GugLIElmucci (couldn't resist =P)

I found out today that Mike Guglielmucci, a pastor of the Planetshakers church, lied about being terminally ill with lung cancer.

For the non-Christians (and non-Australian Christians even), Planetshakers is a church in Melbourne, but is more commonly associated with the conference that they hold annually. The Planetshakers band travels around to most capital cities in Australia, there are huge guest speakers and it attracts tens of thousands of people each year. I've been to three of these conferences ('06-'08)

From about 2005, Guglielmucci has been possibly the key songwriter. About 6 albums were prominently his work. He speaks at most of the conferences and is very inspiring to a lot of people there. I remember in the first year I went, Mike's sermon caused the holy spirit to move in me like it never had before. He had a huge influence in my Christian journey.

The second year I went, Guglielmucci announced that he was sick with lung cancer. The mood was tense and the atmosphere was gloomy. He was nearly crying up on stage. When he was diagnosed, he wrote a song called Healer.* This song is a beautiful, heartfelt cry from Guglielmucci asking God to heal him. It's become something of an anthem to not only the Planetshakers band, but sick people all throughout Australia. This song was one of my favourites from Planetshakers, but now I just can't shake off the feeling it's a fraud.

What would possess Mike to lie about this? Even before claiming he was sick, he was so highly respected and a role-model for thousands of kids.

The weird thing is how this has all happened. First, he announces he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and writes a song about it. Things would have been easy to stitch up there with an announcement he was misdiagnosed, it would have gotten him off the hook pretty lightly. A year later, at the 2008 conference, he could have announced that he had indeed been healed. That's the most sensible approach I can see. Let the people get worked up about the miracle that supposedly happened, and then forget about it forever. This all involves lying some more, but Mike's obviously not too scared to do that.

I just don't know what to think. I can't judge him (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone) and I'm sure he's going to be asking for forgiveness from everyone, which he'll get because come on, he's dealing with teenagers immature in their faith. But he has lost a lot of respect from me and a whole lot of others, I'm sure.



*I just wanted to say: when I went to find the song on YouTube, Planetshakers had videos of it removed. This happened today, because I watched some yesterday and they were removed today. This is unlike Planetshakers as the general belief is "Let the people worship God", they've never really minded. Just saying.
On a side note, Mike deleted his myspace profile which had photos of him sick and everything. I don't mean anything by all this, just letting you know.