McManus said he discovered that “I wasn’t here to have a conversation with everyone that already believed. I was here to talk to people who would never hear the voice of God in the frequency that the church was emitting into the world.” He realized he “needed to get over not being accepted and be a voice for those who might never be accepted unless I speak to them.”
As a visionary, McManus uses terms that seem unusual in church spaces but eventually make Christians “relevant to the world.” Words such as “cultural architect” and “human frequencies” might get him “burned at the stake” initially, he said, but in decades they “will become the natural, normative language of our faith.”
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McManus explained, “I’ve never wanted to be a threat. I love the church, and I’m so committed to the movement of Jesus… I just never bought into the industrial complex” of church.
Immigrant Experience Shaped Erwin McManus
Erwin McManus immigrated to the United States from El Salvador as a child. But he didn’t become an American citizen until age 50, due to his homeland not being a “favored nation,” he said. McManus credits his ability to adapt in various U.S. regions to his grandfather, who helped him understand accents and linguistic nuance.
When Lecrae asked McManus about the immigration debate, the pastor said conversations unfortunately focus on politics instead of people. Rhetoric also veers toward the extremes, he said. Years ago, Bill O’Reilly “uninvited” McManus to discuss immigration on television because the pastor didn’t take an extreme position for either side.
McManus, a lifelong Democrat, said his wife is politically against “illegal” immigration yet gives jobs to anyone who needs one. The couple also housed an undocumented girl for years, helping her obtain schooling and citizenship before she became a missionary.
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Although previous presidents and presidential candidates have taken strong stands on border control, McManus said, President Trump’s language has been “so filled with vitriol” that the issue is now heavily politicized. “Let’s just talk about human beings and see if we can get to a good place together,” he suggested. “There are real problems in both sides of this” immigration issue, but “if we could actually care about people, we might find a solution that works.”
McManus settled in L.A. not to change people’s political views, he emphasized, but to “connect them to Jesus.” The pastor continued:
On Sunday, I’m trying not to give my opinions. I’m trying to give people what the Scriptures say God is saying to us. I also want to give myself permission to talk about stuff…I don’t take a position [from the pulpit] as a Democrat or a Republican, but I do talk about issues, and I do talk about the bad thinking on any position, any perspective. For a long time, people thought they were sure I was like a pure liberal, and then during the pandemic people thought, “Oh no, he’s…gone super conservative,” and it really isn’t that…I’m okay being a liberal on Tuesday and a conservative on Wednesday, if the issue demands that kind of perspective.
