I mentioned this sermon a number of weeks ago  here .  Recently, I stumbled across a video clip of it.  Herein you find a profound ontological distortion of a Biblical understanding of the trice holy Triune God of the Bible.  Here in Steven Furtick’s  tortured eisegesis of Exodus 3:14 you find a god defined  perhaps exclusively a responder to felt needs, needs that quite frankly can often be met be met without Christ.  Herein you find some truth mixed with an element of error and end up with a human-crafted god; you find idolatry.

I remember listening to a sermon at a mega-church I used to go to wherein they placed a quote on the overhead screens that went something like this: “God is honored to pursue us.”  There is nothing in me, in us, that God would be honored to pursue us.  Such thinking, without intent, represents a diminishing of God, the sovereign Creator, by an errant proclamation of exaltation of the fallen creature by the Creator.  Ask yourself this: did the first martyr, Steven, die for this message of a god who lets us define him by our temporal desires?  Did Paul die for this human-centered proclamation of ‘I AM what ever you need me to be?’  Was Peter crucified upside-down for a Christ that allows you to define Him by a “fill in the blank’ survey of felt needs?  Do you pick up your cross to die daily for this lite version of the heretical prosperity gospel?  It should come as no surprise to know the Steven Furtick embraces the message of Joel Osteen and holds him in high regard.  Apparently, too, Steven Furtick, one who speaks at conferences on church growth, seems to be conflicted and confused in his thinking about Bereans .

The disheartening thing is that this sermon was broadcast to hundreds of like-minded churches across the country that participated in a joint sharing of video sermons.

I have become, over the last couple of years, a bit of a student, an observer, of contemporary, attractional, seeker-sensitive ecclesiology. Many of my posts are biased in that direction of interest.  My engagement of a handful of seeker-sensitive churches in my community, churches that I think are reflective of the movement as a whole, leads to my first overarching observation, one that points to a profound and errant human-centricity in the attractional church model, the seeker-sensitives, a phenomena that I believe transcends any traditional Calvinism/Arminian categories.  The focus  of churches that engage attractional methodologies is primarily on the congregates, the audience.  Further, and without regard to the sometimes overly simplified orthodoxy of statements of faith, in practice and teaching, many of these churches are at best semi-Pelagian. One finds the content of the teaching to be primarily focused on the self.  One finds sermons on building self-esteem.   One hears sermons on enhancing leadership potential.  One hears pragmatic life-skills coaching, at the end of which those in the audience are presented with a Jesus that will help you achieve, it is inferred, those aforementioned felt needs if you accept Him as your Saviour.  What one finds, sometimes,  is a truncated, weakened version of the false prosperity gospel.

What I have come to understand is that what is being preached is sometimes bereft of the Gospel, but is, as I have said before, more a legalism lite.  This attitude manifests itself with the ubiquitous proclamation that churchgoers do not need more teaching, they need to do more, often quoting John Maxwell’s ubiquitous pseudo-pietistic dictum that most Christians are educated beyond their obedience.  The inferred solution by many of the stars in the seeker-sensitive movement apparently is to withhold the full council of Scripture. There is also a disdain for the traditional and Biblical  label of Christian.  The inference is that we are to be referred to as Christ-followers.  However, and not to put too fine a point on it, what happens is we are now defined as a state of doing rather than a state of being, a state of grace.  One is defined as a worker for a cause rather than as the Biblical metaphor of an adopted child.  As an imperfect, but workable analogy, one may work hard to further the election of the candidate of a political party, for example, but who is it that will take the president’s name?  It will be his wife and his children, not his followers.  It is understood, too, that his family should work, albeit often imperfectly, for his agenda. It is also inferred by leaders of the movement that one’s depth, one’s passion for the Evangel is measured by, for example, one’s  tithing records and by one’s involvement in the churches’ volunteer ministries, by works of the Law, essentially.  Often congregates, sheep of the flock, are scolded by the leadership for a wanting more substantive diet.  It is often inferred that the ones requesting better food must not be keeping the Law well enough to deserve better food.   It is important to know that the definition of disciple is ‘one who learns.’  Parenthetically, remember that Judas could have been, until his betrayal of the Messiah, defined on some level as a Christ-follower.

