Secularism and Flyervision Entertainment

A famous xinyao (local Mandarin song movement in the 80s) singer, Eric Moo, has been criticised for turning his secular concert into a sermon where he sang more gospel songs than pop songs and even ask the audience to worship along with him as he shared his journey of his conversion to Christianity.

As more details began to reveal themselves, it becomes quite clear that Flyervision Entertainment were rather inaccurate in their initial presentation of events. Eric Moo, who performed at the concert for free, had informed Flyervision that he would be singing gospel songs to promote his new album. Flyervision did informed consumers about this in their Mandarin poster but they omitted it in the English version. They did not immediately own up to this in their first statement which can be read here. They claimed that Eric Moo's antics were "unforseen and unanticipated."

Eric Moo, who worships at the City Harvest Church, had also come out to apologise to his fans and those affected. He had asked the concert organisers if the audience were church members and the organiser had replied that 50% were and the other 50% were their friends. And hence, Eric Moo felt comfortable to go ahead with his segment and even started worshipping.

Flyervision has now offered to refund all ticket holders if they were offended and this is good move. But they insisted that although they knew about Eric Moo's gospel songs, they did not agree with his worshipping on stage.

Flyervision, secular or religious? 

I think the real problem lies with Flyervision as a company, is it trying to be a Christian concert organiser or a secular concert organiser? Those who are less forgiving would see Flyervision as trying to sneakily preach to concert-goers while disguising it as secular event; whereas those more generous would say that perhaps there was a mistake in communications. 

Indications seem to point to the fact that Flyervision is an affiliate of CHC, why would Eric Moo agree to perform at this concert for free? CHC is known to attract many famous Mandarin pop artists who perform for free at the CHC church, they include Eric Moo, Liang Wen Ying and FIR, just to name a few. Checks with fellow Christians worshipping at megachurches also seem to indicate that Flyervision is affiliated to CHC but this cannot be confirmed.

Whatever the circumstances that led to this unfortunate incident, it seems clear that if a church is trying to run too many secular businesses, it may unwittingly waddle into territories that may inflame inter-religious relations in complex Singapore society. Churches should take a conscious effort to segregate their secular and religious businesses so as to avoid controversy and inform consumers of their nature so as to protect ourselves. For eg, The Salvation Army has done a great job running their business and they get revenue from all walks of Singaporeans.

If Christians resort to steeplejacking, similar to hijacking of women association AWARE, or other methods of preaching such that it can be seen as sneaky, the long-term result might actually be the unattractiveness of Christianity.