August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
- 47% of those attending DO NOT believe in salvation by grace.
- 57% of those attending DO NOT believe in the authority of the Bible.
- 56% of those attending DO NOT believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life.
These are the statistics you would expect to find if you were to poll your local mall or baseball game, but these statistics are of a “Church”! The question must be now: “Is this even considered a Church?” If over half of the people attending there don’t believe in core doctrines of Christ, how could this be a body of believers in Christ? The simple, logical, and right answer is, “It couldn’t.”
Join Ingrid Schlueter and Chris Rosebrough on this edition of the SliceCast as they discuss these new results the leaders there are producing from “leading smart” as they self-profess to be doing.
END OF POST
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Today’s gospel, that is, the gospel that is prevalently adhered to by most of the visible Church, is one constructed around the goal of persuading people to make a ‘decision for Christ.’ The entire process is one of appealing to either one’s desire for a better life here and now or their fear of hell. Invitations are designed to entice people to “come forward” by “priming the pump” as several people move towards the front when it begins. Then those folks who are persuaded are led to pray a prayer “accepting Jesus” into their lives or hearts. There is no mention of the Lordship of Christ. There is no mention of repentance. Is this the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?
(click here to read this post)
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Lane Chaplin has put together a great video that includes the recent Slicecast featuring Chris Rosebrough. The YouTube video is 35 minutes long and includes clips from churches that have allowed pop culture to dictate the content of their worship. The comments already are very interesting to read. Thanks, Lane, for a great job.
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Lighthouse Trails shares their experience at the edge of the sharp tongue of Rick Warren, the new sheriff of civility, in light of the recent ABC interview…
Tapper recognized that criticism does bother Rick Warren, as Warren has proven time and again with Lighthouse Trails, such as when he called Lighthouse Trails “evil” and “liars” and when Saddleback said that federal agents were investigating Lighthouse Trails because Saddleback suggested we had broken into their server (something that was never true).
At the recent Presidential Forum at Saddleback, Warren ended the evening with the following words: “We’ve got to learn to disagree without demonizing each other and we need to restore civility. We need to restore civility in our civil discourse.” He has made this same statement before with regard to his critics. The insinuation in this statement is that those who criticize Rick Warren should not be doing so. But he is giving a false impression – many of his critics have given accurate and straightforward information about the teachings and beliefs of Rick Warren.
As for Lighthouse Trails, we have avoided calling him names, saying whether or not he is a Christian (leaving that up to God), have never threatened him or accused him of breaking into our server, and never said he was of the devil. And yet, Rick Warren’s chief apologist recently wrote an article calling Warren’s critics cult-like delusional people who behave like David Koresh (Waco), who are heresy-hunters, paranoid, and extremists.
HT: Watcher’s Lamp
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Lighthouse Trails shares their experience at the edge of the sharp tongue of Rick Warren, the new sheriff of civility, in light of the recent ABC interview…
Tapper recognized that criticism does bother Rick Warren, as Warren has proven time and again with Lighthouse Trails, such as when he called Lighthouse Trails “evil” and “liars” and when Saddleback said that federal agents were investigating Lighthouse Trails because Saddleback suggested we had broken into their server (something that was never true).
At the recent Presidential Forum at Saddleback, Warren ended the evening with the following words: “We’ve got to learn to disagree without demonizing each other and we need to restore civility. We need to restore civility in our civil discourse.” He has made this same statement before with regard to his critics. The insinuation in this statement is that those who criticize Rick Warren should not be doing so. But he is giving a false impression – many of his critics have given accurate and straightforward information about the teachings and beliefs of Rick Warren.
As for Lighthouse Trails, we have avoided calling him names, saying whether or not he is a Christian (leaving that up to God), have never threatened him or accused him of breaking into our server, and never said he was of the devil. And yet, Rick Warren’s chief apologist recently wrote an article calling Warren’s critics cult-like delusional people who behave like David Koresh (Waco), who are heresy-hunters, paranoid, and extremists.
HT: Watcher’s Lamp
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
By Star Parker of World Net Daily
Now we’re seeing a world in which clarity between good and evil, right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance, men and women is disappearing into a borderless and indistinguishable gray.
