Why we follow pastors and teachers

A well-known scene from the movie Cool Hand Luke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnO9Jyz82Ps
http://www.samefacts.com/2013/01/popular-culture/film-popular-culture/special-guest-star-weekend-film-recommendation-cool-hand-luke/

Have you ever pondered the question – why do we follow pastors and spiritual leaders? I don’t mean “follow” as on Twitter, but why do we allow these people to have such an influence on our lives?If you mention Billy Graham or Joel Osteen or Rick Warren, you’ll get various head-nods from just about everyone.Why do we follow these nationally-known men (and women)?

There may be a variety of reasons, but at the core we should be looking to these people for a deeper understanding of God and our relationship to Him. That is their specialty after all. I wouldn’t expect one of them to fix my leaky plumbing, but I should expect spiritual wisdom and direction from them.

That’s why a recent text from Rick Warren is so frustrating.

Failure is not disqualification. Everybody fails.

— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) February 16, 2013

Huh?

Okay, I get that it is supposed to be motivational. I’m supposed to pause and consider a recent failure, pull my boots up and get back on that horse. The problem is, I could get that advice from just about any of today’s self-help gurus.

Deepak Chopra said failure contains the “seeds of success.”

Ben Franklin said something about failing to plan is planning to fail.

William Faulkner said “No man is a failure who is enjoying life.”

Mike Ditka said “failure isn’t fatal.”

Maybe I expect too much from pastors. Or maybe, as a nation, we expect too little from them these days.

Warren’s trite little saying may make us feel good, but it holds little spiritual meat to it – it doesn’t guide us back to an understanding of God. If anything, it puts more emphasis on us and our own works. Failure can have deeply spiritual context and consequences, yet Warren leads us to none of that.

Sure, 140 characters doesn’t give you much room for explanation, but at least give me a link to a sermon or text. Hey, even just a hashtag and Bible verse. Maybe Psalm 73:26 – “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Now, doesn’t that convey so much more than “Failure is not disqualification…”?

There’s even greater context of what the Bible says about failure – such as God causes some people to fail. Or how failing to live up to God’s standard (the law) is sin.

Going past that, consider the heretical statement of Warren’s second sentence – “Everybody fails.”

Uhh, even Jesus?

We know Jesus was tempted but did not sin. He accomplished what He came to earth to do. He lived a perfect, sinless life so He could pay the ransom-price for my condemned soul and yours. Far from being a failure.

If Warren had said “There is only One who never failed,” I could almost give him a pass on this vague, feel-good statement. But, he didn’t.

Is it enough that we could argue Warren only meant to encourage, and not imply that Jesus was also a failure? No, because remember Warren’s purpose. He’s supposed to be a shepherd, leading us to a closer understanding of God and our relationship to Him.

Warren’s statement certainly doesn’t do that. His comment reads more like a Fortune Cookie than God-inspired words.

Instead of pointing us to the failure of our own efforts, Warren should be pointing out that even though we are failures, Christ lived that perfect life for us. By Him, we are made wholly perfect. Only in Christ can we find that absence of failure that all of us seek.

Yet, instead of seeing statements like Warren’s for what it really is (useless babble), millions embrace it and soak in the folly of it like it’s a hot tub. Today’s Christians need to wise up, so we can see how unwise men like this really are. We need to wise up, or we’ll continue to let men like Warren keep us from enjoying the depths of God. We need to wise up so we can hold men like Warren accountable for their role as shepherd. Until we start demanding more, we’ll continue to get less – and that’s pithy enough to Tweet. #2Peter2:17-19.

Catholics aren’t Christians

This is a picture of me with my friend Jeff, (I’m the one on the right…always) and a singer named Matt Maher. About a year ago Jeff and I went to see Matt Maher in concert in Cincinnati. It was at one of those ultra-hip churches that don’t look like a church and has a name like Warehouse 310…this one was called “The Underground”, but that’s not the point of this story. Jeff and I got to meet Matt Maher before the concert, he’s a nice guy, pleasant demeanor, didn’t have the “I’m a rock star” attitude that a lot of guys  in the Christian music business do. I enjoy Matt’s songs very much so, in fact “Christ is Risen” and “Love will Keep us Together” are a couple of my favorite tunes. But there is a problem, Matt Maher is a Catholic. I pray that he would see the error in the ways of the Catholic Church and come out of it, but like so many in the Roman Catholic church he’s been led to believe that the church and it’s system are the means unto Salvation. I was uncomforatble with the entire situation.

