The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (Kennedy Center)
Trump Name Removal from Kennedy Center Saturday
Source: CNN
Showing posts with label Performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Performance. Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Friday, June 12, 2026
Can Performative "Outrage" Be Trusted?
Simon Stapleton
Exploring the hidden psychology behind leadership, ambition, confidence and performance | Founder of Openmind™ Psychometrics and Truthsayers Neurotech®
November 8, 2024
Performative outrage: the flashy, loud, and often theatrical outbursts we see from celebrities, influencers, and, yes, even some of our friends on social media. It’s the moral grandstanding, the high-octane reactions, the hashtags, and sometimes the outrage that catches headlines. But here’s the kicker – in a world where every thought, reaction, and hot take can be amplified at a moment’s notice, how much of it is genuine, and how much is simply an act? Can we actually trust performative outrage, or is it just another tool people use to navigate – or manipulate – the landscape of public opinion?
Let’s cut through the noise and figure out where performative outrage truly stands.
What is Performative Outrage?
At its core, performative outrage is a display of anger or indignation, often delivered in public and meant to show others how morally upstanding or righteous someone is. While authentic outrage is a genuine reaction to something unjust or offensive, performative outrage tends to have a few distinguishing traits:
- It’s attention-seeking: The outrage is designed to attract an audience, typically via a social media post, a public statement, or even a full-blown press release.
- It’s superficial: It rarely delves into real issues or solutions; it’s more about the display than the depth.
- It’s trendy: Performative outrage often centers on topics that are hot-button or current. It fades as quickly as it appears when the topic isn’t trending anymore.
Sunday, December 07, 2025
The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House Full Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY
Chairman James Comer and Oversight Republicans have released a bombshell report exposing the truth behind Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and who was really running the show.
Through transcribed interviews and depositions with Biden’s own former senior staff, we uncovered that while Biden struggled to perform his duties, critical decisions were made behind closed doors without a clear chain of command. That included using an autopen to sign executive actions, pardons, and major policy directives without clear approval from Joe Biden.
Staffers close to Biden admitted his decline was real. Shockingly, some did not even know who was authorizing signatures in his name or using the autopen. Others invoked the Fifth, refused to testify, and stonewalled the Committee at every turn.
This isn’t just a cover-up—it’s the biggest political scandal in American presidential history.
The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.
As Americans saw President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, cover-up his decline, and took unauthorized executive actions with the autopen that are now invalid.
CHAIRMAN JAMES COMER
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As part of the Oversight Committee’s investigation into The Biden Autopen Presidency, Chairman James Comer and Committee staff conducted transcribed interviews with several of Joe Biden’s former senior aides and advisors. These witnesses who worked closest to the former president painted a disturbing picture of a White House in decline and denial.
Their testimony revealed that President Biden’s cognitive deterioration was real, visible, and widely discussed inside the West Wing. Senior staff admitted the President was shielded from unscripted events, major policy meetings, and medical evaluations that could expose his condition.
Political operatives, like Anita Dunn, interfered in medical decisions, blocking cognitive tests to protect Biden’s reelection prospects.
Witnesses further confirmed that critical executive actions and even presidential pardons were executed without Biden’s direct authorization, signed instead by an autopen. Several aides confessed they did not know who was approving or controlling its use.
The Committee’s findings are clear: Biden’s top aides concealed his decline, exercised presidential authority without him, and misled the American people.
Friday, July 18, 2025
Devon Franklin's Candid One-Man Show
Jul 16, 2025
Producer, Pastor, Filmmaker, Actor, Author, and now star of his own one-man show, Devon Franklin tells Efrem Graham about his newest project. It's a vulnerable look at his real life story, from a never-before-scene perspective. It's an uplifting, inspiring, candid faithbased story of trials and triumph.
__________________________________________________________
July 18 @ 7:30 PM
On the SABBATH?
