The Alpha Course is a widely used evangelistic tool designed to introduce people to the Christian faith. The Alpha website describes it this way:

Alpha is an opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting over ten thought-provoking weekly sessions, with a day or weekend away.

The same website gives an indication of its popularity:

The Alpha course spread during the 1990s, initially in the UK and then internationally, as more churches and groups found it a helpful way to answer questions about the Christian faith in an informal setting. There are now over 33,500 courses worldwide in 163 countries and it is supported by all the major denominations.

In the introduction to my article, Dangerous pragmatism – why a transformed life is not proof of salvation, I mentioned (mostly incidentally) the Alpha Course and its developer, Nicky Gumbel. I drew attention to the fact that many people found the course’s theology to be deeply problematic. And I quoted from an article documenting Nicky Gumbel’s apparent denial of the core Christian doctrine that Christ was punished in the place of sinners.

In his comments on my article, my father made these observations:

You also know that I tend to be reluctant to criticise others who seek to proclaim the gospel, even though they do not understand it quite as I do. God is able to use even the most misguided of putative followers to bring sinners to Jesus.

You may not feel it is a good example, but Cliff Richard was first led to think of his need of a saviour by Hank Marvin, a Jehovah’s Witness. You would be the first to say that salvation is solely the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing sinners to repentance and Faith in Jesus and God does frequently ‘work in mysterious ways’! I know that I have preached the gospel for the best part of fifty years and I have only been able to pass on what I understood it to be at that time in my walk with Jesus. That knowledge has developed and deepened over the years but my knowledge of God and the gospel is still imperfect and I can still only ask that he use whatever he can from what I say to enlighten others and draw a veil over my mistakes and imperfections. We are all on a pilgrimage and some are further along than others, some take a long time to learn lessons and others make unnecessary detours. I know little of Nicky Gumbel but it does seem that God does use him to communicate what he understands to be the gospel to many people through the Alpha course. If Gumbel gets them started on the road and they read the scriptures for themselves then their faith can grow and mature.

This is a topic worth considering: do we even have the right to critique someone’s teaching if we compare it to Scripture and find it problematic?

I certainly do not believe that we should be swift to criticize. Not one of us has doctrine that is perfect in every respect. And if we do venture to counter someone’s teaching, let us present our case with gentleness and humility. I think my father most definitely exhibits these traits. I still have a greater maturity to attain.

Does Nicky Gumbel have a responsibility to ensure that the materials he produces are sound?

It might seem obvious but, before we can legitimately critique someone, we have first to be sure that he has a responsibility for whatever it is that we perceive to be at fault.

A critical qualification for any elder of the Church is that he be ‘skilful in teaching’ (as a literal rendering of 1 Timothy 3:2 would have it). This enables him to ‘convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching’ (2 Timothy 4:2).

St. James gives this caution: ‘let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment’ (James 3:1).

To take up the office of elder is clearly a solemn thing.

Since elders must be ‘skilful in teaching’, it is a Biblical requirement that each should be able to explain Christian doctrine in a competent and sound way. This is the very nature of their calling.

Sin, repentance and the punishment of Christ upon the cross in our place are matters of the most basic Christian doctrine. They are the fundamentals of the faith. Err in them, and we do not have the historic orthodox Christian faith. May any elder be qualified for his position if he has not mastered such topics?

Nicky Gumbel is vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton Church, an Anglian church in London. He is therefore an elder of the Church and thus has a God-given responsibility to ensure that what he teaches concerning sin, repentance and the work of Christ accords with the historic orthodox Christian faith handed down from the Apostles and set out in Scripture.

Do ordinary believers have the right to judge an elder’s doctrine?

Let’s look at how the Jews of Berea responded to St. Paul’s teaching:

The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. (Acts 17:10–12, ESV)

Here we have a case, not merely of ordinary believers testing the teaching of an elder against Scripture, but of as-yet unbelievers testing the word of the Paul the Apostle! And far from being reprimanded, the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to commend these Jews for being ‘more noble than those in Thessalonica’.

The implication for us is that it commendable to subject teaching given in the name of God to the word of God. No teacher is above such examination, not even St. Paul, and everyone who claims to speak things about God should welcome it. (I do, even if correction sometimes stings for a time.)

Stephen McGarvey, editorial director of the Salem Web Network (which includes christianity.com and crosswalk.com) has a helpful article on this subject that is worth considering.

Doesn’t Jesus tell us not to judge?

It is important that we remember to place Jesus’ injunction into context:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?

Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1–5, NKJV

When we read the entire passage, it becomes clear that Jesus is warning against hypocritical judgement.

His closing instruction on that subject is not that we should quiet down and shut up, but that we should first deal with our own sin so that we will then be able to ‘see clearly to remove the speck from [our] brother’s eye’.

Doesn’t Paul tell us not to judge another’s servant?

My father makes these comments:

…and the teaching of Paul in Romans 14 [is that we] are required to discern between good and evil and Paul does suggest that the even least in the church might act as judges in some matters. (1 Cor 6) Paul was also quite ready to use his apostolic authority to judge sinful behaviour and enforce sound doctrine so it cannot be that we just allow anything to go unchallenged. That said, each individual servant of God is responsible to God so perhaps we have to take on board Romans 14: 4 ‘Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands of falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.’ See also vv 10-13. God is indeed sovereign!

Amen to God’s being sovereign!

Now, let’s place Romans 14:4 into its proper context:

Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him.

Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.

One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks.

For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written: “As I live, says the LORD, Every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.

Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way. I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

Romans 14:1–14, NKJV

Paul defines the context at the outset as concerning ‘doubtful things’, or ‘opinions’ as the ESV renders it. Paul is not talking about the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, but about adiaphora, things that are neither morally mandated nor forbidden.

And so, if one person wishes to eat certain foods, or refrain from eating them, he is free to do so and is not to be condemned for his decision. Likewise in whether he esteems one day above another, or treats them all alike.

Paul reminds us that we are responsible to Christ. Therefore, we have freedom in matters like these where Christ has given us no instruction. And we are not to ‘put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way’ (v. 13) by judging others who choose differently from us.

But in matters of fundamental doctrine, we do have clear direction through the Bible from Christ Himself – the very one to whom we are each responsible.

When we compare false teaching to Scripture and observe that what is claimed does not accord with God’s word, it is not therefore those who point out this fact who are judging, but Christ Himself through His written word.

Thus, we are to ‘avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless’ (Titus 3:9). Yet Paul immediately goes on to tell us that we are to ‘reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned’ (Titus 3:10–11).

The word translated ‘divisive’ there refers to those who are causing divisions and factions. It is not those who call out false doctrine who are divisive, but those who teach it. Divisive false teachers stand condemned not by those who reject their doctrine, but by themselves, because they teach contrarily to the clear word of God. They thereby testify against themselves that they are false teachers.

Thus, we are commanded to ‘stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle’ (2 Thessalonians 2:15). We are to ‘Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.’ (2 Timothy 1:13) And we must ‘Test all things; hold fast what is good.’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Is the Alpha Course really that bad?

Alpha is not a new phenomenon, and it would be astonishing if Nicky Gumbel were unaware of the criticisms that have been made of it. Yet Alpha apparently continues to perpetuate the same old serious errors, giving a dangerously flawed presentation of sin, repentance and the work of Christ.

Unless Michael J. Penfold is mistaken, it even risks inoculating many unsaved people against the true gospel by giving them a false assurance of salvation, based upon the fact that they’ve prayed a short prayer.

The Bible does not teach that we are saved by ‘saying a short prayer to receive Jesus’, although much of evangelicalism thinks that it does. The visible church is truly in a wretched state, as I have previously discussed.

The question here therefore concerns whether it is even the true Gospel that Alpha is proclaiming. At best, Alpha’s presentation appears to be perilously defective. Given that there are over 33,500 Alpha Courses now being run, the eternal destiny of many people would appear to be at stake.

Perhaps the problem with evangelicals is that we have grown up being told that what we see and hear is the historic orthodox Christian faith. But all too often, what is actually portrayed is at best a corruption of it. Much of the visible church today is outright semi-Pelagian, and Chris Rosebrough has performed a great service by reminding us that Semi-Pelagianism Was Declared a Heresy in 529 A.D. at the Second Council of Orange.

