MOVIEGUIDE Props Up Profane Preacher

Anyone who follows the news knows that mega pop-star Justin Bieber has made headlines for behaving badly. What some of you may not know is that Justin’s a professing Christian. Don’t stop reading here. This isn’t about bad-boy Bieber. What it’s about is his pastor, Judah Smith, who is a rising star in Christendom. Smith is the teaching pastor of The City Church, a megachurch in Seattle. His wife and mother, who started the church with her late husband, are two of several City Church pastrixes. I should point out that it is unbiblical for women to be pastors and elders.

The late Ken Silva, Christian apologist and owner of Apprising Ministries, once called Judah Smith a “charismatic quasi-prosperity preacher.” If you’re unfamiliar with the Word of Faith/prosperity gospel (name-it-and-claim-it), it is outright heresy. Some readers will likely disagree with me on this and may even think I’m being too harsh. So I urge you to do as the Bereans did by going to the Word of God to see if what I say is true. (1 John 4:1)

A few years ago when Pastor Smith was first becoming a rising star, Ken Silva produced a short video showing him addressing a crowd of 60,000 young people under the age of twenty-five at the 2013 Passion Conference. While the founder of Passion, Louis Giglio, looked on, Smith paraded around the stage abusing the Lord’s Name. Yes, a “pastor” chose to use OMG five times. (See the video below) Perhaps he did it for shock value. Or maybe he uses the Lord’s Name in vain all the time and didn’t realize he was saying what he said. Regardless, when it comes to the clergy, neither of these reasons holds water.

Smith certainly knows the Bible warns about the power of words. He’s also aware that the Christian’s role is to glorify God. I mean, that’s what the Passion Conference is all about. According to its website, “Passion exists to glorify God by uniting students in worship, prayer and justice for spiritual awakening in this generation.”

Did Smith think that using the Lord’s Name in this way would glorify God? Probably not. I rather suspect he’s aware that Christians have a responsibility to watch how we speak. One can only conclude that he doesn’t think Exodus 20:7, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain…” applies to him.

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