"LIVE Bible Equips Teens to Put Faith, Creativity Into Action: "The Bible is the world’s bestselling book, but it often leaves younger audiences looking for relevance and practical ways to connect with and apply its message to their lives. LIVE (Group Publishing/Tyndale, June 2008) is a revolutionary Bible created for teens.... 'LIVE is not a static, cement block of a Bible—it’s a living, breathing example of God’s love for us,' says Craig Cable, marketing director. 'This is about interacting with the Scriptures on all levels. It’s about challenging teens ... to grow, to get their hands dirty in the world and shape culture in their day-to-day lives and expressing themselves through the arts." See God's unchanging Word

Those Who Resist: "Every cult in the world has sprouted from the fertile soil of deception, always initiated by a drastic move away from the primacy of the Word of God into the nebulous, self-defining atmosphere of experience....

      "...most people will do exactly this: they take pains to look the other way when something bumps up against their doctrine. As a Christian, there's no quicker way to start a fight with a friend than to tell him that some of his most fervent beliefs are wrong.... It's ironic that, in a fellowship that taught a watered-down version of the fear of the Lord, it was fear that motivated me to stay put." See Re-Inventing the Church

Southern Baptists now in Decline: "'This report is truly disheartening,' said LifeWay president Thom S. Rainer....[W]hat about the books LifeWay offers on Contemplative Spirituality, aka, Spiritual Formation, from Emerging Church authors and leaders, many of whom reject absolute truth, downplay doctrine and encourage their readers to incorporate mantras and mysticism into their Christian walk? One of the foremost authors and leaders of the Emergent movement, Brian McLaren, recently spoke at Willow Creek Community Church... at the annual Shift student ministries conference. Here’s what the SBC’s own Baptist Press had to say about him: 'McLaren's views break harshly from traditional Christian theology that Jesus died on the cross as substitute for sinful humanity, taking the punishment that men and women deserved for their sin.' Yet, at this writing, his books are available for purchase at LifeWay Christian Stores."

Christian City Church - About: "….we aren't traditional or orthodox in our presentation of the ageless, culturally adaptable gospel of grace. We have a commitment to cultural relevance.... Our hearts are in heaven and our feet in the 21st Century. … We believe in apostolic and prophetic leadership.… We aren't fundamentalists, but we are believers.… We pray loud and long.... We wait in the silence that speaks…. We are honest about that complex marvel full of promise and debilitating contradiction - our humanity with: failure, sin, temptation, marriage, money, sex, life, death and taxes…. We believe in faith, hope and love… supernatural happenings, vision…. We are irreverent, risky, fun, conservative, serious and holy. … We believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (even though we have no real idea how Trinity works)…. We really love God, and He loves us." See Biblical versus Postmodern Thinking

 Bishop challenges Anglicans to be ‘Christ-centred' [but not Bible-centered]: “We English Anglicans are extraordinarily good at talking down our church,' says Bishop Mursell in his letter.... He also took a swipe at the bitter volleying between liberals and conservatives in the wider Anglican Communion over homosexuality, saying that Anglicans are 'incomprehensibly obsessed with sex'.... 'Perhaps we’ve never really got over the fact that one of our founders [Henry VIII) had serious marital problems.'” See Biblical versus Cultural Christianity

 

Repeated. Purpose-Driven Message. A New Century: A New Reformation: "Warren says that he recently told a group of business leaders, 'The future of the world is not secularism. It’s religious pluralism… The world is becoming more religious, not less.. We’re going to have to minister in a context where we… learn how to get along.' To that end, Warren is trying to increase civility in the world.... 'I think we need a second Reformation in the church about how we behave.... The first Reformation was about creeds. I think the second Reformation needs to be about deeds….

      "He calls this second Reformation a 'mobilization.' Saddleback is developing a 'peace plan” and worldwide mission to promote reconciliation through service....During 2008, the church intends to make its methods available to any church." See Warren's Peace Plan & UN Goals

Dumping Sola Scriptura: "At a recent conference, the most popular paper resulted in four times as many people crowding into the room than it was designed to hold. The title of this provocative lecture was 'How Evangelicals became overcommitted to the Bible and what can be done about it.' The speaker said that in 'the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational and harmful to the cause of Christ.” He claimed that this over commitment has produced a mean-spirited and grotesque distortion of Christianity....

     "So what?, I hear you say, 'this is what you can expect from atheists, liberal theologians and other unbelievers.' The problem is that these ideas were proposed at a meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society by no-one less than J.P. Moreland, a well-known Evangelical theologian and professor at Talbot School of Theology, which describes itself as 'a conservative, evangelical seminary'!" See God's unchanging Word

Baptist Sunday school undergoes 'extreme makeover': "What kid doesn't like painting? How about storytelling and dressing up in period costumes? Maybe they love playing computer games...? Infuse this fun with peace on earth, good will toward men, and you have Sunday school 2007 at Middle Street Baptist Church....

