Sean Feucht, Triumphalism and our only Hope

We have all seen and watched the videos on Facebook on Sean’s worship tour around cities in the US. The massive crowds of worship, the salvations, the healings, and the testimonies. At one point they even attracted legends of the worship movement like Michael W. Smith (if you don’t know who he is, go find where your evangelical aunt keeps her CDs and statistics say you’re bound to find one in there). I’ve met Sean once, our meeting was pleasant and he always seemed like he led worship out of a place of genuine desire to connect with God. But right now looking at the current times we’re living in, a global pandemic, civil unrest, the anti-poor rhetoric, something seems off about these meetings. As an Evangelical Christian in ministry, I’ve been trying to put the pieces together of the reasons why this particular crusade feels more like something else other than just a “desire to worship.” And I feel compelled to provide perspective.

Before I go any further, I want you to know that I am writing this out of a place of lament, sober courage, and a deep desire for real unity. I took weeks to write this to process my words so this would not come out as an emotional response. I am also writing this as a fellow Christian who grew up in this movement. My goal is to help unveil, as author and pastor Daniel Hill puts it “…a dangerous parasite narrative that has chosen the white American church as its host.” Because I love the Church and when someone in your family is not doing well, we call it what it is in order to bring healing. And right now my family is showing the symptoms of narratives deeply embedded at its core, which is affecting how the world perceives it, or as Christians would say, it’s “damaging your witness.” And just in case you’re wondering, yes I am aware that I still chose to identify as an Evangelical in this time we are living in. I do so because a wise woman once said “I refuse to allow a shallow political agenda to dilute the name of my genuine faith.”

“Let us worship”
This is the main tag line of the movement. The line and the movement were birthed during the establishment of COVID quarantine parameters of large groups. The state of California was one of the first states that came down hard and fast on lockdown regulations due to the high numbers of COVID cases in the state. As you’re well aware, these regulations prohibited any large enclosed gatherings, which of course included any church gatherings. Somehow these regulations were received as a government mandate that said that we were no longer allowed to practice our faith. I even heard someone say “they’re taking away my right to be a Christian!” And with it came the launch of Sean’s outdoor worship events. First in California, and then it turned into a tour. In the first few meetings, you would hear “they can’t tell us not to worship.”

I grew up in the middle of the great worship movement of the 90s and 00s. I’ve been to all the worship nights, prayer all-nighters, revival tents, and conferences. I’ve been deeply immersed in this world. As a practicing believer, I understand that worship at its core is connecting with God in an intimate way, but unless you haven’t read the New Testament of the Bible, you know that worship is not exclusive to a building or a gathering. So it’s hard to understand that a mandate to close churches to prevent the spread of a deadly virus was interpreted as an infringement of the “right” to worship. I live in a city where this mandate was also enforced strictly and we came up with creative ways we could worship God in the community. Honestly, my genuine hope was that this mandate would help expose the idols in our lives and bring transformation. Like exposing the idol of production worship and individualism, and lead us to embrace our rich history of house churches to remember “where two or three are gathered…” Now don’t get me wrong, we are created and meant for community, it is scriptural that we need one another to grow in our faith. And at times I‘ve needed to come to the Lord and mourn the fact that I miss worshiping with my brothers and sisters in my faith community. However, I would suggest that our call right now is to display to the world that our God is not contained to only crowds and buildings. Right now what we need is the simplicity of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We need a message that communicates “because I value your life, I choose to take your life seriously and I choose to do what I can to keep you safe from this virus.” Not to mention, if you’ve watched the videos of these are large crowds crammed into the streets and beaches, people are wearing little to no masks at all. I think it would’ve helped to see people wearing a mask at the very least. I’ve even seen cities telling Sean to please stop these gatherings because it’s putting its citizens in danger.

Now I know some people will say “but what about civil disobedience? My government is telling me not to worship.” To that, I would say this, if people deduce that a misinterpretation of gathering regulations is a valid reason to “protest” while there are people around you dying of COVID and the injustice of police brutality, maybe what we need is a shift in perspective, not a worship gathering. Because the church should be the beacon of love of others, and in the middle of a global pandemic, I would’ve loved to see how American Christians are leading the way in caring for others, and in a lot of ways, these worship gatherings are communicating the opposite. Keeping a person’s life safe should be more important to me than “my right.” Even at its core the idea of the “right to worship” should be an alarming oxymoron for Christians. Throughout his entire ministry Jesus reminded us that in the Kingdom of God we are to lay down our lives for others, the apostle Paul writes about all his privileges and calls them ”worthless” & “garbage” (Philippians 3:4–9) At its core of the Christian faith, we don’t get to brag about our rights, Jesus calls us to lay them all down for others just like He did because that is what Jesus said is how the world would know we follow him. “By this, they will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” John 13:35.

