This book cuts through a lot of the fat the churc has layered on over the centuries. It is amazing how much of what we call church has been taken from pagan worship.
The folks at Willow Creek would do well to start by reading this book.
Posted on 05/16/2008 12:06:26 AM PDT by Gamecock
After modeling a seeker-sensitive approach to church growth for three decades, Willow Creek Community Church now plans to gear its weekend services toward mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.
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Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes.
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.....surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" than from new church attendees. In addition, a quarter of the "close to Christ" and "Christcentered" crowd described themselves as spiritually "stalled" or "dissatisfied" with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Even more alarming to Willow Creek: About a quarter of the "stalled" segment and 63 percent of the "dissatisfied" segment contemplated leaving the church.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
***sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes.***
I have Oprah and Dr Phil for that.
What I need is a Savior.
YBPDLNPLP and a few others.
I find this very encouraging.
Pray this takes hold through out the nation.
GOOD MORNING SAINTS!
historically seeker sensitive outreach has allways,”burnt away”:
A PERIOD OF CHANGE IN CHURCH HISTORY THAT IMPACTED OUR COLLECTIVE THOUGHTS AND THE MODERN FACE OF CHRISTIANITY WE KNOW TODAY.
WHERE AND WHEN THIS OCCURRED IS ALONG THIS SECTION OF NEW YORK AND IMPACTED THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.
Charles Grandison Finney:
Charles Grandison Finney gave the region its name, referring to it as a “burnt district” because so many revivals had taken place there during America’s Second Great Awakening. Finney himself was born in Connecticut but migrated with his parents to western New York. He was starting a career as a lawyer when on Oct. 10, 1821, he saw a brilliant light in his law office and underwent an immediate conversion at the age of 29: “ I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus.” He became a missionary to Jefferson County for the Female Missionary Society of the Western District of New York. He rejected traditional Calvinist theology and Unitarianism and became a founder of New School Presbyterianism that emphasized an evangelistic style of religion, pioneering new techniques of revivalism called the “New Measures” used by a growing number of disciples called the “Holy Band.” He was a charismatic speaker, tall, handsome, with striking blue eyes and a dramatic voice. When he spoke, his body writhed and he seemed possessed by the Holy Spirit. From his ordination in 1824 until his death in 1875, he was the most popular preacher in America. Thousands came to his tent meetings in Utica, Rome, Auburn and Troy. In October 1825 he began preaching every night in the town of Western, continued throughout the winter, beginning the first of what he called the “great Western revivals.” He pioneered revival meetings in large cities after 1827.
tent revival meeting:
His Rochester revival in 1830 was described as intense, lasting weeks with hundreds of “inquiry meetings” and praying for individuals by name and putting them on the “anxious seat” for public prayer and granting them immediate admission into church membership upon public demonstration of conversion. He promoted temperance and women’s rights, allowing women to pray in public during his revivals. He founded a newspaper, the New York Evangelist, with financial support from Lewis and Arthur Tappan. In 1835, Finney became president of Oberlin College in Ohio and wrote a handbook for revival ministers. He blazed the trail that would later be followed by Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham.
MORMONISM,JEHOVAH WITNESSES,7th.DAY ADVENTISTS AND WHAT WE KNOW AS THE PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT ALL BEGAN AND WHERE STEEPED IN THE SAME ERA AND AS WE HAVE SEEN, AS BEFORE THE DIFFERENT BELIEF SYSTEMS MORPHED TOGETHER AND BIRTHED COUNTLESS “CHURCHES”.
WHY THEN WAS AND IS THIS CALLED THE BURNT-OVER DISTRICT?
Predictably, most of Finney’s spiritual heirs lapsed into apostasy, Socinianism, mere moralism, cultlike perfectionism, and other related errors. In short, Finney’s chief legacy was confusion and doctrinal compromise. Evangelical Christianity virtually disappeared from western New York in Finney’s own lifetime. Despite Finney’s accounts of glorious “revivals,” most of the vast region of New England where he held his revival campaigns fell into a permanent spiritual coldness during Finney’s lifetime and more than a hundred years later still has not emerged from that malaise. This is directly owing to the influence of Finney and others who were simultaneously promoting similar ideas.
The Western half of New York became known as “the burnt-over district,” because of the negative effects of the revivalist movement that culminated in Finney’s work there. These facts are often obscured in the popular lore about Finney. But even Finney himself spoke of “a burnt district” [Memoirs, 78], and he lamented the absence of any lasting fruit from his evangelistic efforts. He wrote,
I was often instrumental in bringing Christians under great conviction, and into a state of temporary repentance and faith . . . . [But] falling short of urging them up to a point, where they would become so acquainted with Christ as to abide in Him, they would of course soon relapse into their former state [cited in B. B. Warfield, Studies in Perfectionism, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford, 1932), 2:24].