We, especially in the west, are wired for meritocracy (an anti-thesis to the Gospel?).  We want metrics to measure performance.  We want benchmarks against which we can compare ourselves to others in the business.  We want to engage marketing strategies that gives us market share.  We want to brand our image, our organization, to differentiate it from others in the market.  We take the pulse of the market with surveys to find what it is that consumers want.  This is all fine and well if you want to sell a widget or a consumer service, but is this how the church of Christ is to be managed?  Apparently the answer is, sadly, a resounding yes for much of the American church.  I have commented before on the reading habits of much of the leadership of the movement.  Often the leaders and CEOs, labels they often choose for themselves either as an adjunct or replacement for the label of pastor, will list the books they are reading on their blogs.  The vast majority of the books seem to be of a business or marketing focus.  Rarely do you find a substantive work of theology in their reading lists.  Nothing wrong with books on business and leadership, but the seeming lack of substantive theological reading for a church leader is disconcerting.  The fallout from years, decades, of marketing church seems at times to be a softening of the hard message of the Gospel.  What is found is sometimes a weakening of the nature of sin by defining it as mistakes that hurt our lives in the here and now, a sharp contrast to sin being Biblically defined as an open rebellion to a holy Triune God.  This subtle redefining of the nature of  sin as something debilitating we do to ourselves points to a need for a therapeutic Gospel, a Gospel where the Cross is the place to go to get your relationships fixed, a second chance to get things right and erase mistakes.  That is what people want to hear, that is  what the market bears. The Cross is ultimately not about second chances, though.  If it is just a second chance, I will, left to my own devices, ruin the do-over, too.  I think a reading of Peter’s less-than-seeker sensitive sermon found in Acts chapter 2 would be of value in defining how the Gospel is presented in the New Testament.

The problem with the business-centric benchmarks used on the attractional church is that market-share, numbers, becomes the measure of success rather than fidelity to the Biblical texts.  Those growing numbers can, and sometimes does, breed ugly hubris in those that cultivated them.  As I have mentioned before, it is interesting that, as far as I have been able to tell,  nowhere in Biblical texts are churches and persons ever commended or condemned for the number of, or lack of, converts.  God builds His kingdom through His ordained ways and means.  He does not need clever marketing schemes and bait and switch tactics.  He can use the weak and foolish to confound the strong and wise and that so that all glory belongs to Him alone.  Therein I find hope.

What is sometimes obscured in these churches with their disdain for deeper Biblical knowledge is the clear picture of the Triune God’s grand meta-narrative of redemptive history revealed in the Bible, the true story of the Triune God intervening, working and moving sovereignly in time and space, a narrative of creation,  of the Fall,  of the promise of a coming Redeemer in Genesis chapter three, shown in the types and shadows in the prophets and the Law, with the Kingdom inaugurated by Christ’s birth, death, burial, and resurrection and culminating with His triumphant, physical return in glory. Rather we are all to often primarily presented with the Bible as being a source of moral examples to live up to and tips on living better lives.  God is often  presented as One Who exists to help us fulfill our dreams and assist us in living up to our potential.  It errantly turns the focus inward to us.  Too, what is all-too-often substituted for a substantive Biblical diet, the non-subjective Gospel truth of the five Solas, is a serving of entertainment.  Quite frankly, I find little humor in the Bible.  One may find sarcasm at times, but not much humor.  While humor, theater, and skits, and a rocking praise band may draw a crowd, you will find, as others has said, that what you draw people with is what you draw them to, and what you draw them with is what you keep them with.

OK, I am, at least for now and after thought and prayer, rescinding my blogging  hiatus.  Here I go again…

I found our recently that some focus on the family kind of group sent out an email encouraging Christians not to buy Pepsi products because Pepsi supports gay rights.  All this is probably old news in some denominational circles. After giving this issue some time to percolate, here are some thoughts on Pepsi and boycotts.

• Do we need to come up with a WWJD (what would Jesus drink) bracelet? But that might lead people to abandon Pepsi for wine!!! Irony….

• Is there a list of approved beverages? Can someone point me to a sinless company from which to buy my sodas?

• Does the advancement of the Kingdom really come about due to boycotting the consumer products of the world?

