Dear Jon,
Greetings and God bless you and the entire Southland Christian Church. As a sister in the Lord, I commend you and thank God for your call to pray for Britney Spears. I became awakened to this cry for support to pray for Britney from an open letter to you from MoKelly and felt compelled to express another view. In light of all that has happened publicly in the church in 2007, this is refreshing. Do not give up in your prayers.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/433698/an_open_letter_to_rev_jon_weece_of.html
In approximately 2004, I received a personal phone call from the sponsor of an annual service for Whitney Houston to attend a Night of Healing in Manhattan where her mother, Sissy Houston, and a host of other friends and the community focused on praying for Whitney. The objective was to pray for her to come back to her roots and be delivered from drugs and vices that often plague successful entertainers and to let her know that the church was praying. Although I was not able to attend that particular service, my local church had been praying for Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey (depression), DMX, and so many other celebrities who had faced the same challenges that many of us do, just in their own “world”.
I cannot imagine that the media magnet who claims to mentor interns would not have been aware to review, or sought out to attend because of his so-called “stature”. Regardless of his personal presence or not, I failed to find any publicized railings by MoKelly against these sponsors for praying for Whitney and not praying for every troubled starlet, celebrity, or famous athlete while that call focused on Whitney and others battling drug addiction. If I am wrong, I invite him to produce record of the same. You see, solipsistic folks tend to have blurred judgment and weighted scales depending upon what matters to them. No one blasted the African American community for not praying for the Osbournes, Paris Hilton, Little Richard or Colin Ferrell when we prayed for our neighbors who are from our block, so how dare we suggest that you can’t pray for someone you have a burden for from your neck of the woods.
The fact remains that Britney Spears is a troubled young woman who has been devasted by things in her childhood, too much success too fast, a broken marriage, losing custody of her children, and only she and God knows what else. Her heart and her emotions do not register according to her net worth or celebrity. She is still a young woman who has followed a longstanding Hollywood lifestyle of partying, sex, and drugs. She and her two beautiful young sons are paying for it. We can talk about it, judge her, or do what Christians are put here in the earth to do—witness to her and pray. Each one can reach one. While you may not have covered the list of people MoKelly threw at you, what is important is that you follow God. If MoKelly had God’s agenda in mind, and would stop thinking that real Christians sit around in board rooms contemplating how to make a name for themselves through other people, he would have thrown a host of “distastefuls” like all the serial killers in jail, the missing Bin Laden and KKK kingpins somewhere on his prayer request list to be politically and ethnically inclusive, according to his justice and equity pen. All souls belong to God, not just the ones on the prayer list MoKelly prescribes. He is free to give up some of his bloggossipping time in the guise of journalism and pray for OJ, Vick and the Olsen twins himself for that matter. We all need prayer.
We are in an age where the loudest voices are from people who are more enthralled with their accomplishments which can usually be captured in less than 200 characters including spaces and punctuation marks, and spend too much of their day attempting to vilify folks whose accomplishments, missions and community presence cannot be captured in a book. God knows what their voices sound like in the heavens, and so do people with discernment in the earth. My opinion: ignore them and pray that their hearts be changed. Nehemiah did not come down from off of the wall to assuage the cries of a critic with a loud bark and no teeth. If God is using you to train church people to be different and not buy the gossip rags or subscribe to the blogarbage and act powerless, so be it. Hooray!
Whether Britney ever sees a letter or knows of your efforts personally does not stop the effectual fervent prayers of the righteous from going forth on her behalf and availing much. When someone is in the headlines at least 5 days a week, it is fitting for a senior minister to guide the people on how to filter and process what they see and hear, and what God would require true children of God to do. Our job is challenging enough, so I encourage you to continue to minister to the needs of the people God has put in your charge and to speak life and hope to those who will hear and receive it. The truth is that Jesus did not minister to every single sick, poor and desolate person in the earth during his 3 and ½ years of ministry. He died to pay the price for the sin of the entire world and through this, we have access to a victorious eternal life. Jesus ministered to, and trained His portion, and equipped His disciples to minister to as many as they were called and sent. When He ascended back to the heavens, He left us with power through the Holy Spirit and a mission to seek and save the lost. Paul went to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews (although not exclusively).
If the African American community can pray for those we feel led to, no other implications should be made when you do the same. You are not under any obligation to pray for every headline celebrity that is in trouble, or the first or the last ones. Can you imagine some pious person challenging Jesus to raise every dead person who died before Lazarus and after Lazarus to prove His equitable love for all dead men? “Stop trying to make a name for yourself, Jesus, just healing the woman at the well, who was not the first and won’t be the last troubled soul who needs living water, self-aggrandizer. You know she will go and tell all of her community about you Jesus. Why just focus on her?” This dangerous mode of thinking wreaks of PRIDE and Phariseeism. If you are called to pray for Britney, pray for Britney. Isn’t her momma part of the same community, one among you? Intercession does not respect worldly stratifications or classifications. Sorry folks–the Kingdom of God does not march to the beat of the world or MoKelly’s drum. Britney and many Hollywood stars need to experience the life that only comes from knowing Jesus Christ through an intimate relationship. God is not just concerned about the orphans in the middle of a desert, He is just as concerned about the rich on a high hill. The lost is lost, and God is NOT partial.
Thank you my brother, and be encouraged.
For more info click the links below:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,627919,00.html
http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Celebrities/0,,2-1225-2108_2210642,00.html
http://www.southlandchristian.org/
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