Archive for the 'The Goofy Church' Category

Assumed evangelicalism - Some reflections en route to denying the gospel | David Gibson

Published
by
carl
on January 9, 2006
in Carl's Writings, Revival and The Goofy Church
. 0 Comments

Assumed evangelicalism - Some reflections en route to denying the gospel | David Gibson

This is a great article, especially if you are in a movement that had a great past, and less illustrious present.

‘I doubt very much that evangelicals are wise to pursue academic respectability. What we need is academic responsibility. There is a world of difference. Elevating academic respectability to the level of controlling desideratum is an invitation to theological and spiritual compromise.

Hat tip to GDF

Popularity: 6% [?]

What I learned in 2005 - Complaints are not Solutions

Published
by
carl
on January 8, 2006
in Carl's Writings, Christianity, Doctrine, Home Church, Revival and The Goofy Church
. 0 Comments

I am going to begin a series of posts detailing what I learned in 2005. They are going to come in no particular order. In my first article I would like to outline some of my problems with the current home church movement.

The biggest challenge I have to much of the home church teaching is that it is a reaction instead of foundational.

The Gospel is unchanging. It does not adapt to popular culture. It is our job to make popular culture adapt to the Gospel. And in fact much of what we see in modern churches is amiss. But the answer is not to change the gospel to address these current short comings. It is to preach the unchanging Gospel. The Gospel has the power, not our arguments.

Much of what I read in the house church movement is so clearly tainted by bitterness and judgment that it must be thoroughly deboned before chewing.

I recently read an interview with an author whose book details what he calls the pagan origin of the local church. The crux of the interview attacked preaching. One point made was,

“It (Preaching) was delivered on special occasions in order to deal with specific problems.”

You would have to surmise that preaching is only associated with problems. (You would also have to surmise that we could get to a place where there are no problems so preaching would not be necessary. Who would defend that any group of humans have gotten tot that point?) This is clearly false. Paul stated that he was ordained a preacher and an Apostle. Jesus told us to “preach the word.” This is not just to correct problems. It is because there is power in the preached Word of God.

“It is temporary. Regular preaching is designed to win the lost or equip the church. Once equipped, the members of the church minister one to another.”

Isn’t this the same argument that cessationists use regarding the gifts?

This is the same elitism that we saw (and still see) in much of the prophetic movement. There are two classes, the super spiritual who “get it” and then the rest of the peons.

The fact is that God is leading people to those greatly dysfunctional churches. People are receiving a call from God to be in leadership in those churches. God is sending people to seminary and bible college. You can debate WHY He is doing it but you cannot debate that He IS doing it. And I can assure you that He is not telling one group that modern church buildings need to all be bulldozed while abiding in many of those same buildings when the people join in fellowship there. Either He hates them or He does not.

Do you feel God is leading you to join or start a house church? God bless you! Go do it. Make disciples. Win the lost. Minister one to another. Be the Church! Attacking other Christians will not accomplish any of that.

The House Church movement has much to offer the Body and its influence will only grow. The message of the priesthood of the believer is a valid, vital one and needs to be preached. But to taint the message with past failures and prejudices only minimizes its effectiveness and delays its embrace.

P.S. Drop the pagan accusations. You sound like a bunch of jehovah’s witnesses.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Let us all pray for Bill O’Reilly.

Published
by
carl
on December 19, 2005
in Doctrine, News, Op/Ed and The Goofy Church
. 0 Comments

I wish more Christians would stand up for what the Gospel calls us to do. You see very little political activism in the NT. You do see people helping people. Though I am disinterested in the personalities here, I am interested in Christians calling out the people who claim to represent us.

December 18, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
A Challenge for Bill O’Reilly

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Let us all pray for Bill O’Reilly.

Let us pray that Mr. O’Reilly will understand that the Christmas spirit isn’t about hectoring people to say “Merry Christmas,” rather than “Happy Holidays,” but about helping the needy.

Let us pray that Mr. O’Reilly will use his huge audience and considerable media savvy to save lives and fight genocide, instead of to vilify those he disagrees with. Let him find inspiration in Jesus, rather than in the Assyrians.

Finally, let’s pray that Mr. O’Reilly and other money-changers in the temple will donate the funds they raise exploiting Christmas - covering the nonexistent “War on Christmas” rakes in viewers and advertising - to feed the hungry and house the homeless.