Here is what the IX Marks website says of Alpha in its Evangelism Course Comparison Guide:

A decision is asked for by the end of the third of fifteen sessions, even though neither faith nor repentance is discussed until the fourth. My concern is that the course seems to want to ease people into being a Christian almost before they know what’s happened. Repentance and faith are treated in passing under the heading “How can I be sure of my Faith,” which seems like a strange place to handle those. Even then, repentance gets one sentence, and faith gets about a page. Most of the other courses are much better at explaining clearly and up-front that you must repent and believe to be a Christian.

One sentence on repentance, and that after people have been asked to make a decision for Christ? Man-centered heretical semi-Pelagian decisionalism? A denial of penal substitution? In what way is this the Christianity of the Bible?

Why would an elder of any church choose to use such a course when there are better alternatives available? Because he is unable to discern its problems? Or possibly because he agrees with its theology? Both of those reasons would be deeply troubling. Or perhaps, simply, ‘because it works’? – but I wrote my original post to tackle that argument, and so will not repeat it here.

Penfold’s comments (toward the end of his article) are appropriate here:

It is a fearful and sorrowful fact that multitudes of Alpha attendees have said the sinner’s prayer and are now convinced they are Christians, who haven’t come within a mile of understanding their real condition as bankrupt sinners before a holy God.

Let me roll-out Paul Washer again, as I did in my article What are we to make of our good works?:

Is God not able to use Alpha, even if it imperfect?

Of course! Our God is both sovereign and exceedingly gracious. He will save whomsoever He wishes. As Jesus says:

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8, NKJV)

It is entirely possible that someone might be exposed to enough Scripture in an Alpha Course and their ensuing contact with Christians to be saved. But the fact that some people are saved despite being exposed to false teaching does not make that false teaching acceptable. And what kind of start is it to a new convert’s life to be confused with erroneous ideas about sin, repentance and the work of Christ on the cross?

The choice is not between evangelism-with-Alpha or no evangelism, but rather between presenting a defective gospel or proclaiming the One True Gospel: Jesus Christ crucified in the place of sinners, bearing their punishment and propitiating the wrath of a holy and just God toward them, and His being raised from the dead for their justification.

If we believe in the sovereignty of God in matters of salvation, we should believe Him when He tells us that ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’ (Romans 10:17). The implication of this is that we should strive to present God’s word accurately, not substitute our own ideas in its place. As Paul counsels Timothy:

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15, NKJV)

We preach ‘Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’. It should be unthinkable for us to seek to lessen the offence of this message to make it more palatable to fleshy ears.

If everyone is going to subject preachers and teachers to such scrutiny, who would be willing to teach?

Remember again the words of James inspired by the Holy Spirit: ‘let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment’ (James 3:1).

Might it not be possible that the Church would be much healthier if many of the people currently teaching in her were to stop – at least until they had studied such that they are able rightly to divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)?

My father writes:

I suppose it is partly in recognition of my own inadequacy in proclaiming the gospel that I am unwilling to be too hard on others to attempt the same task. I hope that if someone hears enough of my sermons they will be able fairly assess my teaching but I would hate to be judged on the content of one sermon where I may have skipped quickly over an important doctrine as my intention at that moment was to focus on something else. We all need to be led by the Spirit of God when we discharge the sacred trust of communicating the Good News of Salvation.

I should think that every Bible teacher has the same concerns. I’m just some random blogger, yet every time I post I do so with a non-trivial degree of fear and trembling, lest I inadvertently lead someone astray. (One of the reasons that I value comments is that it gives people an opportunity to correct me if I stray off-course.) How very heavy is the responsibility borne by an elder of the Church.

Nevertheless, the required standard is not perfect doctrine. If it were, then no preacher would ever dare open his mouth. (Of course, only a foolish man would attempt to teach on a matter for which he knew he was ill-equipped!) No, it is to be able to divide the word of truth rightly. (C.F.W. Walther’s book, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, might prove helpful.)

As we saw at the beginning, the qualification for an elder of the Church is that he be ‘skilful in teaching’ (1 Timothy 3:2) and thus able to ‘convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching’ (2 Timothy 4:2).

Perhaps we should therefore ask, ‘How should a generally qualified teacher respond to appropriate Biblical correction when he is shown to have erred?’

The obvious Scriptural pattern is Apollos, and he seems to be exemplary for this.

Apollos was ‘mighty in the Scriptures’ and ‘taught accurately the things of the Lord’, yet his teaching was not quite all that it could be, because he knew only of the baptism of John:

Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (Acts 18:24–26, NKJV)

We infer that he accepted the explanation that Aquila and Pricilla gave him, and he is mentioned eight times in Paul’s epistles – often in the same breath as Paul himself and Peter. The Acts 18 account itself goes on to tell us the benefit of his subsequent ministry:

And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. (Acts 18:27–28 NKJ)

And so we see that a true teacher, called to his ministry by God and suitably equipped by Him so that he is ‘mighty in the Scriptures’, takes upon himself correction when it is offered.

Concluding thoughts: in praise of discernment ministries

It is a noble for any believer to compare to the word of God whatever he or she is taught in the name of God.

There are those (I do not count myself among them) who have devoted themselves to warning the Church against false teachers and their doctrine. These watchmen mostly (I admit that there are some dishonourable exceptions) have done so because, like Pricilla and Aquila, they love the Truth who has set them free, and wish others to hear His Gospel accurately proclaimed.

I especially admire those who are able to correct false teaching and use it as an occasion to preach the Law lawfully (1 Timothy 1:8) and proclaim the true Gospel in all its sweetness. This, too, is a noble calling.

These brothers and sisters receive little honour for their work, but rather much criticism and abuse. I would that their ministry were not needed. But the Church should give thanks for them, for in these dangerous latter times they perform an essential function in the body of Christ. Let us therefore bear them up before the Lord in our prayers, seeking that He might encourage them and open their mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel (cf. Ephesians 6:19).

In the light of the mercies of Christ, let us therefore be speaking ‘the truth to one another in love, that we may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.’ (Ephesians 4:15–16, NKJV)

And ‘Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.’ (Ephesians 4:29-32, NKJ)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every Bible teacher and every Christian blogger has proclaimed some error. And every one of us, teacher or not, has some wrong idea about God, has shared that notion with another. Nicky Gumbel is thus no worse than any of us. Let us all repent of our errors as they are uncovered.

And let us hear those wonderful, comforting words from the end of that last passage, proclaimed to all who believe: ‘God in Christ forgave you’ (v. 32).

S.D.G.

Postscript: further reading

• Discernment in an Age of Deception: Defining the Believer’s Biblical Call to Judge, by Pastor Bob DeWaay, is a helpful and comprehensive treatment of the subject.
• The Shack, Revisited, over at the Sola Sisters blog, defends the public refutation of false teaching with particular reference to William P. Young’s book, The Shack.

In my article, Dangerous pragmatism – why a transformed life is not proof of salvation, I argued that we should not point people to their good works for definite assurance of their salvation. I closed that discussion with these remarks:

Point me then, not to my own works, but to the exceedingly precious promises of Christ that are mine through His finished work on the cross. Call me daily to repentance, and tell me of the forgiveness of all my sin that has been accomplished through Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood. Exhort me not to look inward to myself, but outward to the one with whom I was buried through baptism into death, the one who was raised from the dead for my justification and even now causes me to walk in newness of life (cf. Romans 6).

In his comment on my article, my father made several observations on this topic to which I thought it would be helpful to respond.

On professing Christians who seemingly bear no fruit

My father wrote:

From where I sit, the problem is not so much people claiming to be Christians who have not truly trusted in Christ as Saviour yet exhibit lives that have been radically changed for the better, but people claiming to be Christians who continue to indulge in blatant sins and whose lives are indistinguishable from those ‘in the world’.

James tells us that ‘faith without works is dead’ (James 2). If there is no fruit, no sign of repentance, there is most certainly cause for concern.

Perhaps some of these people are famished sheep, starving to be fed properly with God’s word rightly divided. Others might be goats who have been given false assurance that they are sheep.

