Sometimes, when you least expect it, you hear the voice of the Spirit. From the poetry of Emily Dickinson:

Each life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,

Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility’s temerity
To dare.

Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach
Were hopeless as the rainbow’s raiment
To touch, 

Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints’ slow diligence
The sky! 

Ungained, it may be, by a life’s low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again.

There is in every life a goal, a purpose. I have lost mine. Once, long ago, in the quiet of a summer’s night, I thought I heard a call from God—that my life, my vocation, and my future were to be bound up with Him and His people. Overwhelmed by a surfeit of anxieties and cares and destroyed by a relentless tide of rejection and failure, I now quail under the conviction that I either failed or was wrong. There seems no evidence to support my claim to calling; surely, I must have “heard” wrong.

Suffering from pneumonia these last ten days, I endured the double anguish of considering what’s become of my life. I feel an orphan in foreign land, a refugee doing what’s necessary rather than what I desire. The exclusion from ministry office is like a sentence of death. While I know my lot is not worthy to be compared with the genuine sufferings of others, for me life has become hell. As I worsened toward the week’s end, I wondered if perhaps my prayers requesting release from this hell were being answered. But then I heard Him speak—in Emily Dickinson, no less! Apparently He is not yet done with me.

I dare not articulate what I have only begun to understand. But I think I heard an echo of Paul: “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29, KJV). My pursuit is not over; my call not removed. I turned my face to the wall and prayed, and in the night, this word came: “My son, I say unto thee, ‘Arise!’” (Lk. 7:14).

These last few days have been blurry—yet I am making a turn for the better. With the strength that is manifesting, I choose to arise…. I arise with the only venue currently open to me…. I’m coming back.

Recently I have been preoccupied with considering the work of a pastor. It seems that the majority of pastors in my area have departed from the teaching of scripture and have chosen Christian psychology and life-skills as the syllabus of their preaching. Is that what pastors of Christ’s church are supposed to be ministering? The apostle Paul surely didn’t think so. He explained ministry to one young pastor by writing:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.   —2 Tim. 4:1–4

One wonders: is it the people who have turned away from the gospel? Have congregations decided that they would rather learn financial planning than righteousness and holiness? Or is it that ministers have forgotten their commission?

In the seventeenth century, many ministers in England likewise forgot their calling. Richard Baxter, a Puritan minister, wrote a book addressing the problems with the ministry of the times, The Reformed Pastor. Many of Baxter’s complaints are as relevant today as they were nearly three hundred years ago. Baxter explains that the ministry of the pastor is to acquaint people with God:

“The first and greatest work of ministers is acquainting men with the God who made them…. We should open up the treasures of His goodness for them and tell them of the glory that is in His presence, a glory which all His chosen people shall enjoy. By showing men the certainty and the excellence of the promised joy, and by making them aware of the perfect blessedness in the life to come in comparison with the vanities of the present life, we may redirect their understanding and affections toward heaven. We shall bring them to the point of due contempt of this world and fasten their hearts on a more durable treasure. This is the work we should be busy with both night and day” (70).

Pastors today complain that they must speak of this world in order to reach people of this world. Yet Baxter saw the proper role of the pastor not as evangelist, but as shepherd of Christ’s flock. Rather than reaching the lost—what today’s spineless pastors call “those distant from God”—Baxter suggests that pastors should be caring for Christians:

“The ultimate end of our pastoral oversight must be … to see to the sanctification and holy obedience of the people under our charge. To nurture our peoples’ unity, order, beauty, strength, preservation and increase must be our task. It is the right worshiping of God” (68).

How do we do this? Paul simply declared, “Preach the Word!” Baxter says the same thing, yet not as succinctly:

 “We must show them the danger of evil [and sin], and how much hurt it has already done to us. Then we must unfold to them the great mystery of redemption: the person, nature, incarnation, perfection, life, miracles, sufferings, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, glorification, dominion, and intercession of the blessed Son of God. We must help them also to know the meaning of His promises, the conditions imposed on us, and the duties He has commanded we should fulfill. … In a word, we must teach our people as much as we can of the word and the works of God. … All Christians are disciples or scholars of Christ, and the Church is His school. The Bible is His textbook. And this is what we should be daily teaching to those in our care” (70, 71).

What do they preach at your church? The Bible? Christ? God? The Word? Thank God for it, for sadly, you are in a minority. The majority of us suffer under a steady diet of the words of men. Pastors either regurgitate popular works of Christian psychology (conflict resolution and marriage counseling) or have jumped on the bandwagon of financial planning and checkbook balancing. Christians don’t come to church to listen to amateurs paraphrase other people’s books. We come because there is supposed to be someone who has given his or her life to the study of the Word of God. We come to hear the word of God thoughtfully, accurately and clearly expounded.

