MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON US ALL FOR LIVING SUCH ARROGANT LIVES and thinking we are CHRISTIANS..

AMERICA needs a Spiritual REVIVAL! Lets we get one last chance before his return.

We didn’t understand what was happening to our church until we became aware of Rick Warren and “The Purpose Driven Church” movement and realized that was what it was. I was one who left and joined a small independent fundamental Baptist church with a pastor who preached the whole counsel of God without mincing words. Maybe that small church will never grow large, but I’m sure Jesus would recognize it as one of His own!

One thing that concerns me about the Baptist Press coverage is that it didn’t delve into what I thought was a likely reason for Jones being removed from the diaconate. It’s a reason I wouldn’t expect the WSJ (or any secular outfit) to pick up on, but I was surprised the BP didn’t.

From the Suzanne Sataline article at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06248/719178-84.stm:

Mrs. Jones began scouring the Internet to investigate all the changes taking places at Iuka. Her searches led her to Web sites run by critics of Mr. Warren as well as to Mr. Warren’s own Web site.

More than a dozen church members, including the Joneses, began meeting privately to complain about changes. Church leaders became angry. “The Rev. Jim Holcomb has been slandered and insulted by some of you,” the church’s minister for education, the Rev. Kim Leonard, thundered at one service. Mr. Holcomb and Mr. Leonard deny that Iuka Baptist was becoming purpose-driven. Mr. Leonard says it was “coincidence” that the new initiatives resembled strategies advocated by Mr. Warren and his movement.

Then a Web site run by a critic of Mr. Warren posted a letter from Mrs. Jones describing her worries about Iuka Baptist and comparing the congregation’s admiration for Mr. Holcomb to the cult followings of Jim Jones and David Koresh. The posting sparked angry emails from church members. A church meeting was soon called. Hundreds of people packed into the pews. After heated arguments, the congregation voted 150-to-41 to throw Mr. Jones off the board. The members also accepted the resignations of two other deacons, friends of Mr. Jones who had been asked to leave the board. In the weeks that followed, 40 church members quit.

If the Sataline coverage is accurate, and if it did not omit other (more biblical) actions by the Jones family, then where was their (the Jones family’s) attempt to address this as Christ instructs us to, in Matthew 18:15-17?

(15) If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. (16) But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ (17) If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Based on what was presented in the article, I don’t feel at all comfortable blaming the Purpose Driven paradigm for that particular church split (particularly since the pastor denies implementing the PDC plan), and it makes me wonder about the rest of the examples, as well.

I mean, here we have reports of members meeting privately, with other disgruntled members, in order to complain, then writing letters in which they compare their pastors to the leaders of suicide cults, and sending those letters not to their pastor, but to an Anti-Rick Warren website. What the holy heck?

I would have expected BP, as a Christian media outfit, to more carefully investigate and report what happened in that particular situation, before repeating the Jones story as an example of the turmoil PD paradigms might be causing.

I won’t pretend to know what went on in the Jones’ church, but I do know what I read, and I can’t really get upset about a church removing someone from the diaconate who was involved in secret meetings which were held to complain about the pastor. If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m bone tired of PDL, PDC and of even hearing the name ‘Rick Warren’. I also agree with your point in this entry:

Megachurches, their super programs, their consumer driven worship, their shallow, free-floating theology and their non-pastoral pastors are dinosaurs. A world-wide, global emerging church that’s too diverse to fit into anyone’s book is the rising tide.

I don’t, though, want to unfairly criticize Warren or the PDC approach, based on half reported incidents, where the one of the main complainants is alleged to have acted in a way that appears, at least, to be so contrary to Christ’s teaching.

–Peace.

I may be saying too much too soon, but these things seem significant to me.

I think the death knell of the boomer mega church is several things:

1) The utter failure to spiritually form disciples that meaningfully impact the culture rather than simply entertain boomers.
2) The megas inability to come to terms with missionalism.
3) The Number of megas increases, but the number of churches decreases and the number of people in church decreases.
4) The theological vacuity of the mega church represented in Osteen
5) The failures of megas to move past dynastic, celebrity dirven leadership
6) The small amount megas give to missions
7) the failures of most megas to start church planting networks

They are big, expensive, full service, fun and increasingly more cultural and less Christian.

