In praise of un-canceled Christmas singers, Gilbert King, and institutions actually making good trouble

When Victory Church cancelled its Christmas concert over gay singers; First United Methodist stepped up. Lakeland Now is taking a risk to bring Bone Valley's Gilbert King to Lakeland. Good stuff.

A pretty significant and encouraging civic moment will be happening Saturday night (Dec. 21) on either side of Lake Morton in core Lakeland.

At essentially the same time, about a half-mile from each other, Gilbert King will be speaking about the Leo Schofield case (and more) at the Polk Theatre; and a singing group called Voctave (as seen below) will be rocking out Christmas — acapella-style — to a sold out crowd at First United Methodist Church.

These two events will occur roughly simultaneously, half a mile or so from each other.

“No explanation.” LOL. Sure Grinch, errr Victory

Actually, the Voctave concert isn’t sold out — because it’s free, which is not a thing Voctave seems to do normally. They are, after all, professional traveling performers. Tours do not pay for themselves. See below: one of these concerts is not like the others.

Indeed, Voctave had a paid show set up for the cavernous campus of Victory Christian on Dec. 6, which Victory was hyping relentlessly on social media and even NPR.

And then this happened, with “no explanation.”

No explanation pretty loudly suggests an explanation — as this TikTokker makes bluntly clear.

What Victory genius of sleuthing discovered an acapella singing group might have gay people in it?

The “no explanation” thing typifies what institutions (secular and otherwise) do when they know they’re wrong and stupid. Victory didn’t want to say this in public:

“We’re cancelling this concert you’re all so excited about because we’re shocked, shocked to learn some of the singers might be gay; and we can’t have gay people infecting our congregation with their gay sound cooties as they celebrate, with beautiful voices, the birth of our Lord and savior.”

So they said nothing.

Institutional bigotry is always cowardly before anything else — even before it’s hateful.

Thus, I’m not going to bother contacting the cowardly secular institution of Victory Church to verify its unstated reason for this moment of fake religious cancel culture. Its leaders would just lie to me anyway. If they want to articulate their reason, they can email it; and I will print it verbatim, with my assessment of its veracity.

While they’re at it, if they want, Victory “leaders” can articulate who within Victory’s congregation and/or leadership bureaucracy had the power to go:

• Wait, you mean there might by gay people in the group?

• Ok, that means we have to cancel and anger everybody who bought a ticket and make fools of ourselves.

Voctave’s statement cites the “executive pastor” as the messenger — but I seriously doubt the “executive pastor” would embarrass himself and his institution so profoundly because he suddenly discovered some of the acappella singers in this picture might be gay.

Somebody (or some faction) pushed/threatened him.

That’s a fascinating dynamic to me; and the people in Victory’s congregation deserve to know who wields that kind of power within their institution. I’d be happy to tell them. So send me the story, anonymously, if you want.

Enough about Victory, let’s praise FUMC

I don’t really know this part of the story with any detail, either; but I love the outcome.

It appears that somebody at First United Methodist Church wrote a check or authorized a check paying for Voctave to perform for free on Saturday night.

The new, free concert “sold out” in four hours.

To be clear, I have not seen any FUMC statement casting this free concert as a rebuke to Victory’s behavior. And I’m sure they don’t want to get into any church-on-church battle.

So let’s just call it a better example of how to Jesus — a message born of acts. And let’s praise that. (But if anyone wants to share the details of how this came about, you know where to find me.)

Respect the institutional risk Lakeland Now is taking with Gilbert King

And speaking of Jesus and praise, I just want to reiterate the institutional risk Lakeland Now is taking by bringing Gilbert King to Lakeland to discuss Leo Schofield, Bone Valley, and his other work.

Essentially the entire past and present law enforcement, legal, and local power/media structure of Polk County is eagerly willing to sacrifice Leo Schofield on the cross of its own vanity, rather than admit and fix collective error and the appallingly immoral professional behavior in this case over decades.

I described that vaguely religious dynamic on this article from 2023.

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Leo Schofield should preach the sermon at next year's Lakeland Mayor's Prayer Breakfast

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Specific names willing to sacrifice Leo include: Jerry Hill, Brian Haas, Victoria Avalon, Mark Carpanini, Keith Spoto, Charles Davis, Kevin Abdoney, Skip Perez, Suzie Schottelkotte, and more.

But the general unwillingness of anyone with public or governing stature (other than me and Randy Wilkinson) to publicly advocate for ending this ongoing atrocity and farce demonstrates the power of our badly led institutions to cower the “leaders” of political and civic and religious institutions into approving silence.

An institutional silence breaker

Enter Lakeland Now, which is essentially breaking that institutional silence.

Lakeland Now is a donor-funded, non-profit local news organization. It depends on the generosity of donors to exist. Angering the power structure of a community by forcing it to confront, even a little bit, its abject moral failure is generally not a recipe for juicing donations from prominent people with money.

So this event, which I am sure people of power in Polk law enforcement and judicial circles are quietly hoping to sabotage, is an act of institutional bravery. It seems to me a real marker for the role Lakeland Now wants to play.

That’s why I bought two good tickets and gave them away — fittingly, to someone with ties to First UMC.

Because, alas, circumstances have dictated that these two excellent, civically-important events are happening at the same time, making it impossible to attend both. And I, personally, have an out of town personal commitment. So I can’t attend either.

But hopefully Saturday night marks the start of a new institutional era in Lakeland and Polk County based on the good example of choosing to do brave, moral things.