• Related to the previous bullet point, so what if we get everyone to behave nicely and quit with all those outward expressions of sexual immorality. Do we do the world a favor by forcing the Law on them without also pointing them to Grace? I think Satan would be quite happy, quite satisfied, if the gay people quit being gay and the adulterers quit adulterating and the drunks quit drinking as long as they think they are being ‘righteous’ by their own efforts.

• I assert without ambiguity that marriage is to be between a man and a woman. I also declare abortion is wrong; it is a holocaust. So, our government condones and supports partial-birth abortions. It is easy, it is without cost, to refrain from drinking Pepsi and send them them emails explaining your moral outrage. Now, put your money where your mouth is. The United States of America collects taxes, some of which goes to funding legal partial-birth abortions. If you think the dyslexic sexuality (I wish I could remember who came up with that description) of gay people is bad, how much worse is infanticide? Quit paying your taxes and boycott a country that funds killing babies if you think boycotts are the way the Kingdom is grown. (I hear crickets chirping.) “But I have to pay taxes” you say. No you don’t. You will go to jail if you don’t. It will cost you and your family unlike switching from Pepsi to Coke and sending Pepsi a few emails. So, do your really think boycotts are the way to go out into the world with the Good News to the glory of the Triune God?

• Do you think gay people going to be redeemed by Christ and change their orientation due to your boycott?

• Are there non-gay people, even some Christians, working for Pepsi that may lose their job if your boycott actually takes a substantial toll on Pepsi’s income-earning potential?

• Does not these boycotts sound a bit like the tactics of Islam Lite? “Conform to our moral codes or suffer the consequences!!” “Say ‘Merry Christmas’ during the holidays or we will take our business elsewhere!!!” So, if people do change there behaviors and marketing practices due to your boycotts, does it really reflect a change of heart or is it more due to a desire not to lose your Christian dollars?

• Do boycotts really reflect the call to be salt, to be a light on a hill?

• That all being said, if you desire on some personal level to refrain from drinking Pepsi because of their politics, I think that is quite OK and honestly admirable. Many years ago, I decided not to buy Hitachi stereo equipment because they sold the Soviets equipment that made Soviet submarines more difficult to detect. As an aside, and if memory serves, the president of Hitachi later killed himself. I hope there was no cause and effect.

Here is a portion of a post by a church planter/pastor of a relevant church somewhere in Ohio:

DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN

if you don’t ever share your faith…..ever

DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN

if you are only concerned with judging people instead of first loving them

DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN

if you are not investing in the lives of those younger than you

DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN

if all you do is complain and cause dissension

DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN

Please understand….I’m not saying you aren’t a christian, I’m just asking you to call yourself something else. You are giving everyone a disgusting taste in their mouth and labeling it biblical. Christ’s church will survive, only through the strength of Jesus shown through an outward focused lifestyle that draws those who are far from “Him”, close to “Him”.

I understand the sentiment behind the post, and I have ran across quite similar statements/posts from other leaders within contemporary churches on how they do not like Christians who so not seem to act consistently with their profession. Some have even made lists on why they do not like ‘bad’ Christians. However, serious questions are raised by the above quote. First, is a Christian defined more by a state of doing rather than a state of being? Second, are there classes or a hierarchy of Christians? Are some Christians more Christian than others? Is there irony in this pastor telling someone not to call themselves a Christian if they are judgmental? Are some Christians more justified by grace, by faith in Christ, than others? By this pastors standards, just how good do I have to be, what must I do, before I can call myself a Christian? Do I have to be perfect?

I think of the Apostle Paul in his approach to the wayward, troubled church at Corinth, a church where people were getting drunk during Communion meals among other things. Paul:

1 Corinthians 1 (ESV)

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place e call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as i the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Interesting is Paul’s salutation to the Corinthians. He does not instruct those in the church to quit calling themselves Christians, little Christs. His salutation is warm, though he later gives stern instructions on church discipline so that those in rebellion may be brought to repentance.

I think that what may be found at times is a somewhat underdeveloped understanding of the nature of justification and a lack of understanding that Christians are in different stages of sanctification. It may be, too, that some, perhaps many, who are in self-deception and call themselves Christian my not actually be in Christ. What is not acceptable, I think, is that our status in Christ is based on our performance, our works. How can we instruct others to refrain from naming themselves in Christ unless the one in question denies fundamental doctrines required for salvation?

