Manipulative worship impatiently skips the slow and deep persuasion of the human spirit (knowing full well that it will not be popular with the masses). It will give us the intensity our bodies crave, regardless of the object of our worship. When it comes to what Pentecostals call “intensity,” we would do well to distinguish persuasive, spirit-centered zeal from a manipulative, sensually-controlled passion.

Pentecostal worship places great emphasis on intensity. By intensity, they mean a strongly felt experience of emotion, intimacy, joy, wonder, or happiness. Indeed, this is a close cousin of the ecstasy in ecstatic utterances. The experience sought is one where active seeking gives way to a passive experience of overwhelming pleasure or emotion.
Critically examining emotional experiences like this has all the fun of ruining someone’s birthday surprise or spoiling a joke by blabbing the punchline before the narrator has finished. We don’t like people like that, who appear to find joy in lessening the joy of others. Not surprisingly, when a critique of someone’s spiritual experiences begins, the response is often an impatient sentiment along the lines of “Can’t you just let people have their fun?”, or, “What’s it to you if someone has a different worship experience to you?”
But in matters of Christian worship, we cannot be content if worshippers merely make the claim to an ecstatic experience. That’s precisely because the experience of worship is not the goal of worship. Worship is not successful simply because the worshippers enjoyed their worship. Christian worship is rooted in truth, and therefore everything that claims to be Christian worship must be a truthful response to a truthful revelation of the true God. In other words, you can get worship wrong, even if it felt right. Many people feel good about an exam they wrote, and find out they failed; some feel terrible and find out they passed with flying colours. The indispensable necessity of Christian worship is a true revelation of God from the Scriptures, and a truthful—that is, appropriate and corresponding—response to that revelation. The First Commandment restricts worship to the true God. The Second Commandment restricts the responses of worship to those He has commanded, which correspond to His being. The true God worshipped the true way constitutes biblical worship.
This brings us to a rather dispassionate discussion of felt emotions in worship, one that is sure to annoy all fans of scrunchy-face worship. Philosophers and thinkers have written much on how human emotions differ: their categories, their manifestations, and how they are evoked. Dating back to classical Greece, philosophers have often placed emotions into two categories: those evoked by reason, and those evoked by physical sensation. Different nomenclature has been used, but a similar idea prevailed for centuries. Pre-modern theologians spoke of the affections and the passions. Nietzche coined the terms Apollonianand Dionysian. Our own era has collapsed the two into the word emotion, but the distinction is worth reviving and keeping.
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Bishop Berlin is infamous for his speech on the floor of the 2019 General Conference where he referred to the Traditional Plan (the legislation adopted upholding accountability for a traditionalist understanding of marriage and ordination) as a “virus” that would infect the denomination. The logical extrapolation was that people who supported the traditional plan (i.e., theological conservatives) were also a virus. Moreover, the Southeastern Jurisdiction’s opening worship featured four giant dream catchers and liturgy that some felt had pagan overtones. The dream catchers were present for the entire meeting while, at times, there was no cross.

For months (years, really) bishops in The United Methodist Church, along with other progressive leaders, have pushed hard on two ideas:

The United Methodist Church is a big tent.
There is room for everyone, including theological conservatives, in The United Methodist Church.

From November 2-5, 2022, the five U.S. jurisdictions held their conferences and elected new bishops. The results are clear: the big tent has collapsed. The United Methodist Church now has the most liberal Council of Bishops in its history. Not one single traditionalist bishop was elected. Not one. Forget about these elections telegraphing the future of The United Methodist Church. They declare the denomination’s present state.
It should now be crystal clear that the two points above in reality are the following:

The big tent has collapsed.
It’s time for traditionalist churches to go…if they still can.

There’s Room for Everyone
If there’s truly room for everyone, wouldn’t you think delegates at jurisdictional conference would want to throw theological conservatives a proverbial bone and elect at least one traditionalist-leaning bishop? Yet they didn’t. Instead, here’s a sample of who they elected and the resolutions they adopted:

The North Central Jurisdiction elected Kennetha Bigham-Tsai. Bishop Bigham-Tsai will begin leading the Iowa Conference on January 1. Before her election, she served as Chief Connectional Ministries Officer at the Connectional Table. During an interview with a delegation as she was campaigning, she said, “No, it is not important that we agree on who Christ is.” She went on to further cast doubt on where she stands on the incarnation of Jesus when she said during the same interview “God became flesh, but not particular flesh. There’s no particularity around that. God became incarnate in a culture, but not one culture.” To read the article about this, including a recording of the aforementioned interview, click here.
The Western Jurisdiction elected Dottie Escobedo-Frank. Bishop Escobedo-Frank will begin leading the Cal-Pac Conference on January 1. Before her election, she was senior pastor at Paradise Valley United Methodist Church Arizona. On her biography on Paradise Valley UMC’s websiteshe is described in the following way:

Dottie believes we are living in a time of epochal change, which requires the church find sacred ways to die in order to be reborn. She calls for heretics and edge-dwellers to lead the church forward. Now is the time, she says, to push these new leaders to the forefront of church restarts. (Emphasis added)

The Western Jurisdiction elected Cedrick Bridgeforth. Bishop Bridgeforth will begin leading the Pacific Northwest, Oregon-Idaho, and Alaska Conferences on January 1. Before his election, he was the director of communications and innovation for the Cal-Pac Conference. Bishop Bridgeforth is a married, gay man. His husband is Christopher Hucks-Ortiz. The Western Jurisdiction now has two married, gay/lesbian bishops: Cedrick Bridgeforth and Karen Oliveto. You can read more about Bishop Bridgeforth in this article from the Western Jurisdiction.

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If we have any hope of nipping gossip in the bud, it rests in the gift of the local church. Those who would gossip ought to be called to account for the reputational damage they cause and those of us further away would do well to heed the judgements of the local church who see matters up close.

If you go into pastoral ministry, it is likely you will be on the receiving end of some unwarranted and untrue gossip. I remember speaking to one person who had been publicly and clearly caught indulging in such behaviour. Their defence was, ‘well, that’s just ministry!’ I suppose, in one sense, they were right. That is ministry. But it is an unpleasant and nasty part of ministry that does not justify the one doing the gossiping. If you become a pastor, it will happen to you for such has it ever been. but that doesn’t mean we have carte blanche to gossip about our pastor. Just as sin is always inevitable until Jesus return, that doesn’t give us any right to sin.
I have spoken about Jani Ortlund’s comments on this before. I haven’t heard better advice since. She says:
After almost fifty years in a ministry marriage, here is a piece of advice I wish I had understood from the early days of marriage to my beloved pastor: be willing to risk your reputation.
Leaders are always talked about. I found that hard to live with, because many times I disagreed with the current conversation. I wish someone had mentored me in what it looks like to release my reputation to the one who lovingly made himself of no reputation for us (Philippians 2:7–9).
Her whole article is worth reading on this very thing. But as sure as night follows day, church leaders will inevitably be talked about and their reputations often unfairly maligned.
With the advent of the internet, how much more prevalent these things are. There are issues about pastors that I would never have heard about, but I have heard about, because the internet has told me so. There are things about pastors I have filed away and believed, that I would never have heard about to begin with and have subsequently been shown to be untrue, because the internet has told me. Reputational damage can be done through our networks, through relationships, and now across the internet. I suspect very few of us in any sort of ministry role, and all the more those of us with an online presence, will escape. The rumour mill presses on unabated and one cannot unhear what one has heard. It is all but impossible, try as we might, not to form opinions on what we hear.

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