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.
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6 comments:
Funny :)
Let's not presume that Mike isn't 'sick'. He may not have cancer but he certainly has a mental illness that even caused physical symptoms in his body. I know some of the family personally, and this is not something he did maliciously. Good post, enjoyed reading it.
I am quite frustrated and angry about it all, hating that someone could take something as hard and serious as cancer and just act it's part.
My Poppa is terminally ill with cancer ( from asbestos a long time ago) I guess a lot of my anger is pointed at the fact that I know that in a few months time he won't be around anymore. My Nan is going to be by herself, which just doesn't seem right. It angers me so much that this is happening.
This whole Guglielmucci controversy just really heightens my anger about everything.
Egh. Sorry for the big speel but this has been brewing for a little while.
But I think it'd still be important to pray for him, for his family and his friends.
Karina - I COMPLETELY understand. We will talk about this.
Adam - I thought that was a possibility. I'm sure he didn't mean for it to come out like it did. I'm praying for him and his family.
Vivaladil - :| Incredibly not funny man. This man who has influenced 90% of the last 3 years of my life was a fraud. I'm a touch distraught about it.
It seems conceivable that the song was actually written before the announcement. But it does seem a lot of effort to go to for something that already had a decent sized following. Perhaps he is sick, though it might be more psychological than anything.
Although I wonder more than anything... why lung cancer? (And similarly: Does he have any history of respiratory illness, asthma etc.? Is/was he a smoker?)
I think it is interesting too that suggest it might have been better to have continued the farce. Certainly it would've been easy enough. And there is a lot of examples of this kind of thing. (Take, er, Cardinal Pell's speech on er anything on any given day, for example.)
I thought it was bone cancer?
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