Is Manipulative Worship Okay?

It’s true, everything is a miracle. So, why not perceive life through the lens of amazement?

While, at the same time this doesn’t mean that we just blindly attribute everything a religious institution does to being “of the Holy Spirit”… ya know? There’s good and then there’s bad in our world; it sucks but, being aware, asking questions, all while holding up the possibility of the miraculous, it’s wise…

It’s the question of, what exactly is the difference between manipulation and, the Holy Spirit? 

Just because you have an intense feeling doesn’t mean it’s not of the Holy Spirit; while we do know that having an intense feeling can be manipulated by various tactics of manipulation…

Furthermore, is there ever even such a thing as a benign form of manipulation? And, if so, how does this translate into worship? Could worship be manipulatively benign?

The fact of the matter is, most of us don’t think of church leaders using manipulation in a benign fashion.

We think of instances like Creflo Dollar purchasing private jets, Joel Osteen purchasing the Houston Rockets Arena, Detroit pastors asking their impoverished congregants to donate $1,000 while driving a Rolls Royce, or these televangelists painfully but hilariously mocked and highlighted by John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.

The closest thing to benign manipulation that I’ve heard of is Tony Campolo’s preaching at a mainline congregation filed with mostly white upper-class Christians, and getting them to empty all the cash they had in their wallets in order to pay for a single mothers rent (I’m unsure what it was exactly but, this was the essence of the story).

“Oh, so this is what we’re doing now?”

Its just become a thing we’ve slowly but steadily come to accept.

It’s borderline coercive until you begin to throw in threats of hell and a forceful authoritarian figure then, at that point, it’s just completely coercive.

It’s the difference between enjoyable worship, entertaining worship, and manipulative worship…

As I’ll 100% agree with Brian Houston, founding pastor of Hillsong, in that, “Worship should be enjoyed, not endured.”

It’s the melding of knowledge and spirit; it’s understanding the mechanics of our worship services while not allowing this knowledge to hinder your worship experience.

For me, knowing the mechanics of manipulation, it comes down to these two questions…