The value of heresy hunting

Perry Noble seconded Rick Warren’s “argument” against heresy hunters yesterday.

RT @RickWarren: Heresy-hunting lets u to ignore the mess in your own life. God is more concerned about your hypocrisy than other’s heresy.

Let’s examine that.

1. Where is the hypocrisy? Warren assumes that anyone who finds heresy is a hypocrite. Pointing out heresy is about identifying unbiblical teachings. In most cases, those heresy hunters can only make their argument by pointing to Scripture. What’s wrong with that? What’s hypocritical?
2. Are messes disqualifying? Warren’s standard is that you have to have a perfect life to start worrying about what pastors are teaching. It was my impression that pastors only talked to imperfect people, so I suppose Warren’s formulation gives every pastor a free pass on everything they teach.
3. Is God really not worried? Warren asserts that God thinks hypocrisy is worse than false teaching. James 3 tells us that God holds teachers to a higher standard. Paul and Peter contain far more numerous and serious warnings against false teachers than they do against hypocrites.
4. Aren’t we all hypocrites? Anyone who affirms a moral code, which includes all Christians, cannot keep that code in all instances. Does that mean we should all keep quiet about it? If that’s the rule, who’s going to be preaching in our churches this Sunday?
5. Who does most damage? A hypocrite affects only those people who know him or her intimately enough to see the discrepancy between words and deeds. A heretic affects the spiritual health of everyone who hears him.
6. When are we allowed to heresy hunt? The problem with heresy is that it doesn’t look like heresy. That was Peter’s point in 2 Peter 2. Heretics hide and never announce themselves. If we’re not allowed to actively look for them, how will we ever find them?

I know that Warren and his followers use the term heresy hunter as a pejorative, but it’s an activity that should be embraced by all believers. After a few months of “heresy hunting” on this blog, I’ve discovered a few things about the activity.

1. I heresy hunt my own pastor. Every time my pastor or someone else steps to the pulpit and opens the Bible, my heresy detectors are on. Is what I’m hearing consistent with Scripture? Are the verses from the reading being expounded consistent to their wider context? etc. With my pastor, the answers to those kinds of questions have consistently been in the affirmative. That’s why he’s still my pastor.
2. Heresy hunting is commended in Scripture. The Bereans heresy hunted against Paul. Paul! Here’s someone who really was preaching the directly inspired word of God, yet they wouldn’t believe it until they’d checked it against Scripture. I’m sure many of the Bereans had messes in their lives, yet they’re described as being more noble than other believers.
3. Heresy hunting isn’t just about the heretic. Think about the process of discovering heresy. To do so, you take a teaching and compare it to Scripture, usually multiple Scriptures. This is the basis of the nobility of the Bereans. Not only did they listen to Paul’s teaching, but they added to it and deepened it with their own study. The net effect is that they got a second helping of God’s word.

   NewSpring pastor, Shane Duffey, doesn’t see the connection:

   i’d love to compare the time “discerners” spend in the Word vs. on the web searching for people & reasons to hate… i’d bet the web wins

   I’ll bet, and testify from my own experience, that the Bible wins going away.

   I discovered this for myself in my posts a while back on Simeon. Perry Noble’s characterization of him as a crazy old man prompted me to examine the Scripture to see exactly who Simeon was and what role he played in the story of redemption. The discovery that he had to have been a priest was new to me, but an exciting insight into the unity of God’s redemptive plan and the perspecuity of Scripture. Regardless of what anyone thought about the original teaching or teacher, I was blessed and grew spiritually by engaging in the process of careful Bible study.

A biblical teacher will seek to develop a congregation full of heresy hunters.

A heretic will not.

Have it Your Way

Is Consumerism Killing the American Church?

      On Sunday, my wife and I were talking about Little House on The Prairie. We were discussing the church on that show, and how everyone in the town went to the same church, and the Pastor was active in the life of each family.  Families who were at odds with one another sang hyms in peace on Sunday morning.  Everyone from merchants to servants sat in the same pews as the Reverend delivered his message. As we reminisced about the TV show from our childhood, my wife asked a question that really made me think.

     What if someone in Walnut Grove didn’t like the church?

I guess they would have gone anyway. With no other options for worship in town, no means of travel to get very far from home, and no internet campuses, the devout believer would have most likely continued in fellowship regardless of personal taste. Now, fast forward 150 years. My hometown, with a population of around 16,000, has 219 mainstream Protestant churches. That doesn’t include the charismatic off-shoots, non-denominationals, Catholics, and other groups that seem to pop up daily around here. Count in the thousands that are claimed to be going the virtual worship route, and you can see that this pie is being sliced thinner and thinner.

