Quotes By Dean Martin

Selling God

Rock music, electric guitars and even moshpits are luring more young people to church – but away from traditional worship. Steve Kilgallon investigates the rise of religion as entertainment, and the changing face of Christianity in New Zealand.

There's pandemonium  at Vector Arena. Hundreds have been turned away and inside every seat is taken. An unshaven singer, in regulation black, grabs the microphone and asks the audience to dance. Hundreds of kids race to the front, and begin to mosh. Then he begins to sing about Jesus.

This is the new way of selling religion. And that capacity crowd, gathered to see American revivalist preacher Greg Laurie tell them how they can be reborn, is remarkably fresh-faced.

Even Laurie's surprised. His offsider, Conrad Poe, has already observed there are more kids than usual in this eager crowd; when Laurie takes to the stage for his hour-long oration, he says happily: "Many of you are young, as I look out at you, and I hope you make a decision."

Laurie heavily mines popular culture, beginning with a riff on the weather and Crowded House, mentions his Twitter feed, throws in some jokes, then quotes Woody Allen, Keith Urban, George Clooney, Simon Cowell and Russell Brand. When we talk, he tells me how he went to see U2 recently, partly to learn from the best in the entertainment business.

Laurie has a 15,000-strong church in California, so it follows he must be a sharp operator. And he appears to have recognised one significant trend in how New Zealanders consume their religion: if young people are going to church, they're not going to the old, traditional branches like Catholicism, but the new – to groups operating from flash new buildings or in rented school halls, with electric guitars, youth groups and pastors in blue jeans.

Christianity in New Zealand, says Auckland University theology lecturer Stephen Garner, is "in a state of transitional flux". There are more churches, with fewer branches and smaller, less committed and transient congregations, often divided on racial lines and some may have lifespans as brief as two decades.

OUTSIDE THE arena, some of the ticketless hover in the rain, hoping for a reprieve. Others file away past the ranks of chartered buses that have delivered believers from 200 churches around Auckland to Laurie's Harvest event, one saying disconsolately: "Same thing happened at Benny Hinn."

Inside, after an appeal for everyone to budge up and make room for more punters, there's absolute, entranced silence before a white boy with blond dreads steps up and declares: "The angels in Heaven gonna be rejoicing tonight", then churns out some turgid soft-rock, featuring the lyric "Jesus, you have changed the way I do everything". Then he adds: "If the Lord in Heaven can get hold of a skinny middle-class white boy from West Auckland like me, he can get hold of anyone." It brings to mind the old line about the Devil having the best tunes.

ilovedinomartin: Dean Martin Quotes

As I reflect on these Dino-sayin's I likes know that most of 'em were meant to likes makes us laugh...but there is simply so so much truth even in the funniest of our Dino's ponderin's. Truly our Dino is the wisest knower of the world, and his quotations leave all us Dino-devottes much to ponder as we try more and more to emulate our Dino...walkin' the Dino-way....livin' the Dino-life. "Someone else, would have laid around, feeling sorry for himself, for a year. But Duke, he just doesn`t know, how to be sick ... he`s recuperating the hard way. He`s two loud speaking guys in one. Me, when people see me, they sometimes say, `Oh, there goes Perry Como.` But there`s only one `John Wayne`, and nobody makes any mistakes about that.

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