Amen.

Alas, not all prayers can be answered. Fox News Channel’s crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like “Happy Holidays” included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday’s column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O’Reilly has ignored), Mr. O’Reilly denounced me on his show as a “left-wing ideologue.” Bless you, Mr. O’Reilly, and Merry Christmas to you, too!

Continue reading ‘Let us all pray for Bill O’Reilly.’

Popularity: 9% [?]

Narnia - Not

Published
by
carl
on December 15, 2005
in Christianity, Doctrine and The Goofy Church
. 1 Comment

Since nobody actually reads this blog you would think that I could write whatever tickles my fancy. The truth is that I try not to write anything that I would not like to defend before the Holy Ghost.
It would have been easier for me not to write this but i feel I must.

My family will not be going to see Narnia, and I don’t think you should either. Why? One reason, witchcraft is evil. That is really the end of it. There is neither a redemptive value in it nor is God working in it. To be entertained by witchcraft is wicked and an open door to the enemy.

There, I said it.

More references:

The Witchcraft of the Narnia Chronicles

Into the Depths of Satan in C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia

Safe Reading or Wrong Message to Our Children?

Popularity: 4% [?]

ON EXTRA-BIBLICAL REVELATORY NONSENSE

Published
by
carl
on November 17, 2005
in Prophesy, Revival and The Goofy Church
. 0 Comments

This was written by Loren Sanford. and posted at Openheaven.com. I have read some good stuff of his. I saw his parents in Toronto.

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to one of my church members who asked what we had been praying for in the previous Monday night prayer meeting. I felt moved to post it here as a prophetic call to a serious course correction among those of us who love to see the Spirit move.

“I have been calling us to a new simplicity and purity. What we have had is an intrusion of extra-biblical stuff posing as “revelation” and established fact that has no place in Scripture. The effect has been to create a division between two groups of people – the elite who have this special knowledge that they believe makes them mature or more gifted vs. those who don’t have that knowledge or who don’t have that attitude about themselves. The latter group simply lays down their gifts and eventually goes away.

I’m convinced this is the reason why churches where the Spirit is allowed to move are almost always small while the seeker sensitive churches tend to be large. The seeker sensitive churches are entirely accessible, simple and intelligible, untroubled by esoteric knowledge gained from extra-biblical sources. Charismatic churches have endless barriers of weirdness built from all that extra-biblical nonsense that passes for truth. People turn away from the barriers and go where things are simple and intelligible. So while they don’t allow for the things of the Spirit, the seeker sensitive churches grow and charismatic churches don’t.

It’s all so unnecessary. We can have both worlds, but we’re going to have to stop accepting as truth these things that have no basis in God’s Word. We’re going to have to stop making things so mysterious and complicated. For instance, never did Paul send in an advance prayer team to spiritually map a region, study its history and identify its territorial spirits so that the gospel would be successful there. Never did he do silly things like bury communion elements in the ground. Never does any human being in Scripture summon demonic powers into the heavenly court for judgment as I’ve heard done so often in recent days. Nowhere are we given authority to convene any heavenly court. Several times recently I’ve heard it stated as fact that if you’re a cancer survivor you have more authority to pray for cancer. Nonsense. We’re healed by his stripes, not by surviving the disease we’re praying to heal. These are just a few examples of the kind of thing that has infiltrated us and every other charismatic church I know.

It’s time to come back to the simplicity of doing things the way they are modeled for us in the Bible. We ask. God does. The words don’t need to be perfect. The revelation doesn’t have to be complete. We just have to talk to our Father.

So I’m calling us to a new purity of devotion and a simplicity of approach that makes it all so much more accessible to the average guy and that doesn’t create a spiritual elite that kind of puts everyone else down. Our average Joes and our timid ones have simply laid down their gifts and walked away.

But that’s changing. The more I’ve spoken this into us the more people have picked up their gifts and begun to walk in them. Sharing dreams. Visions. Words. Praying aloud. Having fun again. Growing again. I think we probably spent 45 minutes last Monday talking through all this – and some bit of time today as well. It’s healing our fellowship. God shows up just as He did before, but it’s sweeter and more restful. People feel safe to take the risk and move forward.”

