Church of Tares (Part 1 of 2)

 

I’ve been listening to a You Tube video, “Church of Tares.”  This is a study of a movement called The New Reformation. Its Gospel message and methods began in books written by Robert Schuller and Rick Warren, and their megachurches have been “guinea pigs” for their ideas, which are radical, as we shall see.  These books have been must-reading at hundreds of seminaries by literally thousands of church leaders. Those leaders put the same methods and Gospel message in their churches.  The founding celebrity pastors, by using this name to describe themselves, have put themselves on a par with what Martin Luther did in the Protestant Reformation.   Because of their affected population and influence, they deserve serious scrutiny, to see if the methods and message are in accord with Scripture and beneficial for God’s Church, the Body of Christ. 

First let’s start with the latter textbook for the movement, Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose-Driven Life.  As he called it, “the best-selling book in English, in world history.” But, after some laughter, he rolled his eyes, catching the drift, and said, “next to the Bible, it’s the best-selling….” We must say, as a philanthropist, he has measurably improved lives around the world.  Also, I must add that his  megachurch pastor is in the past; he recently resigned from the sixth largest church in America, Saddleback.. But he is still super-active, doing organizing and speeches. He is undoubtedly the most influential religious speaker, today, in all of America. He is a numbers man, as all megachurch pastors seem to be.  Elevation Church, part of their movement, is unabashedly proud of that goal.  They say ”We are all about the numbers. Tracking metrics measures effectiveness.” (Effectiveness of what?) I have a different idea about numbers; we are not in control of it. Hear I Corinthians 3:7:

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

The Holy Spirit should be given credit, not our effectiveness to draw people in. By their standards, Noah must have been a great failure; he preached for over a hundred years, and no one outside of his immediate family believed him. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the judgment of the seven churches, the only churches which were not rebuked by God were Smyrna and Philadelphia—both were poor, small, and lacking in influence—again, failures by current measuring sticks. But they were faithful to God’s standards, not secular philosophy or pragmatism.  See Colossians 2:8:

 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Paul appeared to some people like a failure (they said “his bodily presence is weak, and his presence contemptible”) and in I Corinthians 2:4-5.  But he did not reject his self-image, as you can see:

 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

It should not bother us to feel weak in presenting evangelism, because God provides the changed heart, and the increase in His Church. We feel nowhere equal to the velvet tongues of these men.  But what secret did Paul learn that we could learn? II Corinthians 12:9 starts with God telling Paul His secret:

 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” “Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may reside in me.”

Contrast that with the statement of Rick Warren: “We slander God’s character if we preach with an uninspiring style or tone.” Yes, he has people’s  attention, but no, many of them are not saved through his preaching. 

Well, I got ahead of myself--these are a taste of the debate.  If you want to know all about the facts about the New Reformation, Rick Warren has it all laid out in his books.  So let’s have a look at his main points.

·        His overall goal in the church service was expressed thusly: “create a service that is intentionally designed for your members’ friends.  Make the service attractive, appealing, and so relevant to the unchurched that your members are eager to share it with lost people they care about.”  So it’s like this:  If the unchurched like the music loud, we’ll do loud music. That way, we bring in more unchurched; maybe they get their lives turned around. The author of the video that critiques him (Elliott Nesch) pointed out that Mr. Warren’s church service followed Robert Schuller, who first put this “reformation” in action in the 1970s, reaching his peak in the 1990s. Warren followed Schuller’s advice in the approach to the service, even if he didn’t agree with all of  Schuller’s beliefs. Mr. Nesch quotes Warren’s wife Kay, who said in Christianity Today, “He (Schuller) had a profound influence on Rick. We were captivated by his positive appeal to nonbelievers.” One key word is “positive.”  I.e., not negative.  No speaking on details of sin that the audience might be guilty of, since that’s a “downer” for them; no speaking of hell or Satan. 

·        Another approach to “positive,” upon which many sermons nowadays are based: These movement pastors constantly tell their congregants:  You are not weak; you must develop self-esteem and learn to love yourself.  You are not unworthy. You have truthful thoughts from your own feelings and experience. You shouldn’t feel guilty over your sin.  God does not disapprove of you; do not take on condemnation.  You are a child of the King of the Ages.  ALL your sins are forgiven when His grace is given to you.  Bad things do not happen to you as punishment from an angry God; bad things happen to everyone—it’s how you react, how you change your thinking into positive thoughts, leading to overcoming your obstacle.  Visualize yourself as defeating the evil and the negative, and winning through power of the mind.