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Sunday, June 05, 2016
Evangelical Worship Has Already Crashed, So Let’s Clean Up the Mess
June 1, 2016
by: Jonathan Aigner
In a recent Church Leaders article, Jamie Brown fretted about the state of evangelical worship. He fears the “performancism” found in the modern worship culture will ultimately lead to a crash.
I actually agree with him on a number of his points, but the sad reality is that his greatest fears have come true.
Subscribe by email to Ponder Anew
It’s too late.
I’m calling it.
Evangelical worship has crashed, and performancism is at fault.
Don’t believe me? Check out a few clips from some of the largest evangelical churches and networks.
Performance worship is now the norm. I fear this is the case with practically all evangelical megachurches and their emulating congregations, which now includes a growing number of desperate mainline congregations, as well. We also see it in the hip, edgy, urban emergent congregations that tout their return to liturgy, but still find themselves enslaved to commercial entertainment forms. Yes, performance worship has killed worship, and it’s done it in several key ways.
Performance worship substitutes entertainment for liturgy. Our new worship language even reflects it. We once had sanctuaries, but not we have “auditoriums.” We once had chancels, now we have “stages.” We once had altar guilds, now we have “weekend stage managers.” We once had a liturgy, now we have a “performance set” (some call this a “worship set” in an effort to maintain some decorum). We once had worship services, masses, liturgies, now we have “traditional” or “contemporary” worship, “modern” worship, worship “experiences.”
At the heart of these changes is a focus on customer service. We want to offer a performance product that will rival anything offered by mainstream commercial entertainment so that they will choose to park their butts in our seats.
Congregations built on entertainment, provided by a combination of rock musicians and celebrity pastors, to be blunt, are more orgasmic than organic. The slavish, masturbatory pursuit of the feeling itself inevitably leads to the worship of something other than Christ. It rejects the Christian story in favor of our own. It rejects true human connection in God’s church and replaces it with introspective preoccupation. It ends with the narcissistic worship of self. It can deliver a spark, yes, and it may get butts in the seats, but in the end, it leaves us wanting. The excitement over the bright shiny objects that attract masses today will eventually wane, and the church will have to offer something brighter and shinier to hold out hope for the future.
Oh, and when we’re successful at selling our worship product, we call that “evangelism.”
Performance worship substitutes music for worship. Music is the sacrament of the performance worship culture. Instead of gathering to tell the Christian story – our story – we gather to “worship” (sing along with a musical performance) and hear a sermon. We talk about “worship bands” and “worship leaders” and “worship time” before the speaker comes to deliver the message, we have lost sight of what constitutes an act of worship. Corporate prayer, creeds, confessions, have no place. No more gathering, proclaiming, thanksgiving, and sending out. Just music, sermon, more music.
Performance worship diminishes the congregation’s role. The congregation’s only job is to sing along, but performance worship doesn’t really require that, either. They use music crafted in the style of commercial performance genres, which doesn’t lend itself well to congregational singing. The band is amplified, and the worship leader and team sings into their mics as if they were giving a performance. The congregation’s voice is ancillary at best, and irrelevant at worst. Performance worship sends the message that there participation doesn’t matter, only their feelings of enjoyment matter.
Though the megachurches continue to grow at the expense of the local congregations, the cracks are showing. Worship attendance is declinining and not just among the oft-maligned mainline traditions. Older generations are (to put it mildly) aging out. Younger generations are growing up with no cultural/social use for the church. And what’s worse, they can sense the emptiness of the marketing scheme; the targeted attempts of performance worship culture to attract young people are offensive, and will continue to lose their effectiveness.
This should be welcome news to those congregations that continue on with their historically-rooted worship in the shadows of the mighty megachurches. Here are some words of encouragement, tempered with a few sentiments of caution, for those carrying on outside the performance worship culture.
Don’t expect crowds to suddenly burst through your doors. A few may, but the inevitable decline of the performance church won’t mean an influx back into the traditional church. Some may disagree, but I think this is a good thing. It means cultural Christianity is waning. It means the church will have the opportunity to refocus its mission, the culmination of its worship, into the surrounding community. And it means the church will rediscover its identity as an asylum, a safe place, a contrast to the ugly world around us.