Edited by Loren Sandford on 09/01/2005 at 9:52pm

Popularity: 9% [?]

What To Do When You Decide To Leave?

Published
by
carl
on July 19, 2005
in Carl's Writings, Revival and The Goofy Church
. 3 Comments

This article might be a good read, especially if we went to church together and we have not spoken in some time.

What do you do when you are absolutely, positively sure that your church is going in the wrong direction and the leadership has no plans to turn back? What do you do when the leadership then brings accusation time after time over the course of several years against every person who disagrees with the leadership? What do you do when you cannot act as if you do not see the leadership living in open hypocrisy, unrepentant sin, more concerned with the comfort of the leadership then the well-being of the sheep? Moreover, after you break with the group what do you do about the people who are stuck in the deception that clouded your vision for so many years? I have been in this situation and this is my warning to those who find themselves in a similar place.

It is said that if you put a frog in hot water, it will jump out but if you put him in room temperature water, you can turn up the heat until you cook him. These churches are that pot of water and there are a whole lot of sheep that are being stewed with the frogs.

We had known that our church was off course for a long time. We continued to serve and pray, wondering if it was us who was wrong. We would join in the leader’s accusation against people as they left, often airing gossip as confirmation that the only reason they left was their moral shortcomings. We continued to see problems with the ministry but “running from them” as the leader said, was taking the easy way out. “If you really heard God and wanted to serve Him you would stay and be faithful,” was our thought.

As always happens, the moral failures of the leadership became more evident. This came as a confirmation of what we had been experiencing in prayer; things were amiss and were getting worse. We shared our reservations repeatedly over the course of years with people that could facilitate change but things continued to worsen.

God had us there for several years as a witness to His warnings. The fact is we had so much invested in that work that we did not want to leave it despite the faults. Regardless of all the problems, it was our church. We believed that God wanted to do something special there and we would hope where there was no hope that things would turn around.

When we finally had a peace about leaving we found a congregation that was on fire for God and seeking holiness. After a few months of sitting under the preaching of the Word, we were shocked to find how much compromise we had allowed in our lives. We were broken by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. False doctrine is a pollutant that clouds the mind of those who entertain it and corrupts the work that Holy Spirit wants to do in the people of God and as much as we thought we could avoid it, we were sullied.

As soon as we left, God confirmed our worst suspicions left and right. There was no question that we came out of a fallen assembly and that there were a bunch of people that we had served for years that were stuck in that quagmire. The question became, what do we do?

I have seen people go through this process before and reacted more like a son of thunder than the beloved of Jesus. They call people on the phone and say, “Can’t you see all that is wrong?” The truth is that they cannot, and pointing out all the problems with the organization that they are still in, and the leader they still follow only causes them to put up their guard. Additionally, when someone actually throws caution to the wind and warns the people, they are systematically slandered as a troublemaker, divisive, rebellious, or bitter. This is a trap set by the enemy to give more reason not to have audience with those who have left. By the grace of God, I have been able to avoid that pitfall.

I have prayed daily for certain people and have had an open door to those that the Lord would lead to call me. I have earnestly prayed that God would shake them up and seek after truth, weather or not I have a role. I trust that Jesus is able to shepherd His flock and that in time, those who truly seek after God will see the situation as it is. That is my conviction but I would not throw stones at someone who feels lead to sound the alarm.

But questions remain. Is it wrong for someone to actively reach out to those who are in a similar situation that they were just delivered from? Is it wrong to want to show people that they are way off base even at the risk of offending?

If the people who left are really deceived, shouldn’t you as a Christian be happy that you still have contact even if it is annoying? I would caution those who choose to stay behind not to judge too quickly those who left. If you love truth, you may want to give them a call and test the spirit. You may be surprised. If you were a Jew in the time of Jesus are you sure that you would have seen the truth or would you have joined in with the throngs of those that yelled, “Crucify! Crucify!” and hoped that the priesthood was simply reformed?

The fact of the matter is that our time here is short and there are lots of churches that preach the gospel, keep watch for false doctrine, and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. I would not begrudge a person or say they took the easy way out if they wanted to attend a healthy congregation. To the contrary, I would say that if you are in a place that winks at sin (or denies the truth and condones sin), you had better be sure that you are where God has you because if you slop around in the mud long enough, you are going to get dirty.

Popularity: 38% [?]