SUMMARY:
“If you build your Church on worldly principles, you will end up with a worldly church”.
So where are we NOW?
The current fad within churches all over the world comes directly from the Church Growth Movement (CGM).
I call it the “Purpose Driven Phenomenon” others have called it “Purpose Driven Apostasy”.
You make up your own mind.
It’s all about marketing the church.
What?
You have never heard of it?
You must be kidding!
By NEIL BOTHAM
FOR 27 years I have worked in the same school near my home in Chesterfield. During that time I have seen many fads come and go amongst the children. It seems every few weeks. It may be a fad concerning dress, music, TV programmes, the latest computer game, collectors’ items or the latest toy. And of course, the manufacturers jump on these fads and the worldwide market can be worth millions.
Recently it was the fad of collectors’ cards that swept our school, where the children were purchasing packs of these cards with sweets and then swapping them until they had obtained the full set. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that the card manufacturers would hold certain cards back from production until the market had been fiooded with all the others in the set.
Then something happened to make this fad seem different from other similar promotions that had gone before. One night a Christian friend visited me at home and as we stood talking in the kitchen he noticed a pile of these cards on the table which I was saving for my grandchildren. He asked “What are you doing with these cards”? “Saving them for my grandchildren,” I replied. He looked through the cards and said something that really got me thinking: “If your grandchildren don’t want them can I have them? I and others at work are collecting them and there’s some here that will complete my set”.
Over the following weeks I thought about the incident a lot. This was the first time I realized that children’s fads can affect adults. Suddenly, a thought came to me: “It’s just the same in the Church. Christianity has its share of fads too”.
During the last couple of decades we have had many different fads within the Church. For example thereontents will be added shortly was the fad of “home-groups” when churches worldwide dumped one of their midweek meetings to meet in “Home Group” leaders’ homes. Sadly the midweek meeting that was dumped was usually the “Bible Study”. This happened at my own church. We stopped theTuesday night Bible Study, which was arguably the best attended meeting of the week and replaced it with home groups.We studied prepared notes taken not from the Bible, but from books by famous authors who were perceived as accomplishing something within the kingdom of God, authors such as Hayford, Frangipane,Yongi Cho & others. Christian authors who were trying out NewThings. The next fad came with the music. Suddenly, instead of individual members of the congregation, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, breaking out in song and leading everyone else during the communion service, thus providing beautiful times in the presence of the Lord, they had to be replaced with “Worship Groups” complete with “Worship Group Leaders” who chose all the songs beforehand for the congregation to sing.They usually came with drums etc.
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A fad is defined as: “A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; (a Craze).” |
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This group leader was then sent on a course by the Church on the correct way in which to lead a worship service. (Usually Chris Bowater in the UK.) On these courses ways were discussed in which we could finally dump the hymn book (Referred to by the youth as Granny Songs) and replace it with “dominionist” choruses like “Majesty” from the pen of Hayford and others.
This trend included the need to invest in “Overhead Projectors” and computers to fiash the words of the choruses onto a screen which could be seen by the whole congregation. (Unless of course you were old, had bad eyesight or sat at the back). In my own church we invested in a loop system for the hard of hearing which never worked properly. One Sunday morning my wife who is slightly deaf approached the local “Worship Group Leader” and asked him if he could make sure that the loop system was on. He replied, “If you don’t like it clear off home because I’m fed up of hearing you moan”. Understandably, my wife never attended that church again.
So out went the great hymns written from truth, experience and doctrine and we were told that we had to move with the times and accept many of the world’s concepts and styles of music. So “Rock Gospel” came into our midst.
A later fad was “Toronto” which, contrary to the popular belief of the time, rather than unite the church, had the opposite effect and split many congregations worldwide. Along with the Toronto fad came a whole new terminology within Christian circles.We had “Catchers” to catch people as they fell over when they were prayed for; “Carpet Time” a term used to describe the length of time you spent laying on the fioor after you had “Gone Down” under the socalled “power of the spirit”. We had “Holy Laughter” when you laughed uncontrollably for hours at a time (usually disrupting the preaching of God’s word); and “Lion Roars” when you roared as loud as you could. (Of course this was the Lion of the tribe of Judah and not the other roaring lion described in the Bible, wasn’t it?)
Oh I almost forgot! You also had to get some young people to remove the first two rows of chairs before the service (or in some cases during the service) just in case the “Catchers” missed and someone fell on the chairs and hurt themselves. (This did happen in one well known incident. A lady “Went Down”, someone fell on top crushing her, and she died from the resulting complications. The ministry behind the famous TV evangelist in whose crusade this incident took place settled the ensuing law suit out of court
to hush the matter up).