For whatever good intentions Pastor Warren may have, by posturing as a neutral broker between different points of view, many of which have profound moral and religious implications, he contributes to the moral ambiguity we’d expect a pastor to be combating.
We have institutions for civic and political forums. The press, universities, town halls, etc. If they’re not delivering well, let the marketplace work to improve what we’re getting. But this is not the job of pastors or churches. If it is, where do we go to learn about good and evil?
What exactly is going on in America when our obsession is to cleanse every inch of public space from religion, yet somehow we think it is appropriate to bring a presidential political forum into church?
See the rest of Star Parker’s astute observations at World Net Daily.
Editor’s note: Star Parker hits the nail on the head. Doesn’t the Purpose Driven church growth franchise model also “posture” the role of a pastor “as a neutral broker between different points of view ( the “unchurched” and the “churched” ), many of which have profound moral and religious implications, he contributes to the moral ambiguity we’d expect a pastor to be combating?”
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
“One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.”
-A.W. Tozer
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
From CRN:
“Granger Community Church, one of the premiere Purpose-Driven churches and the 6th most influential church in America just announced the results of their Reveal Study. The results are SHOCKING but not surprising because sites like this one have been warning for years that the seeker-sensitive / purpose-driven model was creating false converts and now there is hard statistical data that backs up this claim.
Granger’s own qualitative study revealed that:
47% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in salvation by grace.
57% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in the authority of the Bible.
56% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life.
From SliceCast:
“In this latest Slicecast, the guest is Chris Rosebrough. Chris is the publisher of ExtremeTheology.com and host of the Pirate Christian Radio program, Fighting for the Faith. In this edition of the program, the recent survey taken at Granger Community Church is the topic of discussion. When nearly 60% of Granger’s church attenders reject the authority of the Bible and over half don’t believe Jesus is the only way to salvation, are we even talking about a Christian church any longer? Can Granger’s Pastor, Mark Beeson, turn things around with a Wednesday night Bible study when his pop culture laden, entertaining Sunday morning service will reportedly remain unchanged? These are the topics at issue on this Slicecast.”
http://sliceoflaodicea.com/slicecast/2008/08/15/granger-community-church-56-dont-believe-jesus-is-the-only-way/
Granger Community Church’s Mea Culpa!:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2008/08/granger-communi.html
The Details of the Changes Coming to Granger:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2008/08/the-details-of.html
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com
(This video is protected under the US Copyright Fair Use Law as it is used for presenting and criticizing a position for educational purposes. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html )
Author: LaneCh
Keywords: gccwired granger community church mark beeson ingrid schlueter chris rosebrough sliceoflaodicea slicecast
Added: August 18, 2008
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Over at Slice of Laodicea Ingrid Schlueter writes:
This afternoon I have found it necessary to post, despite my being off today (or at least attempting to be off today.) Richard Abanes, you will remember, is the self-proclaimed “well-established Christian apologist” and “best-selling author” whose recent reprehensible conduct online resulted in Ken Silva having to relocate to another server and have his site rebuilt. Mr. Abanes huffed and puffed for weeks online at any blog that would take him, attempting to blow the “ODM” houses down. By God’s grace, he did not succeed with his histrionics in doing anything but exhausting himself. He has apparently recovered.
Now, strangely enough, after publicly and shrilly accusing Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries of “violating federal copyright law”, it appears that Mr. Abanes has done that very thing regarding Slice material…
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Following Sam’s post Franchising Church? I found this quote from A.W. Tozer at Reformed Voices very apt:
“Evangelical Christianity is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social instead of spiritual. We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints. Our models are successful business men, celebrated athletes and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertiser. Our literature is shallow and our hymnody borders on sacrilege. And scarcely anyone appears to care.”
-A.W. Tozer
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
This afternoon I have found it necessary to post, despite my being off today (or at least attempting to be off today.) Richard Abanes, you will remember, is the self-proclaimed “well-established Christian apologist” and “best-selling author” whose recent reprehensible conduct online resulted in Ken Silva having to relocate to another server and have his site rebuilt. Mr. Abanes huffed and puffed for weeks online at any blog that would take him, attempting to blow the “ODM” houses down. By God’s grace, he did not succeed with his histrionics in doing anything but exhausting himself. He has apparently recovered.