The task of the pastor is the teaching of the Word of God. It is not evangelism, nor is it church building. As Christians, we need to petition God for pastors and shepherds after His heart. And we must search out pastors who do and will teach the word. God is watching—He waits for our choice. What will we choose? His Word—or this world? May God have mercy on us all!

—Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (ed. James M. Houston; Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1985).

I realize my review makes for an awfully long read on-line. I sort-of apologize…! I just didn’t want to cut it.

Anyway, some have asked for a version they could download and read off-line. Here are two versions: a Word document, and a PDF. Just give credit where credit is due!

Shack Review—Word doc

Shack Review—PDF

By now few people have not heard of William Young’s self-published runaway success, The Shack. It has spent months atop the bestseller lists, sweeping through the church like fire through a hay barn. I steadfastly resisted commenting on it, hoping the fervor surrounding it would die a quick death. Yet the Christmas marketing machine revived the beast, and Young’s deceptive falsehoods are once again being thrust upon unwitting victims.

Sadly, it is mostly Christians who are enticed to purchase this poison and distribute it as a gift. They should know better, but in the absence of reliable teaching from the pulpit, they are reduced to accomplices in the marketing of deception. The Church is unfortunately rife with pastors who are more concerned with offerings than with truth, who have willingly circumvented their roles of shepherd and teacher. They ignore the book, or in some instances, manifest a startling ignorance of Christian orthodoxy by embracing it.

One has to wonder how much more of a problem this would be if the book were a better novel. Although serviceable enough to hold one’s attention through the “story,” the writing is in no way compelling. There are many better alternatives for someone seeking good Christian fiction. Yet that is our biggest problem: while The Shack purports itself to be fiction, it is anything but a novel. It is a theological treatise, offering an alternative view of God and Christ. It is a subversive systematic theology, masquerading as fiction.

It’s Not Just a Novel…

When one dares to discuss the dangerous deceptions residing in The Shack, devotees often throw up their hands and exclaim, “For heaven’s sake, it’s just a novel!” Such a plaint suggests that they are either extraordinarily naïve or just mediocre readers. Young does not use theology as a prop; it is not ancillary window dressing to the narrative. Theology is the message; the narrative just the means of delivery. Any work that concerns the life, nature and plan of God is theology, and as such, The Shack oozes theology. There is good theology and bad theology; the distinction lies in the extent to which the theology lines up with Scripture. On that basis The Shack is heresy.

Young so frequently contradicts the plain teaching of Scripture that one has to wonder—is he theologically illiterate, or does he have an agenda? More than one commentator has suggested that The Shack appears intent on “undermining orthodox Christianity” (Tim Chailles). That so many Christians embrace and recommend The Shack reveals a startling theological ignorance within the contemporary church. A Christian recommending The Shack becomes an accomplice to its work of deceit. It is not too strong to call Young’s work heresy, for it contradicts the teaching(s) of Scripture. Yet we might go even further and suggest that it is an outright sin, in that it stands in direct violation of the Ten Commandments. The Shack presents us with a graven image of God fashioned in a form more palatable to its author. It is patently obvious that those who recommend the book—especially supposed Christians—understand little of God’s word. Those who recommend this book in church should be placed under discipline and instructed in the Word more fully.

A popular Christian novelist, speaking to a writer’s group recently in Virginia Beach, suggested that recent so-called Christian novels play a dangerous game. He noted that readers relax their critical faculties with fiction, thinking that they are entering a realm of make believe. When a novelist rewrites either history or theology, as Dan Brown did in The DaVinci Code, or William Young does in The Shack, readers consume the deception uncritically, enabling their beliefs to be altered without conscious reflection. This is particularly problematic for believers.

Young has every right to disseminate his theology, but marketing it as fiction is deceitful. Using the genre in this way takes advantage of readers. Given this clear danger, and the fact that Young’s theology is so suspect, one would expect pastors and leaders of churches to address the book. Their silence is revealing. One should not enter The Shack unless he or she is prepared to read actively, attentively and consciously, aware of its theological bias and its persuasive intent. The Shack is no less innocuous than a good sermon or a closing argument in court—it demands the full attention. The Shack is not meant to entertain but to persuade; it is not an innocuous escape but an indoctrinating lecture. Young exploits the genre of fiction to preach unorthodox theology. One seriously has to wonder about Eugene Peterson, who suggested that The Shack was this generation’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Has he merely been co-opted by the publishing enterprise or is he just a poor judge of literature? On so many levels, this is a shack Christians should avoid.