At this time came “Prayer Warriors”, who sat in the service and groaned out loud as they “travailed in the Spirit” supposedly battling the powers of darkness. I recall, at this time, hearing the phrase “Birthed in the Spirit” to show that the Lord was doing a new thing. There was an incident on TV where one pastor stood behind another on stage with his hands between his legs to catch the baby that the Holy Ghost was birthing, whilst members of the congregation cheered. Sadly at this time unless you had clucked like a chicken, roared like a lion, laughed like an hyena, or rolled about on the fioor you hadn’t had a good meeting and there was obviously something wrong with your fellowship because God wasn’t visiting you. All of this time your Christian walk was being, in effect, changed from a life of faith to one based on a supposed supernatural experience.
Then came the “Mission Statement” when each individual church had to formulate its own statement, and when others eagerly inquired, “What is your mission statement”? Some of us were bemused by all this because we thought that the church already had a “mission statement” taken from God’s Word, called the “Great Commission”.
It was about this time that Christian terminology changed in earnest. “Sinners” the “Lost” and the “Unsaved” became the “Unchurched” and “Seekers”. This was followed by the fad of the “Alpha Course” with its no negatives and salvation without repentance emphases; followed closely by “Marketing Strategies” where the church had to learn from the world and adopt its marketing techniques and principles in order to operate properly.
Suddenly we were surrounded by fulltime “Youth Workers” and “Church Administrators” on the church payroll all doing a job which many of us over the years had done without pay as a “ministry unto the Lord”.
Many of you in Christian Leadership will remember that you were sent on weekend retreats to help you to “Define Your Target” and to “Adopt a strategy” to help you to reach that target. To help you reach the “Unchurched” in your “Target Area” the next fad was introduced, “Spiritual Mapping”. A church member was asked to investigate the history of our community to see if there was any record of Satanism or witchcraft. (They
usually came up with some evidence no matter how obscure).
Then the “Prayer Warriors” (in teams) were introduced to combat and bind satanic infiuences over our towns and districts in line with guru Peter C Wagner’s principles of spiritual warfare. Many of these “Spiritual Mapping” ideas were taken straight out of Frank Peretti’s fictional book Piercing the Present Darkness. Even though it was pure fiction, the author effectively became the authority on spiritual warfare and received speaking engagements on the subject from all over the world.
While the “Prayer Warrior” teams were battling behind the scenes congregations were shown the “Transformations Video” so they could support what the “Prayer Warriors” were doing as they entered into this NEW realm of spiritual warfare, which strangely enough both the Bible and church history are totally silent about.
Then along came the BIG GUNS. Wimber’s “Power Evangelism” and his teachings on the five fold ministry gave way to the “New Breed of Christian” not a mere apostle but “Super Apostles”, men who would be in the forefront of this aggressive march of the church in its mission to take dominion over the world. Some of these men joined an organisation called “Promise Keepers” who would promise not to correct or criticize each other and if you did you were labelled a “Heresy Hunter”. Strangely enough, the authors who were promoting this concept of “Super Apostle” usually claimed that they themselves were called by God to belong to this elite band.
Next the “church” came up with the idea from somewhere (definitely not from the Scriptures) that they had to become more acceptable to the world and to their communities. To become more “Social Gospel” orientated; more “User Friendly”; more attractive to the “Unchurched”.We were told to conduct surveys of our localities and find out why the “Unchurched” didn’t attend church and then to give them what they wanted in our services. In short we had to become “Seeker Sensitive” and “Seeker Friendly”.
A new phrase was born: “Friendship Evangelism”. In this concept you formed friendships with unchurched people who shared the same interests as yourself with the intention of bringing them into the fold and then move on to someone else. It was in this environment that the Nine o’clock service was born
in Sheffield a city about 12 miles from where I live.
After conducting surveys of their area a local church found that Sheffield was primarily a “Club Culture” so they set out to give people “Christianised Club” in church. It worked. Young people by their hundreds fiocked to the contemporary services to see drama, dancing and electronic video displays. And the Anglican Church, amazed by its success gave them their full support that is until the lid blew off and it all went terribly wrong. Now there is a saying that goes something like this, “When religion goes wrong, it doesn’t just go wrong it goes terribly, terribly wrong” (remember Jonestown). The nine o’clock service went terribly wrong.
After its exposure in the national press the Anglican Church authorities conveniently brushed “the experiment” under the carpet, but many still remember the revelations of sexual promiscuity and the smashed and damaged lives which ensued. This shouldn’t surprise any discerning, Bible believing Christian because the old saying still rings as a warning to pastors and church leaders the world over
“If you build your Church on worldly principles, you will end up with a worldly church”.
So where are we NOW? The current fad within churches all over the world comes directly from the Church Growth Movement (CGM). I call it the “Purpose Driven Phenomenon” others have called it “Purpose Driven Apostasy”. You make up your own mind. It’s all about marketing the church.
What?
You have never heard of it?
You must be kidding!
Footnotes:
About the Author...
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Appeared in Issue CETF NR 33 2005
"...contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" -- Jude v3
© Copyright 2006 Christian Witness Ministries, except where noted. All rights reserved
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-Last revised-
Monday, October 09, 2006
