Deutero Q

Living Nativity Falls Apart When Homeless Actors Throw Party

GRAND RAPIDS — The regulars at Jade Avenue Lutheran church's "living nativity" scene, tired of standing endless hours in the cold while drivers crept by, hired local vagrants to take their place this year. But the men began carousing and asking for handouts, throwing the event into chaos.

"We were enjoying the manger scene when Joseph pulled a flask from his robe and took a long pull," said Wendy Shanahan. "Then they banged on the windows and asked for 'gold, frankincense or beer.' My husband moved on pretty quick."

Soon, the down-and-out bunch was high-fiving each other, riding frightened sheep and donkeys around and playing football with the baby Jesus doll.

"It was the coolest nativity scene I've ever seen," says 15-year-old Travis, who'd come along grudgingly with his parents. For an hour, the fracas continued, drawing on-lookers who'd heard about the "party nativity." Church elders arrived to see Joseph beating his chest Tarzan-style, the wise men singing off-color pub songs and the animals huddled fearfully in the corner. Viewers had parked and were tailgating. The man playing Mary was doing a striptease, to the roars of the crowd.

When the police arrived, people scattered. "All robed persons, stay where you are," one officer said over a bullhorn. The hired men spent a night in the county jail and were released. The church was fined for aiding and abetting public drunkenness.

The carousing vagrants already have an invitation to perform in next year's "Rave Nativity" put on by the edgy Rock On Church. "They had a pretty cool groove going," says the pastor there. "We'll borrow that vibe."

Source: Lark News

PARIS — Coming soon to the Omnisports de Bercy in Paris are Justin Timberlake, Blue Man Group and John Legend. But the only sold-out show so far belongs to Jesse Duplantis, France's favorite American "comique."

"They think he's the second coming of Jerry Lewis," says one bemused New York theater critic. While Duplantis's American audience is limited mainly to TBN viewers and Word of Faith churches, in Paris he's built a following as a comic genius. After his recent appearance a French newspaper called him a "brilliant showman and deft satirist of all things religious and American."

But for Duplantis, this poses a problem. "French audiences don't think I mean what I preach. They think it's an act," he says backstage after one "performance." "The more I tell them I'm serious, the more they think it's an act."

The French see preaching as an American art form, like blues and jazz music. Recently at a packed 15,000-seat arena Duplantis called people forward for prayer, which the French audience gamely did, clamoring for him to touch their foreheads. Some even fell over backwards for effect.

"I loved the audience participation," said one girl excitedly in the lobby afterwards. "It was like being part of his culture for a moment."

"Could we love Mr. Duplantis any more?" wrote Le Monde's culture critic the next day. "His 'sermon' changes every night, so the show remains fresh."

Duplantis has kept mum about his French popularity to U.S. audiences, but keeps playing Paris hoping for a breakthrough.

"Maybe revival is coming to Europe," he says. "I don't know. Maybe this crazy New Orleans preacher is the start of something big."

Source: Lark News

The following words by J.I. Packer (from his Christian classic Knowing God) are instructive:

"Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.... Churchmen who look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pygmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pygmy Christians."

I wonder if a reason why much of contemporary church life is spiritually stunted is because we have too small a view of God. Surely one of the imperatives of our time is to put God back on display ... to intentionally magnify His greatness and glory, His attributes, His sovereignty in salvation, etc. Our spiritual health will most certainly improve as we exchange the man-centeredness and faddism so prevalent in American church life for God-centered, biblical Christianity.

(We American Christians seem prone to flit from fad to fad [e.g., the health and wealth gospel, seeker-sensitivity, emergent, etc.]; what makes us so succeptible to spiritual faddism? Any ideas?)

"...no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God."

I saw this interesting tidbit in the January issue of Christianity Today:

Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes!