The Winter Jam tour spectacular! One of the largest annual Tour in Christian music. Featuring such names as Newsboys, David Crowder Band, Kutless, And many more.
Ten dollars at the door for ten artists.
This was the seventh Winter jam I have gone to and it was HUGE!
In Oklahoma city over 15 thousand people crowded into the Oklahoma city arena to watch the show. two years ago winter jam featured Skillet, Barlow Girl and Mercy Me and broke the record and became the largest concert ever in Oklahoma.
But as amazing and fun as the show was, there was one thing that I came away with that bothered me.
With that many people in one place and all eyes and ears focused on whoever was on the stage, why couldn't ANYone have given a straightforward gospel message!?
The speaker/preacher for the winter jam tour was a man named Tony Nolan. Tony has been on most of the Jam tours preaching and giving his testimony.
The basic jist of what he preached was this... No matter what sin you have done, no matter what your doing in your life right now, no matter what, God is still madly in love with you.
Is this true? Absolutely! But the problem was that they stopped right there!
They told people that God loves them and there is forgiveness for their sins. but they did not go on to tell people that if they do not turn to Christ and believe in his death on the cross,then they are going to hell when they die.
They did not mention faith all that much. and only mentioned the Cross and Christs death maybe once or twice that I can Remember.
people were not told that God wants to do more than just forgive you, he wants to change you into a new person! one that wants to follow him! Never was to concept of the old man being gone away and being a new creature in Christ talked about. Nor was Jesus taking our place on the Cross talked about. It was all just that God loves you even if your living in sin.
Maybe i am to cynical but I can just see someone almost feeling like God was ok with their sin because of what the preachers at Winter jam preached. Like sin is something that God doesn't really like, but he loves people so if we just repeat this little prayer that they say to us then everything will be alright. Then they don't really have Christ in their lives and they CANT change and turn away from Sin because that is impossible without Christ. So they show up next year and go through the same thing again.
It is really sad to me that A pastor with over 15 thousand men women and kids listening to them cant give a straightforward gospel message. It was convoluted and watered down. as if the people in the crowd are to dumb to understand anything deeper than A kids Sunday school teaching.
I have been to many concerts and I have only been to one where a straight forward gospel message was preached.
It was a small Sanctus Real concert at a college near where I live.
They didn't need a special Pastor or anything to give a message.
The lead singer of the band simply gave his testimony then proceeded to give a gospel message to the unsaved and a message of encouragement to the saved.
It was one of the most refreshing things to hear the Gospel preached like that, in such a straightforward way that people were not left guessing what they had to do to be saved.
Christians everywhere need to understand that the Gospel is something deeper than just "God loves you"
People need to understand that they are a sinner according to God laws.
They need to understand that because they are a sinner they are going to be punished by being sent to hell when they die.
And they need to understand that the only way to be saved is if you believe that Christ took that punishment
upon himself and offers his perfection in exchange for our sin.
That is something that is hardly preached in churches today.
I hope this makes sense.
I would love some feedback to...I would like to see what others think about this.
God Bless
I've heard you say all this before, but it's good to see it written down in a blog post. It's well written and what you're saying is very true.
ReplyDeleteI agree Tony Nolan's message lacked the depth that it needed, but certainly, God can use even a watered-down message like that to change people's lives. I mean, I guess it's better than nothing. That's not to say we should ever be indifferent or content with a watered-down message.
The way I see it is, it wasn't a big "spiritual experience" for me. The message was somewhat encouraging, and some of the worship music that David Crowder Band did was good, but at the end of the day I have to look at the concert as something that was just fun to go. And it was positive fun. But if I want a solid gospel message, I can read Romans. And I certainly don't need a big rock band like DCB or Kutless to worship God. This is from the perspective of a Christian. You're right, with 15,000 people in a stadium, a good portion of them possibly unsaved, Tony Nolan wasted a great opportunity to speak out the really, really deep truth that the Gospel is.
I totally agree, Josiah. It seems that most Christians don't actually believe people are going to hell! Or they don't care enough to actually do anything about it.
ReplyDeleteIt breaks my heart and it makes me want to be more deliberate about sharing the Gospel with those who don't know.