Brian Drinkwine, who appears to be a Pastor at Clarity Church posted the following with regard to both Super Bowl shows. I’m not going to say I agree or disagree with it, I will say I did appreciate it and thought it was worth capturing.
I notice he uses a Remarkable 2 while preaching, and I dig that approach!
We hosted about thirty people in our backyard to watch the Super Bowl.
It was one of those evenings that reminds you why you love hosting. Burgers and hot dogs on the grill. String lights glowing overhead as the sun went down. Lawn games scattered across the yard. A big outdoor screen to show the game. It was a genuinely good environment. Laughter. Conversation. Kids running around. People lingering.
And in the middle of that warmth, I found myself sitting with a tension I didn’t expect.
I’m a pastor and a follower of Jesus. I’m also a fourth-generation native Nashvillian. I was raised in and around the music industry. My college years were filled with friendships with people whose names you’d recognize today in the country music scene. My brother and my sister-in-law are songwriters and performers in Nashville. I listen to their music with pride, affection, and a kind of holy nostalgia.
So when Gabby Barrett sang “The Good Ones,” a song about finding lasting love with unmistakable spiritual overtones, I found it genuinely beautiful. And while I’ve seen plenty of people online making fun of Lee Brice’s “Country Nowadays,” I found it insightful. When he sings, “It ain’t easy being country in this country nowadays,” I hear something deeper than grievance. I hear fear. I hear loss. I hear a longing to go back to a time when the world felt simpler and more familiar.
That’s part of what country music has always done. It takes you back. It roots you. It gives language to memory and belonging.
Which is why the alternative halftime show resonated so deeply with some people. It felt nostalgic. Familiar. Safe. It felt like home.
But as I watched and compared it side by side with the main Super Bowl halftime show, I couldn’t stop thinking about what each one was *doing.* Not just what each one was saying.
The contrast between the two couldn’t have been more striking.
The Bad Bunny halftime show was remarkably simple. Minimalist lighting. Subdued effects. Set pieces that looked like sugar cane fields, Puerto Rican marketplaces, telephone poles mimicking power lines over open land. It felt grounded. Earthy. Blue-collar. A visual world shaped by farmers, workers, and everyday people. It was explicitly ethnic and multicultural, not in a flashy way, but in a deeply embodied one.
The alternative halftime show produced by Turning Point USA was noticeably more polished and dramatic. Pyrotechnics. Digital displays of American flags. A distinctly country-evangelical aesthetic. And at the end, a beautifully produced video honoring Charlie Kirk’s life and leadership. It was bold. Confident. Unapologetically American. Explicitly Christian.
One was simple. The other was spectacular.
One was multicultural. The other was country and evangelical.
One never mentioned Jesus. The other named him clearly.
And I felt the resonance of both.
Country music doesn’t just tell stories. It gives people a place to put their fear when the world changes faster than they can process. And I don’t want to minimize that. Scripture doesn’t pretend the world won’t feel disorienting. Jesus himself said that “in this world, you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) Fear, longing, and grief are not moral failures. They are human experiences.
What gave me pause wasn’t the sincerity of the alternative halftime show. I understand people’s concerns about Kid Rock. I don’t think those should be dismissed, but that’s not the point of this post. In fact, when he declared Jesus, I found it genuinely moving:
“There’s a book that’s sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off.
There’s a man who died for all our sins hanging from a cross.
You can give your life to Jesus and he’ll give you a second chance.”
That was beautiful. Jesus was named. The cross was named. Grace was named. Can we at least sit with that for a moment?
And yet, I couldn’t shake a question that felt uncomfortable but necessary:
Is the *act* of creating a Christian “alternative” itself a form of culture war?
Not because the intentions are bad. Not because the message is false. But because of what it might *do.*
Jesus called the gospel “the good news of the Kingdom of God.” That announcement wasn’t just about where souls go when they die. It was the declaration that Jesus is King NOW. And if Jesus being enthroned is the cause of the gospel, then the effect is supposed to be something more than personal salvation. It’s supposed to be reconciliation. New humanity. Enemies becoming neighbors. Dividing walls coming down.
Paul says that Christ himself is our peace, the one who “has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14)
Is this why I kept hearing reports of major Christian artists declining to be a part of the show? Were they sensing that something was… off?
On top of this, I found myself wondering: even when Jesus is named sincerely, does creating an alternative space sometimes offer us an out? A ready-made experience where we don’t have to sit with the discomfort of difference? A place where we don’t have to wrestle with the reality that we are not the only ones who live here? A place where we can avoid being “in the world but not of the world” and choose to leave the world entirely?
That question hits me harder because of where I was sitting.
I don’t live in Nashville anymore. I live in California. And more than half of the people in our backyard were of Hispanic descent. I was sitting next to a Mexican immigrant who shared with me what the halftime show meant to him. He spoke about feeling discarded. Left out. Pushed aside in American culture. And at the same time, he talked about his deep love for this country. The one he worked so hard to become a citizen of. His patriotism was real. His pain was real too.
And that matters, because Jesus gave us the Great Commandment. He told us to love God. But he also showed us that the measure of our love for God is how we love our neighbor.
And there I was, holding two experiences at once.
Nostalgia in my bones.
Belonging in the music from the hometown I love.
And right next to me, a man whose experience of America has been profoundly different from mine.
I didn’t know how to resolve that tension. I still don’t. But I don’t think the gospel asks us to resolve it quickly.
The Bad Bunny halftime show never named Jesus. It never pointed to Christ as King. That matters. The gospel has a source, and his name is Jesus. And yet, when the show declared that “the only thing more powerful than hate is love,” I couldn’t ignore how closely that aligns with Jesus’ own words. Jesus said the world would recognize his disciples by their love.
What I found myself seeing, uncomfortably, was this:
One show declared the *source* of the gospel without fully embodying its effect.
The other reflected the *effect* of the gospel without naming its source.
And what we ended up with as a culture was a divided experience where neither one displayed the full gospel.
The gospel isn’t just Jesus named.
And it isn’t just love expressed.
It isn’t just heaven in the afterlife.
It is heaven on earth now.
It is Jesus enthroned as King, forming a people who embody his love across real differences, without retreating into fear or dissolving into abstraction.
I don’t share this as an accusation. I share it as a confession.
This is what I’m wrestling with as a pastor, as a follower of Jesus, and as someone who loves the worlds that feel like home to me. Scripture tells us we can recognize things by their fruit. It also invites us to examine our own hearts before we examine anyone else’s.
So maybe the question isn’t which halftime show was “right.”
Maybe the question is whether we are willing to let the gospel do its full work in us, naming Jesus as King *and* allowing his Kingdom to break down the walls we instinctively rebuild when the world feels unfamiliar.
That’s not a comfortable question. But I’m increasingly convinced it’s a necessary one.
And it’s one I’m still asking God to help me answer honestly:
“Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