Though I may have my suspicions, I can’t discern with absolute confidence if a person who claims to be a Christian is really redeemed or not. Sadly, there are people who live seemingly exemplary lives, who are active in doing all the positive things in the quoted list, who perhaps depend on their righteousness to earn God’s favor who will find themselves being told by Christ that He never knew them. There are also immature Christians who struggle with sin, with their tongue, who perhaps doubt their own salvation and feel themselves unworthy to call themselves Christians who are truly redeemed and loved dearly by the Messiah. I cannot see into the heart of a person. I do not always know what baggage, what obstacles to growth in Christ, they bring to the table. I am painfully aware that I have been quite foolish in my life and speech and know there are some who will probably and justifiably be surprised to see me in among the redeemed.

That all being said, Christians are absolutely called into a life of holiness, of progressive sanctification, but it is the distinction that we cannot save ourselves by our works and efforts that separates us from every other religion. Note that I am absolutely not advocating any kind of ‘easy-believism.’ I also do not think we need to get wrapped tightly around the axle on this, but we are are told in the Word to check ourselves, to make sure of our election. Are we bearing fruit? While some branches may grow slowly, but eventually we will show signs of sanctification.

If my earthly father gave me my name, no one has the right to tell me not to be called by his name. If I am adopted into the family of the Triune God, if I am trusting in Christ alone for my salvation, can someone instruct me not to be called by my Redeemer’s name? Is that not the height of arrogance?

…Alister Mcgrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. Having in the last year or two developed an interest in church history, I find this book to be altogether engaging. It is frustrating to have only fifteen to thiry minutes a day or so to work through the book, but with a long Memorial Day weekend to look forward to, maybe I will find time, even though only about eighty pages through it now, to finsih book and share some associated thoughts.

…that finally find their their way here.  Originally, this post was to be much longer, but I am trying to instill a bit more brevity in my posts.

• So, I have been thinking a little bit about this post of mine from February 25 wherein I comment on excerpts form a book called Portraits of Christ in Genesis by the late Dr. DeHann. I am compelled to say that the more I think about the author’s obliquely positive take on Adam’s disobedience, the more troubled I am by it.  In retrospect, perhaps any glossing over the impact of the Fall and Adam’s role in it, no matter how well intentioned, may, I think, tend to diminish or dilute one’s understanding of the impact of the atoning work of Christ, of the cross.  Haven’t had a chance to read much further in the book, but other that this aforementioned concern (and I honestly do not question his orthodoxy), it has been a very good read.   I would have few reservations so far in recommending this title from 1965.  Quite frankly, I only and temporarily put it down because Finally Alive by John Piper arrived in the mail a few days ago.

• Second,  on two occasions in the last couple of weeks, I listened to a youth minister do ‘children s church,’ a tradition in some churches where the pastor, deacon, or some other church leader calls the children forward at the beginning of the service to teach them a Biblical lesson.  Now,  understand this a church with a tradition of theological liberalism.  On the first occasion that I witnessed, Christ”s death on the cross was given worth only as some kind of moral example.  On the second occasion, Christ was lifted up to the kids as an example to follow.  It seemed to me it was  pure Pelagianism being fed to these kids.  Christ being taught only as a moral example….. a benchmark, a teacher to be emulated.   Maybe I was reading too much into these simple lessons tailored for children, but I think any lesson that points to the cross of Christ, whether it be aimed at children or adults, that fails to mention unmerited grace, that removes the offense of the cross, that fails to mention our need for a Savior, may be likened to egregious theological malpractice. Too, this youth minister seems to align himself theologically, from what I gather, with the Jesus Seminar, a media-savvy group of academics who represent the hard-left, apostate theological fringe.