Now, strangely enough, after publicly and shrilly accusing Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries of “violating federal copyright law”, it appears that Mr. Abanes has done that very thing regarding Slice material.
With this post, which Abanes has now very slightly altered after I contacted him by phone message and email, he uses the vast majority of the post typed by a guest blogger on Slice today which was removed earlier. Abanes has no permission to use it. None. I have had the following publicly posted on my site under the About section for some time now:
Slice of Laodicea is a non-interactive news and commentary site regarding the state of the contemporary evangelical church. It is published by Ingrid Schlueter, producer and talk show host of the Crosstalk Radio Talk Show. The posts on Slice are copyrighted material.
And I wrote this also recently:
I feel the need to remind bloggers, especially those who are newcomers to the blog world, that I don’t at all mind a quoted paragraph and a link to a post I have written. I’m glad to have you help spread the word on some of these issues. I do mind when someone cuts and pastes my entire post onto their blog so that it appears it is their work, and they haven’t even asked permission. I don’t mind if someone does post the entire thing as long as they ask about it first. We need to respect the writing of others. If you didn’t write it yourself, you must either get permission from the author to post the entire thing, or excerpt a quote and then link to the article directly at its source.
People are completely ignoring basic copyright rules on writing in the blog world. It has gotten so bad that the Associated Press had a meeting recently on this very issue. Bloggers were essentially cutting and pasting entire news articles from AP and claiming that because they were critiquing something in the content, it was OK under “Fair Use” laws. It goes without saying that the Fair Use laws need revisiting and revising. Nobody seems to understand the parameters of the law any longer with the explosion of new media.
If you didn’t write it, don’t assume you can cut and paste it into your blog, even with attribution. You have to get permission, or just quote from it and then link to the source. You don’t need permission for that. I will show the same respect for your writing. Thank you!
I am publicly calling on Richard Abanes to take down the post from Kevin Williams from his site which had already been removed from Slice earlier today. I will be more fully writing about the event at Saddleback later in the week and intend to do it justice at that time. Abanes is very good at shrieking about his rights being violated as he aggressively violates those of others. Abanes never sought permission to publish anything from Slice of Laodicea and tried to justify his use of the full post by saying it was for “information purposes”. Yes, Richard. That’s the same purpose Ken Silva had when he made public IPower’s grim notice, generated by your email, that his site would be taken down if he didn’t remove an article that wasn’t to your taste.
In the case of Ken Silva, he had every right to do what he did, because it was a communique written to him. In the case of Richard cutting and pasting from Slice, he had no right to do so, and the post needs to come down now. Richard Abanes is so protective of his writing that he copyrights his own emails and threatens others about quoting them. Yet he somehow feels that what’s posted on Slice of Laodicea is free for the taking. Sorry, Richard. It doesn’t work that way.
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Pastor Larry DeBruyn with an article at Herescope explaining how the corrupt contemplative spirituality ala The Cult of Guru Richard Foster has highjacked the idea of meditating upon Scripture.
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
From CRN:
“Granger Community Church, one of the premiere Purpose-Driven churches and the 6th most influential church in America just announced the results of their Reveal Study. The results are SHOCKING but not surprising because sites like this one have been warning for years that the seeker-sensitive / purpose-driven model was creating false converts and now there is hard statistical data that backs up this claim.
Granger’s own qualitative study revealed that:
47% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in salvation by grace.
57% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in the authority of the Bible.
56% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life.
From SliceCast:
“In this latest Slicecast, the guest is Chris Rosebrough. Chris is the publisher of ExtremeTheology.com and host of the Pirate Christian Radio program, Fighting for the Faith. In this edition of the program, the recent survey taken at Granger Community Church is the topic of discussion. When nearly 60% of Granger’s church attenders reject the authority of the Bible and over half don’t believe Jesus is the only way to salvation, are we even talking about a Christian church any longer? Can Granger’s Pastor, Mark Beeson, turn things around with a Wednesday night Bible study when his pop culture laden, entertaining Sunday morning service will reportedly remain unchanged? These are the topics at issue on this Slicecast.”