Paul Washer of the HeartCry Missionary Society is very clear about his diagnosis of the likely problem:

Whether or not the people whom my father describes are saved, they need to hear the Law preached in all its severity, to confront them with their sin and to show them their true state before their holy and just Creator God. They need to be called to repent, and warned of the day of judgement that is surely coming:

Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31, NKJV)

And then they need to hear the Gospel, proclaimed in all its sweetness, that they might believe in Jesus Christ and His work on the cross, in His righteousness put to their account.

I am beginning to sound like a broken record – whatever the question, my answer seems to be the proper proclamation of Law and Gospel, rightly divided. But the Church is called to preach only repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ. This is what we all need to hear. And so I do not apologize.

The Christian life is one of continual repentance and trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, in His righteousness put to our account. What sustains us believers in our lives is the ongoing proclamation of Law (keeping us in repentance) and Gospel (building our trust in Christ alone).

Of those whose lives do seem to bear fruit in keeping with repentance

My father made the point that:

…the drunkard who becomes sober and claims that the change is due to his faith in Jesus does at least merit a hearing.

Perhaps. But I should rather hear him because he preaches the true Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners and raised from the dead, than because of his changed life. For if a changed life is cause to hear such a person, why should I not then give equal credence to a Mormon who is able to give a similarly dramatic testimony?

And what if I were to trust in Christ because I believed the compelling evidence of the reformed drunkard’s transformed life? What if I were subsequently to discover that he has fallen away and reverted to his drunken ways?

What then would become of my faith?

And if my trust in Christ were affected by such an event, would my trust ever really have been in Christ alone, or would it have been shown to have been placed in the testimony and changed life of a mere fallen sinner?

The pattern we see in the New Testament is instructive. Yes, the Apostles continually talked about what they had seen. But they always directed people to trust in the facts of the Gospel, not in the Apostles’ own experiences. They called people to repent and believe the Gospel, not upon the basis of their own transformed lives, but because that Gospel was true, as proved by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. To quote again from the message Paul preached at the Areopagus:

Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, ‘We will hear you again on this matter.’ (Acts 17:30–32 )

And so we see the great twin dangers of asking someone to believe in Christ on the evidence of a transformed life. Firstly, the objective basis for the claims of the Christian faith is eliminated, leaving a mere subjective appeal to experience – the same as every other religion. Secondly, there is a risk of making false converts who are trusting not in Christ alone, but in transformed lives.

The antidote to these dangers is to preach boldly the facts of Christ crucified for sinners and raised from the dead. No other religion teaches this gloriously offensive doctrine.

Let me be clear. I affirm that true faith results in good works, and that many lives have been transformed by the gospel being worked out in people’s lives. My caution, however, and the point of my earlier article, is that a transformed life is not ipso facto proof of a true conversion. The absence of good works in a professing Christian’s life is cause for concern; their presence is no reason for complacency.

We rejoice when people are saved, and we are encouraged when we see their lives bearing ‘fruit in keeping with repentance’ (Matthew 3:8). But we should never look to a transformed life for final assurance of someone’s salvation. Rather, we constantly point ourselves and others to Christ, the fact of His life, death and resurrection, and the sure and certain promises that are ours through His finished work.

My father continues:

I have met such people and to me at least their testimony and changed lives speak eloquently of the transforming power of the Gospel. Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road is surely such a case?

Do we pay regard to St. Paul because of his transforming life experience on the Road to Damascus? Or rather because his testimony concerning the crucified and risen Lord is true?

I knew a man who had severe drug and alcohol problems. Stuart was apparently saved, and gave his testimony at one of the first few church services we attended after having moved to the Isle of Man, back in 2004.

For a time, his life was turned around, and he visibly transformed over a period of months from a haggard shell of a creature to a man with a healthy countenance (albeit still bearing the marks of a hard life).

A year or two back, I was driving into town with my wife, and Stuart was at the roadside thumbing for a lift. We stopped to pick him up. It transpired that he had fallen back into alcohol dependency (and probably worse). We took him to his destination and parked. We talked to him in the car for over two hours, as he drifted in and out of bouts of lucidity. We prayed with him before he went on his way.

Some time later, we heard that Stuart had died.

Now, I neither cite his transformed life as proof of salvation, nor his falling away as proof of his damnation. I simply do not know his eternal destiny. His salvation (like ours) was neither predicated upon what he did, nor upon what he did not do, but upon whether the Holy Spirit had regenerated him and caused him to trust in the merits of Christ for favour with God and the forgiveness of his sin. I hope that I shall meet him one day in eternity, although I fear I might not.

The point of this is that true faith produces works, yes. But the apparent presence of those works tell us nothing definitive about our eternal state.

And even if I were to exhibit great works today, acclaimed by millions, there might be any number of reasons why I may not be walking in them tomorrow: sickness, war, persecution – and yes, even sin. All could bring an end to my works. And thus, if I had been looking to them for assurance of salvation, my crutch would have been removed the moment those works ceased. Where then would my assurance rest?

The problem is even worse than this.

Jesus tells us if that if we love Him, we shall keep His commandments. But since I sin daily, that leaves me with a problem if I am looking to my works for definitive assurance of salvation. For how can my works soothe me, when even the best of them is stained with sin?

Yet how comforting to know that my salvation depends not upon what I do, but upon what Christ has done for me.

And so I shall finish where I started:

Point me then, not to my own works, but to the exceedingly precious promises of Christ that are mine through His finished work on the cross. Call me daily to repentance, and tell me of the forgiveness of all my sin that has been accomplished through Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood. Exhort me not to look inward to myself, but outward to the one with whom I was buried through baptism into death, the one who was raised from the dead for my justification and even now causes me to walk in newness of life (cf. Romans 6).

In his comment on my article, Dangerous pragmatism – why a transformed life is not proof of salvation, my father expressed unawareness of the Purpose Driven Life movement.

I know that my father’s claim might appear scarcely credible to some. Yet he lives in deepest darkest Dorsetshire, in a small rural village near the south coast of England. It seems that Rick Warren has yet to reach the local Anglican parish church that my father attends there.

Now, despite the impression that some might have from my postings, I am not especially interested in talking about Rick Warren, criticizing Purpose Drivenism, or even in lamenting the problems readily apparent in today’s evangelical church.

I should much rather be proclaiming the true Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners like me, and raised from the dead for our justification.

It’s just that the errors of modern evangelicalism keep intruding upon my ability to do that, and it turns out that addressing those errors can sometimes be a useful foil for talking about the wonderful riches that are ours in Christ.

What follows is therefore precisely not the sort of article that I like to write (more Gospel, please!). Nevertheless, I post this brief introduction to the Purpose Driven Life movement for the benefit of my father, and anyone like him who is as yet unaware of its dangers. I do not aim to be comprehensive: many others have covered this ground more thoroughly than I could hope; it would be futile of me to duplicate their work.

Just before I talk about Rick Warren, let me be clear that he is not the enemy: ‘for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’. (Ephesians 6:12, NKJV) By all accounts, Rick Warren is both generous and gracious, and we should be able to differ with him in a like manner.

Rick Warren

Although perhaps somewhat passé and now searching to find the next big thing, Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life movement continues to be a huge phenomenon that has had a significant impact both within and without the visible church. This is what the Purpose Driven Life website says about Rick Warren:

Dr. Rick Warren is passionate about attacking what he calls the five “Global Goliaths” – spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic disease, and illiteracy/poor education. His goal is a second Reformation by restoring responsibility in people, credibility in churches, and civility in culture. He is a pastor, global strategist, theologian, and philanthropist. He’s been often named “America’s most influential spiritual leader” and “America’s Pastor.”

As a pastor, he founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., in 1980 with one family. Today, it is an evangelical congregation averaging 22,000 weekly attendees, a 120-acre campus, and has more than 300 community ministries to groups such as prisoners, CEOs, addicts, single parents, and those with HIV/AIDS. Recently, the church fed 42,000 homeless people – three meals a day – for 40 days.

He also leads the Purpose Driven Network of churches, a global coalition of congregations in 162 countries. More than 400,000 ministers and priests have been trained worldwide, and almost 157,000 church leaders subscribe to Ministry Toolbox, his weekly newsletter. His previous book, The Purpose Driven Church is listed in “100 Christian Books That Changed the 20th Century.” Forbes magazine called it, “The best book on entrepreneurship, management, and leadership in print.”

