Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

24 June, 2007   comments: (0) Today's Methods   News, Notes, and The Worst Church Ever? "The old gospel was about an offended God; the new gospel is about a wounded us. The old gospel was about sin; the new gospel is about needs. The old gospel was about our need for righteousness; the new gospel is about our need for fulfillment. The old gospel is offensive to those who are perishing; the new gospel is attractive." In this post I'll tell you who said that, and I'll also share with you my nominee for "worst church ever". Some changes are coming up Old Truth which I'll address as well. Those old/new remarks really demonstrate the contrast between the message of yesterday, and that which often comes forth from today's pulpits and evangelism methods. It was Gary Gilley of Southern View Chapel who made those remarks in this excellent GodTube video. It's part of his series of videos on the Emerging Church, which actually spends quite a bit of time talking about the Seeker Sensitive Movement as well. In another video in his series, he points out that in the first chapter alone of the Purpose Driven Life book, there are no less than 42 biblical inaccuracies, 18 out of context passages, and 9 distorted bible translations. I'm sure they are not really the worst churches ever, but every once in a while I encounter one that sends chills up my spine. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago which deviant church had this effect on me the most, I would have said it was the she-god worshipping Lutheran church at herchurch.org. But that was then and this is now: I recently ran across Trinity Episcopal Church, which is apparently the oldest church in Manhattan. The building itself has some very interesting history to it, but that's where my fascination with the church ended. If you browse around on their videos page you will learn the following: They are proud of their clown-lead communion service. At the end of their "hip hop service" video, one of their priests lets you know that he thinks "homophobia" is wrong or intolerant. If you didn't know it already, you'll learn that their denomination has a female priest at the helm. You'll find out that this church was ideally positioned for outreach after the 9/11 attacks, but likely had nothing to offer but a powerless liberal gospel. Watch the videos of mayors and other government officials and dignitaries endorsing it with their visits. This church is truly one of the world's darlings. You might remember my "God is Not Your Buddy" post in which I included a couple of video links of Jesus playing baseball, riding on a tandem bike, and horsing around with the guys. Ingrid has been covering a blog post from the Creative Pastor from that same church; he's recommending (what amounts to) a soft core porn movie at the theaters. His blog calls it a "Great Movie", but what he doesn't tell you is what you'll read on this Christian movie review website: "There are numerous scenes of graphic sexual activity and nudity. Language and drug content are also both pervasive. F-words were too numerous to keep count." I guess we've come a long way since the day when pastors like Horatius Bonar warned of the dangers in reading novels. Somebody tell me, did a hacker break-into the always relevant Monday Morning Insight blog? Had any of us posted this in their comments, I'd expect to have the Pharisee tag being hurled in our direction. Who knows why they released this post, but it actually has some good things to say, and is essentially a rebuke against the majority of what's found on the rest of their blog. You can almost hear the crickets chirping in the comment section though, with an unusually low number of commenters showing up to praise the post. Finally, one scheduling note for Old Truth. For the weeks between the 4th of July and Labor Day in early September, I'm going to be dropping down to 3 or 4 posts per week. I'll be using the reduced blogging schedule to deal with a large stack of books that I have sitting here next to me. And since I live in a climate where sunshine is hard to come by, I hope to be doing that reading from my outside patio. Lord willing, I'll be sharing some of those book excerpts with you through the fall and winter months. Although I'm certain I won't read all of this, perhaps I'll make a dent in a few of these: A Heart For God's Glory The Christian's Reasonable Service, 4 Vols The Path of True Godliness Martyrland: Persecution of the Scottish Covenanters Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology Biographies: Whitefield, Lloyd-Jones, George Mueller The Letters of John Newton My Friday series on The Christian in Complete Armour will be ending next week as well. I hope it was a blessing to you just as it was to me. I'll continue to post excerpts from this Puritan era classic at least a few times per year. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/.id.2.pid.717   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism