Fred Markert, a Colorado-based leader of Youth With a Mission, a Christian organization, called Hillsong the most influential producers of worship music in Christendom. Ed Stetzer, executive director of LifeWay Research, says Hillsong’s productions rival any other contemporary form of entertainment.
So what’s R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s issue?
“It’s a prosperity movement for the millennials, in which the polyester and middle-class associations of Oral Roberts have given way to ripped jeans and sophisticated rock music,” Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the The New York Times. “What has made Hillsong distinctive is a minimization of the actual content of the gospel and a far more diffuse presentation of spirituality.”
Is this just a Baptist who doesn’t understand the Pentecostal flow? What’s behind this trend of leaders making appeals to gospel stars such as Joel and Victoria Osteeen and Hillsong? Is it the Lord speaking or another spirit?
