UMC church choir sings Backstreet Boys during worship service: 'Pretty awesome throwback jam'

A progressive United Methodist church in Arkansas drew attention on social media for a viral clip of their choir performing a choral arrangement of the Backstreet Boys' 1999 song "I Want It That Way" during a worship service last Sunday.

The Rev. Jennie Williams, who serves as senior pastor of Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in Fayetteville, suggested to The Christian Post that her church's musical choice was following Jesus Christ's example of being relatable.

????You are my fire. The one desire. Believe when I say. I want it that way???? The choir at Central United Methodist Church Fayetteville sings Backstreets Boy's “I Want It That Way” for their Sunday worship service, because why not? https://t.co/0uWOdzRvbN — Protestia (@Protestia) October 14, 2026

The church rolled out its performance of the boy band's pop hit last Sunday as part of a sermon series on generational distinctions, according to the Rev. Virginia Brown, who is listed on the church's website as its Wesley director and college pastor.

"As we continue our 'generations series' — and as a millennial myself, who we're talking about today — I am especially excited about this next part of our service," Brown told the congregation, according to a YouTube video of the Oct. 11 service.

"Our choir is about to bring a pretty awesome throwback jam; one that you've never heard in this style before. It's a little bit of a millennial nostalgia song, and I'm pretty sure you're going to recognize this one. It was released on April 12, 1999," she added.

After being posted Wednesday by the popular Christian X account Protestia, footage of the choir's performance prompted scorn from X users, some of whom accused the church of being "a whitewashed tomb" symptomatic of mainline Methodist decline.

Williams, a millennial who has pastored CUMC's intergenerational congregation since 2023, explained to CP that the song was "just a bit of nostalgia" in the context of "trying to find ways to garner empathy and collaboration [and] a little more understanding, instead of the generational divides that we see so often, especially in the church."

Regarding how she would respond to critics who might claim that singing the Backstreet Boys during a worship service is irreverent and inappropriate, Williams cited Jesus. "The most important thing Jesus did in order to bring about salvation to the world is to become like us; to make the unknowable relatable. And then, in the end of all of that, He gave us the ultimate sacrifice, and the tomb was empty. And yet, none of that would have meant the same to us if He wasn't like us," she said.

"And so, we're just trying to be relatable to not only the people in our chairs, in our congregation, but also to the people around in the community [to whom] churches seem really irrelevant and unrelatable, so that they can come and meet Jesus, too," she added.

After the choir performed their rendition of The Backstreet Boys, the Rev. Chase Burns read from the story of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32, which he later offered in his sermon as an illustration of millennials wrestling with faith questions amid their generation's disillusionment and disappointment.

The pastoral leadership of CUMC recently gathered for a 90-minute episode of "It's Not Complicated," their podcast offering reflections on different generations. Their latest episode, which aired Oct. 8, focused on the experiences and characteristics unique to millennials born between 1981 and 1996.

During the podcast, both Williams and Brown described their early faith journeys as riddled with anxiety, with Brown claiming her "first bit of anxiety as a human being" was when "an older kid [told] me that Jesus is going to come back, and you better have everything or whatever." She suggested she later learned to move away from her "very Evangelical private school" upbringing, noting she now believes the Earth is older than 5,000 years old and that no dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark.

Video of CUMC's choir performing the Backstreet Boys comes amid growing tensions among Methodists, who continue to fracture as more than 7,500 mostly conservative Methodist churches have departed the UMC over the mainline denomination's debate over LGBT issues.

A South Carolina judge is expected to dismiss cases brought by the UMC's South Carolina Conference against approximately 70 congregations seeking to leave with their properties, the conference announced Tuesday.

Gimme That Showtime Religion

Can the church fight apathy and materialism by feeding people's appetite for entertainment? Evidently many in the church believe the answer is yes, as church after church jumps on the show-business bandwagon. It is a troubling trend that is luring many otherwise orthodox churches away from biblical priorities.

Church buildings are being constructed like theatres. Instead of a pulpit, the focus is a stage. Some feature massive platforms that revolve or raise and lower, with colored lights and huge sound boards. Shepherds are giving way to media specialists, programming consultants, stage directors, special effects experts, and choreographers.

The idea is to give the audience what they want. Tailor the church service to whatever will draw a crowd. As a result, pastors are more like politicians than shepherds, looking to appeal to the public rather than leading and building the flock God gave them. The congregation is served a slick, professional show, where drama, pop music, and maybe a soft-sell sermon constitute the worship service. But the emphasis isn't on worship, it's on entertainment.

Underlying this trend is the notion that the church must sell the gospel to unbelievers. Churches thus compete for the consumer on the same level as the latest TV reality show or a major motion picture. More and more churches are relying on marketing strategy to sell the church.

That philosophy is the result of bad theology. It assumes that if you package the gospel right, people will get saved. The whole approach is rooted in Arminian theology. It views conversion as fundamentally dependent on an act of the human will. Its goal is an instantaneous, superficial decision rather than a radical change of the heart.

Moreover, this whole Madison-Avenue corruption of Christianity presumes that church services are primarily for recruiting unbelievers. Many have abandoned worship as such. Others have relegated conventional preaching to some small-group setting on a weeknight. But that misses the point of Hebrews 10:24-25: "Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together."

Acts 2:42 shows us the pattern the early church followed when they met: "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Note that the early church's priorities clearly were to worship God and to edify the brethren. The church came together for worship and edification; it scattered to evangelize the world.

Our Lord commissioned His disciples for evangelism in this way: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations" (Matthew 28:19). Christ makes it clear that the church is not to wait for or invite the world to come to its meetings, but to GO to the world. That is a responsibility for every believer. I fear that an approach emphasizing a palatable gospel presentation within the walls of the church excuses the individual believer from his personal obligation to be a light in the world (Matthew 5:16).

We have a society filled with people who want what they want when they want it. They are into their own lifestyle, recreation, and entertainment. When churches appeal to those selfish desires, they only fuel that fire and hinder true godliness. Some of these churches are growing exponentially while others that don't entertain are struggling. Many church leaders want numerical growth in their churches, so they are buying into the entertainment-first philosophy.

Consider what this philosophy does to the gospel message itself. Some will maintain that if biblical principles are presented, the medium doesn't matter. That is nonsense. Why not have a real carnival? A tattooed knife thrower who juggles chain saws could do his thing while a barker shouts Bible verses. That would draw a crowd. It's a bizarre scenario, but one that illustrates how the medium can cheapen and corrupt the message.

And sadly, it's not terribly different from what is actually being done in some churches. Punk-rockers, ventriloquists' dummies, clowns, magicians, and show-business celebrities have taken the place of the preacher—and they are depreciating the gospel. I do believe we can be innovative and creative in how we present the gospel, but we have to be careful to harmonize our methods with the profound spiritual truth we are trying to convey. It is too easy to trivialize the sacred message.

Don't be quick to embrace the trends of the high-tech superchurches. And don't sneer at conventional worship and preaching. We don't need clever approaches to get people saved (1 Cor.inthians 1:21). We simply need to get back to preaching the truth and planting the seed. If we're faithful in that, the soil God has prepared will bear fruit.

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