-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Megachurch leaders such as Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Robert Schuller have principles like the elastic in an old woman’s drawers: It will stretch to fit almost any shape! They have problems with principle. It seems their ambition has outrun their character.
In deciding right and wrong, character does not consider friends or foes, personality or position; family or faith; reputation or riches, but will apply absolute truth that comes from the Scripture.
The above three leaders of aberrational Christianity are very careful to never offend anyone with such “barbaric” teachings as personal sin, repentance, judgment, hell and the like; but they are not careful about their attacks upon Bible believing Christians, especially fundamentalists! Fundamentalists are people mushy evangelicals love to hate. Strange isn’t it! The above trio (and their long list of desperate wannabes) tells us to be tolerant of homosexuals, Muslims, even Liberals yet they refuse to be tolerant of Bible-believing Christians! That shows inconsistency and lack of character.
An Emergent Church leader, Brian McLaren and one of Time magazine’s 25 leading evangelicals has a character on page 9 of his A New Kind of Christianity declaring, “I don’t dislike Fundamentalists, taken individually–they tend to be pretty nice folks. Get them together in a group though, and I get nervous. I start to twitch and break out in a rash.” Brian is cut from the same cloth as the above reverends, and I think maybe the twitching is caused by a vitamin deficiency!
All right, let’s see whether the megachurch and emergent church people have any character. In an article from the USA Today Rick Warren claims that Mormonism is just another Christian denomination rather than a false religion. He said, “I’m not going to get into a debate over the non-essentials. I won’t try to change other denominations.” Of course not, since he wants to cooperate with those groups however apostate they may be. As more religious groups listen to him, more of his bilge will be swallowed by them, thereby enriching his prestige, power, and popularity.
Rick and other compromisers use the perverted Message Bible to lend support for their unscriptural teachings. In I Cor. 6:9-11, Paul speaks about the “effeminate,” “fornicators,” “adulterers,” etc., who will not inherit the kingdom of God; however, the Message version changed the passage entirely to make it inoffensive. Rick and others knowingly use a corrupt text to construct their shaky foundation for a spurious gospel and a specious lifestyle. Not very principled.
Rick said that he doesn’t care what “your doctrine is,” but God seems to be concerned since He told us to search out the truth as did the people in Berea in Acts 17 who checked out their teachers to be sure they were preaching the truth. People who don’t care much about doctrine are usually people who are very weak on doctrine. The Apostle Paul reminds us in John 4:24 that we “must worship him in spirit and in truth” and Christ reminded us the truth would set us free. In addition, when the Word is corrupted, the walk soon gets that way as is revealed with Rick’s use of deception in defending himself, his cooperating with ungodly groups, his singing of Jimi Hendrix’s drug promoting song “Purple Haze,” to 30,000 people at his church, etc.
Warren said: “Rather than threaten sinners with fire and brimstone, we believe in attraction evangelism. We believe in loving people into the Kingdom.” However, that is not a biblical concept and if you really love people, you will tell them the truth since truth is essential to knowing Christ. Rick doesn’t seem to know that it is not love but hate when you refuse to tell people the truth.
Warren refused to speak the truth to a Jewish group in Los Angeles where he managed to not mention the name of Christ once! Wonder what Stephen [Acts 7] would think of that?
If a person is not committed to truth, he can sink into a vile lifestyle and not be challenged, convinced, or convicted about it. Most people do not consider truth as absolute and love is the driving and motivating force. However, when you compromise with evil its “evilness” is softened. Soon, the evil will not seem so bad and soon one will begin to condone and defend what earlier he had condemned and denounced. In fact, he will be embarrassed at his former belief.
Bill Hybels of Willow Creek fame had a Muslim cleric speak in his huge Chicago area church
(as did Robert Schuller) and sat silent while the Muslim told the crowd that Muslims believe in Jesus more than they did! Hybels, if he had been principled instead of a pussyfooter, would have stood and rebuked him in front of the crowd, “You are wrong. Muslims do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible. You do not believe He was and is God nor do you believe that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again for our justification. You were disingenuous, devious, and dishonest in your statement today, and I apologize to every Christian everywhere for inviting you to this meeting. And I ask a holy God to forgive me of this spectacular sin I have committed today.” No, Bill was silent supposing that maybe “silence is golden” when it is usually yellow.