What’s the Big Deal?

Young denigrates nearly everything associated with traditional, orthodox Christianity: seminary education (91), Sunday school (98), the local church (177), family devotions (107), theological certainty (203), the adjective “Christian” (182), and the church as a whole (178). While many of us have sympathy for critiques of the institutional church, Young’s remarks sound more like the imprudent rants of an unformed adolescent, bristling under the imposed order of the adult world. It is redolent of baby-boomer resistance to authority and its rejection of submission. Young is not interested in understanding or addressing problems; he simply disparages what he rejects.

However, the book’s evil consists of more than these few gratuitous swipes at the organized church. Young subverts important Christian doctrines. He dismisses the hierarchical organization of the Trinity and minimizes the roles filled by the different persons of God. He confuses the doctrine of salvation and flirts with universalism. He has his god suggest that God does not punish sin (“sin is its own punishment,” 120); something which no doubt would come as startling news to the Jesus who endured the Cross! Young denies the biblical revelation of humanity under sin by having a man stand before God Almighty without a mediator. Then, succumbing to the relativism of our time, Young’s Jesus demurs from His bold declaration of exclusivity in John 14:6, to suggest instead that he is only the “best way” to God. In the world of The Shack, there is more than one way to God and salvation.

Yet even these are not the worst of Young’s heresies. Young blithely breaks the 2^nd Commandment by offering up a graven image of God, fashioning a new god in his own image. And he rejects God’s chosen means of revelation (Word), supplanting it with the new arbiter of truth for the post-modern church—personal feelings and experience.

Young’s false image of God

The Ten Commandments—an important cornerstone of the Judeo-Christian faith—begin with God’s requirements concerning humanity’s relationship to Him. In them God explicitly forbids making an image of Him in any form, real or imagined:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”   —Exodus 20:2–4.

Jesus provided the reason for this prohibition in His conversation with the woman at the well: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:24). God, in His wisdom, never manifested Himself in any form to humanity and expressly forbade the making of any image by which to represent Him. Yet William Young, in his wisdom, sees fit to depict God as a black woman. He even presents the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman. One has to wonder if Young has ever read the book of Romans:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.    —Rom. 1:21–23

Fans of the book suggest that their faith has been revived and their understanding of God enhanced through reading The Shack. That may well be true, yet someone should tell them that the god they meet in The Shack is not the God of Abraham, Jesus or Paul! Young has created a comprehensible god, easy to visualize and capable of being held. The problem with the God of the Bible is that He is bigger than human conception. He is beyond our understanding and is impossible to hold. Which, of course, is one of His reasons for the incarnation of Jesus. God chose the Son to be God in the flesh. Yet Young spurns the choice of God. While God chose to manifest Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Young has God appear as woman, man and Siren. This adds another layer of sin to The Shack. A former teacher of mine, the esteemed theologian Bruce Waltke, explains it this way:

“God, who is over all, represents himself by masculine names and titles, not feminine ones. He identifies himself as Father, Son, and Spirit, not Parent, Child, and Spirit, nor Mother, Daughter, and Spirit. Jesus taught his church to address God as “Father” (Luke 11:2) and to baptize disciples “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). God’s titles are King, not Queen; Lord, not Lady. God, not mortals, has the right to name himself. It is inexcusable hubris and idolatry on the part of mortals to change the images by which the eternal God chooses to represent himself. We cannot change God’s names, titles, or metaphors without committing idolatry, for we will have reimagined him in a way other than the metaphors and the incarnation by which he revealed himself. His representations and incarnation are inseparable from his being” (Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 2008, p. 98).

Young’s depiction of God is sinful from start to finish. It is idolatry. It is brazen disrespect of God and His Word. It also diminishes Jesus. By giving flesh to the Father and the Holy Spirit, Young devalues Christ’s uniqueness. Jesus alone is both God and Man—the unique person in the entire universe—the incarnate God. For this alone, The Shack should not be given, but discarded. Especially by Christians!

Revelation versus Experience

Young’s rejection of God’s form of revelation—the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is accompanied by his rejection of God’s means of revelation—the written Word. Christianity follows the tradition of the Jews in confessing that the knowledge of God is transmitted through written revelation. Christians believe that the Bible is humanity’s only source of infallible revelation of God. Young consistently downplays Scripture and instead advocates personal experience as a source of knowledge of God. Young has his version of the Spirit say, “You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours.” How do we discern truth from error? Apparently, as we mature in our experience: “Of course you will make mistakes; everybody makes mistakes, but you will begin to better recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship.” (195–96).