• Third, I had the opportunity to listen to a professor, Dr. Richard E. Burnett from Erskine Seminary speak on John Calvin.   Part one was last Sunday night and will conclude next Sunday evening.  Ever so enjoyable to listen to this scholar expound on the influence of  John Calvin specifically, and the Reformation generally, on the rise of modern science, on the development on capitalism, on the rise of democratic, modern forms of government, on the influence of Calvinism in American history.  He also touched on Calvin’s understanding of the absolute Sovereignty of the Triune God, of His sovereignty over the created order.  Next Sunday, I believe he will, if memory serves,  expound further on the sovereignty of the God, on His ‘hidden’ will.

• Forth,  I briefly observed some interesting dynamics of a congregation going through distress.  Longish story short, the former pastor is being bought up on charges of heresy.  A group loyal to this pastor is rallying the troops to his defense…a complicated situation. The interim pastor, humble and orthodox, is shepherding over a troubled congregation.  I will be watching with great interest to see if this church, part of an historically Reformed denomination, moves, by the grace of God,  towards a more orthodox faith, a faith where Christ is more than the root of an adjective used to describe moral behavior, a place that I think this church has inhabited for quite a few years.  I hope and pray for this church and her interim pastor.  As an aside, this the ‘main-line protestant’ church I mentioned in this essay.

Almost immediately after writing it, I am struck by the irony of the title of this post.  Usually, I compose the content of a post, then come up with a supposedly catchy, provocative title

Today, I started with the title. The initial purpose of the title of this post was to declare that I have finished reading Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church by Michael Horton thereby setting the stage for the content of the post, my thoughts on said book.  The secondary purpose, though at first unintended, informs that I have seen, experienced much of what Horton describes.

I ran through this book rather quickly and will probably read it again sooner rather than later.  From this first quick read, here are a few things I take away: Horton diagnoses certain  ills that infect the body of the American church, and two main themes seem to dominate. First, there is a strong element of Pelagianism that permeates much of the church.  Secondly, there is a strain of Gnosticism that parallels the Pelagianism.  This Pelagianism often takes on the form of a ‘legalism lite’ while the Gnosticism arrives in the form of the subtle primacy of subjective religious, emotional,self-focused experience over the objective authority of Scripture.   His diagnosis is not unique to either of the broad, polar extremes of ecclesiology, the liberal and conservative branches; there is an overarching  human-centricity that permeates both.  He also points out the ironic commonality of the ‘deeds, not creeds’ mindset that has been so firmly ensconced in liberal Christianity and now boldly infects much of the church growth movement as well as the neo-liberal Emergents. Before continuing, Horton does not argue that the church, as a whole, has necessarily arrived at a Christless Christianity, but that signs are evident that the church is well on its way to that state.  He argues that what is being engaged is not so much heresy, but more silliness, lightness, and self-focus.  Almost gone are the days where the flock comes to church to be ministered to and taught, fed,  truths of Scripture and have the sacraments administered.  Some pastors no longer see their role as being one who feeds the flock and regularly administers the sacraments, but rather view church as the place where they cast vision and give marching orders to the flock.  These marching orders can range from calls to engage those Joel Osteenesque steps to having a better life now to an exhortation to the flock to get out there and ‘be the Gospel’ without ever really and carefully explaining what the Gospel is, the proclamation of Good News given and offered to us more than something we ‘do’ or ‘are’.  Think again on that ‘deeds, not creeds’ mentality previously mentioned.

Horton, with much clarity, traces the pragmatic methods of Charles Finney, quite frankly Pelagian in his theology, to the formulas used by contemporary church growth experts today.  The fallout from this pragmaticism is often an unintended devaluing of the supremacy of Christ in both corporate worship and evangelism.  Rather, church is to be an entertaining event to draw crowds wherein the Gospel (hopefully)  may be found on a table filled with personal anecdotes and calls to moralism by self-effort without a clear expounding of the absolutely astounding nature of grace through faith found in Christ, God incarnate, in light of our sin nature, our total depravity. We end up, sadly, with a de-clawed  Gospel,  that  ‘therapeutic, moralistic deism’ mentioned in a quote in the book.  Even more sad, so many are content with just that.  What is often engaged in that often  ill-defined call to a personal relationship with Jesus, is a narcissism, a salvation solely focused on self rather than one lived out in covenant community.  I have been guilty…

All in all, a sobering read, clear and concise. Another good book in the same vein is The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World by David Wells. Next on the list to read, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, also by Horton.