Robert Schuller has been spewing what is now Warren’s unscriptural teaching for many years in his books, television shows, and ministers’ conferences attracting thousands of weak lemmings to it, fatally infecting them.
Schuller boasted how he started the megachurch movement in 1970: “There were no megachurches 32 years ago–we were the closest thing to it.” Afraid not. Maybe Bob never knew about the huge Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis (pastored by a friend of mine) that had thousands in attendance back in the 40s. The building would seat 10,000 people plus 1500 more in the choir. It boasted the largest permanent choir in the world and the most popular national religious radio program of the time. It also had one of the first religious television shows.
No, Bobby was not the first nor the best. Of course, Cadle Tabernacle was a fundamentalist congregation so maybe it doesn’t count. Moreover, Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Temple Baptist in Detroit, First Baptist in Dallas, Landmark Baptist in Cincinnati and others averaged 2,000 or more in attendance each Sunday and all preceded Schuller’s glass house in California. Maybe Schuller is uninformed about modern church history or does not know the definition of megachurch! And evidently he never heard of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle (Baptist) in London that reached 6,000 people every Sunday morning and night in the 1860s.
The trio boasts about using marketing methods to provide people with what they want, not what they need and they have become apostles of P. T. Barnum and their services are often side shows featuring freaks from the entertainment, sports, and religious worlds.
The megachurch leaders don’t know that a pastor is a preacher not a psychologist, a teacher not a therapist, a shepherd not a salesman. Preachers like Warren, Hybels, Schuller, and Company are not leading sheep but are usually driving herds of goats.
———-
Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 13 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years His most recent book is ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse! His websites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com.)
I went to a MegaChurch on the East Coast for a few years. The whole concept of dealing with sin was soft pedaled in a very how shall we say, mental assent, kind of way. I wasn’t until I needed maritial counseling that I discovered it was all pablum meant to keep you coming to collect the weekly donation. The entire notion of personal responsibility was skewed to the point of poltical correctness based on gender. Here’s what I mean, the pastor of that church wrote a book, in it he said to the effect, “we are not responsible how other people repsond to us.” Sounds great doesn’t it, you flip someone the bird and you’re not responsible if you offended them, you take someone’s parking space and you’re not responsible for them getting angry, hey that’s your problem, right? The problem is Jesus told us that if we know someone has something against us that we were to leave the offering on the alter to go be reconciled with that person (as far as it depended on us). Since this particular church bought into the politically correct Women’s Victimization movement, whatever bad behavior the wife did was automatically discounted and then blamed on the Husband, after all her unhappiness is the fault of her husband as he is head of the family, in other words in name only, all responsibility but no authority or respect to carry it out.
In fact, it was so skewed that they had a singles group catering to 30+ adults (I use the term adult loosely) the women were literally told that whenever they were faced with a situation where they were in sharp disagreement with their partner and they were questioning in their mind whether they wanted to continue the relationship (marriage), they were to have the person (male) removed by the legal authorities under the DV laws (even though no physical striking occured) to give them the “space” to decide what they want for themselves. In fact, one woman who went to this group actually bragged about doing it. Under this scenero, as a male you were not allowed to disagree with your female partner to the point of doing something else. The power of the word NO was to be respected and obeyed at all times by the male, if she doesn’t agree you can’t do anything if you don’t agree, she does as she pleases because you are to live harmoniously with her and be the responsible person. Based on her being a woman, you had to compromise everytime in a manner that benefited her. Never mind, that 99.99% of the time you went along to be a good sport when it didn’t harm you, that 0.01% action of not giving in was a mortal sin and worthy of divorce or being tossed from the home. To normal people, living harmoniously is a two way street and it is not based on the concept of victimization.
The pastor sounded great on the pulpit, but when the actual practice came to be done, it was who you are, not what you did. You can guess what happened to the marriage as a result of that counseling.