·         Some of these cliches come from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and his book The Power of Positive Thinking.  Some are from Schuller’s books Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (1982) and Self-Love (1975). These are the two philosophers that Warren learned most from. The last bullet’s ideals for thinking the way to a better life looks like they could come from any motivational speaker. That’s the point—it’s from man, not from God. I will say more on these “positive” lines of thought later.

·        The second thing we see is that the emphasis of every point in the service, including the sermon, is on the unbelievers. The messages are for anyone; they do not go deep on explaining passages (some of their congregants have hardly any knowledge of what’s in the Bible).  Dr. Peale’s words about positive thinking could be applied to anyone, believer or unbeliever; he seldom used the word “God” or “Bible” in his books.  Though he was a pastor, he is quoted as saying, “It is not necessary to be born again; you have your way to God, I have mine.”

·        Schuller had the same positivity idea, but hooked into thinking better about yourself —thus, talking about God’s redeeming us from the slavery to sin, God’s power in the blood of Christ, or the sin that places us far from God, were unacceptable —because, as he put it in Christianity Today, “sin is simply a lack of self-esteem.” So… sin was just a mental thing that simply needed rethinking.  If you train you mind to think more positively and learn to love yourself, you can be better. It seems to me, those concepts turn our attention away from God, and focused on ourselves.   He also was not into quoting the Bible much.  As he put it, “it doesn’t seem wise to quote a source in which they do not believe.”  In that sentence, you can see he is focusing, as did Warren, on the unbelievers.  He insists that you first need to “relax them so they will listen to you.” Hence the necessity for positiveness; so they would enjoy listening.  Unfortunately, this has nothing to say about conviction. Or repentance. The backbones of ‘old evangelism.’

·        Bill Hybels, another megachurch protégé of Schuller at Willow Creek (note: he stepped down five years ago when there were allegations of misconduct with women—but he ruled that church for 40 years), surveyed the neighborhood, and then designed Sunday morning services for them. He says, “for every sermon we preach, they (i.e., the unchurched) are asking ‘Am I interested in that subject or not?’ If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how effective our delivery is; their minds will check out.” It seems to me that for those places that became a megachurch, they got there by appealing to the lowest common denominator of religion.

·        Andy Stanley (son of the famous Charles Stanley), lead pastor at North Point, in Atlanta, with nearly 40,000 members spread out over 8 campuses, believes the same way.  As he says it: I stood in front of our launch group and said, ‘Atlanta doesn’t need another church—they need a different kind of church—a church where people feel free to invite their unchurched friends.’ We’ve created a church that unchurched people loved to attend.”

So what does God have to say about all that? First of all, Scripture has no such concept as “church is for the unchurched.” As Ephesians 4:12 says, church is…

….for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, ¹³ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

In I Corinthians 12:4-7, Paul is explaining how each member of Christ’s body has been given a gift, and how those will be used for the maturity of everyone toward a goal of Christlikeness:

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. ⁵ There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. ⁶ And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. ⁷ But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all

Paul goes further in I Corinthians 12:27,28:

Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. ²⁸ And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.

Note that God gives these gifts to believers, not unbelievers, who are, by definition, not part of God’s Church, the Body of Christ.  The megachurch pastor sees things differently.  When frustrated members complain about the music being loud or all about feeling, or when they beg the pastor to “go deeper” into explaining Scripture, the answer is a somewhat winsome, “where have you gotten that mistaken belief?”  As Warren’s first four words of his book says, “It’s Not About You.” So we see the secret in those words: He means church is about the unchurched. We are willing to stunt the sanctification of members; their development is sacrificed for the unchurched.  If you gain anything by this approach, you could lose much more.    But I will address the Scriptural idea behind evangelizing later.