One of Finney’s contemporaries registered a similar assessment, but more bluntly:
During ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that real converts are comparatively few. It is declared, even by [Finney] himself, that “the great body of them are a disgrace to religion” [cited in Warfield, 2:23].
B. B. Warfield cited the testimony of Asa Mahan, one of Finney’s close associates,
. . . who tells us—to put it briefly—that everyone who was concerned in these revivals suffered a sad subsequent lapse: the people were left like a dead coal which could not be reignited; the pastors were shorn of all their spiritual power; and the evangelists—”among them all,” he says, “and I was personally acquainted with nearly every one of them—I cannot recall a single man, brother Finney and father Nash excepted, who did not after a few years lose his unction, and become equally disqualified for the office of evangelist and that of pastor.”
Thus the great “Western Revivals” ran out into disaster. . . . Over and over again, when he proposed to revisit one of the churches, delegations were sent him or other means used, to prevent what was thought of as an affliction. . . . Even after a generation had passed by, these burnt children had no liking for the fire [Warfield, 2:26-28].
Finney grew discouraged with the revival campaigns and tried his hand at pastoring in New York City before accepting the presidency of Oberlin College. During those post-revivalist years, he turned his attention to devising a doctrine of Christian perfectionism. Perfectionist ideas, in vogue at the time, were a whole new playground for serious heresy on the fringes of evangelicalism—and Finney became one of the best-known advocates of perfectionism. The evil legacy of the perfectionism touted by Finney and friends in the mid-nineteenth century has been thoroughly critiqued by B. B. Warfield in his important work Studies in Perfectionism. Perfectionism was the logical consequence of Finney’s Pelagianism, and its predictable result was spiritual disaster.
Galatians 2:21
“I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”
(NKJV)
THE GENERAL MALAISE FROM EMOTIONAL CONVICTION OF SIN AND ENTERTAINING CONVERSION EXPERIANCES WHERE AND IS EVIDENT.
LAST WEEK I WAS LISTENING TO LIGONIER MINISTRIES AND DR. SPROUL WAS TEACHING A SERMON,TITLED. “REGENERATION – A SOVERIEGN ACT”.
HE STATED THAT MOST CHRISTIANS DO NOT KNOW HOW THEY WHERE SAVED.I AGREE!
YOU CAN NOT WRITE YOUR NAME IN THE LAMB’S BOOK OF LIFE,A PLEDGE CARD OR WALK DOWN THE AISLE DOES NOT DO IT, JESUS DOES NOT HAND OUT PENS!
Joh 6:65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE ARE ACCEPTED TODAY MORE THAN THEY HAVE BEEN IN 100 YEARS.
CONVENTIONS, LIKE THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST HAVE LONG SHIRKED SOVERIEGN GRACE BECAUSE IT WAS INCORRECTLY BELIEVED THAT THEY WHERE NOT ENVAGELISTIC.
Calvin did not limit the preaching of the gospel to those considered to be elect. He explains his views more fully in his treatise on predestination:
Since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, it befits us so to feel as to wish that all be saved. So it will come about that, whoever we come across, we shall study to make him a sharer of peace . . . even severe rebuke will be administered like medicine, lest they should perish or cause others to perish. But it will be for God to make it effective in those whom He foreknew and predestined.[6]
Calvin clearly encouraged Christians to be involved in evangelism! “It befits us” to desire all people to be saved. The result of this proper desire should make us try to lead everyone “we come across” to faith in Christ, for that is the only way they could share in peace. This is not to be a half-hearted effort. Christians are to use “even severe rebuke” if necessary to prevent others from ignoring the gospel and perishing. Christians must make the effort to evangelize everyone knowing that only God can save.
the sheep will move to grace filled meadows,they will migrate to where they can be fed!
the goats will,being dumb,stay,eat trash or move to a new more exciting trash pile!
5 SOLAS!
Well said my brother.
Church is the place to feed sheep, not amuse goats. (Spurgeon said that)
In place of gospel preaching, this “new-and-improved” variety of Christianity was substituting amusements. Spurgeon warned that many were turning the church into a “play-house,” allowing the values and techniques of the theater to invade the sanctuary of the Lord.
Spurgeon noted that many churches were no longer having prayer meetings. Spiritual fervor was dwindling, congregations were thinning, and enthusiasm for the gospel was quickly becoming extinct. “Alas! many are returning to the poisoned cups which drugged that declining generation. . . . Too many ministers are toying with the deadly cobra of ‘another gospel,’ in the form of ‘modern thought.’”[26]
Who was chiefly to blame for the decline? Spurgeon believed it was the preachers: “The case is mournful. Certain ministers are making infidels. Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith. . . . Germany was made unbelieving by her preachers, and England is following in her tracks.”[27]
Spurgeon made no effort to disguise his contempt for the modernists: “These destroyers of our churches appear to be as content with their work as monkeys with their mischief. That which their fathers would have lamented they rejoice in: the alienation of the poor and simple-minded from their ministry they accept as a compliment, and the grief of the spiritually-minded they regard as an evidence of their power.”[28]
http://www.spurgeon.org/downgrd.htm
THE DOWN-GRADE FORCED SPURGEON TO LEAVE THE BAPTIST UNION,THEY LOST,”THE PRINCE OF THE PREACHERS”.
