Looks like Young may be starting a whole new trend. Webcams in bedrooms might replace plexiglass pulpits soon, actually. Cutting-edge pastors can read their borrowed sermons while wearing their Sponge Bob jammies, and congregations can stay at home in their own jammies to watch it online. Remember that you read it here first.

NEWARK, Calif., March 10 /Christian Newswire/ — Digital Praise® Inc, the leader in Christian-themed, family-friendly entertainment software and currently under pending merger agreement with Left Behind Games (OTC: LFBG), today announced it has entered into a strategic relationship with Stryper, the top- selling Christian metal band. Together, Digital Praise and Stryper intend to develop new products leveraging the band’s top live performance recordings.

“This is our first opportunity to license music directly from a top Christian artist,” said Tom Bean, President and CEO of Digital Praise. “It is unbelievable to be working with Stryper, the first openly Christian heavy metal band to gain recognition in the mainstream music world. The idea of creating the first band-specific expansion packs for our guitar and dance games is another first for Stryper.”

“Since 1984, Stryper has always been a band on the cutting edge that has broken down barriers,” said Dave Rose of talent agency Deep South Entertainment, which represents Stryper. “During their 25th Anniversary World Tour, legions of loyal Stryper fans have been coming out to experience the energy of their favorite Stryper songs performed live. So it’s exciting that Digital Praise is planning on merging the world of interactive games and the live Stryper experience. Both Stryper and Digital Praise are once again on the cutting edge of technology and music. We’re thrilled to be involved.”

Digital Praise is excited to be working with Stryper and has already started working with many of the live Stryper recordings.

About Stryper:
Looking back over the last 25 years, Stryper is considered a groundbreaking act by all accounts. Since the band’s label debut in 1984, the quartet has sold more than 8 million albums worldwide. The first Christian rock band to enjoy decided success in the mainstream market, Stryper’s RIAA certified platinum 1986 magnum opus To Hell with the Devil is listed among the “100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music” as designated by CCM Magazine. One of the most mesmerizing stage acts still today, Stryper received tremendous exposure on television’s MTV and VH1, paving the way for more faith- fueled bands to be considered for airplay. “We attribute so much of our success to God,” Stryper founding member Michael Sweet says unashamedly. “He has orchestrated this band, and His hand has been on it from the beginning. We often ask Him, ‘Why did You choose us?’ We are just average guys who He has continued to use in amazing ways.” For more information about Stryper and the upcoming tour, visit www.stryper.com.

About Digital Praise Inc.
Digital Praise is a developer of family-friendly Christian entertainment software for personal computers and other devices including iPhones. The company produces, publishes and distributes titles for families who enjoy interactive entertainment software with principled character-building themes and “just good clean fun.” On February 25, 2010, Left Behind Games, Inc. (OTC: LFBG) announced that it has entered into an agreement to merge with Digital Praise, making Digital Praise its wholly-owned subsidiary. Pending SEC approval, the transaction is anticipated to close in Q2 of 2010. For more information, visit www.digitalpraise.com…

When Jesus says, ‘Take, eat. This is my body that was broken for you,’ He says, I want my body in you. (Pause . . . shouts and claps) I want my blood in you. And every time you celebrate this rite, it is a reminder that you belong to me, and I belong to you. And he said, ‘I will drink no more wine until I drink it new with you and the kingdom of God. Communion is the most romantic ordinance. Eh, Eh, Eh. (He laughs. Pause . . . the audience shouts and claps.) It is the most romantic ordinance between two lovers.

The folks from Leadership Network are into innovation in a big way. And they have something shiny and new. It’s called Monvee.

Remember, Leadership Network is the organization that helped infect the church with the twin blights of Seeker Drivenism and Emergence Christianity. Leadership Network has marketing clout, and knows how to use it. Monvee could be huge.

One of the problems with the Church Growth Movement’s seeker-driven approach to mass-producing disciples is that it has largely failed to consider how to make disciples who are growing into spiritual maturity in Christ. When the most mature members of your own congregation tell you that they are ‘not being fed’, there’s a problem. And when the mainstream media writes that ‘megachurches like Saddleback are market-driven, with transcendence not on the menu’, and worse, describes you as the ‘butt end of Christianity’ using the words ‘bland, cheerful, dull’, the scary prospect of irrelevance beckons. And with irrelevance comes that worst nightmare of the Church Growth CEO pastor – stagnant or shrinking congregations. Read the post here.

