The Rich Gospel

I have been watching the Christian music scene in South Africa for some time and I think whilst they are doing a good job, I wonder if there is any place for the gospel in it. The strange thing that I find is that we have found a formula (Hillsongs, Passion.......) and we seem to be doing a windows shortcut on the whole experience. We copy and paste. Whilst that has its good news for musicians we have lost a context in our church. So we have lost the South African Jesus and replaced it with a Australian Jesus or even an American Jesus. Some might say look at Tree 63 whilst they may be South African they are an American based band and therefore have another context. Even South African worship leaders are constintly trying to repoduce the same experience that they say in other parts of the world here in SA. I wonder if Jesus had to ever walk into our churches would he ever say Is this not the vision I had for that church in Australia. The Side product of this is bad theology and meaningless songs enter our churches and we find ourselves selling our depth for a riff

The second thing that I have come to notice is that the average person in South Africa cant afford the price of a ticket to a concert. Even R40 is expensive when you have a family to feed or you have to go take your son to the Doctor. So the price of the Gospel is expensive? Should the gospel not be free. Surely it was given to us freely why then do we allow people to make a prophet off Jesus. The people who made the heart of the gospel pump are the ones we say are not allowed into our malls called churches.

Jesus has a great church growth plan..... Invite the poor