Hillsong London, Grace, Principles and Having Fun – Part 1

One of the things I’m beginning to learn again is how to just be myself and to have fun. I used to believe that having fun was not as important as understanding every single word written in the Bible. I had my misgivings about Christians at Hillsong London because I believed that they were too focused on socialising (or having fellowship, as they called it); I also didn’t like the way that the Hillsong crowd weren’t as excited about Word studies as I was. A lot of the focus in the Sunday sermons at this church seemed to be on being relational. I used to think to myself, “What about Jesus and what about the Gospel?” These people just seemed to be very sociable people anyway, so when they were told “be relational” – they took to it like a fish to water!

But now I have come to realise that these Hillsong Christians really do seem to have the balance right: they have a sermon on a Sunday, they get together in people’s homes during the week to discuss the Sunday message in what are known as Connect Groups. But all of these activities are about the most important thing: people. It is vitally important to get together and relate to one another. And of course, these Christians know how to have fun!

Jesus used to relate to people in a personal way. Jesus would have His many disciples, and then He would have His close-knit group of twelve whom He would break bread with. It is important to have fun and this is something that the Hillsong crowd take to heart. When it comes to sharing the Gospel with others – they are really not going to be interested unless the people are fun to be around. Non-believers are more likely to get saved in a relaxed, social setting than listening to a nerdy street-preacher barking out a hellfire-and-damnation message.

What about Grace?

But I still have my reservations about Hillsong London. When I was making the transition from law to grace, I would have liked to have people from church who were going through the same thing: people who I could share findings with and encourage one another. Fortunately, I was able to find the fellowship I needed with other grace Christians from all around the world on the internet through the social networking sight Facebook. When I joined Facebook I thought it was just a way of keeping in contact with old friends and work colleagues. I had no idea that God would turn Facebook into a means of connecting with other like-minded believers all over the world.

The message and doctrinal focus of Hillsong London did switch towards grace when the well-known grace preacher Joseph Prince visited the church in 2006. You can read all about this in Joseph Prince’s wiki-page. Nevertheless, I found that the Hillsong crowd would get just as excited about principles as they did the grace message. It seemed to me that these people saw grace as just another message – instead of it being the message. Joseph Prince would often state that grace is not just another message – it is the Gospel. We tend to compartmentalise the pulpit message into different categories: prosperity, servanthood, grace and so on; but the Gospel is just one message.