From there, the conversation steered itself towards some recent books he had read. As he told me his opinions of these books, we analyzed those opinions back and forth until he stopped and decided to read me this excerpt from page 101 (softback) of a book entitled “Tangled Ropes” which is the autobiography of retired professional wrestler Superstar Billy Graham written by Graham himself along with help from Keith Elliot Greenberg

But now, in January, the dry, cool air had tamed the desert. We talked about Jerry Graham a little bit, and analyzed the wrestling business. It was a strange world of trickery.

“Do you ever feel bad about conning the fans?” Brick asked.

It’s a subject I’d contemplated a lot.

“I think we’re doing them a favor,” I responded. “Living in a delusional world of fantasy is good for them. It’s an escape hatch for their frustrations. The violence is organized. They can scream obscenities at the heels, right in our faces. But imagine what would happen if they did the same thing to their bosses, or some cop who just gave them a ticket.”

I glanced over at Brick, smiling broadly at my dissertation.

“You go to wrestling to release stress,” I continued. “Then, you go home calmer and relaxed. I mean, they call us ‘wrestlers’. But really, we’re kind of like mental therapists.”

I drove on, feeling pretty good about myself and my most recent career path.

The very first thing I thought about after hearing my friend read this excerpt to me was…..

the church

the gears in my head started to spin but there was no smoke coming out of my brain….

The words that came from the autobiography of a retired professional wrestler sounded too much like the clergy/laity relationship of the seeker-sensitive, purpose-driven church of today. I thought about these words that Superstar Billy Graham (later I was to find out that he had been an evangelist before entering the world of pro wrestling) stated and I really wondered if this was the same mentality that many pastors viewed their congregations/fans as being. I thought about the non-legitimate pastors that are in the ‘ministry’ to con people and wondered if their conscience bothered them. I thought about if pastors see their services as simply going through the motions and doing the congregations/fans a huge favor or really trying to develop an atmosphere of learning, worship, and fellowship.

I then turned my thoughts over to the congregations/fans and wondered about their motives of going to church.

Do we go to church to learn, worship, and fellowship or do you go for a couple hours to the ‘weekly escape hatch’ and get away from the frustrations of life that the pastor claims you should be having victory over. However in reality, the victory is not present and you experience week after week of being blamed for the victory not working because of ’secret sin’, lacking faith, disagreeing with the pastor…

Do we go to church to learn, worship, and fellowship or do you go for a couple hours to experience the delusional world of dominionalism that seems to only work at a restaurant Sunday after church?

Do we go to church to learn, worship, and fellowship or do you go to participate in the ‘organized violence’ of ’spiritual warfare’ screaming mantra chants and Christianized obscenities at the devil demanding the drug demon to leave Fifth Avenue from your plush sanctuary on Church Street never witnessing or making an impact physically on Fifth Avenue? Or do you go hoping that one day after you have ruined your vocal cords from yelling too much, God will kill off the “DEMONcrats” and ‘reform America’ to be the nation of Republicans, homeschoolers, anti-lottery, butterfly-kissing “Ned Flanders” type of feminized men?

But the sobering reality is found in Graham’s statement when he asked the reality shattering question

But imagine what would happen if they did the same thing to their bosses, or some cop who just gave them a ticket.”

And the brutal honest truth is that in many of these dominion oriented churches, you are expected to treat your boss who treats you bad as ‘great Satan’ and pray for his firing, eventual poverty of the inability to find gainful employment, and/or his future children are born retarded. You are expected to treat a police officer who gave you that speeding ticket on Sunday on the way to church as ‘great Satan’ and pray for God’s wrath to come down on him and the city he patrols. You are expected the tell that disagreeing Christian in public that you ‘love’ them but pray in private that they will miss the rapture for not being one of the ‘chosen ones’.