Now as a charismatic, I am completely comfortable with the idea of “hearing the voice of the Spirit” within; yet I am also quick to state that when the Spirit speaks, He agrees with the Word. Jesus said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26, ESV). Later Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (Jn. 16:13). What does the Spirit hear? What the Father says, which is the Word of God. What then is the means of testing the Spirit? The Bible—which is the Word of God!

When Young refers to the Bible, he casts it in a negative light. Young dwells on how the Bible has been abused by people, which admittedly is a sad but all too common reality. Yet to abandon the Bible simply because imperfect humans have misused it is to cast humanity adrift without a rudder—which is exactly what Young does:

“In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects…. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?” (65–66).

The Shack creates the impression that scripture alone is insufficient for humanity’s relationship with God. The apostle Paul taught differently: “[T]he sacred writings … are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:15–17). Scripture is all we will ever need to learn of God and His will. The Shack also suggests that personal experience of God can supplement what scripture might lack. The apostle John thought otherwise: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (Rev. 22:18–19).

It is right and good to encourage Christians to experience God in a way that exceeds the mere act of reading words off a page. Yet we must never exalt personal experience of God over the written revelation of God. Every experience must be submitted to the Word for judgment. Experiences come and experiences go, but the word of the Lord remains forever. The Word alone is the Christian’s surest guide to the reality of God’s presence and the course of His will. To the extent that The Shack points readers away from the Bible it becomes both dangerous and heretical. Great Christian literature should lead us to a new and heightened appreciation for the Bible and its teachings. That certainly is the legacy of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The fact that The Shack treats the Bible as insufficient and unnecessary ensures that while popular, Young’s work will never achieve the status of Bunyan’s.

In Conclusion

Because of the numerous doctrinal problems contained in this book, I would strongly advise Christians to avoid it. I would definitely advise against any Christian purchasing this book and passing it out to others. Ingesting the errors of The Shack could harm both young believers and those who are unformed. I think it inexcusable that any Christian would actually recommend The Shack. But then again, given the state of the North American church today, with its absence of leadership and rejection of scripture, it is not surprising to find even church elders and employees as evangelists of its heresy.

We have reached a sad state of affairs in the church. Contemporary pastors have decided that preaching scripture and teaching doctrine is an antiquated hindrance to advancing the kingdom of God in the world. Pastors today esteem the feelings of those who are dead in their sins more than the command of Jesus or the needs of the body of Christ. Regrettably, many pastors are too cowardly to stand for the Truth. They are more concerned with filling the seats of their auditoriums than with genuinely proclaiming the gospel; they are more concerned with building buildings than they are with making disciples. Either that, or they are themselves so ignorant of orthodox theology that they do not recognize the errors of The Shack. Whatever the reason, too many pastors demonstrate neither the inclination nor the integrity to stand up in church and address this situation. May God have mercy on their souls.

We live in a time of great deception, a time when the culture and the church together appear to have decided to return to the dark ages of superstition, mysticism and spiritualism. The church has largely apostatized and its ministry is corrupt. Pastors no longer see themselves as shepherds, and their ministry is no longer about God’s revelation. Believers today must make a decision of quality to feed themselves on the Word of God. We must so immerse ourselves in the Word that we have faith to recognize the voice and directions of the Holy Spirit. That is our only hope of escaping the vortex of delusion sweeping across the earth. We need not tickle our emotions or feed our flesh with sophomoric amusements like The Shack. The time has come; the kingdom of God is at hand. The call of God is a call to come out from the darkness that will ensnare your soul. The Shack is just one such place, a place where the truth of God has been twisted and perverted for human amusement. Come out from it! It is a shack to avoid. 

Christians live under command—the command to participate in the great Commission:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”   —Matt. 28:18–20

Little makes good Christians more uncomfortable than talking about personal evangelism. We all recognize our need to witness to Jesus, yet many of us shrink back, worried that we may not know enough to answer questions or that we are otherwise ill-equipped to share our faith.

