Post by philiprosenthal on May 20, 2006 22:07:23 GMT
Neglect of basic Bible teaching
When His People Ministries first started, everything in the movement was based on the Bible. If you taught something, you were expected to supply a set of Bible verses to prove you were not just making it up out of your own head. That applied to sermons, to Bible School, conferences, to home groups, to one-on-one evangelism. Everything, including arguing with non-Christians, was based on the authority of the Bible. Now sometimes our understanding of the Bible was simplistic and limited, but at least we tried to be faithful to the Bible.
The first step away from the Bible was that a lot of leaders got lazy about their personal Bible study and decided rather they would just remember whatever interpretation they were taught at 'Bible school' and church, without critically examining the Bible for themselves. At this stage that was not too dangerous because at least the pastor was trying to do his homework.
The second step away from this was the concept of 'Christian worldview'. Essentially this was meant to be the application of the Bible to everyday life, society, politics, economics, the arts etc. Nothing wrong with that. Just that a new method of 'proof' was introduced. Humanism was defined as the enemy and now all that was necessary to prove something untrue was that it had its origins in humanist thinking. To me thats faulty logic. Not everything the humanists say is false. Just proving something has an origin in humanism doesn't then prove it false. One still needs to prove your position from the scriptures. Most of what was taught under the banner of 'Christian worldview' was good and true, but there was little attempt to prove it properly from the scriptures.
The third step away from the Bible was the introduction of lots of good ethical wisdom from worldly sources such as leadership books, business ethics books etc. A lot of this was okay, but some of it was just baptised selfish ambition and worldly business sense. Here only a very thin attempt to prove it from the scriptures.
Then came the various attempts to justify the wealthy lifestyle and elitism of the apostolic leadership. Here only those with really poor Bible knowledge would not be able to see that this was not based on the Bible. Sermons drifted into 'How great is our ministry'; 'How great am I'; 'Why its okay for me to drive a sports merc'; 'You can achieve anything you want to if you believe it and have enough ambition'. Sermons could just as well have been worldly motivational talks - so seldom was the Bible quoted.
The little Bible teaching there was tended very often to be re-cycled old sermons that old timers had heard before. Sometimes young trainee ministers were borrowing lots of bits of sermons and illustrations from older ministers - so much for personal Bible study. The same topics were recycled over and over resulting in a narrow range of teaching for the poor congregation.
The last few years I attended His People the Bible had taken really low priority.
To further degrade the respect and authority of the Bible then came the idea that the Bible needed Church authority for its interpretation. Thus it became impossible to challenge anything a church authority did wrong, because they claimed that only they could interpret the Bible. If you challenged them, then you must be interpreting it wrong! Scandal thus became justifiable because the pastors can do whatever they like - because they interpret the Bible.
My call is: Trash this humanistic man-centred nonsense. Lets get back to the Bible. We don't just need topical preaching. We need systematic exposition of passages of scripture and whole books of the Bible. Stop feeding the sheep the dry grass of humanistic ideas. Feed them the refreshing word of God.
And no. Anyone can interpret the Bible and anyone can challenge the church to obey it.
Have other EveryNation churches experienced a similar departure from scripture?
When His People Ministries first started, everything in the movement was based on the Bible. If you taught something, you were expected to supply a set of Bible verses to prove you were not just making it up out of your own head. That applied to sermons, to Bible School, conferences, to home groups, to one-on-one evangelism. Everything, including arguing with non-Christians, was based on the authority of the Bible. Now sometimes our understanding of the Bible was simplistic and limited, but at least we tried to be faithful to the Bible.
The first step away from the Bible was that a lot of leaders got lazy about their personal Bible study and decided rather they would just remember whatever interpretation they were taught at 'Bible school' and church, without critically examining the Bible for themselves. At this stage that was not too dangerous because at least the pastor was trying to do his homework.
The second step away from this was the concept of 'Christian worldview'. Essentially this was meant to be the application of the Bible to everyday life, society, politics, economics, the arts etc. Nothing wrong with that. Just that a new method of 'proof' was introduced. Humanism was defined as the enemy and now all that was necessary to prove something untrue was that it had its origins in humanist thinking. To me thats faulty logic. Not everything the humanists say is false. Just proving something has an origin in humanism doesn't then prove it false. One still needs to prove your position from the scriptures. Most of what was taught under the banner of 'Christian worldview' was good and true, but there was little attempt to prove it properly from the scriptures.
The third step away from the Bible was the introduction of lots of good ethical wisdom from worldly sources such as leadership books, business ethics books etc. A lot of this was okay, but some of it was just baptised selfish ambition and worldly business sense. Here only a very thin attempt to prove it from the scriptures.
Then came the various attempts to justify the wealthy lifestyle and elitism of the apostolic leadership. Here only those with really poor Bible knowledge would not be able to see that this was not based on the Bible. Sermons drifted into 'How great is our ministry'; 'How great am I'; 'Why its okay for me to drive a sports merc'; 'You can achieve anything you want to if you believe it and have enough ambition'. Sermons could just as well have been worldly motivational talks - so seldom was the Bible quoted.
The little Bible teaching there was tended very often to be re-cycled old sermons that old timers had heard before. Sometimes young trainee ministers were borrowing lots of bits of sermons and illustrations from older ministers - so much for personal Bible study. The same topics were recycled over and over resulting in a narrow range of teaching for the poor congregation.
The last few years I attended His People the Bible had taken really low priority.
To further degrade the respect and authority of the Bible then came the idea that the Bible needed Church authority for its interpretation. Thus it became impossible to challenge anything a church authority did wrong, because they claimed that only they could interpret the Bible. If you challenged them, then you must be interpreting it wrong! Scandal thus became justifiable because the pastors can do whatever they like - because they interpret the Bible.
My call is: Trash this humanistic man-centred nonsense. Lets get back to the Bible. We don't just need topical preaching. We need systematic exposition of passages of scripture and whole books of the Bible. Stop feeding the sheep the dry grass of humanistic ideas. Feed them the refreshing word of God.
And no. Anyone can interpret the Bible and anyone can challenge the church to obey it.
Have other EveryNation churches experienced a similar departure from scripture?