Objection: Some Healing Ministers Are Glitzy, Dramatic Showmen, Not Humble Servants
A particular method of presentation does not determine the validity of a message. Only Scripture validates or refutes a message.
Whether something is glitzy and dramatic is a matter of personal opinion that will differ for different believers. What is “hype” to one person is “excitement” to another. If the Word is being preached accurately and people are getting healed, I’m not going to criticize a minister for the clothes he wears, what singers he uses, what the stage looks like when he ministers or how he acts when he’s preaching. In fact, you have to be careful, because people can change their demeanor abruptly when the Holy Spirit starts moving powerfully through them. I am in that category. That doesn’t mean that anything is fake or worked up.
It is also unfair to make general statements about healing ministers that only apply to a few of them in an attempt to discredit all of them.
I am not glitzy and I don’t wear expensive clothes, but I can be extremely passionate and expressive and that leaves me open to the charge that I am putting on a show. I am not going to tone things down in an attempt to make people think I’m “humble.” God uses different ministers with different personalities; He likes variety. There is no single way that all healing ministers have to act. I saw a conference where a minister who is famously deadpan was seeing people healed and another minster who is known for being dramatic was also seeing people healed. The main thing was that a lot of people were being healed!
Some of the very people objecting to there being any “pizazz” when healing is being preached have no issue with slick multimedia presentations, music with laser lights and fog machines, and other “enhancements” during a Christian concert, evangelistic service or even a regular service. I assume that the organizers think, “If we have flashier bait, we’ll catch more fish.” I would rather have healings and miracles be the attraction, but if healing is not being preached, it’s not unusual to have “flashy” music to try to draw a crowd at an outdoor meeting. Is it not humble if you try to draw a crowd? Other people use drama to attract crowds on the street. Drama is by definition dramatic, but I have no problem with it. If someone puts on a healing-related drama, why should that be any worse than putting on a new-birth-related drama?
Scripture does not warn against being dramatic, as long as the drama is attracting people to a good message and a good move of the Holy Spirit. It does warn, however, against having confidence that it is our eloquence or cleverness that will change lives. We have to make sure that our preaching emphasis is on the gospel and not on ourselves and what we’re doing.
2 Corinthians 4:5:
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.
Slickness doesn’t remove sickness, but trying hard to be “humble” by being so boring that people fall asleep won’t help anyone get healed either. Let’s not, like the objector, assume that we can see into a preacher’s heart just because he does a flamboyant presentation.