Don’t be afraid to be small. Performance worship says that it’s successful because it gets butts in the seats. Performance worship hooks them in, but worship sends them out. Jesus himself chose twelve followers to work with him in changing the world. Worship feeds and sustains the church through Word and Sacrament, so that we can be sent out as Christ’s hands and feet into the world.
Don’t use music to attract a crowd, use it to express your faith. Proclamation is not only the pastor’s job. It belongs to all of us. Use music to deepen your sacred storytelling.
Don’t be afraid of the new. Performance worship culture has spread the lie that to be against them is to be against anything new. The Spirit still gifts men and women to strengthen the church through their creative talents, so choose from the best of current generations, and be sure to look outside the worship industry and performance culture.
Don’t be desperate. It’s easy to be overcome by delusions of grandeur, by attendance envy, by hunger for the fame, power, and prestige offered by the performance worship culture. Don’t be so desperate for the crowds that you compromise your liturgical identity.
Don’t be lukewarm. Performance culture what happens even in the most committed liturgical worship settings. The urge to loaf through Sunday after Sunday is stronger than ever. Don’t let that win. Pray, sing, listen, and serve with your whole hearts, your full attention, and your best efforts.
Don’t idolize your traditions. Tradition for the sake of tradition alone is toxic. Embrace the meaning behind the symbols, the liturgy, the sacraments. Allow the rituals (not a bad word, whatever anyone says) to anchor and center your lives around the gracious acts of God in Jesus Christ, so that we are able to more fully live out Paul’s admonition to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, which is the greatest and ultimate act of worship.
We are not the performers in worship. God is the performer. We tell God’s story, and God pours out God’s gifts on us, renewing us, restoring us, and reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus.
The show must not go on any longer.
Let TV win, already.
It’s time to stop acting.
It’s time to stop entertaining.
It’s time to be the church.
In a recent Church Leaders article, Jamie Brown fretted about the state of evangelical worship. He fears the “performancism” found in the modern worship culture will ultimately lead to a crash.
I actually agree with him on a number of his points, but the sad reality is that his greatest fears have come true.
Subscribe by email to Ponder Anew
It’s too late.
I’m calling it.
Evangelical worship has crashed, and performancism is at fault.
Don’t believe me? Check out a few clips from some of the largest evangelical churches and networks.
Performance worship is now the norm. I fear this is the case with practically all evangelical megachurches and their emulating congregations, which now includes a growing number of desperate mainline congregations, as well. We also see it in the hip, edgy, urban emergent congregations that tout their return to liturgy, but still find themselves enslaved to commercial entertainment forms. Yes, performance worship has killed worship, and it’s done it in several key ways.
Performance worship substitutes entertainment for liturgy. Our new worship language even reflects it. We once had sanctuaries, but not we have “auditoriums.” We once had chancels, now we have “stages.” We once had altar guilds, now we have “weekend stage managers.” We once had a liturgy, now we have a “performance set” (some call this a “worship set” in an effort to maintain some decorum). We once had worship services, masses, liturgies, now we have “traditional” or “contemporary” worship, “modern” worship, worship “experiences.”
At the heart of these changes is a focus on customer service. We want to offer a performance product that will rival anything offered by mainstream commercial entertainment so that they will choose to park their butts in our seats.
Congregations built on entertainment, provided by a combination of rock musicians and celebrity pastors, to be blunt, are more orgasmic than organic. The slavish, masturbatory pursuit of the feeling itself inevitably leads to the worship of something other than Christ. It rejects the Christian story in favor of our own. It rejects true human connection in God’s church and replaces it with introspective preoccupation. It ends with the narcissistic worship of self. It can deliver a spark, yes, and it may get butts in the seats, but in the end, it leaves us wanting. The excitement over the bright shiny objects that attract masses today will eventually wane, and the church will have to offer something brighter and shinier to hold out hope for the future.