WOE TO THEM,THEN AND OF COURSE NOW THEY ARE APOSTATE.
MY PRAYERS FOR YOU MY BRETHREN,IS SERVE THE KING,FEED THE FLOCK AND IF ANY MAN-CENTERED WALLS ARE CAUSING DIVISION WHERE YOU PRESENTLY ATTEND WORSHIP,LEAVE!
Ac 13:51 But they shook off the dust from their feet against them, and came to Iconium.
DO NOT JUST GO ALONG,TO GET ALONG!
SOON I’LL START TEACHING A NEW SERIES,TITLED “THE MARK OF A SAINT”
I appreciate all of the recent posts quoting or citing Mr. Spurgeon, a clarion voice for two full centuries.
“Spurgeon warned that many were turning the church into a “play-house,” allowing the values and techniques of the theater to invade the sanctuary of the Lord.”
This was the ring in the preaching of Bible-believing Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and other prophetic preachers of his day.
Search the Internet for THINGS TO COME, A JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, published periodically in England from 1894 to 1915. In every issue there were brief pieces exposing the worldly trends in the churches even in that day. Using the world’s entertainment to attract people is nothing new. In those pieces you will find interesting parallels to what is happening today in the megachurches in America and elsewhere. It is the APOSTASY. It was recognized and innunciated by the true in-depth Bible students and preachers at the turn of the 20th century. The warnings have been ignored by the denominational churches and their training institutions since that time, especially since 1950.
At least they were alarmed. I've witnessed mainstream churches bleeding members who don't care and don't plan to continue to preach anything but their societal based doctrine.
Matt Branagh at CT quotes some folks who say WC is making a fundamental shift, but the evidence from the “Reveal” study isn’t so clear cut. A fundamental shift at WC would for them to abandon their dated, failed, seeker model (in other words repent) and to embrace a Christ-centered, means of grace oriented approach to ministry of Word and sacrament. According one person quoted here whenever WC has attempted to introduce the least bit of substance to their morning services attendance suffers.Good thing Jesus never said anything unpleasant or he might have been really unpopular. Oh wait a minute. He did and he got crucified for it. Well, that’ll never sell.
Has WC really changed? No. Have they abandoned a market-driven approach to ministry? No. What’s their plan for those who want to grow and become more mature in the faith? They plan to teach them to be “self-feeders.”
Yes, I think Jesus said something like that.
“Peter, if you love me, teach my sheep to feed themselves.
‘Peter do you love me? Teach my sheep to be self-feeders’
‘Peter, do you love me?” ’You know I do Lord.’ ‘Teach my sheep to be self-feeders
I too find this announcement encouraging.
There was an article a few months(?) ago in which Hybels admitted that the seeker-sensitive stuff wasn’t working. Perhaps this is the result of that epiphany; hopefully it means Willow Creek will take a more scriptural approach.
Oh, how I had hoped that it really was encouraging, Gamecock...
But, unfortunately, Willow Creek is just using the popular man-made survey approach, again. They used this approach to establish the church and now they are using the approach to to meet the crowds ever changing tastes. The crowd no longer wants the "entertainment church". The crowd, as shown in the survey, now wants something more "spiritual".
So what will Hybel's give the crowd, now?
It is something that existed already at Willow Creek in a smaller dose...but it appears that Hybel's is ready to give it to them in a much bigger dose: hard core mysticism and the social gospel.
As evidence, Hybel's just had Brian McLaren, an emergent heretic, speak at Willow Creek, on the "shift" that is taking place, and that must take place, in Christianity. McLaren's proposed shift is a shift away from biblically-based orthodox Christianity towards a religion of mysticism and the social gospel.
While Willow Creek's conclusion that the seeker sensitive approach does not work is correct (as many have said from the beginning)...Their remedy associated with their conclusion is EVEN WORSE!
- the existence of a literal hell
- the atonement of Christ on the cross (among other statements on the subject, he endorsed a book that calls penal substitutionary atonement "cosmic child abuse")
- that homosexuality is a sin
- the Gospel
- all that...and so much more
This is the "huge shift" that Willow Creek is talking about.
Seeker = customer
No doubt - I’m in a “seeker sensitive” church. It was great to bring us all into the faith, but now it seems to be the equivalent of eating marshmallows for breakfast every Sunday.
I even talked with one of the lead pastors recently about whether they were concerned about being “offensive”.
For those seeking more “meat”, they are offering a Wednesday night, bible centered service that dives into the meat of topics more thoroughly than the Sunday service.
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