Posted on 09/10/2019 9:46:26 AM PDT by Gamecock
Want to fatten a church for slaughter? The steps are below.
This is a true story.
1. Launch a church for people who dont like the church with a dynamic leader with big ideas and self-help teaching.
2. Care less about biblical depth, discipleship, and leadership character than inspirational messages, excitement, and creativity. Make sure the success is built around the leaders brand so that he and the church are largely synonymous.
3. See the place attract large crowds.
4. See the success go to the leaders head. Make excuses and accommodations as his short temper, control issues, and lack of accountability begin to take their toll. Accept the loss of numerous quality leaders as the collateral damage necessary to win the attendance war in your citys ministry marketplace.
5. Continue staking everything on a killer weekend experience to the expense of discipleship, community, and mission. Marginalize (or get rid of) anyone who does not get the vision.
6. Watch the leader eventually crash and burn.
7. As the church hemorrhages attendees who were there for the brand, fail to learn your lesson and hire a similarly dynamic leader to replace the one whos fallen. (Make sure hes at least nice.)
8. Make sure only yes-men ascend to leadership as the new leader tries to rebuild a better version of what crashed the first time.
9. Watch as the new leader drifts further and further away from biblical teaching and more into the world of quasi-spiritual wanderings. Make sure anyone who sees red flags in occasional New Age-type teaching and embrace of heterodox spiritualities cant do anything about it. When those people leave, dont care.
10. Watch as liberal theology takes root and slowly drives more and more people out the door. As money dwindles, and staff along with it, take no steps to correct course. Go all in.
11. Follow the new kind of Christianity all the way to barely-Christianity, and close the doors on what used to be a thriving megachurch.
12. Wonder what went wrong.
This isnt the only way to kill a church. Some churches dwindle and die through no fault of the leaders. But if you want to kill a church, this is a time-tested way to do it.
Ever see the movie, “Come Sunday”?
Worth a watch. It touches on this stuff.
How to ruin a church.
Put Man in it.
Or to sum it up - care more about popularity than sound doctrine.
Not exactly news, but something we see over and over again.
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*Your Best Purpose Driven Life Now
All it takes are a few false prophets.
The clergy stop believing in what they are suppose to teach.
Preach the prosperity gospel.
Play a lot of “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” songs in Church.
Feminize it:
Everyone will eventually leave.
You might even get honkies to join a non-feminized faith.
Gosh I WONDER which one THAT is.
Bump for later.
Our small town church just went with the Purpose Driven Life materials
so we are without a church. Many people have left, but the leaders have such control there is no hope for change.
Most there have no use for the Old Testament, thinking Jesus read and preached from the New Testament...unbelievable.
Modern thinking is that God speaks from the pastor now instead of His Word.
The scary thing here is that PDL is already way behind the times.
Sigh.
To and fro with every wind of doctrine.
Downplay the value of the Bible because “many people have been hurt by it”.
Focus your outreach towards the people who have been hurt by the church
Design your worship towards “seekers” and “questioners”
I’m watching one go under now. We moved to a Scripture-focused church
“care more about popularity than sound doctrine.”
A church we attended about 20 years ago was very fundamental, and we liked everything about it. Sermons were sound, etc. One day I was in choir practice, and one of the songs mentioned the blood of Jesus. The director thought maybe they should replace that phrase because “some people are offended by the blood”.
My mouth dropped open. I stared over at the preacher’s wife down the row, waiting for her to say something. She didn’t.
We never went back.
“the attendance war in your citys ministry marketplace.”
This right there is what is wrong with many megachurches. Too many leaders are focused on making money rather than leading people to Christ. Give me a small neighborhood church where everybody knows everybody else over any megachurch any day of the week.
From the Book “Christless Christianity”:
What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over a half century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia, all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, Yes, sir and No, maam, and the churches would be full every Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.
One of my favorite quotes.
I remember that first time I read the quote, it totally made my reconsider everything I thought I knew about religion.
Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, Joel Osteen, are at the top of this list.
Christless, “church entertainmentanity” incorporated.
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