http://sliceoflaodicea.com/slicecast/2008/08/15/granger-community-church-56-dont-believe-jesus-is-the-only-way/
Granger Community Church’s Mea Culpa!:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2008/08/granger-communi.html
The Details of the Changes Coming to Granger:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2008/08/the-details-of.html
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com
(This video is protected under the US Copyright Fair Use Law as it is used for presenting and criticizing a position for educational purposes. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html )
Author: LaneCh
Keywords: gccwired granger community church mark beeson ingrid schlueter chris rosebrough sliceoflaodicea slicecast
Added: August 18, 2008
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
From Donald Hank at Laigle’s Forum we read:
There is something sinister going on here. James Sundquist (see below) had read my article. Did Rev. Rob Schenk really owe that apology to Rick Warren” (in which I demonstrate that he did not), but nowhere in that article did I disclose the email address of the person who sent me the slanderous email suggesting that I had somehow sullied a “man of God”…
And the subject line “ready to eat crow?” is identical as well. Now, let’s try not to get paranoid and ask whether the name “Hunt” is itself a veiled threat (as in “hunt and kill”?), although Sundquist, one of the most thorough investigators out there, has uncovered sinister means used to destroy numerous God-fearing people who have dared to criticize “America’s pastor”…
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
The Franchise Business Opportunites blog has a telling article about churches starting to franchise themselves, entitled The Chick-Fil-A Church. These franchises are made possible by state of the art techonology, with the pastor preaching through a live video feed. Is the church a business to be franchised? How far will pastors go in their imitation of the marketing and business schemes of the world to achieve numerical success? God’s definition of success is far different from the world’s.
While there is nothing wrong with using techonology to aid ministry, it seems that beaming your pastor in by video misses the point. A wise pastor recently told me that your congregation will have a hard time respecting you and your preaching if you are not among them, serving them and building trust. Obviously, it’s hard to wash feet and feed sheep when you are miles away. Ministry is about people, whether it’s 6 or 600, it’s not about expanding your franchise.
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
“Friendship must be cemented by piety. A wicked man cannot be a true friend; and, if you befriend their
wickedness, you show that you are wicked yourselves. Pretend not to love them, if you favor their sins, and seek not their salvation. By favoring their sins, you will show your enmity to God; and then how can you love your brother? If you be their best friends, help them against their worst enemies.” -Richard Baxter. Full quote here.
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
HT: No Cross No Crown.
“…there will be three effects of nearness to Jesus–humility,
happiness, and holiness.” -Charles Spurgeon
ShareThis
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
(2 Peter 1:20-21, NASB)
Rob Bell Tolls On The Bible
Apprising Ministries has received many requests for critique of the false teachings of Emerging Church Pastor Rob Bell. And for some time now people have been contacting me here to put together some of his teachings in a nutshell for easier reference.
Time to do so has been hard to come by due to a lack of financial support but this is the first installment in what I pray will be a few pieces toward that direction. As God leads watch for this to continue to develop as we begin with the most important area concerning the view of the Bible held by Rob Bell.
People I’ve talked with who have known Bell and/or have sat under his teaching tell me that at one time he was actually quite sound as an expositor of Scripture but at now it’s clear that, at best, Bell is closer to neo-orthodoxy . As one who used to hear Bell back in his Calvary Church days told me recently, think MacArthur. However, after Bell and his wife read A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren, as you will see below like most Emergents Bell has rejected sola Scriptura. This is an irrefutable fact.
For example the following is adapted from my piece Bell Tolls on the Bible. While making the rounds promoting his book Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith (VE) Bell told BeliefNet.com:
The Bible itself, he writes, is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted. He dismisses claims that “Scripture alone” will answer all questions. Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader’s bias and current realities, he says. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises.
“It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says,” Bell writes.
(Online source, emphasis added)
Then in VE, after laying out essentially a neo-orthodox understanding of some of the Biblical writers, Bell specifically says:
This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice but it is not true… When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true (067,068, emphasis mine).
In the Christianity Today article The Emergent Mystique we find out that Bell is another McLaren disciple. CT has now put it into archive and one must register to read it, so the version I’m referencing comes from Brian McLaren’s own website and complete with his comments. Also the following material is condensed from my own article Seeing Bell in a New Light.