Because you’re a ‘King’s Kid’
Because they ‘touched God’s anointed’
Because they ‘exposed’ your weak point (curse of Ham)
Because you’re a “Super-Apostle Mega Prophet”
Because you’re the ‘mand of gawdddddddd’
Because you’re in Gideon’s Army
Because you’re a member of the “Joshua Generation”
Because you’re the remnant

It works only in the two hours in the sanctuary on Sunday mornings before performing the dominion experiment at the diner afterward. The ‘real’ world that occurs four hours a week on Sundays that is totally unreal the rest of the week. But if we just pray harder, give more money, vote Republican, rebuild Ezra’s temple, hold a mega fast on 9-09-09 and a ‘if my people shall humble themselves’ fast-a-thon…. That ‘real’ world that occurs four hours a week on Sundays will be forced on our society to where the ‘fantasy’ world will be cast down and the ‘real Christian world’ will be reality one future day that all will have to follow.

When you leave that ’secular’ job and go to work for or create “Christian Company USA”.

You tell your boss that doom from God is coming to him and his family for the next four generations because he treats you like crap and see what he does…. He treats that statement as a communicated threat and fires you and if needed, gets a restraining order against you.

You tell that police officer as he writes you that speeding ticket on Sunday morning that he is touching God’s anointed and he better tear up that ticket or else and see what he does… He shows you what real authority he has when he puts you in the backseat of that police cruiser and takes you to jail and if the magistrate / judge hears the same thing, you may ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation…

You go to pray for someone’s healing and decides that you need to place your knee in their stomach knocking them down as the condition for healing and see what happens… An assault charge.

Do we go to church to release stress and go home calmer and relaxed to get wound back up for another 166 hours until you repeat the cycle next week or do you go to worship, fellowship, and eventually learn how to have a prayer life and disciplined Bible reading life to daily manage stress?

Do we really want to hear a sermon from a true pastor of God or do we want a three point sermon from a pentecostal psychotherapist? Do we really want to hear a sermon from a true pastor of God or do we want a ‘positive prophecy’ from a pop-culture prophet?

At the end of every Sunday, as the pentecostal psychotherapist and pop-culture prophet lays their head on their pillow to sleep, one has to wonder if they can without a clear conscience feel pretty good about themselves and their current career path? One also has to wonder as they ‘lay me down to sleep…..’ if they can without a clear conscience feel pretty good about themselves and their current Christian walk?

I wonder at the end of every Sunday, if I can even remember what the pastor preached on and if can apply it to my life somehow. As I wrestle with the issue of fellowship, I grieve at the shallowness of other Christians who only speak to me when they need their ‘Techno geek nerd’ to fix their computer. I grieve at the shallowness of other Christians who only speak to me when they need to recruit potential ushers or small group members. I grieve at the shallowness of other Christians who only speak to me when they see a single naive person and want to ‘be friends’ to attempt to bring you into their MLM pyramid scheme. I grieve at the shallowness of other Christians who only speak to me to tell me that America is doomed unless we vote for their candidate.

I deeply grieve at the shallowness of other Christians who only speak to me (in the name of fellowship) when they want to turn my salvation into another ’superstition’, faith into ‘formula’, spirituality into ’superficiality’, fraternity into ‘fanaticism’, and ‘anointing’ into ‘activism / affluence / agenda’.

I want to worship. I want to fellowship. But most importantly, I want to learn and put into action the words of God in my own life.

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Why We Really Go To Church

In the video below, you will hear the story of ‘Ronnie’. A seeker-sensitive Christian who church hops and loves his fifteen minute worship block and his comedy, tragedy, and stories.

The video is labeled as ’satire’ while at the same time gets the point across about the fallacies of the purpose-driven, church growth movement. I fail to see the ‘coincidence’ (reference the 2:26 point of the video between ‘Ronnie” and today’s church people. Instead, I see a pervasive spirit where we value our entertainment over evangelism and our easy-believism over the straight and the narrow road. Even though (referencing the 2:38 point of the video) the makers of this video per their own words…

…are confident that churches across this nation could not possibly have anyone like Ronnie attending

Could they?

I came to the horrid conclusion (after church this morning) that the answer to their question is unfortunately

YES

The church sang a hymn and some worship choruses. The church lit the prophet’s candle to start the Advent season and read the Scriptures in regards to the hope of Jesus’ arrival and quickly talked about Advent. The church took up the offering. However, the church went to a ‘presentation’ that came across like a ’spiritualized 30 minute infomercial’ that talked about their world missions outreach and a yard sale next weekend to raise money for missions, sacks to purchase toiletries, socks, etc. for a local homeless ministry, and small Christmas stockings to stuff with small childrens items for another local branch of a nationally known outreach ministry.