Yet personal evangelism is not about knowledge, eloquence, or the ability to think fast on your feet. In truth, it should be the easiest thing we ever do. To prove it, we need only look to John’s gospel. Take a moment and read John 1:19–51. In that extended passage, John presents a model for personal evangelism. Its simplest expression is found in the account of Andrew and his brother Simon:

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).     —John 1:40–42

How does Andrew evangelize? Simply by sharing his own experience: “We have found the Messiah.” The day before, Andrew himself heard a testimony about Jesus and decided to follow Him:

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.   —John 1:35–40

Andrew heard testimony about Jesus from someone he valued, and he chose to follow Jesus for himself. Andrew then stayed with Jesus—the Greek there can also be translated as to remain. By remaining, Andrew acquired his own experience of Jesus. And that experience served as the content of his evangelism to his brother.

You do not need a degree in theology nor an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible to be an evangelist. All you need is a willingness to forego your exclusive possession of Jesus! You need to be willing to share Jesus with others. Then, like Andrew, just bring the person to Jesus (Jn 1:42). How do you bring someone to Jesus? Bring them to the Word! Jesus is the Word of God:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.   —John 1:1–3, 14

People don’t need to be led to your church, your home group or your lunchtime Bible study. Introduce them to Jesus! Let them garner their own experience of Him. Then you might invite them to church. Church will only confuse the lost, but Jesus will open the eyes of their understanding. Bring them to Jesus and He will direct their steps to His church.

Evangelism isn’t hard; it takes nothing more than your own experience with Christ. You know the difference Jesus has made in your life; can you imagine what He could do for those around you who do not yet know Him? Tell them! All you need to say is, “Come and meet the man who changed my life!” Give them a copy of John’s gospel; better yet, buy a couple of those pocket New Testaments and give them one. Avoid the pop-culture paraphrases (Message, NLT, NNIV) and pick a readable, faithful translation (NIV, ESV, NKJV) instead. Show them the gospel of John and encourage them to read it. And make yourself available to them to talk about what they’ve read. Then pray for them—both with them and apart from them.

It is time for all of us to obey the command and participate in Jesus’ great commission. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Let us share the good news of God—Jesus Christ of Nazareth! May God have mercy upon us.

I received a letter from a couple who recently left their church because they perceived it had embraced a seeker-sensitive ecclesiology. I read their remarks with interest because I know something about that church. The situation presents a marvelous case study of how some contemporary church leaders supplant the historical culture of a local church with the recently formulated seeker-sensitive ecclesiology.

The couple that penned the letter tends toward the Calvinistic end of the theological spectrum, yet their theological proclivities are not so adamantine as to make it impossible for them to find a home in a genuinely reformed church. This particular church trumpets its reformed credentials and makes much of its denominational affiliation, which nationally (at least) embraces a Calvinistic view of redemption and a high view of Scripture. Yet the couple perceived an insidious difference between those proclamations and the message coming through the pulpit and recent church marketing. They interpreted the difference as indicating a substantive change of theological direction, and because of it, they decided to leave.

The church is in a season of change. Unlike many churches, which choose to remain blind to the future, the leadership of this church is seriously engaged in planning for its future. And to their credit, they recognize that the future will not be the 1940’s—let alone the 1840’s or 1600’s. Absent the Lord’s return, the Church is headed into the 2040’s, and there are few among us who have a clear vision for what that world will look like. One must applaud leaders who take the shifts in culture, demographics and traditions seriously and allot time to think through how their church(es) should respond. That said, their responses must be critically examined.

The leadership of this church sees their future requiring a new church facility equipped to dispense a panoply of services—from the weekly Christian worship ceremony and Christian school, to sporting fields, movie theatre, retirement village, meeting space, cafes and shops. Explanations of the vision range from the view of the church as evangelistic outreach center to the church as alternative community for Christians. The vision embraces the romantic conception of the church as the center of the community by exploding the separation of the church from the larger life of the community. It is a big vision.

However, the couple recognized that hidden within this change to the church’s physical plant was a larger change in the definition of church. When they combined that with what they were hearing from the pulpit and reading on the church’s website, they concluded that the church was being led away from its historic culture. Instead of remaining with its roots as a conservative, reformed evangelical church, the church was exhibiting a distinct tendency towards seeker-sensitivity.

The genius of the couple’s letter lies in its comparison of statements made on the church’s website with the doctrinal statements of both the national denomination and previous versions of the church website. The difference is palpable. The current leadership has obviously embraced the vocabulary of Hybel’s seeker-sensitive movement. There is the noticeable absence of traditional language, including words such as sin, forgiveness, righteousness, holiness and sanctification. In its place is the language of postmodern culture: meaning, community, wholeness, relevance and doing good. Some suggest that language is just a matter of style and not substance, yet this misses the point. For a church, language is its substance. Words are of immense significance in Christianity. It may seem unfathomable to the modern mind, but wars have been fought over some of our words. Christians, like our Jewish forefathers, are people of words. Faith and salvation come through hearing words (Rom 10:17; Acts 11:14). Although our traditional biblical vocabulary has been proven by numerous generations and has transcended countless cultures, proponents of seeker-sensitivity declare that it must be changed to address contemporary cultural norms. But in the process this dilutes doctrine and marginalizes Christian principles.

