Despite the tremendous amount of backlash and nationwide criticism Pastor Michael Todd and Transformation Church has received from its controversial Easter play, the church says something wonderful has resulted from it—multitudes of souls have been saved.
Transformation Church posted on their Facebook page that “500 people gave their lives to Christ” following the production of “Ransom.” If this is true, then the angels in heaven are certainly celebrating.
“We want to let you know that TC and all of heaven is rejoicing because of your decision,” the Facebook post read. “We wish you a warm, welcome home.”
It’s not the Resurrection Sunday message that is in question, it’s the way Transformation Church went about it. Women on stage twerking to secular music from Ke$ha—including one particular song, “Die Young.”
Other secular songs were performed and actors wore dark clothes and makeup with fire and red lighting to set the stages to “actually look like a frame from hell.”
The Blaze’s Allie Beth Stuckey wrote that “Twerking is not appropriate for an Easter service. … I don’t know what to say. I’m not saying that all churches have the same forms of worship and the same kind of Easter service, but I do think that the church’s primary role is to glory God and to edify believes with the Word of God and with the gospel. It is entirely inappropriate.”
Todd himself said he had never preached an Easter sermon before and, instead of doing so on Resurrection Sunday, Transformation Church would put on a play—one that would shock the world.
Todd said, “We’re gonna go to the edge on this, and they said, ‘Pastor, how far on the edge are we gonna go?’ I said, ‘We gonna’ do everything short of sin.'”
To which Stuckey responded, “If you don’t know what to do as a pastor, just read the Bible.”
“Our Easter production RANSOM showed how God’s love conquered sin, death and the grave. We believed that so many lives were transformed today because He’s not DEAD. Thank YOU for spending this Easter with us. We LOVE you. And God loves you so much more than He sent His only Son to die for you to have a close relationship with Him.”
Let’s simply hope that is the message the claimed 500 souls that were saved that day at Transformation Church took home with them, and not the memory of women twerking on stage to secular music from a woman who has criticized the Bible. {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma News.
