This is a positive step. So good for Kanye West. But I just wish he didn’t team up with Joel Osteen. Osteen Is a bit too close to the slick “prosperity preacher” mold for my taste.
Osteen IS the mold.
It could be that Osteen is the only “big name” preacher that is willing to fully embrace West at this time, with the other big time names maybe keeping him at an arms distance. I’ve seen this in ministry before, with on-fire people who have some different way of spreading the Gospel getting the cold shoulder from “respectable” established ministries, so they go where they are welcome. Sometimes later they regret it, but they feel they went where God was leading them at the time.
Not so sure about that-- I've met him (a friend is a regular attendee at Lakewood) and heard him preach.
He seems to place as much emphasis on leading a Christian life as anyone, but just offers the carrot of living your life with joy at having received the Word, instead of having just the stick of hellfire and damnation.
Joy in faith can bring about as much of a change in personal behavior as fear of the Lord.
I see Osteen not as a preacher but as an entertaining motivational speaker that sprinkles in some Christian concepts.