I know some people do not like the style of these videos, but I think they are really quite powerful, for a certain demographic that most older folks simply “don’t get.” Check this latest video from the Wretched Network. Yes, the man singing the song was serious.

This is the best, and most thorough-going critique of Rick Warren’s Purpose Drive Life I’ve read, to date, from anyone. In light of the fact of how any number of Lutheran congregations picked up and ran with the “Purpose Driven” craze, in spite of it being quite thoroughly contrary to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, it is important that this kind of critique be as thoroughly promulgated as possible (I don’t get to use that word ‘promulgated’ too much, try saying it out loud, it’s fun!).

Here’s the paper: WarrenCritique

NOTE: Click the link once, then click on it again, in the next window, and allow time for the PDF file to download to your computer.

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, here’s a snippet.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains.

I read this first on Dr. Gene Edward Veith’s blog, who read it at Joe Carter’s blog, who in turn found it on the Internet. OK, now that we have the hat tips out of the way, here is a great interview with Rodney Stark.

Read this interview with sociologist Rodney Stark on how the so-called “mainline” liberal denominations have dwindled into irrelevance: Are Evangelicals the New Mainline?. Among the many interesting points he makes is that the only congregations in those traditions that are doing well are those with conservative pastors. And when “evangelicals” decide to go liberal, as in the emergent church or progressive evangelical movement, they decline too. He goes into the history of this phenomenon and finds that it goes way, way back.

I’m not sure who this guy is, but I enjoyed his video. You may too, there is a high-def version, just click on through to the original at YouTube for that:

“The fact is that there simply is no neutral, undogmatic, generic Gospel, which may then be flavored to taste with denominational additives, say a dash of delicate Anglican mint sauce here, and hearty Lutheran sauerkraut or Baptist okra there. Every confession of the Gospel is at once and inevitably dogmatic or ‘denominational.’ For no honest presentation of the Gospel can escape the necessity of saying yes or no to basic evangelical ingredients like the power of Baptism, grace alone, universal grace, the Gospel as means of grace or the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Holy Supper for our salvation.”

Kurt Marquart, “Central Lutheran Thrusts For Today,” Concordia Journal. Vol. 18, Number 3, (May 1982), p. 87.

A thought-provoking post from “Gospel-Driven Church” blog. I think this is spot-on true. What do you think?

Your Church May Not be A Church If . . .

You rarely, if ever, hear the word “sin” there.

When you do hear the word “sin,” it is only only briefly mentioned, or redefined as “mistakes.”

You can’t remember when you last heard the name of Jesus in a message.

The Easter message isn’t about the resurrection but “new opportunities” in your life or turning over a new leaf.

On patriotic holiday weekends, the message is about how great America is.

On the other weekends, the message is about how great you are.

There are more videos than prayers.

People don’t sing during “worship,” but watch.

The pastors’ chief responsibilities are things foreign to Scripture.

There is more money budgeted for advertising than for mission.

The majority of the small groups are oriented around sports or leisure, not study or service.

You always feel comfortable there.

Church membership just appears to be a recruiting system for volunteers.

You only see other church people on Sunday mornings at church.

—
WARNING: If your church meets one or more of these, it might be a spiritual pep rally, a religious performance center, a Christian social club, or something else entirely, but it is probably not, biblically speaking, a gathering of the Church.

Book of Concord Title Page

There is a powerful little statement made by a Lutheran theologian, who, in signing his agreement to one of the documents in the Lutheran Confessions, captured the very essence of what, precisely, the Lutheran Confessions are. He wrote: “I judge that all these agree with Holy Scripture and with the belief of the true and genuine catholic Church.” — John Brentz, Minister of Halle, Smalcald, 1537. The true and genuine catholic Church — this is that the Lutheran Confessions represent. Nothing more, nothing less.

