Last Saturday, the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper carried an article about a pastor and her upcoming Easter service. Nothing I have read of late highlights the failure of the contemporary church more than this description of her agenda. Sadly, I do not think her an isolated aberration but rather a fruit of the failure of the contemporary evangelical church.
Gretta Vosper is the pastor at the West Hill United Church in Toronto, a local church within Canada’s largest protestant denomination. She has written a new book, the title of which seems to articulate the frustrations many in the church feel. The book is entitled, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe. Indeed, there are many who hunger for a greater integration of our faith into our lives. But while the title suggests that she might recognize the problem, the solutions reported in this article are worrisome.
For this year’s Easter service at West Hill United, Vosper planned to remove all references to Jesus Christ, physical resurrection and salvation. Instead, “it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected—an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit” (emphasis added). Ms. Vosper desires to rid the church of its “theological detritus,” and “build on its ashes a new spiritual movement that will have relevance in a tight-knit global world under threat of human destruction.”
Chief among the things to be discarded is the Bible, which she claims is “a human project filled with contradictions and conflicting worldviews and political perspectives” that is “wrong in some parts, and that, in the 21st century, is no more useful as a spiritual and religious guide than a number of other books.”
This credentialed pastor
“wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. She wants the church to define resurrection as ‘starting over,’ ‘new chances.’ She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather, she would have congregations work together to define God—or god—according to their own worked out definitions of what is holy and sacred.”
One foolish pastor in Toronto, Ontario, may not seem like anything to be worried about. However, she says things that will surely resonate with the un-churched, under 40-year-old, educated majority of our population:
“She says now that the work of biblical scholars has become publicly accessible, the churches and their clergy are caught living a lie that few people will buy much longer. ‘I just don’t think we can placate those in the pews long enough to transition into a kind of new community that doesn’t keep people a way.’”
Ms Vosper apparently recognizes that the blasphemy aired on cable outlets like the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel and the History Channel has more authority in today’s culture than preachers of the Bible. Rather that exposing the fallacies of these deeply flawed presentations, she decides to do away with traditional orthodoxy and find a more ‘relevant’ message to preach. I fear she is not alone.
In far too many North American evangelical churches today, the Bible has been removed lest it become a cause of strife to seekers. Services have been stripped of theological content and reduced to meaningless Christian entertainment. The Gospel of Christ and all that it involves—sin, righteousness, death, the Cross, blood, holiness, redemption, sanctification—has been discarded in favor of pop psychology and the meeting of felt-needs.
Perhaps we do not need worry about a United Church pastor offering another anti-Christian book for sale. But I wonder: are her views unique, or does she represent the vanguard of a new wave that will eviscerate the Church? How long will it be before our church—or our neighbor’s church—discards the Bible and the gospel in a pursuit of growth and community recognition? Or have they already? And then, without a gospel of sin and redemption, without a Bible to reveal the meaning of the circumstances of human life—what then will govern and guide our churches? Many churches have already dropped discipleship in favor of programs requiring no commitment. Pastors already spend more time with contractors and fundraisers for building projects than in visitation. How long until our churches become merely community centers, distributing the compassion resources of the state? Of course I’m over-reacting… or am I?
The time of the Remnant is at hand. Let us cry out to the Lord to purify His church. Let us ask Him to preserve us from the false churches and ministry of this time of deception. Let us get in to the Word again, open our Bibles and pray. Wake up! Watch! Be led!
Ref: The Globe and Mail, Saturday, March 22, 2008; http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080322.wchurch22/BNStory/National/