Almost as if to prove that claim, statements on the church’s website reveal a substantial departure from orthodox Christianity. The church is no longer described as a gathering place for the people of God; instead it is now seen as a fellowship for everyone—saved or not. There is silence on the critical issues of the authority and inspiration of the Bible. And apparently the church has adopted the liberal understanding of humanity; where the Bible characterizes all of humanity as under sin, liberals—and this church in particular—view humans as a “mixed bag” of good and evil. Each of these statements demonstrate that the leadership has embraced seeker-sensitive theology.

Meanwhile, the majority of the church—or at the least, those who are long-time attendees—remain conservative evangelicals, committed to the Word and the principles of the reformed faith. They maintain a traditional view of the church’s function as meeting the needs of the body of Christ. They believe that individual Christians—and not the church—do the work of the ministry (evangelism and compassion), and that the church must empower them for service. The people sense the changes in the church, but because they have little exposure to contemporary ecclesiology, they are unaware of the implication of those changes.

Thus we see a church exhibiting an ecclesiological schizophrenia—the leadership espouses one theology while the people hold to another. The couple perceived this disconnect between their understanding of the church and the leadership’s definition and decided to leave. Sadly, the majority of people remain silently confused, blaming themselves for their increasing sense of discomfort at church. And like the story of the frog in the coffeepot, by the time they recognize the change in their surroundings for what it is, they will be cooked!

This church will no doubt proceed with its new direction, and over time, more people will decide that they too must find a new church. It is sad to witness the destruction of an existing church, but change is inexorable. It remains to be seen what the future will bring to the church in North America, yet one wonders if the kind of wholesale change advocated by the proponents of the seeker-sensitive movement is truly wisdom. Nonetheless, it seems to be a season of change. Therefore it is a time to stay alert and on-guard. It is a time to discipline your mind with the Word and cultivate your awareness of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who will teach you and confirm truth to you. These may be days of change, but they are also days of deception. May God have mercy on us all!

It has been a tumultuous couple of months for our family here in Virginia Beach. During the precipitous market crash of the Fall, 2008, our savings disappeared without so much as a “see you later!” We were entirely too leveraged and should have pulled the plug earlier, but my unfounded optimism and tendency to avoid unpleasant realities clouded my judgment. I had hoped for an escape, but unlike previous downturns, we would not weather this storm.

Losing one’s financial security yields an odd mixture of outright panic, deep remorse and remarkable peace. My wife consoled me by saying, “At least we don’t have to worry about what the market is doing anymore!” Yet it brought other worries, including my on-going struggle to find ministry employment. As long as we had some kind of safety net, the process of sending out endless résumés to churches was merely a frustration; without any means of support, it became a luxury we could no longer afford.

So after twenty-two years of teaching and ministry, I began a search for secular employment. And God is so good: He opened a door for me with an electrical contractor in Yorktown. The committed Christian who owns the company learned of my need and thought that we might help each other for as long as the Lord allows. So I am now learning the language and processes of purchasing electrical equipment and materials. I confess there are moments when I am entirely baffled by my circumstances, yet I quickly remember how miraculous it is that I—a middle-aged preacher, ignorant of almost everything other than some theological tidbits—have found a job at a time when the economy is (supposedly) going down the tubes.

Needless to say, my life has been dramatically rearranged. The job only asks for 40 hours a week, but the commute adds another 10–15 hours each week. My days begin well before the birds awake and seem to end shortly after dinner! For those of you who know me well, you would be genuinely surprised by how early I’m “up and at’em!”

The change has necessitated a reexamination of my ministry activity. For some time I had wrestled against what I believed was the prompting of the Lord to start some kind of fellowship. Still being somewhat scarred from my earlier ministry experience in charismatic, word-faith circles, I was reluctant to go out on my “own,” and so sought a position in an existing church. While I had the means to wait for the right position to open, I eagerly volunteered my teaching gift to local churches. It is not as noble as it sounds, though; I admit that I hoped that one of those churches might have recognized the gift and been moved to take me on staff as a teaching minister, but it never happened. Why buy the cow when the milk is free, right? Heh!