I will give Rick Warren the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was meaning well when he started Saddleback Church in 1980, and though he didn’t create the seeker-friendly concept, most of the major trends in evangelical churches can now be traced back to him. His influence on the modern church can’t be overstated.  It could be said that Warren begat Ed young, who begat Perry Noble, who begat Steven Furtick.

With each successive generation we move farther away from Biblical Christianity, and more towards a pragmatic business model.  The chain of thought seems to be:

1. If it draws people, it works.
2. If it works, it must be from God.
3. If it is from God, do it.

Of course, this line of reason is fundamentally flawed from the very first point. Scripture never tells us to do whatever is necessary to draw a crowd. We are told to make disciples (Matthew 28:19). We are told to test all things and keep what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21).  We are told to study to show ourselves approved ( 2 Timothy 2:15). We are told to do many things, but I’m having trouble locating anywhere in Scripture that advocates frivolous activity with the only purpose of drawing a large crowd.

Frivolous, you say? But wait Downing, these are ministers of the Gospel Surely you aren’t calling their actions frivolous. I am. You be the judge:

1. Dropping 50,000 Easter Eggs from a helicopter. Some of the Eggs contained certificates for prizes, including plasma TV’s.
2. Hyping up naughty sex talk with suggestive videos and provaocative images. Making promises that the things said about sex haven’t been said in church before.
3. Intentionally dismissing solid doctrine, because something else draws larger crowds.

Of course, those are just the tip of the iceberg. We could come up with one hundred silly things that churches are doing to draw crowds without even thinking hard. And let’s be honest, if you are a new believer, or not a believer at all, are you going to the church with rock-solid theology, or are you going to the church that might just give you a plasma TV? If you start connecting the dots, it makes complete sense that there are more mega-churches in America now than ever before, but there are less Christians now.

When Rick Warren first polled his community to see what they wanted in a church, I can see where he was coming from. It is good to ask what is wanted in a church, but he should have been asking God instead of lost sinners. The result of his questionnaire could only lead to the type of watered down Christianity that is all too common today.

 Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. If I let my six year old choose what she would eat all the time, she may occasionally put down cotton-candy long enough to eat a Happy Meal. Being that I love her, and know what is best for her, I don’t allow her that choice.

With that in mind, how loving is it for us to offer a dying world a steady diet of spiritual cotton-candy and fast food.

Do we know that there is something that is better for them?

Do we care?

Rick’s Revelation

Rick Warren tweets:

God taught me the 5 Purposes of Church at 24, but few paid attention. Now,in my50s,I ask”What 24yrold should I be listening to?

1. Had God been hiding these purposes until 30 years ago? You mean to tell me the Church wandered around for 1,970 or so years without knowing its purpose, until 24 year old Rick Warren comes along and recieves some type of special knowledge from God?
2. Is Warren really hoping to find another man in his 20s who has received new divine revelation?
3. Which 24 year old should you listen to? Pretty much anyone who is clinging tightly to the Word of God. Of course, that wouldn’t be new revelation, but really, really old revelation…but at least it is real revelation.
4. Age shouldn’t disqualify someone from being heard, nor should it be the reason we listen to them. I am sure there are some 24 year olds out there carrying the true message of God…and I would love to hear them. I know for a fact that there are some men in their 60s who are faithfully delivering God’s word.
5. Why is the messenger all that important anyway? The message itself is what matters.

Not even close

Rick Warren:

If you feel far from God, guess who moved? You are as close to God as you choose to be.

God:

No one understands; no one seeks for God.

Criticize Me

Let’s start with an honest comment from Furtick:

When I make comments about refusing to let critics upset me, it’s usually b/c a critic has just upset me.

I appreciate Steven’s honesty. I have often wondered why the Turnstile pastors spend so much time talking about, blogging about, tweeting about, how much they don’t care about what their critics say.  Perry Noble even took the time to develop a well-reasoned apologetic for his critics: SCOREBOARD. If you follow these guys on any given week, you will notice that it is extremely rare for them to make it a few days without addressing critics in some way.  Why do these guys think they are above criticism? Perhaps the idea comes from Purpose Driven mentor Rick Warren, who made this statement in his book The Purpose Driven Church:

Do not criticize what God is blessing.

This is one of those weird statements that seems OK upon first glance, but might require a little more digging. What is Warren really saying here?