As a Christian, I cannot fellowship, worship and ‘do church’ with Catholics. There are matters in the church we can disagree on and still fellowship and worship together. For instance:  Ecclesiology, how we “do church” how the church functions…we can disagree on and still fellowship. Eschatology, the study of the last things, we can disagree on and still fellowship, even Pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit we can disagree on and still fellowship and still worship the same God together. But there are two views with which we should never compromise on, one is our Christology-How we see the nature and work of Christ on our behalf. And the other is our Soteriology-the nature of our Salvation. Catholicism has a very different soteriology than Biblical Christianity. (and I’m not even speaking of their Semi-Pelagian view of man)

A good Catholic places all of their hope for salvation essentially in themselves, hoping, through faithful adherence to the sacraments they will merit salvation. From the middle ages even through today the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the sacraments work ex opere operato, or by the power of the completed act, and the validity of the sacraments does not depend on the orthodoxy of the minister, or his state of grace. Grace is infused into the sinner through the Sacraments making the sinner righteous; thereby God then justifies the sinner based on this real and inherent righteousness within the person. In Roman Catholic theology sanctification precedes justification; the sinner is infused with righteousness by cooperating with the grace found in the sacraments of the Church and this eventually brings justification or a right standing before God because the sinner has been made righteous. This view of sanctification preceding justification and our works being meritorious to our salvation is exactly backwards of what the Bible teaches.

The Roman Catholic Sacramental Means of Grace: Seven Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, and Matrimony. The following definitions taken from: Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (1952) by Roman Catholic Theologian Ludwig Ott, approved with the Papal Impramatur.

The Hell-Raiser

Rob Bell’s article in The New Yorker raises some interesting questions

In a recent article in The New Yorker, former pastor Rob Bell is profiled. Not only does the article reveal that Rob was far more liberal, far longer than anyone realized. It also chronicles his search for “a more forgiving faith.” I have a lot of trouble with this idea, I ask you, what is a more forgiving faith that Biblical Christianity? What is a more forgiving faith than a free gift?

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. 6:23

The admissions and statements Bell makes in this article just goes to show that, like so many others, Rob Bell doesn’t understand the gospel at all.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  Eph. 2:8-9

A free gift that we don’t have to work for and that we don’t earn and don’t keep by our works. What is more forgiving than that? Nothing…in fact every time you try to take this aspect of the gospel away you’re left with nothing but works. No other world religion offers this free gift…and yet by the thousands people reject it, including Bell. The extreme “Christian” liberalism that Bell promotes is the same side of the coin as extreme Christian legalism, because it’s all on you to earn your salvation, as the Bible says is impossible.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. Gal. 2:16

Most surprisingly though the article prompts me to feel sorry for Bell, sorry because he is trying to do the impossible…find a more forgiving faith than Christianity. I feel sorry for Bell because he is leading himself and others down the broad road that leads to hell.

Sanctification is not Optional

Now before I get started breaking down these terms I want you to understand that, as Christians, sanctification is entirely monergistic in its nature, meaning that it is done entirely by God. It is not synergistic, meaning you do your part and God does his. And it’s an important distinction because the Bible is very plain when it says we are saved by grace, through faith. It is very plain when it says Christ is the author and perfector of our faith. So it’s very clear from the Bible that we can do nothing of our own power to make ourselves more Christ-like. Anything we do to make ourselves more holy in our own power makes us more like the Pharisees than Christ. I know sanctification happens entirely through the power of the Holy Spirit in you, this is what Christ meant when he called him our helper. After we have been saved, we’ve repented of our sin trusted Christ to forgive us we are then justified and sanctified. This is known as definitive sanctification. It refers to the decisive break with, or separation from, sin as a ruling power in a believer’s life. It is a onetime event that happens when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation. Sin no longer dominates our lives. That’s why the Bible says we are dead to sin. It doesn’t have the hold on us that it once did. That doesn’t mean that sin isn’t a problem, sin wars against us and hence our struggle, but it doesn’t have the hold over us it once did. We can see sin for what it is, the non-Christian doesn’t have that ability, they see sin as “bad-habits” that they need to break.

Progressive Sanctification happens slowly, over time we change and become more and more Christ-like, in our response to the world, how we interact with the world, and how we see the world. As we grow in holiness our world view shifts from an earthly

Multi-Site Churches: Paving the Road to a “Cult of Personality”

Heard this blog read on PCR and I had to come read it formyself, so I thought I’d pass it along to the DPS audience. The author is spot on in his concern about multi-site churches. What do you say?