Giving and outreach is not wrong in and of itself. I do not have a problem with any of the three groups that were highlighted this morning. However, the problem came after the presentations when the empty sacks and small Christmas stockings appeared at the front and the “sales pitch” began asking for people who were interested in the sacks and/or stockings to stand up (next time, a countdown clock like they use on the six home shopping channels I have on my cable tv subscription could add to the effect…. being sarcastic here but with a point).

The majority of the people stood up while some remained seated (designed to ‘convict’ those sitting down to stand up). Some people left in disgust of the tasteless sales pitch. I would have joined them in leaving but there was a part of me that was very curious to see what would happen next (and one day, curiosity may eventually kill this cat) while thinking another announcement of going to the fellowship hall to retrieve the sacks and/or stockings after service would have been sufficient. After all the people who were interested received their sacks and/or stockings, the benediction was offered up. The elders took their place to pray for the personal needs of the congregation and the congregation was dismissed. There was no ‘announcement after service’. This was the service…..

I went to the restroom and eventually to my car in a state of anger and disgust because I realized and pondered the thought during that walk to the parking lot …

THE ONLY TIME I OPENED MY BIBLE UP THIS MORNING AT CHURCH WAS WHEN AT THE END OF THE SERVICE, I OPENED UP THE BIBLE TO PLACE MY BULLETIN IN MY BIBLE.

You can be free to interpret both the boldness of that last statement and also the ‘all-capital letters’ of that last statement per the Internet standard of ’shouting’ and ‘anger’.

There was no sermon or I ‘failed’ to ’see the sermon’. I believe the first observation was the correct one. I am wondering if we have crossed the line of Godly conviction being seared to where if the purpose-drive seeker sensitive church was to see the Ronnie video, they would really believe that people like me who are disgusted with the purpose-drivel seeker sinsitive church are the ‘Real-life Ronnies’ instead of the de-sensitized two-dimensional mass produced Christian clones who suffer from both a physical and spiritualized form of attention deficit disorder who leave when the church down the street offers a bigger romper room with new games for the kids and a ‘Gag Gospel’ (they think gag means joke but gag means vomiting to me).

My name is not ‘Ronnie”. My name is not ‘troublemaker’. My name is not ‘obsolete’. My name is not ‘accuser of the brethren’. My name is not ‘Ananias and Sapphira’. My name is not ‘mud’. My name is not ‘dissenter and preventer of progress’. My name is not ‘Luddite in the Spirit’. My name is not ‘Spiritual Baalam’. My name is not ‘Great Satan’……

My name is ‘child of God, eternally secure’…

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My Name Is Not Ronnie

The portion of the article that stated…

The church is also planning to change its name…..

How is the name going to change? If you read the article, one will begin to see that the word ‘Baptist’ is going to be removed from the church’s name.

Why?

According to a member of the church’s “public relations committee”

“We are trying to remove any boundaries that people have associated with Baptists and making it known that we are contemporary and nonjudgmental,”

Is the reasoning really due to what was stated above?

Or could the real reasoning be either a ‘bait and switch’ tactic where we appear ‘non-denominational’, ‘contemporary’, and ‘nonjudgmental’ and then ’sneak in’ the “Baptistese” consisting of the same doctrine with different ‘buzzwords’ once a person is deeply ingrained or indoctrinated.

If the reasoning is really due to what was stated by the church, then can we assume that what is really being displayed is a ‘fence-walking’ mentality of wanting the side of Baptist affiliation / resources behind the scenes while at the same time trying to imply in public an independent non-affiliated mentality.

By removing the key identity of the denomination from the church name, what we have here is really in one sense ‘identity theft’.

Wikipedia defines the term Identity theft in reference to financial matters as:

…a term used to refer to fraud that involves pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or get other benefits.

In pretending to be someone else, there is a hidden desire to deny who the identity thief really is because of shame, reputation, or lacking the skills, knowledge, and resources to do things the legal way.