At any rate, my wife and I prayed and concluded that the time of waiting for recognition had come to an end; it was now time to do what we knew to do. So we resurrected Household of Faith Ministries, the tax-exempt ministry organization we formed ten years ago, and began holding services in our home on Sundays at 4 pm. While these are still early days, we are cheered by the attendance and the fellowship. I decided to step down from the other volunteer positions; they consumed a lot of time. It is important to be a blessing, but when one is drowning its not the time to volunteer. I chose to spend my ‘free’ time with my family and in pursuit of my writing.

As you might imagine then, the last seven weeks have been a blur. I am emotionally and physically exhausted. It may be only another opportunity to walk by faith and purge my reliance on things of this earth, but it has been an arduous education. It has taught me a lot, about God, others, and myself. You really do learn who your friends are when times get hard! But thankfully, there is Jesus! Now that I’ve completed the last of my volunteer responsibilities, I should have another eight to ten hours to use for other projects. But, for this week at least, I’ll probably just sleep!

Believe it or not, I do have a couple of entries to post here. I have been working on a new website for Household of Faith which will include recordings of my teaching. I have not decided if I will migrate this blog to the website, but for now I will continue to post the occasional musing here. There is so much to say…! Until then, please—get into the Word! And may God have mercy on us all.

I’m a teacher, and perhaps not surprisingly, I enjoy nothing more than teaching the word of God. For many years I hoped to find a teaching post in a bible college, seminary, or ministry training center. Unfortunately, in most of the world today, one needs a PhD to even apply to those institutions. Somewhere along the line, we decided that that was an objective I was not called to pursue.

In truth, while that decision complicated my employment prospects, I do not regret having made it. I love to study, but as a confessional protestant, who embraces certain historic, orthodox theological concepts about the Word and the Spirit, I find myself uncomfortable in “the academy.” A friend once suggested that I avoid the PhD; he feared it could crush my spirit. The academy is not overtly hostile to believers, but neither is it openly supportive of trusting faith. The problem is not that the academy suspects the church’s intelligence; rather it is more that the academy is hostile to the tenets of traditional Christian belief.

Nonetheless, I sometimes look over my shoulder and dream of pursuing a degree and making my way back to the academy. But then I receive a theological journal that interrupts my reverie. This one contained a book review that killed that dream forever. Lest I unfairly prejudice you against the author or her work, I will refrain from sharing any references. But listen to what a reviewer wrote:

“While this study, through the use of post-colonial theory, poststructuralist psychoanalysis, and political-liberationist-feminist hermeneutics, provides insight into the theology of the cross, it achieves its distinctiveness as a narrative theology by its appeal to an Asian/Korean American experience. … This creative scholarship provides a Christology especially relevant to a world in which oppressed and oppressor, love and hate, self and other, are interpreted in oppositional categories that privilege patriarchal dominance in its various forms….”

I’m not necessarily proud of the fact that I understand most of that theological gobbledy-gook. Yet what really concerns me is that this is just the kind of biblical scholarship that generates excitement amongst seminary faculty and at Society of Biblical Literature meetings. Might I be forgiven for asking what “insight into the theology of the cross” will possibly be gleaned from this work? How will it contribute to people coming to the Cross and placing their trust in God through Christ? Sadly, it is the scholars who produce works of this nature that receive appointments to posts in seminaries and bible schools, where they become responsible for training our next generation of pastors and leaders. What effect do you think they will have on the church of tomorrow?

I worry about the church, for I fear many of its leaders today are not feeding the sheep. They are not nourishing God’s people on words of faith and the doctrines of God. Truthfully, I find an anger percolating up within me toward these shepherds who allow the sheep to be scattered and become prey for the enemy. But then I must ask myself—are these “pastors” (I use the scare quotes intentionally; the title no longer fits them), are they really at fault? Do they even know what it means to shepherd the flock of God? After all, they are products of a ministry education in which teachers who are embarrassed by faith train them for ministry. They graduate having spent more time reading post-colonial, post-structural, political-liberationist-feminist hermeneutical theory than they do the Bible. They are shaped by constant interactions with faculty, an increasing number of whom are not believers in any traditional sense of the word. Is it surprising then that they arrive in our pulpits absolutely clueless about the real Christian life? Should we be shocked to find that they preach pop-psychology and self-actualization rather than Scripture? And should we be astonished that they rely more on church marketing consultants than the Holy Spirit?

