Part of an Interview with Erwin McManus...good stuff.

Relevant Magazine: You once said, "The Gospel needs to be an underground movement. It needs to read like an independent film." I really connect with this statement. Could you elaborate on this idea?

EM: I think that’s a part of what motivates me in my teaching and writing. Once the Gospel feels mainstream and becomes a nicely organized, orchestrated belief system, frankly, I don’t think there is even an attraction to the human spirit. I live in L.A., and if you want to impress the movie industry, you make a blockbuster movie that makes $200 million. If you want to reach the artist, you create a story that speaks to the human spirit.Unfortunately, I think the Gospel in America is like a blockbuster, $200 million, Star Wars kind of thing. The irony is that Star Wars has made more than $360 million so far, but I don’t know how many people would say it’s a truly great story. For a lot of us, people are running into our megachurches, and we’re building these massive buildings and we say, “Look! The Gospel’s a hit!” What we’re not realizing is that yes, people are going to see the blockbuster, but they’re not really buying the story.

RM: How do you think we arrived at this “blockbuster” style of the Gospel and megachurches?

EM: Well, I have less concern about the megachurch and more concern for the media church—how Christianity is depicted and expressed through television and radio, mostly television. I think in the '80s, Christianity just decided, "Hey, we have enough people to shape American history and shape America’s future through political means" rather than through the spread of the Gospel. That’s where I think we became the blockbuster, when we became the moral majority and we began to leverage things more politically than we did spiritually. I don’t know if we’ve actually recovered from shifting from a spiritual voice in culture to a "moral voice" in culture. I know it sounds crazy, but as soon as Christians start telling non-Christians how to live their lives, we’ve lost the Christian faith.

RM: Has this made people resistant to the Gospel?

EM: No, what you don’t want to assume is that people don’t want guidance. In a recent series, I just dealt with abuse of power, defiance, lust, violence and hatred. I’ve been dealing with really hard-core subjects, as intrusive as possible. The difference is that I’m saying, "Look, you can lead any kind of life you want to, but this is where this kind of life and these kind of choices will take you.”