As a global strategist , Dr. Warren advises leaders in the public, private, and faith sectors on leadership development, poverty, health, education, and faith in culture. He has been invited to speak at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the African Union, the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, TIME’s Global Health Summit, and numerous congresses around the world. TIME magazine named him one of “15 World Leaders Who Mattered Most in 2004” and in 2005 one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Also, in 2005 U.S. News & World Report named him one of “America’s 25 Best Leaders”.

As a theologian, Dr. Warren has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Judaism, the Evangelical Theological Society, and numerous seminaries and universities. His six books are known for explaining theology in understandable ways and have been translated into more than 50 languages. Dr. Warren says he teaches theology without using theological terms and telling people it is theology. His latest book, The Purpose Driven Life, has sold 25 million copies and is the best-selling hardback book in American history, according to Publisher’s Weekly.

The numbers are breathtaking. Rick Warren has been incredibly successful at what he has set out to do. He is intelligent and personable, and he has influence.

But even this glowing description itself should begin to make us uncomfortable.

Dr. Warren’s stated goal is a ‘second Reformation by restoring responsibility in people, credibility in churches, and civility in culture’. But hang on, those are all things that we have to do. Where is the Gospel of what Christ has done for us?

And what is Forbes, a secular business magazine, doing describing Rick Warren’s manual, the Purpose Driven Church, as the ‘best book on entrepreneurship, management, and leadership in print’? Surely shepherding a church must differ somewhat from leading a corporation? Why would Forbes, and institutions such as the UN and the University of Judaism even be interested in listening to someone who is boldly proclaiming the exclusivity of Christ and teaching pastors how to make plain the offence of the Gospel?

Something doesn’t seem quite right. And that something goes to the heart of the problems of the Purpose Driven Life movement.

The Gospel obscured

I have sent my father a copy of Bob DeWaay’s excellent book, Redefining Christianity: Understanding the Purpose Driven Life Movement. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to understand the problems with the movement. (I think I must now hold the record for the most endorsements of that book on a single blog.)

Perhaps you are eagerly awaiting the arrival of your newly purchased copy? The following brief article, also by Pastor DeWaay, is a helpful introduction to the biggest problem with the Purpose Driven Life (and several others):

• The Gospel: A Method or a Message? How the Purpose Driven Life Obscures the Gospel

Here is a pertinent quotation:

[Rick Warren’s] teaching is in keeping with popular, American, evangelical pietism so it is no wonder most evangelicals cannot see what is wrong with it. It comes from a stream of theology that can be traced back to Charles Finney who popularized a methodological “how to” approach to the gospel that puts spiritual revival in the hands of man to work at will. In doing so neither the message nor the method of Jesus Christ and His apostles is followed.

What Pastor DeWaay says about American evangelical pietism is equally true of evangelicalism in the British Isles (where I was born and still live). Those of us brought up in evangelical circles often find it hard to fault what Dr. Warren is offering. This isn’t because Warren is correctly teaching Biblical doctrine, but because so much of evangelicalism is following ‘neither the message nor the method of Jesus Christ’.

There are, of course, many other resources out there that warn of the dangers of the so-called ‘seeker-sensitive’ Purpose Driven Life movement. I picked Pastor DeWaay’s book and the article above because I find him to be a balanced, readable and insightful observer of the movement.

Drs. Sproul and Mohler on the errors of seeker-sensitivity

The views of two other heavyweights, Dr. R.C. Sproul and Dr. Al Mohler might also be appropriate to include here. They highlight the nonsensical nature of the term ‘seeker-sensitive’, the foolishness of making church attractive to unbelievers, and the misguided notion of catering to ‘felt-needs’ as a means of evangelism:

Aside: The only thing that I’d add to what Dr. Sproul says in the video clip about the gathering of believers for worship is that this is also where we go to be fed with the Word and through the Lord’s Supper. We hear the Law to convict us of our sins, and then the sweet balm of Gospel, assuring us that our sins forgiven in Christ. (Some of us who lean slightly towards the Reformed camp of the Reformation traditions can so easily overlook this, and instead start to see the gathering of the local church as a duty that we are supposed to do for God, rather than a feast-laden table where we go to be fed by Him. But it is an error to make the Gospel benefits of our gathering together into a mere duty of the Law.)

It is self-evidently unhelpful to take our church gatherings – something intended by Christ to feed, equip and edify the body of Christ (cf. Ephesians 4) – and turn them into spectacles designed to entice unbelievers. It is no wonder that so much of the visible church is spiritually impoverished – it has been on a starvation diet.

Hostile church takeovers

One particularly pernicious aspect of the Purpose Driven Life movement is the way that it trains pastors to ‘transition’ their churches to the Purpose Driven model. There are numerous testimonies available online of faithful Christians who have been forced out of their churches by this process. For a flavour of how this works, I recommend listening to this episode of Fighting for the Faith radio program:

• Special Edition: The Cult-Like Hostile Takeover Tactics of the Purpose-Driven Church Transitioning Seminar

Concluding remarks

As with the rest of the Church Growth Movement, Purpose Drivenism obscures the gospel and applies modern marketing methods to the church.

It endeavours to engineer church growth by human techniques, rather than by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit through the proclamation of Law (to convict people of their sin and to show them their true state before God) and Gospel (to direct broken sinners to Christ for forgiveness and justification).

The people behind the movement are smart and well trained. Their techniques work and their congregations consequently swell (at least to a point).

Yet we remember that it is not we who build the Church, but Christ Himself – even He who loved her, and gave Himself for her on the cross. In Christ, therefore, is forgiveness of sins for everyone who believes.

I’ll throw open the comments here, and invite you to provide links to any further resources that you might have found helpful on this topic. Please don’t be bashful about posting relevant links to your own articles and blogs.

Of course, responding meaningfully to comments takes time, and I love it when one commenter responds to another in an insightful way and thereby alleviates the need for me to address a particular point.

Nevertheless, I am a little back-logged at the moment following my last post. It might therefore take a little while for me to make all the responses that I’d like. I ask for your indulgence in the meantime, but please, continue to talk amongst yourselves!

In particular, my father (Alan Neades) raised a number of important questions in his comment on my article, Dangerous pragmatism – why a transformed life is not proof of salvation. He thereby gives me an excuse to clarify my position on a few things, and to explore others in more detail.

Rather than try to squeeze an even longer response than his into the comments section (my first draft weighed-in at over 5,000 words, which I fear might have tried the patience of even the most enthusiastic reader), I have instead decided to respond in a series of three separate articles:

• The Purpose Driven Life: introductory discernment resources
• What are we to make of our good works?
• A closer look at the Alpha Course and whether it is permissible to judge what other Christians teach

All of these articles are now posted, and I shall now direct my attention to the other excellent comments that people have left.

Peace and grace to all of you in our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I was chatting with a good friend last week. He is on the leadership track of a self-described Purpose Driven church, and we have a history of (mostly) amicable sparring over the nature of the Gospel and how it should be proclaimed.

(For anyone unfamiliar with the dangers of the Purpose Driven church movement, I recommend Bob DeWaay’s eminently readable and definitive book on the subject, Redefining Christianity: Understanding the Purpose Driven Life Movement.)

Entirely incidental to the topic of our conversation, my friend happened to mention that the home group he leads had been showing a Nicky Gumbel video. Without thinking, I blurted out the mildly disparaging quip ‘Never mind.’