A little detail almost always is overlooked when we talk about the Book of Concord:the “Lutheran” confessions really aren’t (just) “Lutheran!” It is important to highlight this in our relativistic, subjectivistic culture where everybody seems to have their truth — and so, why shouldn’t (some in) the Lutheran church have their Lutheran confessions (so long as the Reformed get to have their confessions and the Catholics their Council of Trent — and non-denominational groups their bible)? But that understates the ecumenical claim of the “Lutheran” Confessions. The “Lutheran” confessions are not interested in formulating some particular truths (really then: “truths”); they’re interested in reasserting the catholic, universal, Christian truths of Scripture. In other words, on the one hand, it does make sense to call the Book of Concord the “Lutheran Confessions” to distinguish them from the, say, Anglican Confession or the Reformed Confessions. Yet that only touches on one aspect.

Even though it historically emerged out of inner-Lutheran arguments after Luther’s death in 1546, the 1580 Book of Concord was not originally entitled: Lutheran Book of Concord (then the Catholics would have won: “Ha! See? You Lutherans only run after Luther’s private opinions — the “ecumenical councils” are us!”).

It is entitled: Christian Book of Concord (as can be seen on the beautiful title page of the German Book of Concord: the German word “Christliche” (Christian) is the largest, most ornate word on that page — and that is so for a very good reason!). It gave an account of correct Christian, catholic, universal teaching of the Church precisely because it was drawn from the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures. Building on the three “ecumenical creeds,” the Book of Concord now formulates the standard of what is considered Christian in the Christian church. That is, at least, the assertion of the churches bearing Luther’s name. This claim is indeed controversial, as everybody can easily understand. But since we are now in the time of the church militant — which truth / interpretation of Scripture is really uncontroversial?

In fact, if there’s any reason for there being a distinct Lutheran church, then it can only be found in the catholicity of this church’s doctrine, once confessed in the Christian Book of Concord of 1580. So we’re really saying: even though it sounds very parochial and particular, this one confession defines what is Christian to this day because it correctly expounds Scripture, God’s word. Many, no doubt, will call this “sectarianism” (as opposed to the “ecumenical” denominationalism where every “denomination” is just a different, but equally valid denomination, kind of like different dollar bills in your wallet).

But in the church of the Crucified, truth is not found in generalizations and abstractions many can agree on “by their own reason or strength”. It is found in the in agreeing on what God’s word actually means.

How do we teach the faithful what it means to be a genuinely small-c “catholic” Christian who is pledged, at the very least, to Luther’s Small Catechism, and that their pastors and other church workers are pledged to the Book of Concord?

In what sense is the Book of Concord “Lutheran”? And in what sense is it “Christian”? What’s the difference? How do we avoid sectarianism while maintaining an unconditional subscription to the Lutheran Confessions?

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

You’ve got to read/see this one to believe it. What a great example of everything that is so desperately and totally wrong with many Christians’ view of worship, and of what the Church is. Lord, have mercy. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.

Raised by post-church boomers, or by children of boomers, it should come as no surprise that the so-called “Millennials” are hazy, to say the least, about all things religious. Here is an interesting story in USA Today about it.

Here is a snippet from the story:

Key findings in the phone survey, conducted in August and released today:

•65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.

•65% rarely or never attend worship services.

•67% don’t read the Bible or sacred texts.

Many are unsure Jesus is the only path to heaven: Half say yes, half no.

Here is the more complete report directly from LifeWay. LifeWay reports:

“Millennials are the most religiously diverse generation in our culture’s history,” Rainer said. “Unsure of the afterlife and the life of Jesus, Millennials present the church with a great opportunity to engage them in conversations dealing with the nature of truth and its authority as God.”

Here are a couple of charts from the story:

A thought-provoking article by Pastor Peters, for your consideration and reflection.

On another on-line forum is the question “Why Lutherans Can’t Evangelize.” It is a striking question born of a time when Lutherans have borrowed the evangelism methods of others and found themselves without a voice of their own to speak the Gospel to their neighbor. I cannot always have been true because there was a point in the 1950s when Lutherans were growing at astounding rates. TIME magazine noted this in April of 1958 with the prediction that if things continue everyone in America will be Lutheran by 2000. We know how that turned out. Perhaps TIME jinxed our forward momentum since the last year we saw substantial growth in the LCMS was 1963.