Isn’t this what seeker-sensitive churches that are sucked in the vortex of the church growth movement are doing spiritually?

frauding the ’seekers’ by pretending to be someone else (that they are really not) in order to gain influence, affluence, fatten the bank account, or grow the membership count.

A church’s denominational affiliation is the church’s identity. When removing the church’s denominational affiliation from the church name, isn’t the church trying their best to pretend to be some other church (that got famous) in a hidden desire to suppress who the church really is because of a shame, past reputation, or lacking the true power of God to see miracles and growth the Bible way in an attempt to to gain influence, affluence, fatten the bank account, or grow the membership count?

Go drive down the streets where churches are located and look at the names and denominational affiliation on the church signs. When you see ‘Reformed’ and/or ‘Presbyterian’ in a church name, you expect to see Reformed doctrine, the Protestant Reformation, and Calvanism. When you see ‘Baptist’ in a church name, you expect to see an emphasis on the Word of God, evangelism, and less move of the Holy Spirit. When you see “Pentecostal’, ‘Charismatic’, and/or ‘Word of Faith’ in a church name, you expect to see an emphasis on the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

It comes across to me that what is the root of all of this is the love of money fueled by a mentality of fraud / dishonesty trying to ‘market’ yourselves as being “contemporary and nonjudgmental” while the world laughs at all the Jesus Junk, cut-rate “Christian Hannah Montana” entertainment, Sunday School teachers who ran Enron, televangelists who commit adultery, and canned cliches.

What happens when this church growth movement fails? You ‘re-invent’ yourself and you ‘re-identity theft’ yourself denying that you were a part of the last church growth movement while trying to emulate another successful church’s techniques in the name of being ‘contemporary’ and fall into a vicious cycle that becomes cyclic and repetitive. Do we really think that doing these church growth programs to become ‘culturally relevant’ and ‘contemporary’ (while raging the ‘culture war’ in our voter activism and our ten minute two part sermonette) that one day the world will no longer scoff, persecute, and ridicule us to one day eventually join us?

It seems that the end result of a new contemporary ’seeker-sensitive’ church is to create a perfect world on the inside with hip services and great tasting coffee coffee and to create a perfect world on the outside with no enemies of God within our cities (because we have either become hip with them to save them but really sell out to them or we have voted ‘God’s candidates’ into office who eliminated temptation and our enemies). Doesn’t this sound way too much like the same common thread that runs prevalent within the religious right movement, the word of faith movement, the charismatic movement, the apostolic / prophetic movement, the Lakeland Revival, and the third-wave spiritual-mapping movement?

A common thread of a Kingdom Now / Christian Reconstructionalism / Dominionism mentality where we must somehow re-establish the kingdom of God on Earth ‘by any means necessary’ thus preparing the way for or enabling the Second Coming of Christ.

Where postmodernism is ‘all roads lead to heaven’, what we have here (via the common thread that runs through the Kingdom Now / Christian Reconstructionalism / Dominionism / triumphalism mentality) is really ‘Christian Predominionalism’ where…

all roads will lead to a culture and society ruled exclusively by God’s Law per the Bible, to the exclusion of secular law (when their own God stated in Titus 3:1 to “Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work…..)

No matter what is done, the world is still going to scoff, sneer, and snicker and still remain outside our four walled ‘corporation’. They are not going to ‘just come’ to our buildings and our imitation “ST. Arbucks” because we ‘built it’. Instead of ‘church growth’ seminars, why doesn’t the church go back to the ‘growing church Bible’ and follow the example in the Book of Acts and go out to fulfill the Great Commission, testify of salvation, pray without ceasing for miracles, and boldly proclaiming the faith?

The early church did not war against culture. They warred against principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. The early church didn’t need a perfect world to remain a church. They died daily and crucified their imperfect flesh to become a powerful and perfecting church in the midst of an imperfect world.

We see the history and the result of a church that is still existent to this day. And we want to replace history with story and a ‘growing church’ with ‘church growth’. All of this without realizing that the identity theft is taking place. It starts with removing the name of a denomination from a church name to ‘remove stereotypes’. Where will it end, removing the word Christian and calling yourself fellowship to ‘remove persecution’? We have allowed identity theft to take place within the church and it stole more than just our identity and our name.