    "'Attendance was down and the older method was boring for kids,' said Pease....'With all the technology and fast-paced lifestyles, we found the kids were having a hard time sitting still.' ... The Temple Courtyard serves as a multipurpose room for games, spiritual formation, missions and more. The music and movement room is called The Psalms and Songs Conservatory.... Pease, a strong supporter of multiple intelligences theory, said children learn through multiple pathways to the brain such as tactile, visual, verbal, spatial, mathematical and more.... And what is the message they are trying to get across?" See Re-Branding Christianity

Postmodern Churches. A Congregation of Customers: "If you can find a way of seeing religion primarily as a form of consumerism -- skipping the faith and truth part of religious belief -- then Mr. Twitchell's analysis makes some sense. And in fact there are churches out there self-consciously engaged in marketing. They hire consultants and public-relations experts to 'grow' their flock, and they obey a market discipline...." See Re-Branding Christianity

Church and Fellowship: "The center of attraction in a true church is the Lord Jesus Christ.... If the many activities engaged in by the average church led to the salvation of sinners or the perfecting of believers they would justify themselves easily and triumphantly; but they do not. ...many, perhaps most, of the activities engaged in by the average church do not contribute in any way to the accomplishing of the true work of Christ on earth." See Spiritual fellowship

Many Churches Preach "Gospel light": "...In an article published by the Baptist journal Die Gemeinde he recalls the old days, when pastors and evangelists preached fervent sermons of repentance. Today this call had been replaced in many churches by an invitation 'to make friends with Jesus'. Many find it hard to talk about sin, hell, the need for conversion and the ensuing joy in Jesus." See Trading Truth for a "Social Gospel"

What saves? - The power of God or the sensitive way? "A dialectic question, usually offered by change agents and facilitators in a group setting, is designed to present a false and distracting premise in order to encourage dialog between opposing positions with a predetermined outcome in mind - which, more often than not, involves the compromise of absolutes....

     "We're not called to be loved but rather to love; and as I've written many times before, telling someone the truth is the most loving thing you can do for them. Jesus already warned us that we would be hated by the world because of Him. If we concern ourselves with what the world thinks of us, we'll never preach the Gospel, will we?" See Evangelism

Hillary Hires Evangelical Consultant: "Hillary Clinton has hired an 'evangelical consultant' to help woo Christian conservatives in her likely 2008 presidential campaign.... Clinton’s new hire is Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and is the lead staffer for the Democrats’ Faith Working Group....Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the group...." See Biblical versus Cultural Christianity

Erwin McManus & the Five Elements: "Erwin McManus is an emerging church leader, author of The Unstoppable Force, and lead pastor and self-professed 'cultural architect' of the Mosaic church in Los Angeles. He believes that the church needs to shape a cultural movement, an apostolic ethos. To create this apostolic ethos he has reinvigorated the five elements that come from ancient pagan spirituality." See Biblical versus Cultural Christianity

 

Episcopalians install female leader: "Katharine Jefferts Schori took office Saturday as the first woman presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church.... She will now represent the American denomination to the many Anglican leaders angered by the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.Her job is further complicated by her personal support for Robinson's election. She believes the church should ordain gays and bless same-sex couples, though she insists she won't impose her views on others. [Yet she says:] 'If some in this church feel wounded by recent decisions, then our salvation, our health as a body, is at some hazard and it becomes the duty of all of us to seek healing and wholeness.'...  Some Anglican leaders also reject the idea of women's ordination: Jefferts Schori has said they'll have to 'get over it.'" See Softening God's Word

Only when Christendom dies, it can bear fruit: "Mike Love is the chairman of the ecumenical Churches Together in the English city of Leeds.... The era of Christendom is over, according to Love....The modern church, built on rationalist principles, doesn’t work anymore in the age of postmodernism....

    "The church... can never be a sphere separate from other sectors in society.... ‘Seeking the shalom of the city’, I see that as a primary task for the church..... An example is Together for Peace. We brought 100 Christian and non-Christian organisations together, around themes like peace, multicultural society, racism, sustainability, et cetera. With, a couple of months ago, a final festival, and it was amazing. It went totally out of the box of the church....

    "The early Christians made use of terms like ‘saviour’, ‘kingdom’ and ‘lord’, unmistakeably political, those are words used for Caesar.... As a result of that, He subverts the logic of the system, the logic of power and oppression." See Trading Truth for a 'Social Gospel ' and The Language of Dreams and Idols

 

Emerging from the Emerging Church: "...during his argument about education in his little book The Abolition of Man, Lewis defines the ground of all truth as the Tao, the Chinese concept of impersonal truth. This effectively makes Christianity a subset and the God of creation a subset of the Tao.... How can the 'greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century'—as he is often called—write things like this? Here’s a quote from part of this section: 'This conception (A view of the reality of truth) in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth referred to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao.’...

     "Lewis was steeped in philosophy in his education, with a special emphasis on German philosophy of the 1700s and 1800s. He even taught philosophy....

     "Brian MacLaren and other Emergent Church leaders are claiming to be rediscovering valuable parts of church traditions that have been neglected or rejected by conservative evangelicalism. In this process they are also incorporating traditions and philosophies from non-Christian and occultic religions.... As a result of my background in being rescued from occultic/New Age religion, I am very sensitive to the kind of syncretism." How mysticism & the occult are changing the Church

Word'- Raising the Roof: "Hip-hop services are popping up all over. ...Holder has developed 'The Hip Hop Prayer Book,' inspired by the Book of Common Prayer, which he wrote with help from dozens of rappers, musicians and poets. Here's their version of the 23rd Psalm: The Lord is all that, I need for nothing. / He allows me to chill. /He keeps me from being heated /and allows me to breathe easy. /He guides my life so that I can /represent and give shout outs in His name." See Chart: Biblical versus Cultural Christianity

Links to earlier articles on the Postmodern Church

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