I think we lost our voice. The boats stopped coming from Europe, America changed and suburbia brought with it additional cultural changes, our own shift from a largely rural to mostly urban and suburban church body made us turn inward to figure out what this meant for us, and we found ourselves without a voice to speak to those around us.

So we did what Lutherans are wont to do. We went shopping in the religious marketplace. We looked at the denominations that were growing (Southern Baptist) and began shaping our approach in their terminology and from their perspective. But it was a little like those who speak another language from a phrase book. It was not our native tongue.

Then came Evangelism Explosion and D. James Kennedy. We Lutheranized it into Dialog Evangelism (ala BZ) and suddenly there were people showing up on the front porches of America asking “What would happen to you if you died tonight?” Again, with all our tweaking, it was a foreign language to us and the decision theology part of it all left a taste in our mouth that diluted our enthusiasm.

In the end what this did is transfer the responsibility to an Evangelism Committee. Remember that before this Luthern congregational structures did not even have an evangelism group or committee or deacon. Don Abdon came along to help us with this restructuring need and with a list of those who were “evangelists” and we decided that evangelism was best done by those with its gift. All of this distanced the average Lutheran Christian from the task and purpose of sharing the faith.

Advance a few years and we were shopping at Willow Creek or Saddle Creek or CCM radio stations in the hopes that if we looked different and sounded different people would be attracted to us. Never mind the fact that our sanctuaries were architecturally unsuited for this style and our heart was not fully convinced (hence the traditional services that kept us Lutheran in identity at least at 7 am on Sunday morning).

Our mission execs began shopping for those churches that were growing and they shifted our paradigms and made us more missional and insisted that everything we were or did had to be negotiable if we were really to grow. Their hearts were in the right place — they daily faced statistics that most people in the pew choose to ignore… but the result has been a great division between those congregations that are LINO (Lutheran in name only), those who have abandoned even the name but exist within the denomination, AND those who turn to page 151 on LSB on Sunday morning and the worship wars past and pressent.

Now our Lutheran evangelistic zeal is part of the angst of who we are and what we are. If we did bring people to worship, would they feel at home? Would they like it? Would they find us friendly? Would they come back? Can we do this? Will it (giving up who we are) be worth it all in the end? Instead we should have been thinking Isaiah 55 — My Word will not return to me empty handed… Instead we should have been confident that where the Word and Sacraments are and the baptized people gathered around them and their Pastor, there is the Church with the fullness of the Spirit who IS the one who grows the Church.

Our parish grows because the people invite people to come with them. Our outreach is through the people in the pew who daily witness and share their faith and not through an evangelism committee. People hear about our work in the community or find out about us through our highly regarded preschool or come to one of our Music at Grace concerts or are brought by those who have confidence in the Word and Sacraments, the means of grace. We do try to be deliberately welcoming, we have a welcome desk at the door and people stationed to identify and welcome visitors. We have signs and lots of parking. We have a well maintained building. But we sing the liturgy on Sunday morning and use the full resources of the hymnal for the Divine Service. We have good teaching for all ages and good Biblical preaching that keeps the Law and Gospel distinct but together. We do everything wrong in this regard and next week we will receive nearly 40 new members (through baptism, instruction, adult confirmation, affirmation of faith, and transfer). What happens on Sunday morning and who we are during the week is the same. The result is that people know who they are in the pews and feel confident about bringing people with them, sharing the faith with their neighbors and co-workers, and they know what people will experience on Sunday morning. Even kids do this.

We must know who we are before we know our voice in evangelism and outreach. It must be authentic and real, positive and genuine… Identity is what helps us welcome… confidence in that identity gives us confidence to invite and welcome… it really does work.

Dr. John MacArthur offers these poignant observations about the state of American Evangelicalism, which apply across the board to all conservative denominations in the USA. These problems are not particular to the Evangelicals. We Lutherans are struggling with the same issues. I appreciate Dr. MacArthur’s honesty and candor. Much food for thought for all of us. I urge you to read this very carefully.

You don’t have to be an astute observer of the evangelical scene to notice the unrelenting barrage of outlandish ideas, philosophies, and programs. Never in the history of the church has so much innovation met with so little critical thinking.