Like what takes place within the financial realm of identity theft, it also stole power, authority, credit, and reputation. The person who is the unfortunate victim of identity theft within the financial realm has to go through a lengthy and painful process to attempt to restore the name, identity, power, authority, credit, and reputation to what it once was.

The church who is the willing participant of spiritual identity theft usually never repents and turns away from their deeds to get their name, identity, power, authority, credit, and reputation restored. Usually they try another ’scheme’ of pragmatics and get further sucked in the vortex, further seared in their conscience, and / or gets further ‘desperate’ for the program to work to the point of throwing more money and resources eventually going spiritually bankrupt.

And someone usually ‘bails them out’ to repeat the same mistake again……

Sounds like the US economy doesn’t it? And I am afraid that both the US economy and the seeker sensitive church may have to hit ‘rock bottom’ before change and reform can be made.

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Identity Theft

When you hear the term ‘public relations’, what is some of the first things you think of? Marketing, press releases to media, customer services, etc. The point I am trying to make is that you usually think of something from either the ‘corporate’ realm or from marketing consultants.

I thought it was ‘tacky and taboo’ when I found out months ago that the organizers of the Lakeland Revival hired a public relations firm from New York City to ‘blitz and saturate’ the media with ‘press releases’.

But now, I’ve heard it all….

I saw this article about a coffee shop birthed from a church. What really caught my attention while reading this article was not just ‘another church’ deciding to open ‘another Christian coffee shop’. What dropped my jaw was the fact that the article revealed that this church actually has a “public relations” committee when a member from the committee was quoted in the article.

I thought about committees in churches and their purpose within church government. Committees are something that has been in many church structures throughout the years. From staff committees, building committees, missions/outreach committees, christian education committees, and the much needed technology committee, meaningful contributions have come forth when people of a common goal come together and pool their resources to give God their best efforts at ministry and discipleship.

But the “public relations” committee is a new one on me. Sounds like the ‘old school’ mentality has merged with the ‘new school’ church growth programs….

When I ‘link surfed’ the church’s link from the news article and finally got to the church’s web page and found this page, my hunch was correct when I read the first line of…

Southside is a Purpose Driven Body of believers. Founded in 1894,…..

explains it all….. doesn’t it?

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The “Public Relations” Committee

From reading this article over at ‘the Slice’, it appears that the answer is “yes” as Saddleback invited ‘the Slice’ owner Ingrid Schlueter to partake of ‘the Saddleback experience via the 2008 Purpose Driven Church Gathering (May 20-22) at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California with an offer to have her ‘travel needs’ handled by Saddleback’s travel agent.

Ingrid did not accept the ‘Saddleback Kickback’

Instead she ‘kicked backed’ at Saddleback with an excellent, well thought out response.
Way to go Ingrid!!!!!

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The Saddleback Kickback

Listen to this man!!! A man lying on his death bed wanting the answer of how to receive and know that he has received forgiveness because he knew death was on the horizon and did not know where he would end up in the after life.

This man was smart enough to know that forgiveness could not come from within. He knew that it had to come from God and God alone.

No drawing for a $100.00 Wal-Mart Gift Card, no ten part series of spicing up the marriage bed, no ’spiritually correct’ terminology such as ‘pre-Christian’ and ‘celebration Sunday’, no postmodern ‘the answer is inside you’ psychobabble, no meaning of his purpose, no ’send me $62.00 for 12 months to receive the Psalms 62:12 blessing, no “lets put an XBox in the children’s church”, and no ‘lets paint the walls black, light candles, and have couches in the sanctuary’ was going to answer his question.

He really wanted the answer that every ’seeker’ really wants to know? Where will I spend eternity in the afterlife? The truth is, the ’seekers’ do not want the same stuff listed above either. They want and need a answer that is truth.

That answer is Jesus Christ and Christ alone. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. He went to the cross in our place and died on the cross to bear our sin and arose on the third day to have victory over sin, death, hell, and the grave..

Ask Jesus for forgiveness, repent and believe in Faith

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What The “Seekers” Really Want