1. How do we know what God is blessing? Is it because of a large congregation? Financially prosperous? Large number of converts?
2. What about the false prophets Jesus warned against in Matthew 7:15 ? Wouldn’t it be possible that these false prophets looked like they were being blessed by God?
3. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 tells us to test everything. That would seem to imply that we should even test things that which God is blessing. Perhaps, if God is truly behind it, it will hold up to criticism.

I think it is fairly obvious that what Warren really meant was:

Do not criticize what Rick Warren thinks God is blessing.

I have a slightly different concept: Criticize everything. I think this holds up pretty well in light of 1 Thes. 5:21 .  God will not be offended if you test His work against scripture. Nor will God’s work ever fail that test. Not all criticism will be helpful. Not all will be scriptural. This is what the passage means by holding on to the good, and discarding the evil.

A question we routinely get here is, “How would you feel if people were criticizing you?”

I welcome it.

You may have noticed that we leave the comments open for you, and as long as you are civil, you are allowed to say what you think. Furthermore, if your criticism is well founded and based in Scripture, I may actually benefit from hearing it. So, I encourage you to criticize all that I say.  If what I say does not line up with Scripture, discard it and correct me.

However, if you find that what I say does line up with Scripture, that may require action on your end.

Running the Numbers

I made a comment in the When to Stop Eating thread that I think deserves a little more thought.  Last weekend, Elevation had their grand opening for their first permanent site. It drew their largest attendance yet. As Furtick reports:

Over 7000 people at Elevation this weekend! Over 500 salvations! Eph. 3:20! Thank you Jesus!

500 salvations is a huge number, and praise be to God for those souls. Even though it seems unbelievable, I know through Christ anything is possible. I wouldn’t question the legitimacy of those conversions, but apparently Steven does:

We’ve seen over 5000 people indicate that they placed their faith in Christ in the last 3 ½ years through our weekend worship experiences.  While we can’t make any assertions about which of these conversion experiences were genuine, we’re so thankful that God has allowed us to scatter so much seed and see such an evident harvest in our city.  He will separate the wheat from the chaff.  We’ll just keep sowing the Gospel and celebrating the life change we can see.

Nevertheless, I’ll assume those 5,000 converts are real for now. Just a quick glance at the figure in the first quote vs. the figure in the second quote stopped me in my tracks.If Elevation’s largest attendance ever was 7,000, and they have had over 5,000 people saved in the last 3 years, that would mean that at least 70% of Furtick’s audience are new believers.

So as Senior Pastor to such a congregation, what is Steven teaching these infants and toddlers in Christ?

• Here he paints Bible study in a negative light.
• Here he teaches that too much bible study is a bad thing, and we should avoid learning about things like the doctrines of Grace. Gotta be careful about Spiritual Obesity.

I am sure he borrowed the idea from his mentor Perry Noble, who probably borrowed it from Rick Warren. Here’s a quote from Warren on the topic:

“The last thing many believers need is to go to another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles.”

Why do these guys have such a disdain for bible study? It has to be one of the following:

1. They don’t believe it is powerful. Surely if these pastors thought the Word of God held any power, they would encourage their members to study it as much as possible. It would make their job easier. We’ve seen how they don’t want to give individual attention to members, so at least leading them to God’s word would ensure they were being fed.
2. They don’t believe it is God’s word. If studying the Bible is listening to God, then it is impossible to study too much. If God has chosen to reveal himself to us through this book, then we should spend as much time as possible learning about him.
3. They believe there is a better method for hearing God. This is particularly bothersome, considering their dependence on personal revelation.
4. They find it threatening. They are afraid that Christians well-versed in Scripture will start raising questions about things going on in the church.

The next figure to address is the 500 salvations from last weekend. That is 500 brand new converts, thrown into this world where the pastor doesn’t care about their needs, they are told to feed themselves, and directed away from Bible study. 500 people. That’s an entire church…all with no guidance. The church I serve is in a town with a total population of 600.

You have to question what is being done to care for these 500 brand new believers. Have they hired new staff to look out for these guys? Have they made any changes to ensure this group is cared for? Again, you have enough people to be considered a pretty large church here. That’s scary.

