Well, I learned my lesson: If you want to tick off a bunch of people and lose some subscribers of your personal blog, write a post that encourages readers to appreciate the positives in a church like Hillsong NYC.

Last week, I wrote a post in which I urged people to be grateful for the ways that Hillsong NYC attracts a diverse crowd that might never have connected with Jesus if it weren’t for that church’s uniquely cool culture.

I agreed that Pastor Carl Lentz conveys a certain degree of narcissism with his hyper-cool, Instagrammed image. But in the end, I concluded that regardless of the distracting “headlines” we might find at any given church, we need to respect God’s creative work in the stories behind those headlines  — assuming those churches remain faithful to the Gospel.

A few readers made claims about Hillsong’s theology that don’t reflect what I know about the church, and I figured we could all just agree to disagree about that. What still agitated me was this lingering question: When do the “headlines” of a ministry become so distracting — when do they take up so much of the page — that it effectively makes it hard for people to receive from Jesus?

To check out the rest of this post, click here, where you can find it at Boundless.org.