Who is Nicky Gumbel? He’s the developer of the wildly popular Alpha Course, the content of which many have found to be highly problematic. Michael J. Penfold’s brief analysis of The Gospel According to Gumbel likewise indicates a dangerously flawed presentation of sin, repentance and the work of Christ. Penfold even goes so far as to document Gumbel’s denial of the doctrine of penal substitution, which teaches that Christ was punished in our place for our sin (my emphasis):

Gumbel’s limited understanding and presentation of the theology of sin, leads to a faulty explanation of why Jesus died. Despite giving various illustrations of Christ’s death, including the old ‘swap the Bible from one hand to the other’ visual image, Gumbel misses the central point of the atonement. The Bible reveals that God’s righteous anger and wrath burn constantly against sin and sinners (John 3:36, Rom 1:18, 2:5). To save sinners from wrath (Rom 5:9) penal substitution took place on the cross. Simply put, the righteous anger and wrath of God against sin was poured out on His own Son (Isa 53:5 & 10). This glorious truth is denied by false teachers like Steve Chalke and Clark Pinnock. Gumbel’s position on penal substitution (God punished Jesus) is spelled out in Questions of Life: “Some people caricature the New Testament teaching and suggest that God is unjust because He punished Jesus, an innocent party, instead of us. This is not what the New Testament says. Rather Paul says ‘God was…in Christ’ [2 Cor 5:19]. He was himself the substitute in the person of his Son…We can come back to the Father and experience his love and blessing…That is what God has made possible through his self-substitution on the cross.”

Although Gumbel later refers to Isa 53:6 and says that, “God transferred our wrong-doings onto Jesus,” he denies that God actually punished His own Son. Here, at the heart of Alpha, is a serious error, for scripture plainly teaches that it was God’s will to bruise His own Son (Isa 53:10). Calvary involved divine punishment. That is why the word chastisement is used (Isa 53:5). The iniquity God laid on Christ stands for the wrong itself, the guilt incurred and the punishment to which it gave rise. Literally in Hebrew it means that the Lord ‘made to meet upon Him’ the punishment due to us all. Wrath was poured out on Christ, as He vicariously identified Himself with sinners, being judicially made sin for them on the cross (2 Cor 5:21).

Now, notwithstanding Gumbel’s questionable theology, it wasn’t especially gracious of me to fire a barb at my friend in the way that I did – at least, not in that particular conversation. (If he’s reading this, I apologise for having done so.) But the reason for this post is not to make a public confession, but to discuss the implications of his response, for he quickly pointed out that they had seen lots of conversions, and that people’s lives were being transformed by Gumbel’s teaching. I have no reason to doubt that these things are true.

Since this was an off-the-cuff rejoinder to my provocation, it would be unfair to hold my friend too closely to it as a definitive and final statement of his position. What follows is not therefore addressed specifically to him.

Nevertheless, my friend’s remark is illustrative of the pragmatic grounds upon which the Church Growth Movement justifies its techniques. In essence they say, ‘Don’t criticise us – look at the lives that are being transformed! The fruit of what we do is proof of God’s blessing.’

Let’s look at three of the faulty assumptions that underly this line of reasoning.

False assumption 1: We can judge what is right by whether it ‘works’

In the business world (the source for many of the ideas in the Church Growth Movement), judging by results is generally reasonable. However, the church is not her own master, but rather is responsible to her Head, even the Lord Jesus Christ who bought her. She has not been given a mandate to innovate, but to ‘stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle’ (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

For the church, what matters is not our own opinion of what works, but what Christ has commanded. She is to hold fast to the Apostle’s doctrine, to the proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

False assumption 2: Growth in church attendance proves God’s blessing

In my previous treatment of this assumption, I observed that Baal worship was at one time the most popular religion in Israel. Was this evidence of God’s blessing?

Islam has over a billion adherents and is currently growing faster than the total world population. Is this proof that God approves of Islam?

Or is the reality that the true Church preaches a message that the world finds unpalatable? Even ‘Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

False assumption 3: A transformed life is proof of salvation

Many religions transform lives. Mormonism has produced zealous clean-living converts who would put most evangelicals to shame in their general moral conduct. And radical Islam certainly transforms the lives of those who decide to become suicide bombers – and those of their victims.

Self-help books transform lives. Here’s one not atypical comment of many concerning Stephen R. Covey’s bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

This book changed my life. After reading this book back in 1997 my whole thinking about myself and others changed. I wish they teach this book in high school in every country in the world. Since 97 I buy this book and give it as gift to anyone I come across, especially to young people. You read it and judge it.

The religion of the Pharisees transformed lives. Yet Jesus said of them:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15, NKJV)

Clearly, Jesus didn’t approve of that particular sort of life transformation.

We should be concerned that Pharisaism, which was really all about making God’s law doable, is alive and well in far too many of today’s churches. Whenever anyone gives you five simple steps to keep God’s law (whether it is to stay out of debt, or have healthy relationships, etc.), understand that Pharisaism is the religion being offered. Likewise, when someone preaches the law and tells you to just go out and do it. But the Bible tells us that God’s law exists primarily to show us our sin – it does not have the power to make us righteous:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20, ESV)

I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. (Galatians 2:21, NKJV)

The gospel is not a formula by which we can obey God’s law and thereby become righteous. No, it is the Good News that, even though we do not obey the law, Christ kept it for us. That His perfect righteousness is put to our account, and that the wrath of God that we deserved for our sin was instead poured out upon Christ on the cross:

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26, NKJV)

Those who believe that gospel have eternal life. These are the ones who believe that God justifies (declares righteous) all those who are trusting in Jesus and His work on the cross. For them, ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness’ (Romans 10:4, NKJV).

‘Ah’, someone might say, ‘You don’t understand. When I talk of a transformed life, I mean that people’s lives are turned around and they are joyful in the Lord.’

What then, of the parable of the soils? Jesus says:

Behold, a sower went out to sow.

And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.

Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.

But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

Matthew 13:3–9, NKJV

Jesus subsequently explains the parable to His disciples:

Therefore hear the parable of the sower:

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.

But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.

Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

Matthew 13:18–23, NKJV

The seed which fell upon stony ground appeared to burst into life – it ‘immediately sprang up’. Why? ‘Because there was no depth’.

Far from the immediate flourishing of growth being an indicator of eventual fruit, that growth was caused by the seed falling upon unprepared ground. This is sobering; the implication is that a quick conversion – an abundance of early growth – might very well prove to be ill-grounded.

Notice that the first hearer is said not to understand the Word he has heard. We are not told whether the second and third hearers understand it, but we are left to draw our own inference, given that we are expressly told that the final hearer, he who received seed on the good ground, ‘is he who hears the word and understands it’.

The seed which fell on stony ground is likened to one who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet there is no depth there, no true understanding of what has been declared.

If this is sometimes the case with those who hear the true Word of the Kingdom, properly proclaimed, how plainly this exposes the dangers of our modern watered-down presentations of man’s sinful state. Rather than risk offending people by telling them of the wrath of a holy and just God toward sinners, we instead talk of having ‘made mistakes’ and ‘messed up our lives’. Instead of warning of the coming judgement, we tell people that God loves them, omitting any mention of His holiness and justice. Rather than call sinners to repent, we entice them with the offer of a better, more abundant life.

And thus we emasculate the Gospel, robbing it of its majesty and power. For if God is not angry with sinners, the punishment of His Son in their place on the cross can make no sense. Truly, it is this kind of diluted evangelism that results in false converts, lacking depth and with no understanding of the amazing grace that has been poured out upon sinners through the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Church’s task is not to make the Gospel palatable to unbelievers. It is to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ so clearly that the offence of the Gospel – Christ crucified in our place, the just suffering for the unjust – is plain to everyone who hears.

Our message should be such that it is impossible for anyone to accept, except the Holy Spirit be at work supernaturally in people’s lives. The Church is charged with preaching the Law in all its severity to frighten comfortable sinners, and then to comfort frightened sinners with the Gospel.

And so we see that false religion can transform lives. Secular books and programmes can transform lives. And even those who hear the true Gospel can receive it with joy and exhibit the signs of a transformed life, yet fall away when tested by tribulation or persecution. And thus, when it comes to matters of eternal salvation, a transformed life is proof of precisely nothing.

The right way, and the wrong way, to view good works

None of what I have said regarding a transformed life is to deny that genuine faith will result in good works. For it is true that ‘faith without works is dead’ (James 2). That is, someone who has been regenerated and granted the gifts of repentance and trust in Christ will inevitably produce good works.

But always remember that any such good works are the consequence of our salvation, not its cause. We must never think that we have somehow earned favour with God by anything we have done. We have favour with God only because of what Christ has done for us and in our place. It is impossible that we could add to that finished work. As Paul admonishes the Galatians:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?

This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

Galatians 3:1–3, NKJV

Neither should we look to good works as proof of salvation. Elders may not rest secure simply because they see transformed lives among their flock.

