Home Christian News ‘Too Much Jesus’—Megachurch Criticized for Elaborate Christmas Program

‘Too Much Jesus’—Megachurch Criticized for Elaborate Christmas Program

Johnston said that, at each performance, a clear presentation of the gospel is given, and a time of response follows.

“We ask each person responding to the Gospel for the first time to switch on their cell phone flashlight all across the auditorium,” Johnston said. The church also offers an invitation to participate in follow-up discipleship programs by signing up via text message.

“The performance of this show is on par with one my wife and I have seen on Broadway,” Johnston told ChurchLeaders, expressing that the criticism it has received is “sad,” and arguing that Christians should aim for quality in attempting to attract people to the message of Jesus.

“Skeptics can’t have their cake and eat it, too,” Johnston said. “They can’t accuse the church of being irrelevant, dated and boring and then criticize the church when we are leading out using innovative technology to spread the message of Jesus’s birth and the gospel.”

The mixture of production quality and emphasis on the gospel is what drew Johnston to accept his position at Prestonwood. Last year, the church witnessed over 1,000 decisions for Christ. After attending one of the performances last year, Johnston said he knew that it was the place for his family.

“There are many people who attend Prestonwood today,” Johnston said, “that were saved at ‘The Gift of Christmas.’”

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He added, “Like ‘The Gift of Christmas,’ I have personally seen the same level of excellence applied to other Prestonwood ministry outreach events; such as, Biblical Worldview Institute, which features Bible artifacts and dinosaur fossils in our atrium.”

Johnston concluded by sharing a testimony of a high-profile athlete who attended one of the performances. “They had one critic,” the apologist said, “there was ‘too much Jesus.’”

In a follow-up video, Daussat, who doesn’t attend Prestonwood, shared that he posted the video because he found it “objectively funny.”

Overwhelmed by the response, Daussat said that he doesn’t really have an opinion on the video itself, but suggested to the people who have been debating about the church’s Christmas production to be “just be a little more kind.”