I am currently trying to have the SBC urban core church I pastor re-planted by a vibrant “emerging” SBC church. I mean the Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, Acts 29 type emerging church. How large is this movement I wonder—say according to the three categories noted by Ed Stetzer?

Back to the mega-church. I have seen some remarkably positive things at a mega-church or two but I would celebrate a move to something different, smaller, less geared to so-called boomer values. Again, what is the evidence that the death knell has sounded?

People know me. EVERYONE in the congregation knows me by name and I know everyone. People can’t hide, or if they try to, someone will call them and invite them to women’s circle, or choir, or something. If someone stops coming, people notice. If someone’s sick or in the hospital, people call them, people show up with food, people offer to watch their kids. It’s a community.

I think one of the things about some of the megachurches is that they allow people to be spectators rather than participants - that there are people who can “just” come to church and never get asked to serve as deacons, or make food for a funeral dinner, or teach a Sunday school class.

And I don’t think God intended for us to be spectator-Christians.

I do a lot of things in my local congregation - I wear an awful lot of hats. And sometimes it’s exhausting. Sometimes I think how nice it would be to never have to get up and make announcements about some group that I’m leading meeting, or be able to go home on Wednesday nights and not have to do the youth group thing. But at the same time it’s one of the most tremendouly fulfilling things that I do - and it gives me a real investment in the congregation and its continued success.

it also seems to me - and I could be wrong on this, I don’t have much experience with the megachurches - but the small churches I have been a part of have a real commitment to carrying Christ’s light OUT into the community - working the local soup kitchen, and doing school-supply drives for impoverished kids, and participating in city-wide clean-up days, etc. From what I’ve seen, at least some of the mega churches seem more turned inward - sort of setting themselves up as a bulwark against the “fallen” outside world. Whereas a lot of people in the small churches seem to look at the world, see hurt, look at themselves, and say, “We can do something to help this.”

I think it would be a real shame if these lovely and pictureque churches were somehow endangered by the ecclesiastical equivalent of a big box store. I don’t go to church (SkipChurch, get it?) but I do value their presence in my community. They do good, as far as I can tell. They add to the charm and beauty of my community. And you can go up to the Dutch Reformed church in Blawenburg and hear Kit play bagpipes sometimes. But not during a service. So, yes, okay, I value churches in my community for purely sentimental and aesthetic reasons. That’s the conservative and the traditionalist in me. I don’t oppose all change, but I certainly object to substituting something big and garish and mega for something small and good and beautiful.

What baffles me, on purely aesthetic grounds, is why someone would prefer the mega-church to the mini-church. If I were a church-goer I’d definitely scope out the quality of the organist, the architecture, the eloquence and erudition of the minister, the congeniality of the people, and whether they made a decent cup of coffee. Shallow, shallow I guess. Shows why I’m unsaved etc. But isn’t that what one wants in a community, if you can get it? If you want a jumbotron and thousands of people, go to a ball game.

I mean, do the have dizzy bat races and a seventh inning stretch at the mega-churches as well?

Well, as usual I find myself scratching my head at the modern turn of events.

My lady friend, who is a regular Bible study attender, was given a copy of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life book. So I looked into it and she asked me what I thought, which was that it was the worst drivel I’d ever seen, excepting when my sister-in-law bought an Anthony Robbins “Unleash the Power Within You” course which she supposed would make her rich and cause her to lose thirty pounds.

So do we preserve traditional institutions and forms for their own sake? No, not for their own sake. We preserve them because they’ve stood the test of time, because they embody a kind of accumulated community wisdom, because they provide a connection to our past as a people. These are perfectly good reasons.

So– SkipChurch urges all the Christians– don’t go mega, go mini! The 17th century Quaker meeting house and the 19th century Presbyterian churches here will be at their old stand when the mega-churches have turned back into sports arenas.