Hey! It dawns on me…this is my first book review ever.  It dawns on me, too, how hard it is to be objective when you are close to the subject matter of the book being reviewed.

Ran across an article a couple of days ago (HT: Between Two Worlds) in the NYT Magazine titled Who Would Jesus Smack Down, an essay on Mark Driscoll and his church, Mars Hill, in Seattle in specific, and the growing interest in Calvinism in general.

I’m just getting around to putting the final touches on some quick, rambling, and perhaps peripheral thoughts regarding the article:

First, though not the best example of unbiased journalism to be found, I thought it an interesting read even in it’s  rather insufficient understanding of Calvinism.  But there again, I have engaged some of the same misunderstandings until rather recently.

I think sometimes the church wants to react as a pendulum on some issues.  Not growing up with much of a church background, I have not been exposed, other than in examples found in old paintings portraying a soft, medieval Euro-Jesus, to this  feminine church culture alluded to in the article, but I do not question that such exists. That being said, on the other side of the pendulum lies an equally distorted  hyper-masculine polar opposite, a phenomena that I have been witness to on a couple of occasions.  I don’t think this is where Driscoll resides.  More, I perceive he gravitates to a Biblical center.  I strongly suspect a few pastors try to emulate Driscoll  but lack his theological underpinning; there you find at times a reactionary caricature of masculinity. Also, the reference to his reputation as the ‘cussing pastor’ is a bit passé.

It must also be understood that Driscoll is called, and uniquely fitted,  to be a pastor in Seattle with all it’s post-modern, post-Christian cultural distinctions.  Seattle is not in the Bible belt.  Too, I think Ed Stetzer, quoted in the article as follows, is dead on the mark when he says “Mars Hill is “a reaction to the atheological, consumer-driven nature of the modern evangelical machine.” Though they may share some elements, some practices, not all mega-churches are cut from the same cloth.  I think that Mars Hill, unlike many mega-churches, is as deep as it is wide.

All that being said, I really like and have been edified by what I have heard and read by Driscoll.  I also, take a bit of umbrage at this quote found at the end of the article:

At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage – until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll’s face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

One, that is perhaps unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric and reads more into the described moment than that moment intends, but I understand where the perception comes from. Two, I would say it is the nature of the beast, without regard to embraced theology, to be spring-loaded to a position of arrogance and pride.  It is not unique to any ideology or theology. That being said, when properly understood,  the doctrines of grace presents the most radically humbling and absolutely Christ centered of all theologies, an antidote to arrogance.  Also, speaking and acting with strength of conviction is not necessarily synonymous with arrogance.

Interesting article from Themelios titled How a Megachurch is Rediscovering the Gospel. Following is a quote from the aforementioned.

A couple weeks later, I met with a man who had been attending our church for four years. He said he needed to ask me a theological question before he could join our church. I never like those kinds of conversations since the question is usually about a distinctive rather than about something central. We met for breakfast, and his question was the best theological question I had ever been asked. He simply asked me how people grow. He said that he knew people were saved by grace, but he wanted to know if I thought people were sanctified through their own sweat equity. I thought for a moment and then told him that the only thing that ever really changed me was love. Ever since the mission trip, I had been feeling that it was more important for me to understand how much Jesus loved me than it was for me to figure out how to love Him. I watched in amazement as relief spread across my friend’s face. He said he had tried for twenty years to be sanctified through his own effort; it had ground him to powder, and he would not go back.

I return briefly to the predominate theme that I often pursued on this blog, and I will allow to go dormant again.

I listen, when time allows, to sermons from different churches, different pastors.  Many are quite edifying and Christ exalting.  Others, I sadly find less so.  I come away with some overarching  observations, some quite disturbing, based not so much on any one individual sermon, but more on an overarching methodology that gives birth to some common themes.

I recently listened to a substantial portion of a sermon wherein the pastor stated repeatedly that “God is trying…” and that “God tries….”  In the context of this particular sermon, this rhetoric was used to describe God’s ‘attempts’ to get peoples attention, specifically Herod’s in the case of the aforementioned sermon, so as to draw them to Himself.  I appreciate and applaud the evangelical zeal found in the sermon, but I have extreme reservations over a pastor, or anyone for that matter, saying ‘God tries.’ .