After reading a review like this I am grateful that God has separated me from work in the academy. I am thankful that I need not interact with an academic culture that celebrates perversion over holiness, and for whom such things as belief in the full, plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture are antiquated, meaningless shibboleths. Yet I grieve for the church when I consider the future of the pulpit. We need to pray and ask God for shepherds after His heart, who will nourish His people with the warm milk and strong meat of the Word and the Spirit! We need to petition the Lord for a revolution within this enterprise of church, ministry and academy. May God have mercy on His Church. And may God have mercy on us all!

If you are like me, your inbox has been flooded recently with emails like this one: “There’s still time for us to turn these elections! God is plenty powerful enough to do so. The real question is: Will we rise to the level of prayer and spiritual warfare necessary to release that power? And remember, we don’t need a majority of Christians who are willing and able to do this—only a praying remnant. We can do it!”

American Christians are becoming agitated as November 4^th approaches, and perhaps with good reason. Yet I am troubled by these e-mails, because they seem to reflect a profound lack of trust in the sovereignty of God. Obviously, the writer has enough faith to call for a nationwide prayer meeting and enough confidence to believe that praying could change history. Yet fear percolates through his syllables and his plea reflects a disturbing level of unbelief. Won’t God still be God on November 5^th? Will America’s choice of president diminish God’s power? Or is it something else? Is it fear that at long last American Christians might have to genuinely exercise faith in God rather than trust in their culture?

Few today have heard of the doctrine of the providence of God; it is rarely spoken in today’s seeker-sensitive, culturally relevant churches. The Westminster Confession describes God’s providence this way: “God, the great Creator of all things, does uphold, directly dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy” (V.1).

Admittedly, some of those words are antiquated and would benefit from definition. To “directly dispose” is to arrange or position something for a particular purpose. “Providence” has to do with the management of affairs or resources. And “immutable counsel” is unchallengeable, absolute, unchangeable advice.

Using those definitions we might define providence as God arranging the activities and affairs of all of creation (including humans and nations) according His own knowledge of the future, by His own unassailable counsel, and for His own glory. In other words, the doctrine of providence reminds us that everything that happens in life is divinely ordered. All things happen for a purpose; the world is being led to a place of glorifying God.

Now more than ever, we need to foster an awareness that God is entirely sovereign and in control of all that is happening, even in—or, especially in—this election cycle. We rejoice at the words of Jesus when He said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matt. 10:29). Shouldn’t we have as much confidence that America’s civil leadership is also under the care of God?

Please do not misunderstand me; I do not for a moment wish to discourage Christians from praying for this election. We must pray, because this time the hype just might be true—this just might be the most important election we will have in my lifetime. Neither option seems entirely satisfactory, yet I fear that one side could release things that will destroy the very fabric upon which this nation is still, albeit loosely, knit. So we must pray. But prayer alone—especially at this late hour—may not be all that’s needed.

At times like these the well-known scripture from 2 Chronicles is used to prompt us to pray. But even there God revealed that prayer alone would not heal the land: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chr. 7:14). It is time for more than prayer; it is time that we repent.

Let us be honest; have we, like God’s people of old, allowed ourselves to slip into the lifestyle of the world around us? Have we lost the commitment to holiness and righteousness? Haven’t we just become like everyone else? Hasn’t our nation become drunk with debt; engorged with material consumption and polluted by immorality? Don’t the streets run red with the blood of millions and millions of murdered unborn infants? Do we not treat the weak, the elderly, the poor and the stranger with contempt? Surely it is not a surprise that the heathen participate in these horrors; but have we, with our silence, for reasons of our own sufficiency, been complicit in all the evil? Indeed, it is time for repentance, and perhaps this election is designed for that purpose. Perhaps it is a sign that this is a time of judgment.

As Election Day nears and anxieties heighten, let us come before God and make some quality decisions. Let us commit to keeping our eyes fixed upon God. Let us return to His Word. Let us decide to live holy and upright before Him, by the power of His Holy Spirit. Let us reject those “churches” and “pastors” who call us to be like the world, who value being culturally relevant more than committed to the Truth. Let us remember that genuine love for God is expressed by obedience to His commands—not by the doing of deeds no matter how good or noble. Let us live worthy of our calling to be people of God, and rekindle our desire for the things of God.

No matter what happens on November 4^th, let us face it with faith and confidence in God. Remember, the American government is not the source of our peace or prosperity; they are fruits of the Spirit. This nation will only prosper when we return to the Lord whole-heartedly. Let us therefore keep our eyes fixed on God. Let us immerse ourselves in His word. And let us pray. May God have mercy upon the United States of America! And may God have mercy upon us all.