Why we worship on Sunday

In my recent posts on the physical center of the Christian worship, a few commentators challenged the idea that the Christian church should assemble on Sundays. I promised them that I’d explain why, so here it is:

1. The Sabbath is as physical and natural as night and day. The origins of the Sabbath come from the seven-day cycle God established in the first week of creation, not from the Ten Commandments. God worked for six days and rested for one. Work six, rest one is built into the essence of creation, just as the cycles of night and day and winter and summer are. Although we should worship with our whole lives and pray without ceasing, there is a special day in seven created for us to focus on worship. In other words, we can’t just celebrate the Sabbath whenever we feel like it, just as we can’t turn night into day just because we want to get more work done.
2. The Sabbath provides us rest and worship. The creation account and Commandments tell us that the purpose of the Sabbath is to rest (for ourselves and our servants) and to worship. Neither purpose is made obsolete by the New Testament.
3. The Sabbath is a gift, not a law. A few earlier commentators have asked me to show where the New Testament “requires” observance of the Sabbath. Why are we looking for a law? The Sabbath can’t be understood without understanding grace; it is God’s special gift to us. If I tell my son that he has to be back from playing with his friends in time for dinner, I don’t expect him to ask me where in the family rule book it insists that we eat dinner. Because he’s a member of my family, I am delighted to offer him dinner, but he needs to be at home when we eat so we can enjoy it as a family. Similarly, God gives believers the Sabbath as our spiritual sustenance. To ask for specific rules dictate why and when we should benefit from it misses the whole point.
4. Jesus didn’t abolish the Sabbath, he embodies it. Some argue that because Jesus fulfills the Sabbath, it’s no longer on the books. Jesus describes himself as the Lord of the Sabbath, which is a designation he would be unlikely to use for something that had passed away. Exodus 31:16 tells us that God gave the Sabbath to his people for generations to come. The analogy is imperfect, but when we refer to the President of the United States, we don’t assume that the president has replaced the country. Instead, we see the president as a personal representative of the country. Jesus not only embodies the Sabbath, he is an essential part of it. The two central elements of the day can only be found through him. He is the source of our rest and the only reason we can worship. Rather than abolishing the Sabbath, Jesus was necessary to preserve the Sabbath.
5. The Sabbath publicly celebrates Jesus. Paul instructs the church or assemble an an orderly fashion. Although churches were sometimes assembled in believers’ homes, church worship was not a willy-nilly whenever and wherever proposition. The question, then, is when did the early church leaders decide was the best time to exploit the Sabbath and worship God. The early church re-calibrated the six-plus-one sequence from Genesis 1 and moved the day of rest and worship to the first day of the week, which became known as the Lord’s Day. In 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 Paul assumed that the most convenient time for the church to collect money was on the first day of the week, presumably because everyone had gathered then. John received his revelation on the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10), and the term’s usage assumes that his readers would know what day that was. When we enjoy God’s Sabbath on Sunday, we proclaim Christ’s resurrection just as surely as we do on Easter. The great thing is that we only have to wait seven days to do it again, not a whole year.

I’m sure there’ll be objections and other observations in the comments, but let me try to replicate a quick Q&A here.

• Are you saying that we must observe the Sabbath? No, because Paul tells us in Colosians 2:16 that we are not to observe the Sabbath simply because it is the Sabbath. Our salvation is not found in works of observing Sabbaths and holy days. I’m saying that the Sabbath is a part of God’s grace to everyone. As an element of common grace, he gives all men rest, which is a point I made in the cultural argument for a Sunday Sabbath. It’s also part of God’s special grace to believers that we are privileged and able to worship him on a special day that he reserved for us. The Sabbath is best understood as a gift, not a law.
• Can we celebrate the Sabbath on Wednesday like Rick Warren does? I don’t think so. The reason is that the Sabbath offers two privileges: rest and worship. Although Warren’s Wednesday services are opportunities to worship, it’s unlikely that it really functions as a day of rest for most of the congregation because our culture treats Wednesday as a work day, even in Southern California. Worship becomes something that is tacked on to the end of the day, rather than being the main point of the day, as Sunday worship is, or should be. It’s interesting that although Warren says his Wednesday services are his church’s real Sabbath, they don’t get the attention that a rest/worship day would enable. To quote an observation from my test-marketing post,
  

  In his long-term goals, [Warren] dreams of having 15,000 members, though only 5,000 attending midweek (p. 363). This isn’t reality; it’s his dream. The Christian service is really just an optional extra.

• Can we celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday like Piper does? This is an improvement over Warren’s plan because Saturday worshippers are more likely to be able to combine rest with their worship. The weakness is that it misses the resurrection proclamation and celebration of Lord’s Day (Sunday) worship.
• Aren’t you relying on church tradition rather than the Bible? A little, but no more than anyone who uses a Greek lexicon to study the New Testament. Although the New Testament does not specifically say the church worshipped on Sunday, we can look at how the term Lord’s Day was interpreted by contemporaries of Paul and John. We see that they understood it to be Sunday. I don’t think that looking at how contemporaries understood a term is much different than consulting the works of Greek scholars to see how various NT words were understood in their time (something I did, for example, in the scatology post).

