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

 

20 October, 2005   comments: (0) Today's Worldliness   Teaching Their Flock to Flirt With The World It only stands to reason that pastors help set moral boundaries for their church, by the things that they speak in favor of. An example of this are pastors who publicly approve of secular music with morally bankrupt lyrics. What's worse is when these pastors use such songs as an evangelism tool. This week, mega-church pastor Ed Young's CP website gave rave reviews to one such pastor. "CP" stands for Creative Pastors (or Compromising Pastors depending upon who you ask). Here's what their site had to say: Love Shack Ba-by! Can't get the song outta my head now! . . . This 19-month-old church plant decided to catch the attention of their community (consisting of an average age of 36) by using the jams they would all recognize. Their goal was to squash the prevalent opinion that church is "boring and the music sucks!" They flooded the area with 20,000 of these psychedelic flyers to draw in the crowds. Then they completed it by decorating with "hippy" flowers and an inflatable tiki hut "Love Shack" right on stage. Their band learned the music to the song, re-wrote the words...and it was on! Tell me this song isn't just playing over and over in your head... They may have given the song a much-needed lyrics-upgrade, but the original words by the popular rock group "The B-52's", are what's going through the heads of unbelievers who receive one of their evangelism flyers. Here's a sampling of the lyrics: Lyrics: Well it's set way back in the middle of a field, Just a funky old shack and I gotta get back. Glitter on the mattress. Glitter on the highway. Glitter on the front porch. Glitter on the hallway. The Love Shack is a little old place where we can get together. Love Shack, that's where it's at! Huggin' and a kissin', dancin' and a lovin', wearin' next to nothing It's a popular idea now days, to use secular rock music in an effort to make your church more relevant and relate-able to the world. You might remember last month when I reported on the church that handed-out poker chips to the community; the chips had their church's name on them. During the offering, their's was one of the many churches playing music from the more mellow, but secular none the less, singer - "Sting". Another church recently played "We Can Work it Out" by the Beatles during worship. And of course, there's the church that was giving away tickets to the U2 Concert. The music concern is not limited to the Ed Young type evangelism strategies. Sometimes I think certain pastors sacrifice discernment on the altar of "cultural relevance", even in their own tastes for music. Consider Perry Noble, the Senior Pastor of one South Carolina church that recently boasted having over 4,000 in attendance. His church website says that "God gave [our pastor] a passion to one day plant a church that seriously made a difference in the lives of the people that attended". But on this pastor's publicly-viewable blog - he recently wrote: [My wife] and I were driving home on Saturday night. (She has a sweet car--a convertible...and she let's me drive it on the weekend!) Anyway, on the radio station we were listening to they had an "all request" night...and someone requested, "Ice Ice Baby." I was so excited! I know this is going to ruin the view that some of you have of me--but I love that song. And if you are anywhere around my age--there was a time that you loved it too. In fact, you still know the words, "Rollin' in my five point O with my rag top down so my hair can blow..." Go ahead, finish it--you know you want to! So here we are, jammin' to this song--and we pull up to a stoplight. Do you know what my first reaction was? You guessed it--I reached and turned the radio down...I didn't want anyone to actually see me enjoying that song. But then I sat there and thought, "Wait a minute--I like this song--I don't even know the people in the cars around me...and I am letting what they might think about me control my behavior--NO WAY!" So I cranked it back up... In speaking favorably of this song on his blog, this undiscerning Senior Pastor sends a message to his several-thousand member church, that music with lyrics like this are "okay": Lyrics: I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom. Deadly, when I play a dope melody. The girlies on standby, waving just to say hi. Did you stop? no -- I just drove by. Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis. Rockman lovers driving lamborghinis. Cut like a razor blade so fast, other djs say, damn If my rhyme was a drug, I'd sell it by the gram. One has to wonder, would it even be possible for pastors like these to carry on this way, and then turn around and preach a sermon on 1 John 2:15: "Do not love the world or the things in the world". We live in a time when undiscerning pastors are dropping the standards for Christianity, by teaching their flocks to conform to the world. Most concerning of all, are the times that it comes under the banner of "evangelism". UPDATE 5/25/07: See this page for additional (very troubling) developments at this church. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.81   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism