There’s one in every crowd,
brings the party in us out,
good time Charley with a Harley, whiskey bent and hellbound,
he’s got the next round, but he always drinks for free,
there’s one in every crowd, and it’s usually me.

He’ll bum a light and steal your girl,
then laugh at you for gettin’ all upset.

He’s a hard drinkin man’s man,
and women love him when they can.

Lamb is using the song in a series called Party, which supposedly describes the reaction in Heaven when a sinner is saved.

Gary, this is not an appropriate song to use to describe that holy event. The character in this song is unconcerned about going to hell, steals women from other men and laughs at their misfortune, and an adulterous drunk.

How does this have any relationship to your worship of God?

Wait, never mind. I think I know.

Then we had profanity directed at God’s house.

Now, NewSpring’s youth group maintains its momentum with murder and hate in a tirade seemingly plucked from the hymnal of the Bloods and the Crips.

Youth pastor, Brad Cooper, highlighted his band’s performance of a song whose lyrics are so violent I’d be ashamed for someone to find it on my iPod, let alone offer it in God’s house as worship.

Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:

[You] Don’t wanna step to me unless you plan on losin’

I’m here to battle, baby. I dance to kill.

Time to go all in.

Move to kill ‘em all.

We dig them trenches so they be trippin’

Annihilation of the enemy. Wrath pours down when I move my feet.

Fall in all my new recruits. Now you’re in my troop.

They can scratch and claw, We ain’t backin’ off.

I have developed low expectations when it comes to NewSpring’s worship, though they keep surprising me and lowering the bar in new and creative ways.

(Note to commentators, before you huff and puff about taking the song out of context, you might want to defend BCoop’s boastful post, the point of which is to present his so-called “dirty” song out of context. Where does he show off the songs that actually worship God?)

I once criticized Cooper for describing his worship as BAMF.

Perhaps he was right.

Are there two or three words that can define your church?

Does BAMF count as one or four words?

• Sinners become people far from God.
• Unsaved becomes unchurched.
• Unregenerate becomes “unregenerate.”
• Sanctuary becomes auditorium.
• Christian becomes Christ follower.

When they talk about the church, the language turns violent and profane.

• Pastors are whores.*
• Worship is BAMF.
• The Bible is to be @#$#& believed.
• Wise financial stewards are to be vomited upon.
• Old ladies should be clubbed with baseball bats.
• Traditional churches should be burned down.

If you get into their heads, the logic sort of makes sense.

* Noble complains that pastors who preach for pay are prostitutes. Besides the insult and error in the claim, the hypocrisy is astounding. Noble is paid so much by his church that they worry about an IRS audit for excessive payment to the CEO of a non-profit (Check items 14 and 16 in the linked pdf in this article). Understand that I have no problem with Noble’s high salary. He is obviously an effective leader and his congregation definitely values him; they can pay him as much as they care to. But if it’s good for NewSpring, why can’t Noble extend the same privilege to other congregations who are happy to pay their own pastors?

I know NewSpringers don’t like bloggers always finding things to disagree with their leaders on, but would this be an appropriate time to point out that he’s probably wrong?

UPDATE: People who complain about playing Highway to Hell to open an Easter service are told that they can’t criticize unless they’ve seen and understood the song in the context of the whole service, notwithstanding the fact that NewSpring itself is proud to display the song out of context. Look at Brad Cooper’s page or Tony Morgan’s site (who posted two versions of it); all they show you from the entire service is the H to H song. They obviously think it’s the coolest thing they did that morning.

Has anyone seen them showing off videos of the other parts of the worship service to the same extent as this one?

I wanted to create a stage persona for myself that allowed me to really speak about anything I want… So I can be a storyteller, I can be jokey, I can be corny, I can be a little vulgar, I can be a lot vulgar. And I’m not afraid to go anywhere to get the point of [the message] across, even if I have to just blabber like an idiot.

The inspired Preacher says this is how you do it.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.

As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.

There’s just so much conflicting advice.

Crack Smokin T-shirts are far more then just a novelty, they’re a lifestyle. A company that covers all bases of the crude t-shirts market, making people laugh and cringe day in and day out. All shirts are 100% soft cotton with awesome silk screen print and a WILD message. Take your ordinary offensive t-shirt to the next level of obscenity.

My headline = Amazon’s description. That’s WILD.

If someone tells you to your face that you are full of bee ess, are you offended any less than if he or she used the full words?

If a child responds to a parent’s instruction with an eff eewww, do you think the parent should just take it in stride because the kid didn’t actually say the magic word?

It wouldn’t happen in my world, and I doubt it would happen in yours.

Regardless, it should never happen in church.

A few weeks ago I pointed out how pastor Brad Cooper asked his congregation if they frickin’ believed the Word of God (frickin’ being just a different spelling of the f-word.)

This evening I clicked on a Twitter picture from Cooper of people receiving Christ at NewSpring’s Easter service. Very good, no problem. Then I clicked on another of his photos and found this.

The caption says Fuse Factory looking bamf! (FYI, the Fuse Factory is the church’s newly completed youth “worship” center.)

I didn’t know what bamf meant until this evening, and my Internet filter did its very best to block me from finding out, so vile is the meaning. If you’re brave and not near anyone who could fire you from your job, check out the meaning here, though I really suggest that you don’t. Take my word, this makes frickin’ look positively genteel.

Come on, people. Why aren’t alarm bells going off all over Anderson?

If you go to NewSpring, I won’t ask how you can support this (though if you do, I’d love to hear from you), but I would like to know you can stand by when this is happening? How do you go to a church that keeps on doing this (as if once weren’t enough)? Do trash-talking pastors mean more to you than God’s holiness?

Either BCoop knew what bamf meant, which is unthinkable, or he used it without knowing what it meant, which is unthinkably stupid.

Much of what NewSpring does is debatable, meaning that you could make an argument to defend its beliefs and practices.

This? This isn’t debatable; this is unbelievable.

And on Easter Sunday. Way to go.

Update: It’s not the first time. Apparently worship at NewSpring is bamf too.

I’ve been accused of worse, but I happened to be reviewing a Brad Cooper sermonette for an upcoming post and ran across this little piece of desecration. Although he doesn’t have the sex posters behind him on this evening, he brings the dirt to the altar all by himself.

After reading a passage from Romans (and successfully soliciting the crowd to endorse universalism, though we’ll leave that alone for now*), he asks his listeners if they frikin’ believe the Word of God.

(Visit the original stream here if you want the full context.)

Cutting edge? Yes.

Over the edge? Definitely.

You probably already know or suspected this, but frikin’ is simply a synonym for the other F-word. The fact that it’s a verbal sibling hardly excuses it it, given that the meaning is exactly the same.

Some questions:

1. What does Cooper mean?
2. How does one learn to frickin’ believe the Bible? Is NewSpring a good place to start?
3. Should all Christians frickin’ believe the Bible?
4. How do you get away with this as a pastor? Would his bosses be upset if he’d said “do you effing believe?” or if he actually used the original F bomb? How is what he said any better?

It’s too bad his question wasn’t greeted with a loud chorus of No’s.

P.S. What kind of Bible is this?

Shouldn’t the question be, “Do you frickin’ believe my sermon notes?” or at least “Do you frickin’ believe this little cut and pasted part of the Word of God?” Nothing against sermon notes, but if you’re going to use the Word of God as a visual aid, it probably should actually be the Word of God.

*Quick hint: when someone asks you to shout out an answer to something you haven’t thought about, keep your mouth shut.