Oh, and when we’re successful at selling our worship product, we call that “evangelism.”
Performance worship substitutes music for worship. Music is the sacrament of the performance worship culture. Instead of gathering to tell the Christian story – our story – we gather to “worship” (sing along with a musical performance) and hear a sermon. We talk about “worship bands” and “worship leaders” and “worship time” before the speaker comes to deliver the message, we have lost sight of what constitutes an act of worship. Corporate prayer, creeds, confessions, have no place. No more gathering, proclaiming, thanksgiving, and sending out. Just music, sermon, more music.
Performance worship diminishes the congregation’s role. The congregation’s only job is to sing along, but performance worship doesn’t really require that, either. They use music crafted in the style of commercial performance genres, which doesn’t lend itself well to congregational singing. The band is amplified, and the worship leader and team sings into their mics as if they were giving a performance. The congregation’s voice is ancillary at best, and irrelevant at worst. Performance worship sends the message that there participation doesn’t matter, only their feelings of enjoyment matter.
Though the megachurches continue to grow at the expense of the local congregations, the cracks are showing. Worship attendance is declinining and not just among the oft-maligned mainline traditions. Older generations are (to put it mildly) aging out. Younger generations are growing up with no cultural/social use for the church. And what’s worse, they can sense the emptiness of the marketing scheme; the targeted attempts of performance worship culture to attract young people are offensive, and will continue to lose their effectiveness.
This should be welcome news to those congregations that continue on with their historically-rooted worship in the shadows of the mighty megachurches. Here are some words of encouragement, tempered with a few sentiments of caution, for those carrying on outside the performance worship culture.
Don’t expect crowds to suddenly burst through your doors. A few may, but the inevitable decline of the performance church won’t mean an influx back into the traditional church. Some may disagree, but I think this is a good thing. It means cultural Christianity is waning. It means the church will have the opportunity to refocus its mission, the culmination of its worship, into the surrounding community. And it means the church will rediscover its identity as an asylum, a safe place, a contrast to the ugly world around us.
Don’t be afraid to be small. Performance worship says that it’s successful because it gets butts in the seats. Performance worship hooks them in, but worship sends them out. Jesus himself chose twelve followers to work with him in changing the world. Worship feeds and sustains the church through Word and Sacrament, so that we can be sent out as Christ’s hands and feet into the world.
Don’t use music to attract a crowd, use it to express your faith. Proclamation is not only the pastor’s job. It belongs to all of us. Use music to deepen your sacred storytelling.
Don’t be afraid of the new. Performance worship culture has spread the lie that to be against them is to be against anything new. The Spirit still gifts men and women to strengthen the church through their creative talents, so choose from the best of current generations, and be sure to look outside the worship industry and performance culture.
Don’t be desperate. It’s easy to be overcome by delusions of grandeur, by attendance envy, by hunger for the fame, power, and prestige offered by the performance worship culture. Don’t be so desperate for the crowds that you compromise your liturgical identity.
Don’t be lukewarm. Performance culture what happens even in the most committed liturgical worship settings. The urge to loaf through Sunday after Sunday is stronger than ever. Don’t let that win. Pray, sing, listen, and serve with your whole hearts, your full attention, and your best efforts.
Don’t idolize your traditions. Tradition for the sake of tradition alone is toxic. Embrace the meaning behind the symbols, the liturgy, the sacraments. Allow the rituals (not a bad word, whatever anyone says) to anchor and center your lives around the gracious acts of God in Jesus Christ, so that we are able to more fully live out Paul’s admonition to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, which is the greatest and ultimate act of worship.
We are not the performers in worship. God is the performer. We tell God’s story, and God pours out God’s gifts on us, renewing us, restoring us, and reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus.
The show must not go on any longer.
Let TV win, already.
It’s time to stop acting.
It’s time to stop entertaining.
It’s time to be the church.
.
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