My reservations are not a case of putting too fine a point on peripheral or merely illustrative rhetoric.  When we talk about our Redeemer, about God almighty, we need to be careful and accurate about the words we use out of reverence to a Holy God.  We need to thoughtfully weigh our words and thoughts about God in light of Biblical revelation, especially when one is an under-shepherd charged, along with the elders in the church, with guarding and feeding the flock, the body of Christ.

What then is the problem with saying “God tries?” To try infers potential of failure.  To say that God tries is to infer potential of failure in God almighty, that His will may be thwarted.   If such were true, then His will could be stunted and I can have no absolute confidence in that God.  That truncated God, a God who tries, (and apparently failed in Herod’s case in the context of the sermon) is not the sovereign God of Biblical revelation.

Again, I make specific reference to a particular sermon, but I have heard this same rhetoric, this – I hope unintended – reference to a limited God, on other occasions and by various individuals.   Where does this conceit come from, this idea that God is somehow limited by our choices?  It goes back to a humanistic theology, a strain of Christianity that permeates much of the landscape of American ecclesiology.  Beyond the errantly inferred limitations placed on God, I find sometimes a subtle redefinition of the Gospel.  Before I continue, I want to make something perfectly clear.  I am not calling into question motivations or authenticity of faith of any particular personality.  I am not going to bash any particular individual.  However, I will not shy away from bringing the hammer down on what I strongly believe is theologically dangerous methodology.

What of this subtle distortion of the Gospel I mentioned? It is a distortion that comes on the heels of a confusion between felt needs and true spiritual need. It is a blurring of two aspects, the simple proclamation of the faith delivered by the apostles, repent and believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sin and the perceived benefits of salvation which is the meeting of the felt need for significance, the felt need for purpose, the felt need for happiness. I could go on, but I think the point is clear that there are many felt needs we all would want to write in on the sign-up sheet for salvation. The danger in pandering to felt needs is this: our felt needs are not necessarily reflective of our true need before a holy and righteous God. We may, based upon certain evangelical exhortations, approach God and request transformation so that our felt needs for self-esteem, security, and significance are met, for example, but quite miss the real need for forgiveness of sin. So many evangelical calls offer forgiveness along with the thinly veiled and inferred promise that God will fix all your problems and meet all the felt needs of an unregenerate heart, but often what is missing is a clearly defined call to repentance.

What also I find at times offered is a devalued grace, a devalued Gospel.  A friend from work, a brother in Christ, told me of an evangelical outreach to which he was invited to participate.  This outreach was aimed at sharing the Gospel with disadvantaged kids.  It involved taking these kids hunting and then sharing the Gospel with them afterwards.  I appreciate and applaud the hearts desire to share the Gospel.  However, one of the things  these kids were told was that Christianity was the easiest club in the world to join.  Further, I have heard on numerous occasions that I need to try Jesus because He is the best deal going .  I have heard Christ offered as a sixty day challenge.   The lost, the unregenerate, are apparrently invited to try this Gospel thing out, kick the tires and take it around the block a few times.  If it doesn’t work for you, you can drop it off where you found it.  The Gospel has been reduced to a product that is marketed to consumers.  I have read time and time again people in ministry, church planters and pastors,  affirm that the church has the best product in the world, but we just are not marketing it as effectively as Disney markets their product.  Quite frankly and without regard to the good intent of those who engage it, that methodology, that reduction of the Gospel to a product to be marketed, to a pill freely dispensed, makes me want to vomit.   What is missing from these bold, creative evangelical marketing ploys and vision casting is a robust theology of the Cross.  The cost of the Cross is rarely given it’s due.  Showing clips from The Passion of the Christ or Braveheart from huge screens suspended over an entralled audience is not a replacement for faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of repent and believe.  What kind of Gospel are people being drawn to when the church feels it needs to compete with Hollywood to make the Cross attractive?  The Cross is not, nor has ever been, a pill easy to swallow.  But you know what, God in His mercy and grace, and in spite of well-intentioned, but often confused methodologies, will draw the lost, the unregenerate to Himself and redeem them by His blood that all glory, all honor, and all praise be to Him.  Christ will build His church.