*For many churchgoers, seeing their pastor personally bring his or her sermon to life physically is nothing new. With Michael Todd, things elevated to a new level when he brought his barber onstage to give him a haircut and shave in front of his congregation.
Todd, the pastor of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Transformation Church, was preaching on how the bearing of godly fruit stems from submitting to being shaped by God as the barber went to work styling his hair and shaving his beard. Needless to say, the delivery of the March 3, 2024 message was a memorable one.
“I just came to tell somebody that the Church has … done a bad job in this last season of emphasizing how comfortable serving God would be,” Todd preached, wearing hot-pink pants and a light pink polo shirt.
“I need to say this to you, like ‘just come to God and all your fears and all your tears, and He bottles them, and He’s going to coddle them.’ And we make you feel like when you come to God, then somehow it gets easy. … I just want to let you know that our desire for comfort has made us despise His cut.”
“You think if God tells you ‘No,’ you’re getting punished instead of if God tells you ‘No,’ He’s protecting you. You think if God doesn’t allow you to get the position you prayed for that somehow, He hasn’t heard your cry, but He actually is answering the prayer you didn’t know how to form with your lips by not letting you get into a position that you would be locked into because He knows you’re a people-pleaser and if you got that position, you wouldn’t leave there for 15 years. And three years from now, He’s going to open up the actual destiny step that you need. So, He told you ‘No’ now to lead you to the place of purpose,” he continued.
Pastor Todd added: “But if you desire comfort at the expense of desiring the cut, not from anybody, just regular, I’m talking about from God, you will miss out on what God has for you.”
Digging into his point further, Todd cited Matthew 7:18-20 and John 15:1-3 while touting his work in the gym. The pastor, who recalled his previous weight, voiced his appreciation for putting in the effort to better himself while motivating worshippers to put in the same work to open themselves up to what God has in store for them.
“I was on the beach, praise report, I felt more comfortable in swim clothes than I ever have in my life,” Todd voiced. “Now, some of you all won’t shout with me, but you weren’t with me when I was 275. I was so ready to take my shirt off. … I’m just serious. I was like, ‘What are we wearing today, baby?’ I was getting my bathing suits ready, and I wanted to color coordinate. ‘I want you wearing pink today,’” he said, mimicking his wife’s voice. “I wear pink today. …. What I realized is my comfort on the beach came from the cutting in the gym. Your comfort comes from a place of cutting. You want comfort in your marriage; go get that cutting at counseling.”
“You want … comfort in your finances … cut the budget. Everybody wants comfort, nobody wants cutting, but the cut … gives you the edge,” he added while referencing his longtime barber. “And this haircut by the end of this service, by the faith and crazy faith of God, will be sharp because what He’s doing to me right now; He’s cutting me. [He] is shaping me into the image of what he sees for me because I can’t see it for myself.”
Overall, Tood’s sermon emphasized his view that while some folks will attempt to take God’s place in shaping their own lives, their results won’t measure up without His direction.
Todd’s lively sermon isn’t the first time he’s raised an eyebrow or two with his unique style of delivering the Word.
The Christian Post noted a situation in 2022 when Todd apologized to his more than 1.8 million social media followers after receiving backlash for wiping globs of spit on the face of a man he identified as his little brother during a sermon.
During that sermon, the megachurch leader referenced the story of Jesus healing a blind man at Bethsaida by spitting into his eyes privately. The tale is taken from Mark 8:23.
Although Jesus opted to privately spit in the blind man’s face, Todd public spitting in front of his congregation was too much for some churchgoers.
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Responding to the backlash, Todd took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to apologize for his controversial approach to the sermon.
“It’s never my intention to distract others from God’s Word and the message of Jesus … even with illustrations! I apologize for my example being too extreme and disgusting!” he said in a statement on X.
“I watched it back, and it was disgusting. Like, that was gross. I want to validate everybody’s feelings. That was a distraction from what I was really trying to do — trying to make the word come alive and make people see the story”
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