Thursday, October 18, 2007

Willow Creek

In a recent article entitled, "Willow Creek Repents" in Leadership magazine, a multi-year research project into the church's ministry is recounted which was conducted by Willow Creek, and brought about some interesting findings. The research was "to know what programs and activities of the church were actually helping people mature spiritually and which were not." Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek, made the following statements regarding the research findings.

"Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for."

"We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

It is wonderful that Bill Hybels is recognizing that church programs do not automatically effect personal spiritual growth, but isn't it sad that it took a research study to lead to this realization when the Bible itself has plenty to say about the matter. Later on in the article, the executive pastor of Willow Creek says they are going to replace old assumptions and "replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture." I fear that Willow Creek has still not addressed the underlying problem: a pragmatic approach, which looks to what research says "works" rather than to the Word of God itself. Read the full article below.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html

Psalm 112:6-8

For the righteous will never be moved;
he will be remembered forever.
He is not afraid of bad news;
his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
His heart is steady; he will not be afraid,
until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.
(English Standard Version)

Monday, October 15, 2007

Joel Osteen on 60 Minutes

Joel Osteen was featured on 60 Minutes last night, interviewed by Byron Pitts. See the link below for Christian blogger Michael Spencer's thoughts on the interview. Here's a preview:

"The line about getting people into 'church' who have been out of 'church' is simply crap, to be polite. No one in this movement is in church. They’re in the worst form of the prosperity Gospel, they are abandoning the God of the Bible, and they are glorifying a man who is assisting in the humiliation of the Gospel of Jesus. Osteen is a motivational speaker, and he uses only enough Christianity as necessary to get in the pockets of the gullible. Osteen is a Gospel preacher like Col. Sanders is an army officer." "Again, as I’ve said before, every evangelical leader needs to personally and by name repudiate and separate from Osteen, and call upon him and his followers to come back into the faith that is articulated in the Apostle’s Creed."

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/reactions-to-the-60-minutes-joel-osteen-piece

Also, Westminster Seminary professor Michael Horton was interviewed on the show as well, regarding the theology of Joel Osteen. Check out the link below for his comments.
http://www.whitehorseinn.org/osteenpage.htm

Sunday, October 14, 2007

22 Theses on Paul and the Law

I'm happy to announce that my former professor, Dr. Caneday, has recently posted a newly revised 22 Theses on Paul and the Law on his blog, Biblia Theologica. His theses are extremely helpful in better understanding the apostle Paul's understanding of the Mosaic Law and how it relates to the Christian now that Christ has come. I encourage anyone interested to click on the link to the blog under the list of my favorite blogs, or just click on the link below.

http://bibliatheologica.blogspot.com/

Friday, October 12, 2007

Spiritual Warfare Part Two

I came across several helpful quotes in a book I was reading today, Missions in the Third Millenium by Stan Guthrie. Guthrie is commenting on the particular understanding of spiritual warfare advanced most powerfully by Frank Peretti's book, This Present Darkness. I think the comments Guthrie makes in regard to the worldview put forward by this book are very perceptive.

"These depict a God who lets angels and demons 'duke it out' while remaining largely on the sidelines. Much of the spiritual warfare movement implies the existence of a God who is either unwilling or unable to work without specific, targeted prayers to first neutralize the satanic hosts pervading the planet" (80). Later, Guthrie adds, "Claiming the truthfulness of a teaching based on recent experience or a new revelation is the modus operandi of a cult, not of biblical Christianity" (81). Finally, Guthrie helpfully reminds us, "If this 'warfare' emphasis was not known or needed in the church's first two millennia, why would it be for the third millennium? And if it is a true way of becoming 'equipped for every good work,' why did God take so long to reveal it? And how do proponents defend themselves against the charge that they are promoting just the latest gnostic teaching in the church? Gnosticism, long a bane of the church, is an approach to faith that says that some special, hidden knowledge available only to the few is necessary to properly live the Christian life or to do God's will. The warfare emphasis certainly seems to imply this" (82). To end on a positive note, Guthrie offers this concluding comment: "Despite its flaws, it would be a mistake to dismiss the spiritual warfare movement out of hand"..."The spiritual warfare movement rightly reminds us that we battle not only the world and the flesh, but the devil as well" (82).