Purposefully ashamed of the Gospel

Besides giving away the Sabbath, Rick Warren advocates that preachers abandon the Bible in church. Consider this passage from p. 297 of The Purpose Driven Church. (All of the following quotes, except the third and fifth, are from the same section in Warren’s book and are reproduced in order and without any omissions, and are only broken up with my own interjected comments.)

Select your Scripture readings with the unchurched in mind.

As I said in my Sabbath post, when Sunday is just another day, believers get abandoned.

While all Scripture is equally inspired by God, it is not all equally applicable to unbelievers.

This is a gross distortion of Scripture itself, and a good example of the general characteristics of false teaching. Warren starts the sentence by quoting from Scripture (though inserting the while and the equally), then finishes it by contradicting the very passage he seems to be quoting. The first part comes from 2 Timothy 3:16 and says

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

Why did Warren leave out the bolded section? It’s all profitable. It’s all profitable for reproof and correction. Surely that’s what the unchurched need to hear, isn’t it? How does one repent unless first reproved and corrected?

Warren continues:

Some passages are clearly more appropriate for seeker services than others. For instance, you probably won’t want to read David’s prayer in Psalm 58: “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God….Like a slug melting away as it moves along, like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun….The righteous will be glad….when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.” Save this passage for our own personal quiet time or the local pastor’s breakfast!

Can’t you hear the embarrassment? Shucks, God, why do you have to say stuff like that? It just isn’t cool to go all swords and sandals on us mellow Southern Californians.

The example he picks is actually perfect for preaching the gospel to sinners. We need to understand God’s judgment before we can fully appreciate our own sin and God’s grace. David provides the key to understanding God’s anger in the last verse of the psalm:

Then men will say, “Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.” (Psalm 58:11)

Again, it’s instructive what parts of the Bible Warren is leaving out of his own book.

Warren again:

Certain texts require more explanation than others. With that in mind, at Saddleback we like to use passages that don’t require any previous understanding.

Isn’t that why God ordained preachers to explain the Scriptures to us? See Piper’s powerful explanation of the preacher’s job.

We also like to use passages that show the benefits of knowing Christ.

Perhaps he could start with Psalm 58. Not getting your teeth broken in by God sounds like a distinct benefit to me. There are certainly benefits to knowing Christ, but there are also costs. We are called to sacrifice all and take up our cross. It’s not the same as joining Club Med.

We have talked a lot on this blog in recent days about Warren and Noble’s new reformation, but one of the points that the original Reformers corrected was the Catholic church’s practice of hiding the Bible from the people in the pews.

What might Luther say about Warren’s papist idea?

The tragedy of market testing the 10 Commandments

Rick Warren is well known as one of the founding fathers of the modern seeker-sensitive church movement. His philosophy is responsible for changing many preaching and worship styles. Many of his changes are controversial, but most of the problems stem from one of his very first decisions–to ask his future congregants when they wanted to have church.

In his book, Purpose Driven Church, Warren explains why he put his Christian service on Wednesday and his seeker service on Sunday.

When I started Saddleback, I asked unchurched people when they would be most likely to visit a church. Every single one said, “If I ever did, it would be a Sunday morning.” I also asked our members when they were most likely to bring unchurched friends. Again, they said Sunday morning. Even in today’s culture, people still think of Sunday morning as “the time you go to church.” So that’s why we decided to use Sunday morning for evangelism and Wednesday night for edification. [emphasis added] (pp. 245-246)

It is not Rick Warren’s place to decide when church should be held. Here are some problems with thinking you can poll test the fourth commandment.

1. It cancels the Commandments. The first commandment tells us who we must worship, the second and third tell us how, and the fourth tells us when.
   

   Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

   Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

   For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)

   The Sabbath is a big deal to God.

2. It contradicts consecration. God tells us to keep it holy, meaning set apart and sacred. It really doesn’t matter what Warren’s neighbors think about the day; God has marked it for himself. We just had Mothers Day. How many of you tried telling your mother that you thought it was a bit overdone, but that you’d love to see her a couple of days later to celebrate it then? No, the day was your mother’s holiday. Sunday is God’s holy day. He made it for himself, so who are we to think we can take it away from him?
3. It conceals convention. The Apostles understood the point of the Sabbath and made it their habit to worship God with other believers every Sabbath day. See Acts 13:14-15, for example. They also knew it was the pinnacle of our worship, and expected that hungry followers would wait until the next Sabbath to hear the Word of God preached in its proper context.
   

