpose: to uplift God. But the venue wasn’t available which in hindsight was probably for the best since I don’t think I agree with church houses being converted to secular structures…