Sunday, October 7, 2007

My New Church

God has been good to provide me with a new body of believers to commit myself to while here at Trinity. I have recently made Arlington Heights Evangelical Free Church my new church home. It is a wonderful church, and I am looking forward to seeing how I can get involved in serving there. I've just missed the new member classes, so I will have to wait for February for that. The past few sermons have been awesome as well, as the pastor, Colin Smith, has been preaching through the Gospel of Mark. His messages are recorded and put online for free download, so I've attached a link for those interested.

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/arlington_heights_evangelical_free_church/

Spiritual Warfare

Today I wrote a reflection on a chapter in the book "Introducing World Missions" for my Foundations of Christian Mission class; an assignment due tomorrow. I've decided to post part of it here, as it is a topic that interests and concerns me. The topic is spiritual warfare.


Spiritual warfare is a topic that has greatly interested me in the past, and right up to the present it continues to occupy my thoughts from time to time. The authors discuss the phenomenon of “spiritual mapping”, a spiritual technique which by discovery of various demonic strongholds one is able to determine the spiritual climate of a given area and is thus better able to pray and combat the forces of darkness in that location. I wish I knew the history of such thinking, but as the authors make clear it was promoted most effectively by means of Frank Peretti’s books, This Present Darkness, and its sequel Piercing the Darkness. In these books, the reader is taken behind the scenes of spiritual warfare to see what goes on in the spiritual realm, the realm of angels and demons, when Christians are engaged in the fight against the kingdom of Satan. I read both of these books when I was in my early teens, and they had a profound influence on how I perceived the spiritual world and how the Christian should engage this spiritual war. Like so much of evangelicalism, my own worldview and understanding of how to live the Christian life was radically shaped by these books. It was not these books alone, of course. Many other Christians were saying the same thing, and still are today. Today, however, I am much more critical of such an understanding of the Christian life, and I see very little, if any, value in having such an understanding in order to live the Christian life or go out on the mission field.
If there was something positive accomplished by Peretti’s books, it was, I think, that they reminded Christians of the reality of the spiritual battle we are all engaged in. It dramatically and creatively portrayed what may go on behind the scenes as Christians engage unbelievers, struggle against sin, and pray for their communities. The negative effects are seen in the very evident priority many Christians give to such an understanding of spiritual warfare, as a necessary understanding to have before one can minister effectively. To use myself as an example, I let This Present Darkness inform how I understood the events of life and determine what my behavior should be in response to sin and evil. This understanding of spiritual warfare, an understanding based upon personal experiences more often than the Bible, became the higher spiritual knowledge necessary to make effective warfare for God’s kingdom. I believe Scripture does suggest much of what This Present Darkness and other writings and experiences portray about the reality and involvement of the demonic in the world. What I have a problem with, however, is the suggested response of the believer to such knowledge. What is being suggested by so many “experts” on spiritual warfare is that believers and missionaries need to know that Satan works in this manner so that they can be effective in struggling against him. The problem is that what Scripture hints at in several passages[1] has been blown up to be a major grid through which one views the Christian life. What was intended to be in the background has been taken and forced into the foreground. Or, perhaps a better way to put it is this: we have become overly interested in what God has not chosen to reveal, and have in the process overlooked what he has revealed. Scripture certainly does portray the Christian life as a battle against the forces of darkness; and if God has revealed such a portrayal to us, then it is certainly helpful for us to know it. The means of fighting this war has also been revealed to us, however; and it is this that has been tragically neglected by so much of the church. The means of our warfare, as Scripture constantly portrays, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul responded to Christians in Colossae who were being told they had to reach a higher plain of spiritual knowledge by reminding them that all spiritual authorities and rulers were created by Christ and for Christ (Col 1:16). Paul reminded them that Christ disarmed and conquered all spiritual rulers by his death and resurrection (2:15), and that they must hold fast to Christ in order to grow spiritually (2:19). Paul’s response to the situation in Colossae was to affirm to the Christians there that yes, there are evil spiritual rulers in the heavenly realms, but the attitudes and behaviors being promoted in response to such an understanding are not right. The message of Colossians is one we all need to hear: Christ has conquered and is currently reigning. Our weapon of warfare is simply this: the gospel message. Any kind of spirituality that leaves Christ and his work as an event in the past, with little usefulness for how we go about fighting now in the present, Paul would have us reject as “empty deceit” (2:8). The church, and its missionaries, do not need some Gnostic-like, higher knowledge, beyond what God has chosen to reveal in his Word, about how to wage the war of faith. God has not hidden secret truths deep away in his Word that we must discover and exploit in order to be effective in our warfare against sin and Satan. He has revealed it plainly and openly, so that as Paul says, we may all “reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:2, 3).


[1] Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6, for example.