But the problem is, in trying to win unbelievers, these churches lean too heavily to conform to worldly methods, so the unchurched are comfortable.  They think nothing of Romans 12:2

do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

The second major problem we have, as Scripture explains, is that all church leadership, goals, and direction, must come from a body of elders, a plural body, not from a single celebrity pastor.  Leadership is always plural in Scripture. Your version may use slightly different words, but pastors, or elders, or bishops, or overseers are described in Ephesians 4:11, Philippians 1:1, Titus 1:5,7, and three more Scriptures as ALL PLURAL.  Pastors have one vote in decisions.  But Rick Warren’s quote here is interesting: “You must change the primary role of the pastor from minister to leader.”  When asked, “should we not talk about pastors as shepherds?”  Andy Stanley responded “Absolutely. Nothing works in our culture with that model.” (Then I ask, Why did Jesus treasure that model for directing His flock?  See John 10. Or, why is Paul using that model—I Peter 5:1,2).  Stanley maintained that shepherding was not leading, which is what he wanted. Scripture speaks the opposite of Mr. Stanley:  it wants leaders to think of themselves as shepherds (I Peter 2:25, and Acts 20:28), and a shepherd is humble and a minister. Consider Mark 10:42-44:

You know that those who are considered (pagan) rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. ⁴³ Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. ⁴⁴ And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all

 But these men have a hunger to lead, skipping the humble ministering part, or the slowdown that a group of elders might do to their ambition.  But if they attain total control, they are moving down a dangerous path:  based on history, running the show means it’s far easier for him to ride off the rails in doctrine. Ask Schuller about that:  His weakness about doctrine, like sin, was a big part of his demise.  He only gave up the Crystal Cathedral when it was ready to file bankruptcy.  It is now owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Or, consider the questions about Mark Driscoll ruining Mars Hill Church in 2014, when he was forced out. Here is an insider’s view:

After he left, eleven of the Mars Hill Churches became independent churches and the remaining four churches were dissolved. The story of Mars Hill speaks to a broader story about evangelical America and celebrity pastors. Part of Cosper’s interest in the story was because everything happened online. “But also a lot of us kind of agree that Mark said things very loudly related to power related to celebrity,” Cosper says. “At some point, I think the church needs to have a reckoning with its relationship to power and weakness.” Historically, the church has served the poor and the sick through sacrifice — something places like Mars Hill invert by putting wealth in power in the hands of few individuals.

One of the ways for the pastor to grab the lead more effectively is known as “vision casting.” Everyone goes into prayer for some stated time while pastor gets his vision.  Once he comes out with it, it is often “aggressively defended” (says an Elevation churches infographic—there are more than 20 of them) by other leaders.  Everyone is expected to be fully accountable and fully loyal to his vision.  If you have influence but too many questions, and stall, you may be given two options:  follow the vision or leave the church for somewhere else.  Bill Hybels calls it “the most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” Getting people to work toward a united goal is admirable, but calling it a “weapon” and “aggressively defending” it is a little off the chart; and pushing people out, even when done “kindly,” when they have a doubt amounts to censuring them. (See Suzanne Sataline, Wall St. Journal, 2006).  But we need to give you the Scriptural problems too: (1) Vision casting is nowhere implied or stated in Scripture as applicable to God’s Church; (2) it implies that the pastor receives direct revelation from God; this suggests his vision was “divinely inspired,” and thus cannot be questioned.  To oppose his vision is to oppose God. Your accountability moves from the Word of God to the vision, a bad idea to remove the focus away from God.  Discernment ministries are scorned by these leaders; those guys ask too many questions, they say.  Well, all of this has led to much spiritual abuse in the history of the church. Consider II Corinthians 1:24, where Paul tries to warn us before it happens:

Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are fellow workers for your joy

The third problem we have is, their message is not the Gospel as presented in Scripture. Celebrity pastors say our complaint is only on their methods; not so— their message is a problem too. Their movement is actually anti-doctrinal to its core. Warren emphasizes “deeds, not creeds.”  His view of the Judgment seat is, “God won’t ask about your religious background or doctrinal views.”  Well, I disagree--He will put some Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon feet to the fire.  Believing in doctrines that don’t make Jesus God is a blasphemy that will send you to hell.  Sound doctrine has other beneficial uses besides as a litmus test for heaven.  See what Paul says to Titus in Titus 1:9:

…holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict.

Ignoring sound doctrine means people are not exhorted nor convicted.  But they feel good.  So, would you feel good under deception, ignorant of possibly spending eternity in hell?  Sorry for my bluntness.  These guys can be blunt.  I watched as Perry Noble, one of their group, pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson SC, actually said, “Who’s the jackass in the church?  The person who always screams “I want to go deeper.”” Screams?  Really?  I wonder, does II Timothy 4:3 apply to today?  It reads:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves “teachers” ⁴ and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

Please join us in a week for the conclusion of this important study