Purpose Driven and the Irrelevance of Faith

Well, here's a prime example of how to know your church is adopting Warrenism. Presented in all it's glory are two pages of an October 2006 church newsletter, which lets you know in no uncertain terms that it's about numbers and "the bottom line". The first page is here. The second is here. You'll need to click on a size to get it readable. Oh. It also contains references to Awana, but I digress...

Faith? "Pheh." Not necessary. We go by what "has the best probability of succeeding". The Lord build His church? "Double Pheh." After 2000 years, we've decided He isn't doing it right. Never mind the fact that in all the seven letters to the churches in Revelation, not one rebuke had anything to do with a lack of growth.

Here we see the local church transformed into a business with the pastor as CEO. Warren's "Church In A Box" (and yes, Warren does call it that!) is bought and the franchise is open for consumers. It's up to us to make the church grow by whatever means have the greatest "chance" of succeeding. It's no longer about a work of God.

"Building the church" means getting bodies and decisions, not real converts. Take the Gospel out to the lost like Jesus said in the great commission? No, no....that's inefficient. Besides all the tares we bring into the church won't be interested in evangelism.

Never mind the feeding of the flock. Never mind the building up of the saints. And regardless of the fact that they use the word "evangelism", it's meaningless because by definition of being "seeker sensitive" and "Purpose Driven", any talk of sin, righteousness and judgement (The very thing that the Holy Spirit testifies to) are off limits.

Truncated Gospel anyone?

My friends, I post this with sorrow. Believe me. This church used to be a place where there was love and true community. It died a long time ago. Just a few years ago, this church had 100 in attendence. We'd have pot lucks (hey, it's a Baptist church!) and the older women could be found in the kitchen. No one had to ask anyone to do anything. They just helped one another. Now that they've adopted this, they are down to an average of 49....and this is in a small farm town. And of course, the ones who don't care to go along with Warrenism are expendable.

Try to talk sense into them and you get "we're doing this to attract the young in the town".

"Oh really? How come you aren't getting any of them"

"Well, there aren't any".

Not kidding. That is an actual conversation. So much for sanity and biblical reasoning in the professing body of Christ.

Beloved, there is the "visible" and "invisible" church. The visible is made up of the total number of people in the local assembly whether their profession of faith in Christ is genuine or not. The invisible is made of those who are genuinely converted. And only God knows who they are. You don't build the Body of Christ by adding tares to the local assembly. You go out and evangelize. People are convicted of sin and the need for repentance and faith in Christ alone. They become genuine believers. It is then that they are part of the Church, not before. That is how it was done in Acts, and that is how our Lord Jesus Christ wants it done now.

Jesus said Himself in John 4 that "The Father seeks those who will worship in Spirit and in Truth". And I can't help wondering what our Lord thinks of us bringing in the "walking dead" to make religious motions with no God-glorifying substance. Simply put, spiritually dead people cannot worship "in spirit and truth". It's impossible.

According to Bob DeWaay who wrote "Redefining Christianity", once a church goes down the purpose driven path, it won't turn around. Too much is at stake. The tares must be entertained or the money stops flowing. To turn back means losing the tares that keep coming after the real converts have left because they aren't getting the scriptures on Sunday morning. In short, you end up with lots of bodies, but very few real Christians.

One final observation from Bob DeWaay, who has made a comment to me via email about the articles linked above:

"Warren is being disingenuous in his claim that Jesus targeted a certain market niche of people to be effective. He said "I was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." Actually, the whole picture is that He was sent to be rejected by His own people as prophesied in Isaiah 53. That is typical Warren, changing categories to confuse people."

So, I leave this to you as a "Requiem For a Dying Church". The people perish for a lack of knowlege.