Giving a thoughtful biblical response becomes harder and harder all the time. Merely sorting through all the evangelical trends and recognizing which of these novelties really represent dangerous threats to the health and harmony of the church is challenging enough. Effectively answering the huge smorgasbord of accompanying errors poses an even greater dilemma. New errors sometimes seem to multiply faster than the previous ones can be answered.

To sort it all out in a godly way, cutting a straight path through the wreckage of evangelicalism, several old-fashioned, Christlike virtues are absolutely essential: biblical discernment, wisdom, fortitude, determination, endurance, skill in handling Scripture, strong convictions, the ability to speak candidly without waffling, and a willingness to enter into conflict.

Let’s be honest: those are not qualities the contemporary evangelical movement has cultivated. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Consider the values and motives that prompt postmodern evangelicals to do the things they do. The larger evangelical movement today is obsessed with opinion polls, brand identity, market research, merchandizing schemes, innovative strategies, and numerical growth. Evangelicals are also preoccupied with matters such as their image before the general public and before the academic world, their clout in the political arena, their portrayal by the media, and similar shallow, self-centered matters.

Maintaining a positive image has become a priority over guarding the truth.

The PR-driven church. Somewhere along the line, evangelicals bought the lie that the Great Commission is a marketing mandate. The leading strategists for church growth today are therefore all pollsters and public relations managers. In the words of Rick Warren, “If you want to advertise your church to the unchurched, you must learn to think and speak like they do.” [Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995) 189] An endless parade of self-styled church-growth specialists has been repeating that same mantra for several decades, and multitudes of Christians and church leaders now accept the idea uncritically. Both their message to the world and the means by which they communicate that message have been carefully tailored by consumer relations experts to appeal to worldly minds.

Many church leaders have radically changed the way they look at the gospel. Rather than seeing it as a message from God that Christians are called to proclaim as Christ’s ambassadors (without tampering with it or changing it in any way), they now treat it like a commodity to be sold at market. Rather than plainly preaching God’s Word in a way that unleashes the power and truth of it, they try desperately to package the message to make it subtler and more appealing to the world.

Runaway pragmatism and trivial pursuit. The most compelling question in the minds and on the lips of many pastors today is not “What’s true?” but rather “What works?” Evangelicals these days care less about theology than they do about methodology. Truth has taken a backseat to more pragmatic concerns. When a person is trying hard to customize one’s message to meet the “felt needs” of one’s audience, earnestly contending for the faith is out of the question.

That is precisely why, for many years now, evangelical leaders have systematically embraced and fostered almost every worldly, shallow, and frivolous idea that comes into the church. A pathological devotion to superficiality has practically become the chief hallmark of the movement. Evangelicals are obsessed with pop culture, and they ape it fanatically. Contemporary church leaders are so busy trying to stay current with the latest fads that they rarely give much sober thought to weightier scriptural matters.

In the typical evangelical church, even Sunday services are often devoted to the trivial pursuit of worldly things. After all, churches are competing for attention in a media-driven world. So the church vainly tries to put on a bigger, flashier spectacle than the world.

Evangelical fad surfing. Contemporary evangelicals have therefore become very much like “children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4: 14). They follow whatever is the latest popular trend. They buy whatever is the current best seller. They line up to see any celebrity who speaks spiritual-sounding language. They watch eagerly for the next Hollywood movie with any “spiritual” theme or religious imagery that they can latch on to. And evangelicals discuss these fads and fashions endlessly, as if every cultural icon that captures their attention had profound and serious spiritual significance.

Evangelical churchgoers desperately want their churches to stay on the leading edge of whatever is currently in vogue in the evangelical community. It almost seems like ancient history now, but for a while, any church that wanted to be in fashion had to sponsor seminars on how to pray the prayer of Jabez. But woe to the church that was still doing Jabez when The Purpose-Driven Life took center stage. By then, any church that wanted to retain its standing and credibility in the evangelical movement had better be doing “Forty Days of Purpose.” And if your church didn’t get through the “Forty Days” in time to host group studies or preach a series of sermons about The Da Vinci Code before the Hollywood movie version came out, then your church was considered badly out of touch with what really matters.