Please keep in mind here that Bell happens to be the pastor that writer Andy Crouch chose to use as he opens his article on the Emergent Church. Crouch tells us:
The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself–discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.”
“I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible,” Kristen says, “that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again–like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color…”
The Bells, who flourished at evangelical institutions from Wheaton to Fuller Theological Seminary to Grand Rapids’s Calvary Church before starting Mars Hill,…[felt] that very world, as the Bells tell it, became constricting–in Kristen’s phrase, “black and white…”
And how did the Bells find their way out of the black-and-white world where they had been so successful and so dissatisfied? “Our lifeboat,” Kristen says, “was A New Kind of Christian.”
(Online source, emphasis mine)
The New Postmodern Cult Of A PostLiberalism
So we start here because without this anchor of sola Scriptura Rob Bell’s neo-orthodoxy (being quite lenient) has now led him into a “repainted” [i.e. redefined] liberalism. And you need to understand that his embracing of mystery is Emergent-speak for the practice of Contemplative Spirituality Mysticism (CSM).
Bell’s neo-orthodox view of the Bible would be along the lines that the text of Scripture itself is not necessarily inspired but rather as the Holy Spirit inspires a particular passage to a particular person it then comes to life and it becomes the Word of God. We would then breathe it in, so to speak, living it out but in a highly subjective and existential experience.
This heretical view sees the Bible as “a human product” and in fact denies the perspicuity and verbal plenary inspiration of the text of Holy Scripture, which it does claim for itself (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16). Now you know the underlying reason why Emergent Hollow Men like Rob Bell make studying the texts of Holy Scripture far more difficult than it needs to be.
In his article Postmodern Liberalism: Repainting a Non-Christian Faith (I) A Christian Critique of Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis pastor-teacher Casey Freswick gives us some important background into Bell’s faulty philosophy:
Rob Bell’s repainting of false teaching looks like a merger of the dialectic philosophy of Hegel, the liberalism of Rudolph Bultmann and the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth. Rob Bell has embraced these and other errors and merged them into postmodernism, an anti-Christian philosophy teaching the impossibility of absolute truth. Both postmodern 21st century philosophy and 20th century “modern liberalism” have influenced Rob Bell.
A more appropriate title for Rob Bell’s painting, his “Velvet Elvis”, is “Postmodern Liberalism”. Rob Bell accomplishes what he sets out to do. His painting includes “every person everywhere who has asked big questions of a big God” even when their answers deny the truths of the Bible.
We have already seen that Bell clearly tells us he flatly rejects the Biblical Reformed position of sola Scriptura. So now we add Bell’s disregard for the plenary inspiration of the Bible to his fascination with the Hebrews Roots movement and the strong influence of Ray Vander Laan.
As we then combine this with Bell’s embracing alleged postmodernism and the Contemplative/Centering Prayer of the CSM at the core of the Emergent Church you will now be able to see that Rob Bell has been seduced into its new repainted version of social gospel of liberal theology, which just as in liberation theology, reduces Christ Jesus to a social reformer–little more than a cause to live for as one fights poverty, aids, social injustice, etc.
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
Apprising Ministries has received many requests for critique of the false teachings of Emerging Church Pastor Rob Bell. And for some time now people have been contacting me here to put together some of his teachings in a nutshell for easier reference.
As you will see in this post about his teachings concerning the Bible itself like most Emergents Bell has rejected sola Scriptura.
August 18, 2008
Click the post title to be taken to the source.
The Jerusalem Post with another preview of the ecumenical future of postevangelicalism and the Emerging Church. You can almost hear Jesse Winchester now: “C’mon people now; smile on your brother, and love one another right now”:
What can an American Sikh learn from the Jewish people’s Zionist state for his own people’s aspirations to set up an independent homeland in Punjab? What do Seventh-Day Adventists think of a renewed Jewish state in the Holy Land?
These were some of the questions batted around by members of an eight-member multi-faith contingent of US policy makers active on Capitol Hill that included, in addition to a Sikh and an Adventist, a Hindu, an Evangelical Christian and a Chinese-American…
Older Entries