Likewise, we should never look to our works for definite assurance of our own salvation. To do so is immensely dangerous. For whenever we examine our lives honestly in the light of God’s Law, we can but agree with Paul:

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do…For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. (Romans 7:15, 18, NKJV)

Direct me to my works, and I shall despair, for I do not see them, except perhaps a few rags ‘defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection’ (as the Westminster Confession puts it). And even if I should be so blind to my true sinful state as to be reassured, I would then no longer be trusting in Christ’s merits alone, but rather in my own. A new Pharisee would have been born.

We are simul iustus et peccator, righteous and yet sinners at the same time. I am declared righteous, but the taint of sin is as yet present within me. With St. Paul, I cry out:

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:24–25, NKJV)

Point me then, not to my own works, but to the exceedingly precious promises of Christ that are mine through His finished work on the cross. Call me daily to repentance, and tell me of the forgiveness of all my sin that has been accomplished through Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood. Exhort me not to look inward to myself, but outward to the one with whom I was buried through baptism into death, the one who was raised from the dead for my justification and even now causes me to walk in newness of life (cf. Romans 6).

Conclusion

The Church Growth Movement is predicated upon pragmatism. It wrongly assumes that numerical growth and transformed lives are proof of God’s blessing. Let us not measure the health of our churches by such things, but by their steadfast adherence to the Apostle’s doctrine, and by their faithful proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

Christ’s message to the church in Sardis should be salutary for all churches whose confidence is in their results, in their reputation for being alive:

These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars:

‘I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.’

‘You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.’

‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

Revelation 3:1–6, NKJV

How different from Christ’s letter to the persecuted and apparently impoverished church in Smyrna! (Revelation 2:8–11)

The Church has no need for human efforts to engineer salvation. For hear St. Paul’s summary of the Gospel and its power:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21–24)

Postscript

After I had begun writing this article, Ken Silva posted a précis of a piece by Dr. John MacArthur on this same subject of pragmatism in the Church. Ken’s summary and Dr. MacArthur’s full article are both well worth reading. This quote from Dr. MacArthur is particularly apposite:

It is folly to think one can be both pragmatic and biblical. The pragmatist wants to know what works now. The biblical thinker cares only about what the Bible says. The two philosophies inevitably oppose each other at the most basic level.

Afterword

Readers might find the comment thread below helpful in clarifying why the Purpose Driven Life movement is problematic. I have also written a follow-up article, Our transformed lives: what are we to make of good works?

I briefly covered this in my article, The mysterious case of the disappearing gospel. But the topic is so important that I return to it here.

St. Paul defines the Gospel very clearly and concisely in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

1 Cor. 15:1–8, NKJV

The Gospel, then, is the fact that Christ died for sinners, was buried, and rose from the dead.

Notice that Paul says ‘I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you’.

The Gospel is Good News to be declared. Good news to be preached.

And it is good news to be received. Good news in which we stand. Good news by which we are saved – if we cling fast, as Paul says, to ‘that word which I preached to you’.

There’s that word ‘preached’, again. The Gospel is a message to be delivered.

Paul frequently uses shorthand for this Gospel:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1 Cor. 1:21–24, NKJV

Paul here sums up the Gospel message that he preached (and are you noticing a pattern?) in just two words: ‘Christ crucified’.

Of course, this short phrase needs further explanation.

But within those two words is contained the entirety of the glorious truth of the Gospel: the Father graciously regenerating underserving sinners by His Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Saviour:

For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:3–7, NKJV

Read again the 1 Cor. 1:21–24 passage:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

How are people saved?

What’s interesting here is that Paul does not say that people are won to Christ by being befriended and having their felt needs met by the Church.

There’s nothing wrong with Christians showing love in such practical ways, of course. In fact, this is a good thing! But this is not the means that God uses to save people.

No, Paul tells us plainly: ‘it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe’.

And which message is it that saves? Which message is it that is a stumbling block and foolishness? Which message is it that is ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’ to those who are being called?

It is the message of ‘Christ crucified’.

‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’ comes through the preaching of this message.

If you would love your neighbour, bring him ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’. Tell him of how, without Christ, he is under God’s wrath and will receive the eternal punishment that he has earned by his rebellion and sin. Tell him of the Christ crucified for sinners such as he. Tell him of the Christ who was buried, and who rose again on the third day. Call him to repentance. And give him the offer of forgiveness of sins in Christ to all those who put their trust in Him.

This is what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. This is what it means to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.’

Luke 24:46-48, NKJV

Please, use words that your neighbour will understand. Patiently explain anything that he doesn’t grasp. But preach Christ crucified. Proclaim to him repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ. Nothing else can save him.

The only means that God has ordained to save the lost is this proclamation, this message of ‘Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2). If you would show love your neighbour, there is no greater good that you can do for him than to bring him this Good News.

Paul returns to this theme of the preached Gospel over and over. How could he not, as one who had received such boundless grace and love in Christ? How could the love of God poured out in his heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5) not overflow in the proclamation of the Gospel that saved him?

But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’

Rom. 10:8–13

I weep for the lost. They need to hear the Gospel message, ‘the word of faith which we preach’. And to hear it, they need a preacher. And preachers must be sent:

‘How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!’

Rom. 10:14–15

Not all will receive the message of peace between a holy, righteous God and fallen sinners, for ‘Christ crucified’ is a stumbling block and foolishness to those who are perishing:

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’ (Rom. 10:16, NKJV)

Nevertheless, our speech and our preaching are not to be with ‘with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power’ (1 Cor. 2:4). O Lord, may our lips resound with the Gospel, ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’!

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Rom. 10:17, NKJV)

This Gospel that the lost need is the very same Gospel that I need to hear. That you need to hear.

Every day.

For I sin daily. And were it not for the regular reminder of Christ crucified for my sins, I should despair.

But the Gospel message brings hope. It builds faith, for ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ’.

And the true faith in Christ that comes through hearing the Gospel word of Christ shall surely bring forth its fruit.

Pastors, if you would have your flock bear fruit, feed them with the Gospel every week.

If you would fulfil the commission with which Christ has entrusted you, take every opportunity to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

The sheep you oversee need the reminder of this message every week. And you too need to hear this message. For the preached Gospel is Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Cor. 1:17–18, NKJV

O God, have mercy upon the lost and upon all your Church. Raise up and send many preachers, that the dying and all the hungry may hear clearly the bold proclamation of repentance and the remission of sins in Christ. And if in your grace it should please You to use such a weak and lowly vessel, ‘Here am I. Send me.’ Amen.

If you have read my article Spiritual growth? There’s an app for that, you’ll be aware that there is currently a big push within the Church to adopt these dangerous practices. Mike and Bob show you why this is a Bad Thing.

Still here? Quick, go read the article now – but don’t forget to come right back:

• The Dangers of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines

For those who don’t know him, Bob DeWaay is pastor at Twin City Fellowship in Minnesota and the founder of Critical Issues Commentary. He is also the author of two superb books, both of which I highly recommend:

• The Emergent Church – Undefining Christianity
• Redefining Christianity: Understanding the Purpose Driven Life Movement

If you don’t have a copy of these books, go buy them now!

Christian organizations everywhere are emphasizing the importance of engaging in practical ways with the poor and needy. The talk is of ‘impacting people’s lives for the Kingdom’ and ‘responding to Jesus’ call to look after the poorest and most vulnerable’.

This is a good thing, surely? Is this not simply following the example that Jesus set? And does not Paul exhort the Galatians to ‘do good to all’ (Gal. 6:10)?

This short video makes a pertinent observation. (For best results, choose ‘720p’ and view full screen.)

Try this experiment:

Pick a few well known Christian organizations that work to meet the practical needs of those in their community or further afield. Visit their websites. Find out what they say they are about. What they do.

Is anything missing?

Look harder…

How prominently does the proclamation of the Gospel figure in their mission?

Is the Gospel message of ‘Christ crucified for sinners’ even mentioned?

And even if the word ‘gospel’ itself is used, what does the context show is meant by that term?