It is too late now if you missed any of those trends. To use the language of the movement, they are all so five minutes ago. If your church is just now experimenting with Emerging-style worship, candles, postmodern liturgy, and the like, then you are clearly way behind—that train already left the station…and crashed.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that all those trends are equally bad. Some of them are not necessarily bad at all. For example, there can be great benefit in teaching a congregation how to respond to something like The Da Vinci Code. But contemporary evangelicals have been conditioned to anticipate and follow every fad with an almost mindless herd mentality. They sometimes seem to move from fad to fad with an uninhibited and undiscerning eagerness that does leave them exposed to things that may well be spiritually lethal. In fact, the question of whether the latest trend is dangerous or not is not a welcome question in most evangelical circles anymore. Whatever happens to be popular at the moment is what drives the whole evangelical agenda.

That mentality is precisely what Paul warned against in Ephesians 4:14. It has left evangelical Christians dangerously exposed to trickery, deceitfulness, and unsound doctrine. It has also left them completely unequipped to practice any degree of true biblical discernment.

The sad truth is that the larger part of the evangelical movement is already so badly compromised that sound doctrine has almost become a nonissue.

The mad pursuit of nondoctrinal “relevancy.” Even at the very heart of the evangelical mainstream, where you might expect to find some commitment to biblical doctrine and at least a measure of concern about defending the faith, what you find instead is a movement utterly dominated by people whose first concern is to try to keep in step with the times in order to be “relevant.”

Sound doctrine? Too arcane for the average churchgoer. Biblical exposition? That alienates the unchurched. Clear preaching on sin and redemption? Let’s be careful not to subvert the self-esteem of hurting people. The Great Commission? Our most effective strategy has been making the church service into a massive Super Bowl party. Serious discipleship? Sure. There’s a great series of group studies based on The Matrix trilogy. Let’s work our way through that. Worship where God is recognized as high and lifted up? Get real. We need to reach people on the level where they are.

Evangelicals and their leaders have doggedly pursued that same course for several decades now—in spite of many clear biblical instructions that warn us not to be so childish (in addition to Eph. 4:14, see also 1 Cor. 14:20; 2 Tim. 4:3-4; Heb. 5:12-14).

What’s the heart of the problem? It boils down to this: many in the evangelical movement have forgotten who is Lord over the church. They have either abandoned or downright rejected their true Head and given His rightful place to evangelical pollsters and church-growth gurus.

John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, president of The Master’s College and Seminary, and featured teacher with the Grace to You media ministry. Grace to You radio, video, audio, print, and website resources reach millions worldwide each day. Over four decades of ministry, John has written dozens of bestselling books, including The MacArthur Study Bible, The Gospel According to Jesus, The New Testament Commentary series, The Truth War, and The Jesus You Can’t Ignore. He and his wife, Patricia, have four married children and fourteen grandchildren.

The original post is here.

File under: Bringing Disgrace on Christ and His Church/Dumb Things Christians Do

“If I were an unbeliever and I attended these [seeker-driven /purpose-driven] churches and listened to all their sermons week after week, how would I define the term “Christ Follower”?

Here’s the answer I came up with after reviewing the sermons preached at these seeker-driven / purpose-driven churches over the last 24 months:

Christ Follower: Someone who has made the decision to be an emotionally well adjusted self-actualized risk taking leader who knows his purpose, lives a ‘no regrets’ life of significance, has overcome his fears, enjoys a healthy marriage with better than average sex, is an attentive parent, is celebrating recovery from all his hurts, habits and hang ups, practices Biblical stress relief techniques, is financially free from consumer debt, fosters emotionally healthy relationships with his peers, attends a weekly life group, volunteers regularly at church, tithes off the gross and has taken at least one humanitarian aid trip to a third world nation.

Based upon this summarized definition, I’ve come to the conclusion that the world is full of people who can fit this definition but who’ve never repented of their sins and trusted in Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins.”

Read more here.