There is a small group of “believers” who are pouring their lives into the secular marketplace. The impact of the group is growing, and while the general public are embracing their message of hope, others who defend the “Evangelical lifestyle” over all else are attacking the remnant.

Lauren Daigle has a clear vision to reach those “outside of the church walls.” Her recent appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Jimmy Fallon was well received by the general public, but those who are trying to keep the Evangelical lifestyle alive (I’ll refer to them as the ELAs) warned the “church” that her secular venues might lead her astray, causing Daigle to abandon her worship roots to become a secular artist.

The odd thing is that Daigle is a Contemporary Christian Artist through and through. Her latest album “Look Up Child” reached #3 on Billboards Top 200 because its message was universal and appealed to the masses. Unfortunately, Daigle’s performance on NBC received criticism on social media. Most argued that Daigle was wrong to appear on the show because Ellen is a lesbian.

Daigle responded to some of the criticism during an interview on WAY-FM Radio, “I think the second we start drawing lines around which people are able to be approached and which aren’t, we’ve already completely missed the heart of God.”

Jeremy Lynch appears to be another member of this up and coming remnant. His passion is making movies that reach the general public with messages of hope and love. Lynch is a Millennial filmmaker who got his start working crew for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. After getting his feet wet, he became an editor and worked on the visual effects for The Ryan Car Show. Most recently he wrote, directed, and produced his first short film The Scavenger, which can be seen on Amazon Prime Video. The Scavenger is a story of transformational love that changes a selfish man into a self-sacrificing man—a clear demonstration of unconditional love.

Lynch is not immune to ELA attacks, but has far less to worry about since his passion has always been focused on the general marketplace. Most ELAs have a penchant for going after those well established in the “Kingdom” because of what some call a “we/they” mentality. While the Bible directs Christians to “go” into the marketplace, ELAs believe Christians should “separate” themselves and create their own marketplace, which some see as a contradiction to the “Great Commission.”

While the argument about “separating from the world” versus “being in the world, but not of it” will continue to be argued for years to come, high profile people like Selena Gomez are taking advantage of this new uprising of the remnant.

Gomez has promoted Daigle’s album multiple times on social media to her 144.4 million followers. Daigle’s top three songs have been listened to by millions within the general public, creating one of the greatest witnessing tools of this past decade. Yet, the ELAs are more concerned that Daigle might create less worship songs, rather than rejoice in the millions who have heard her message of hope.

Unity within the church and the supporting of those who go into the marketplace must be revived for denominations to survive these changing times. The question is, will the ELAs empower this revival or will they become modern day Pharisees?

No matter what the outcome, millions will continue to be touched by the remnant.

Copyright © 2018 by CJ Powers