   As Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging that these things might be spoken to them the next Sabbath….

   The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. (Acts 13:42, 44)

4. It confuses the center of worship. The point of the Sabbath is to worship God, which means it is for believers, who alone are able to worship God. The purpose of the Sabbath and of the church is to bring God pleasure through worship.
   

   You shall keep My sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 26:2)

   The Sabbath and the church go together. Why? Because “I am the LORD.” God is the center of the Sabbath and the center of the sanctuary. When Warrenesque churches make the unsaved their primary focus, they miss the whole point.

5. It cleaves congregations. Warren has split his church into the spiritual haves and the spiritual have-nots. What is particularly interesting is that both sides don’t get equal attention. I couldn’t find more than a couple of paragraphs in Warren’s book that talked about the Wednesday church. When people talk about Warren, they don’t usually think of his Wednesday evening ministry. It would seem that when Warren thinks of Warren, he doesn’t think of the Wednesday night folks much either. In his long-term goals, he dreams of having 15,000 members, though only 5,000 attending midweek (p. 363). This isn’t reality; it’s his dream. The Christian service is really just an optional extra.
6. It cheats Christians. Sabbath worship is a unique opportunity and blessing that God extends only to his children.
   

   I gave them My sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them. But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness. They did not walk in My statutes and they rejected My ordinances, by which, if a man observes them, he will live; and My sabbaths they greatly profaned. (Ezekiel 20:12-13)

   Chasing believers away from Sundays is akin to a shepherd kicking his sheep out of the best pasture to invite the goats to take over. There’s a place and time for goats, but the shepherd’s primary responsibility is to feed the sheep. Sabbath worship is God’s gift for our spiritual sustenance, and it shouldn’t be denied to believers by their know-better pastors.

7. It chases culture. What might have happened if Warren’s respondents had said they only wanted to meet once a month? At the beach? At Hooters? On what basis might he have turned them down? Culture should bend to God’s Word, not vice versa. When we ask permission of our neighbors to worship God, we don’t have a faith worth inviting anyone to join.
8. It condemns the church. If the time of worship isn’t important, neither, perhaps, is the place of worship or the method of worship. If the fourth commandment is negotiable, surely all the others are as well, including the first. In the next few weeks I plan to explain where I see Warren-type churches ending up. I am not hopeful, but for all the problems I see, I think they all have their genesis in the church’s negotiating away the Sabbath and losing its spiritual perspective and authority.

A vision of congressional-strength hypocrisy

Perry Noble was at it again a few days ago, criticizing other pastors for drawing a paycheck.

Unfortunately for some church leaders passion isn’t their motivation…a paycheck is…and because of that their vision is “always for sale!”

The curious thing about this particular complaint is that, while PN is probably the highest-paid pastor in the state, he earns his money precisely from selling his vision.

Selling vision to the congregation is one of the highest priorities a pastor can have, according to Noble.

My advice…get alone with God–develop a vision…a GOD SIZED vision.  Share that vision with people–challenge them to get on board.  The ones that can’t–let them leave–it’s ok, people walked away from Jesus, they will walk away from you as well.  AND then continually cast that vision over and over and over again.

Do you suppose if Noble changed his vision radically, he’d still get his paycheck? Not that that’s likely:

When you cast a compelling vision…it will fire some people up and piss some people off…

And the ones that are pissed are usually the most vocal.

But you can’t allow the pissed to trump the passion God has placed inside of you!

AND…you’ve got to understand that there are people ON BOARD!  People DO BELIEVE in the vision God has placed IN you.

Yesterday I picked up Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church book for a series of posts I’m developing for next week, and found this instruction to pastors that helps us understand why Noble is such a visionary.

People give to vision, not to need. …It is not the neediest institutions that attract contributions but those with the greatest vision….

If your church is constantly short on cash, check out your vision. Is it clear? Is it being communicated effectively? Money flows to God-given, Holy Spirit-inspired ideas. Churches with money problems often actually have a vision problem. (p. 202)

Did you catch that? Vision is a money-making device, completely divorced from actual need.

So, Noble complaining about pastors being paid for their vision is like Obama and Pelosi complaining about people flying in private jets.

Just a little rich.