All too often, the Gospel has been redefined to mean showing God’s love to other people in practical ways. The mainstream liberal denominations did this in the 20th century. And now, the same thing is happening in mainstream evangelicalism. Yet the love that we owe to our neighbour (and to God) is the epitome, not of the Gospel, but of the Law:

‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Matt. 22:37–40, NKJV

The primary purpose of the Law is to show us that we are all guilty before a holy and just God, for none of us is able to keep it.

The Gospel, however, is Good News to be proclaimed to all those who, like us, have been condemned by God’s Law:

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

1 Cor. 15:1–8, NKJV

The Gospel is not what we do, but what Christ has done for us. It is the Good News of His reconciling to the Father those who are by nature children of God’s wrath (Eph. 6:4). His death for our sins. His perfect life put to our account. His resurrection for our justification.

As I make clear in the video, the message that the Church has been given to proclaim in the name of Christ is ‘repentance and remission of sins’. Meeting physical needs is useless if we fail also to proclaim the only message that can meet people’s greatest need of all – to be saved from the just wrath of a holy and righteous God.

The Great Commission is not that we should ‘go into all the world and be nice’, but that we should make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to hold fast everything that Christ has commanded:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ Amen.

Matt. 28:18–20, NKJV

We are to proclaim the same message as Jesus:

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.’

Mar. 1:14–15, NKJV

The same message as St. Peter:

Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’

And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’

Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.

Acts 2:38–41, NKJV

The same message as St. Paul:

‘Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.’

Acts 17:30–31, NKJV

Now, the fruit of the Gospel in the lives of those who believe is most certainly good works. But never confuse the fruit of the Gospel with the Good News itself.

For more discussion about what this Gospel message is, and is not, you might like to read some of my other recent blog posts:

• The power of the Gospel
• The point of the ‘sheep and the goats’ passage is NOT that we should try harder to do good works
• What is a sermon for, and is it right for us to judge a poor one?

Back to our experiment. Try looking at the websites of, say, your local Christian youth outreach ministry. Or even a local church.

How did they do? Do they understand that their mission is to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ?

Leave a comment and let me know what you find. Don’t forget to leave a link to any websites you discuss!

Remember, Leadership Network is the organization that helped infect the church with the twin blights of Seeker Drivenism and Emergence Christianity. Leadership Network has marketing clout, and knows how to use it. Monvee could be huge.

One of the problems with the Church Growth Movement’s seeker-driven approach to mass-producing disciples is that it has largely failed to consider how to make disciples who are growing into spiritual maturity in Christ. When the most mature members of your own congregation tell you that they are ‘not being fed’, there’s a problem. And when the mainstream media writes that ‘megachurches like Saddleback are market-driven, with transcendence not on the menu’, and worse, describes you as the ‘butt end of Christianity’ using the words ‘bland, cheerful, dull’, the scary prospect of irrelevance beckons. And with irrelevance comes that worst nightmare of the Church Growth CEO pastor – stagnant or shrinking congregations.

Monvee is the solution to this problem of stalled Christian lives lacking in transcendence. Market research has uncovered a missed opportunity, and Monvee is the new product that has been created to fill this void.

Monvee claims to be ‘The Future of Spiritual Formation’. This is in itself bad news, because ‘spiritual formation’ is code-talk for Roman Catholic Monastic Mysticism. (Be sure to read my good friend Christine Pack explaining how the practices of spiritual formation have their origin in occultic mysticism, then listen to her powerful testimony.) Not content with the damage that it has already done to the church, Leadership Network now apparently wishes to undo the Reformation.

The rather prosaic reality is that Monvee is a website that claims to diagnose your spiritual needs so that it can create a personal growth plan for you to follow. (Monvee also looks like it will be able to provide pastors with the ability to track the progress of those in their congregations who are using it.) In other words, Monvee is simply a software application that is running on a webserver somewhere. But perhaps that doesn’t sound as important as ‘The Future of Spiritual Formation’.

Take a look at this short promotional video for Monvee:

John Ortberg opens by saying:

If you make the inside of the tree right, then the fruit will be good. If you change somebody’s habitual patterns of thinking and feeling, then inevitably the kind of stuff that they do will be the right kind of stuff. But that means I have to step back and ask the question, ‘How is it that those habitual patterns of thinking and feeling get changed?’

Ok, that’s an interesting opening. So, I am now expecting a Biblical follow-on. Perhaps something like the following:

Of course, there’s nothing we can do to change those patterns. We have to be buried with Christ by baptism into death so that, just as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life in Him. (cf. Rom. 6:4)

We can do nothing! Christ has done everything!

Let us therefore live lives of daily repentance, trusting in Christ’s finished work alone for the forgiveness of our sins, and in His righteousness put to our account. Let us feed gladly upon Christ in the Word that He has given us, speaking the truth in love to one another, that we might be nourished in the faith and grow up in every way into Christ. (cf. Pet. 2:2; Eph. 4)

But no, instead we have this from Bob Buford, chairman of the Leadership Network board:

A worship service isn’t the only treatment. A Bible class isn’t the only treatment. And, uh, a small group doesn’t fit everyone, either. There, uh, what we need is a diagnostic device to find out what the customer needs at different stages in their, their development in the life of faith. And what it looks like we have now is that device.

Notice anything missing? (I’m going to ignore the consideration of worship services and Bible classes as treatment – that’s way too easy a target to bother tackling.)

We need a diagnostic device? Huh? (And no, he’s clearly not talking about the Law of God showing us our sin.)

Where is Christ? Where is the Gospel? Where is the work of the Holy Spirit?

It is truly said that ‘The Gospel assumed is the Gospel denied’. But here with Monvee we have, at the very least, an implicit denial of not merely the Gospel, but also of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. This, then, seems to be a Christianity that has no need for the work of the Christ or the Holy Spirit. This is a Christianity that has no need for a Triune God.

Thanks to Leadership Network and Monvee, we can dispense with the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in applying to us Christ and His righteousness. What we are given instead is a set of techniques and resources, a customized ‘growth plan’ for each individual.

I wonder how the church managed for two millennia without this crucial innovation?

In the light of what Bob Buford and others say in the video, take another look at John Ortberg’s opening words:

If you make the inside of the tree right, then the fruit will be good. If you change somebody’s habitual patterns of thinking and feeling, then inevitably the kind of stuff that they do will be the right kind of stuff. But that means I have to step back and ask the question, ‘How is it that those habitual patterns of thinking and feeling get changed?’

Is not the underlying assumption here, borne out by the rest of the video, that we each have within us the ability to change our ‘habitual patterns of thinking and feeling’? What we need, then, is to discover and apply the right kind of techniques to bring about this change, thus making ‘the inside of the tree right’. We need a growth plan, a programme. We need Monvee.

Take a look at this complete transcript of the video, and tell me whether I have misunderstood the message that it conveys:

JO = John Ortberg, author ‘Faith and Doubt’
BB = Bob Buford, Buford Foundation & Leadership Network
TW = Tom Wilson, CEO Leadership Network
JW = Jud White, Central Christian Church
MF = Mike Foster, xxxchurch.com founder
MB = Mike Breaux, author ‘Identity Theft’

JO: If you make the inside of the tree right, then the fruit will be good.

JO: If you change somebody’s habitual patterns of thinking and feeling, then inevitably the kind of stuff that they do will be the right kind of stuff.

JO: But that means I have to step back and ask the question, ‘How is it that those habitual patterns of thinking and feeling get changed?’

BB: A worship service isn’t the only treatment. A Bible class isn’t the only treatment. And, uh, a small group doesn’t fit everyone, either. There, uh, what we need is a diagnostic device to find out what the customer needs at different stages in their, their development in the life of faith. And what it looks like we have now is that device.

TW: I think that this Monvee’s going to be an innovation that’s gonna take the Church, uh, in the next century in, on into a whole new level.

JW: To me, it’s a, a remarkable idea that we can customize a growth plan for each individual that would want it. That would be open to pursing and going after it.

MF: And, the idea that I could take a really quick assessment, a really easy assessment, that Monvee’s going to understand how I think, and how I feel, and how I like to learn, and then create a plan for me. That’s exciting, and that’s what I want as a person. Uh, because, again, the desire is there. It’s just I gotta figure out the pathway. And a pathway that works for me.

MB: And I think as, as people start to find that it’s ok to walk with God in the way that He has wired you up, that you don’t have to do this as much as this. Uh, I think it’s going to be revolutionary for people.