Rick Warren is engaging in public blasphemy by holding a flesh-filled show on the day dedicated to rejoicing in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over sin, death and hell. Everything we have ever said about the man-centeredness of the Purpose Driven movement is embodied in this desecration and public mockery of Resurrection Day. The Jonas Brothers, regardless of their anointing by neo-evangelicals as good role models, exemplify nothing but lust, flesh and worldliness. Scripture tells us the following:

For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

–Romans 8:5-8

Rick Warren has put man on the altar and his followers are bowing low before their god. Rick has sown to the flesh in his ministry and is, of the flesh, reaping corruption. Little more needs to be said.

Mark Driscoll, who has been appropriately criticized for choices he has made, at least can be congratulated for not passing out 3D glasses as they use a trailer to segue into some semi-religious thought, but instead pointing out the dangers in the contemporary culture that are overwhelming millions of self-identified evangelicals.

The world tempts you to sin, to use people, to disobey God, to live for your own glory instead of his own, to be a consumer instead of generous, that’s the world system.

And if you don’t believe me, go see Avatar, the most demonic, satanic film I’ve ever seen. That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me. I logged on to christianitytoday.com and the review was reflective of Christianity today, very disappointing. See, in that movie, it is a completely false ideology, it’s a sermon preached. It’s the most popular movie ever made, and it tells you that the creation mandate, the cultural mandate is bad, that we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t develop culture, that’s a bad thing.

Primitive is good and advanced is bad and that we’re not sinners, we’re just disconnected from the divine life force, just classic, classic, classic paganism, that human beings are to connect, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds and that there’s this spiritual connection that we’re all a part of, that we’re all a part of the divine.

It presents a false mediator with a witch. It presents false worship of created things rather than Creator God in absolute antithesis to Romans 1:25, which gives that as the essence of paganism. It has a false incarnation where a man comes in to be among a people group and to assume their identity. It’s a false Jesus. We have a false resurrection. We have a false savior. We have a false heaven. The whole thing is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals. Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.

One could well argue that pagan philosophy has existed in movies before Avatar (some are calling Avatar “Pocahontas in Space”), and that one does not need to “go see Avatar” to realize its danger, but its always nice to know its not just “the fringe” that is concerned about the worldview behind pop culture.

Dr. John MacArthur, as usual, nails it in this piece. Having had a front row seat to the ever changing freak show of evangelicalism over my lifetime, I can remember fads that many readers may not recall. I remember a cover of Campus Life magazine that featured a scene from Godspell with Jesus tied to a chainlink fence. That musical was all the rage among hip evangelicals back then. It was going to make God relevant to hippies.

I remember the “I Found It” bumper stickers, the One Way fingers on the backs of cars, The Way paraphrase version of the Bible, the Jesus People, the early years of CCM where grown men dressed up in black and yellow spandex and strutted around stage like an an 80’s version of KISS (Stryper), the spectacular crash of PTL and Jimmy Swaggart, the early Christian chain “bookstores” comprised of items like Testa-mints and books like Marybelle Morgan’s sex advice for the married, (dress in clingwrap, ladies.) Then there were Frank Peretti’s fantasy books, including the appropriately named, This Present Darkness, and the seemingly endless Left Behind series. Who can forget those Prayer of Jabez coffee mugs and key chains, the WWJD bracelets, the Wild at Heart-style men’s retreats where guys pounded out their manhood on drums made with animal skins, or Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven campaigns that were going to usher in a New Reformation of “deeds, not creeds”? As Dr. MacArthur points out, it all has an air of antiquity about it now. That’s how long things last these days.

It’s been a long, strange trip for anyone on the evangelical bus. But those who value biblical truth will get off the bus immediately. What we need to find is the narrow road that leads away from commercialism, marketing, fads. bandwagons and Botoxed, airbrushed celebrities who present a false gospel. ‘We would see Jesus’, and those who seek Him will find Him where evangelicals, sadly, never look—in His Word.