October 12, 2010
Dressing in My Sunday Best
I went to Sunday School and after watching 15 minutes of our current video series about the church I got up and left. The study is produced by Rick Warren’s Saddleback church staff and I knew there was no way I could be open to the Spirit’s leading if I were sitting there angry. The leadership of my previous church was sucked into Warren’s ‘The Purpose Driven Church’ and quite honestly I no longer have the desire or the energy to battle the destructive influences found in the material. You’d think that Sunday morning worship would be the one time of the week that we didn’t have to be fully dressed in the armor of God and ready to go into battle.
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Gail;
-----Why think battle must be done with Rick Warren or his ideas? His books are best sellers. And The Purpose Driven Life has even received great acclaim amongst non-believers. There must be something to what he is saying or he would not be so widely received and followed. When I read The Purpose Driven Church I found a lot of good points in it. I was very taken by the call to purpose for the church, because purpose is a mark of sincerity. The New Testament epistles speak of a sincere and pure devotion to Christ, a sincere faith, sincere love, and a sincere mind. It is only natural the such sincerity should flow on to the formulation of a specified purpose.
-----But the Bible exhorts that natural flow to occur in the heart of the believer. The flow then happens in the church as what is flowing in each believer joins the currents of flow made only of what flows in the hearts of the rest of the believers. This is backward from what Rick Warren proposed. He proposed a flow be chosen and made in the church, then each believer within the church either submit and join that flow or, quite literally, get out. Moreover, the sake of unity was called upon to support the ideology.
-----If a person thinks of the subtleties involved here, it becomes quite clear why battle against Rick Warren’s thinking is a good battle for any day. Jesus Christ has called His people individually for individual relationships with Him. From this relationship He gives each a new nature of being in love. Through this love they naturally come together and do stuff, which is church. So each church becomes in its stuff what the aggregate stuff of all its members is as taken together. And the churches will do some stuff that all the other churches also do, because this stuff is elemental of the new nature. Communion, exhortations, songs and hymns of worship and celebration, instruction, education, generosity, and evangelism are all currents flowing in the church not because the church brings them to the people, but because the people bring them to the church. It was to each one that gifts were given by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the body (Romans and I Corinthians 12), “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” (I Pet 4:10) It is a collection of individuals which make the church, therefore the purpose of each church, as well as, and especially, all its other social characteristics like music style, decor, and decorum will emerge in it from those gathering who make it.
-----It is an evil trick Satan plays upon our minds, the thinking that people collect together and form an institution to which they must then surrender their individuality. Each individual has issues needing unique resolutions, and God has in each individual skills for unique employment. It is through His Spirit’s joining with each individual that He moves His purposes forward as each individual resigns to Him. He has not set up an institution between Himself and His individuals to receive their resignation. Rick Warren has.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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