JO: It offers the possibility of getting beyond what most churches do, which is, we try to mass-produce disciples of Jesus. And disciples of Jesus cannot be mass-produced, they have to be hand-crafted.

Monvee is built upon the assumption that it is possible to train and discipline a tree to think and feel in a particular way, and that this process will then make the tree right inside so that it produces good fruit.

There’s a term for this belief that we have the innate capability to become righteous, that we can obtain right moral standing before God by applying the appropriate disciplines to our lives through our own efforts.

That term is Pelagianism.

Pelagianism was condemned as a heresy by the Church at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Pelagianism denies original sin, the Biblical doctrine that we are dead in our sins and completely incapable of becoming righteous by our own endeavours. Pelagianism denies that, in our state of utter helplessness, we need Christ and His righteousness applied to us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

Based on this promotional video, I rather think that I detect the putrefying stench of Pelagianism emanating from the rotting foundations of Monvee.

Let me be clear. I am not here asserting that John Ortberg, or anyone from Leadership Network, actually holds Pelagian doctrine. But they certainly might like to re-examine the innovations that they are introducing to the church in the light of the historic, orthodox Christian faith that is set forth in the Scriptures. And they might wish to think rather more carefully about what they say and how they say it. Right now, they are not sounding as if they are orthodox.

Finally, I do agree with John Ortberg’s closing comment, that ‘disciples of Jesus cannot be mass produced, they have to be hand-crafted’.

But that statement leaves me slightly puzzled.

Monvee offers a growth plan that is churned out automatically by a piece of software based upon your responses to a standardized set of questions. How is that anything other than an attempt to mass-produce disciples? What, exactly, is hand-crafted about this approach?

No, the Church doesn’t need Monvee.

Rather, we need to abandon the failing seeker-driven megachurch model. We need a return to an age of sound doctrine, where each elder assumes personal responsibility for each sheep under his care.

Consider Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor:

Concerning his time in Kidderminster, Baxter would write that ‘there was about one family in a street that worshipped God and called on his name’ upon his arrival; whereas ‘when I came away there was not past one family in the side of a street that did not do so.’ Baxter promoted a vigorous and personal pastoral ministry among his flock. He regularly visited them in their homes and personally catechized whole households until he was ejected from the Church of England in 1662 because of the Act of Uniformity. Though he would continue his preaching ministry, he would never again have pastoral charge over a congregation.

— Richard Baxter and the Multi-Site Movement, www.9marks.org

Richard Baxter took a genuine ‘hand-crafted’ approach to making disciples. He believed that pastors should give personal attention to each individual in their flock.

Monvee might have ‘hand-crafted’ pretentions, but its boast is nothing more than the deceptive claim of an over-active marketer’s imagination.

I think, therefore, that I shall decline this particular innovation. I am instead going to stay with historic, orthodox Christianity. It has served the church well for nearly 2,000 years, and I am confident that I too can do no better than to trust alone in Christ and Him crucified. And I have the treasure of his pure and holy Word to feed me. Sola scriptura! Sola fide! Sola gratia! Solus Christus! Soli Deo gloria!

‘It drives Pharisees nuts to watch God keep blessing ministries they ridicule & despise.God’s sovereignty is often humorous.’

What’s the Pharisee card? Good question.

In my quest to become Todd Wilken’s number one fan, please allow me to direct you to his incisive article:

• Playing the Pharisee Card

Now, Rick Warren’s proof of the rightness of his position (and that his opponents are wrong) seems to be based on his claim of God’s ‘blessing’. And, as CEO of Saddleback and self-proclaimed disciple of management guru Peter Drucker, he knows how to apply best 21st century management practice to his business. So, it is important for Mr. Warren to be able to quantify this blessing.

How is God’s blessing measured? Well one easy way, in Mr. Warren’s book, is by seeing how much your church grows. A numerically growing church is a blessed church. Saddleback has grown vastly over the last three decades. So, God must be blessing it. And He must approve of their theology and practice. Quod erat demonstrandum.

The only problem with this, and it is just a teensy-weeny one, is that not all growth is good growth.

Measured on the basis of numerical success, Baal-worship was doing pretty well in ancient Israel. (If you are unfamiliar with the story, now would be a good time to read 1 Kings 18.)

All but a remnant of 7,000 people had bowed the knee to Baal. Thus, the 450 prophets of Baal whom Elijah confronted must have been pretty confident of God’s favour. After all, 450–1, that’s pretty good evidence of whose side God is on, right?

At least, it must have seemed that way.

Until Elijah routed the prophets of Baal and had them all executed at Brook Kishon.

It turned out that Elijah was the one who had been listening to (and trusting in) God, after all. He was the real Prophet. The prophets of Baal? They were self-deceived impostors, false prophets with no legitimate place in God’s kingdom.

Which brings us to the question, how does Rick Warren know that God is blessing him and those ministries fashioned after his own?

This might be an appropriate point to remind ourselves of what Christ wrote to the Church of Sardis:

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.”

“You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’

—Revelation 3:1–6, NKJV

A name for being alive doesn’t cut it. Your works must be perfect before God.

Not sure that you can manage perfect works?

Good.

You can’t.

But what matters is what Jesus Christ has done for us. And He has lived a perfect life for us, died for us.

But this Gospel message, what Christ has done for us, isn’t what Mr. Warren has been emphasizing. He instead proclaims the need for a New Reformation, this time of ‘Deeds, not Creeds’. (Since this is itself a creed, there is, shall we say, a certain tinge of irony here.)

Rick Warren thus preaches a message of what we must do for Christ. This back-to-front gospel is from the world of Alice Through the Looking Glass.

But, let us consider seriously for one moment this creed of ‘Deeds, not Creeds’. What kind of deeds might God be interested in?

After he fed the five thousand, some of the people came to Jesus and asked exactly this question:

Then they said to Him, ‘What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?’

Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.’

Therefore they said to Him, ‘What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’

Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’

Then they said to Him, ‘Lord, give us this bread always.’

And Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.’

‘This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.’

—John 6:28–40, NKJV

Jesus’ message sounds remarkably like ‘Creeds, not Deeds’. What you believe about Him is everything. What you do? Well, not so much. (Which isn’t to say that what we do isn’t important. But the good works that we do are a fruit of the gospel, not the gospel itself. Never confuse the two.)

Are you believing and trusting in Christ? Yes? Then you ‘have everlasting life’, and He will raise you up ‘at the last day’.

The work that God would have you do is to believe in His Son. To trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. To trust in His perfect, righteous life put to your account. His death in your place for your sins. You give God glory by believing in His glorious Son.

The problem with Mr. Warren’s doctrine of ‘Deeds, not Creeds’ is thus obvious: it directly contradicts what Jesus taught.

This is why many Online Discernment Ministries (ODMs) and have for years been questioning Mr. Warren’s doctrine and practice. And perhaps, just perhaps, they might now be getting a little under his skin.

One of the two tweets Mr. Warren made immediately prior to playing the Pharisee card was:

“Father,thank u for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise&clever,&revealing it to the CHILDLIKE”Mt11:25

Doesn’t he sound somewhat defensive? I pray that the Holy Spirit troubles his conscience. May the Lord have mercy upon him and grant him repentance and faith in Christ for the forgiveness of all his sin, including his false gospel.

Finally, here is the other tweet that he made before playing the Pharisee card:

It takes ALL kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. If Jesus is honored & lives transformed, I like how you do it!

It is encouraging that Mr. Warren appreciates the value of all kinds of churches.

Except, of course, those that call him out on his unsound doctrine and practice. No, they’re simply full of Pharisees. Aren’t they?

Afterword

For over two years, I have refrained from naming names and making negative posts on this blog. This article marks a shift from that policy.

Why the change?

Because Rick Warren and his Leadership Network partners are responsible for immense damage to the Body of Christ.

And now, rather than respond to his critics with a Biblical defence of his position, he has resorted to the playground tactic of name-calling. The gospel is too important for this to go unchallenged. People’s eternal destinies are at stake.

Mr. Warren, enough is enough. If you are unable or unwilling to present an exegetically sound Biblical defence for your doctrine and practice, may the Lord rebuke you and grant you repentance.