Let us learn from the global Church, that gets creative in loving others. Because with everything happening in our world and country, radically loving others is what we need.

Lament is not a dirty word
Another aspect that is troublesome is something that flows out of these gatherings is the distorted view of the emotional temperature of the country. We’re living in a time of injustice, police brutality, COVID deaths, and white supremacists groups planning violence. Communities are suffering and grieving right now, and I believe that as Christians our call is to come close to those who are mourning and do our best to hear and understand their pain. Lament is a spiritual practice that has lost its “popularity” in the western church culture. It seems that “praising” our way out of hard situations is a more exciting way to preach the Gospel. I’ve seen this on display on Sean’s worship tour. He held worship gatherings in cities where communities are grieving the loss of family members due to COVID or are grieving police brutality. Triumph is not something they are feeling or seeing right now. It seems dangerous theology to bypass the pain and say “worship because God is still good.” Yes, God is still good, but this core truth becomes real in our hearts when we see the pain face to face and we cry out to God for justice. As under-resourced communities of color are disproportionately dying of COVID and are being over-policed, an appropriate response is to mourn with them and try to understand why their cries of justice haven’t been heard. Sean’s worship tour keeps calling for revival, but it seems like he’s forgetting something critical about history, the (white evangelical) church will never find true revival until it deals with its history of supremacy and the destruction of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous people of color).

When revival comes, it comes holistically, not only will our hearts change but society will be transformed by disrupting the injustice. And this revival will shake both extremes! The left will criticize it saying it’s not radical enough and the right will tell us that it’s not biblical, and that’s ok because the Kingdom of God is neither of those camps. I will remind you again of the scripture that says we will not be known by our politics, or our tribalism, but how we love another. In modern history, the last time the Christian church was relevant in our country was during the civil rights movement. An anti-violent holistic gospel movement that addressed the sin of racism and bias, but it also understood that sin ultimately can mold the narrative that informs policy. So you can see how Sean’s worship gatherings are completely ignoring the plight of the marginalized. At the end of the day, love will have the final word, and these gatherings don’t scream love for neighbor, it communicates tribalism and privilege. It says “because it’s not my problem and it doesn’t affect me personally, I don’t see the problem” which is the very definition of privilege. If you read the Gospels we read about a God who laid down every single ounce of privilege he had and came down to earth to live among the poor and the marginalized and called them loved, blessed, and even more radical: His equal! I read about a Christ who called the religious hypocrisy of denying justice to the poor. A Christ who said to the poor “your faith has healed you” or to the outcast “I will have dinner with you tonight.”

The call of Jesus to his followers is one of proximity to the margins, self-denial and to practice lament with those who are grieving. Which is why Sean’s worship movement brings me great sadness. Not only as a person of color, but as a believer who also is reading the same gospel he is, and yet it seems we both find two completely different versions of Jesus.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love that people are meeting Christ in these gatherings, and there are miracles and healings happening as well. But my final question is at what cost? Your witness to the country and the world is now fragmented. It seems like all they choose to see is the government telling them that they can’t worship, and that to them is more important than choosing proximity to grieving country. And when I read the gospels, Jesus is always found in the margins and that is the place where he is calling all of us to meet Him.

A Chance for Unity
I don’t want to end this without giving you the reader some hope. After all, that’s what lament is, acknowledging pain but knowing that there is hope. To my fellow Christian believers, we have a historical opportunity here. We can come out of this time in history with the world knowing what we stand for. But the question is, will we continue to be a church that is known for its privilege? known for it’s denial? for loving religion over people? Or can we become the church that Jesus commanded us to be in the gospels, which is one that lays its life down for others? Our culture is grieving, and now now culture has taken the place of the church as the innovator of taking care of the poor and marginalized and that should grieve all our hearts. But instead of being united in this common goal, we are experiencing the biggest polarization in the modern history of our country, and the church is at the forefront in leading the divide. Shame on us, the church of Jesus Christ, that the NBA & the WNBA can walk in more unity than us. The Gospel says several times to the early church, “bear with one another” walk in unity, because you now have brothers and sisters in the family of the Kingdom of God, and what Christ did for the world should supersede our petty differences. So our hope dear Church is to walk in unity, not uniformity. To set aside differences because in this time of history our country needs love and proximity instead of defending our “rights.” So the question is not, should Sean be doing what he’s doing, the question that should concern us is which gospel he is reflecting in these worship events. And if the goal is not to reflect the sacrificial love that Christ showed when he was here, then let’s toss it aside and begin to engage our hurting country. And maybe, who knows, the world will know then that we are actually following Him, and that we are reading the same gospel.