Cedric Fisher: "earnestly contending for the faith."

The Origins of the “New Christianity”

When I first heard of the Seeker Friendly Willow Creek church, I was baffled that something so wrong could be accepted as true Christianity.  Next came the Emergent church that appeared to take the church growth philosophy of the Seeker Friendly movement to its next logical step.  The conclusion is a brand of Universalism that even declares salvation for cults and other false religions.  Now there are mega churches that form their own belief systems.  Some of those belief systems faintly resemble Christianity while other ones are far outside the boundaries.  It finally dawned on me how and why these aberrations have occurred.

We could blame it all on Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and other heretics, and they well deserve some of the blame.  But the bulk of the blame lies upon people that never made it into the spotlight.  Most Christians have never heard of them and would not recognize their faces if they saw them.  However, almost everyone would recognize their work.  They were the shadow leadership in churches that nudged them into the latest fads and concepts of church growth.  However, the ground for these flawed ideas was laid by a reduction of reliance upon the Holy Spirit, and a decision that God would no longer add to the church daily such as should be saved (Acts 2:47).

First, a false premise surfaced that the Gospel preached under the anointing would not attract children and young people; that they would not understand or respond to it.  That premise led to the belief that children and young people had to be drawn into the church meetings by other means.  There were many gimmicks employed including attendance contests and handing out free gifts.   However, there were individuals, some that worked in denominational headquarters and other ones that were free lance writers, who initiated a plan.  They had decided that children and youth should not attend the adult meetings.  That was the first and greatest mistake.  It was a spiritually fatal blow to the next generations of leadership in evangelical fundamentalist churches.  I cannot speak to the effect it may have had on the liturgical and other stoic churches where seldom anything spiritual occurred in the adult meeting.  Most of those churches produced biological Christians that simply inherited religion from their parents and/or grandparents.  However, it had a negative and lasting effect on churches where truth was preached, where God met repentant souls at altars, and lives were changed by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel.

Obsessed with church attendance, these pencil-pushers and denominational hirelings convinced most pastors that numerical value superseded or at least equaled spiritual quality.  The concept was that more children would come if church was more attractive, fun, exciting and entertaining, and the adults would follow.  They decided that the “Sesame Street” presentation of the Gospel was the best way to reach them.  Thus, millions of children and youth were subjected to literature and programs written by people whose goal was to sell books, or whose jobs were dependent on an increase in the annual statistics.  They reduced the Bible to puppets and cartoon stories.  Christ also became a cartoon figure.  And then there were the fun and games with the customary sugared treat at the end.  However, the day that the children and youth were ushered out of the main service and into separate rooms or buildings was the day they were unwittingly given over to mediocrity and shallowness.  I must be clear that although many children and youth ministries committed this error, not all of them did.  Another disclaimer is that for very young children, that method of teaching may well have been appropriate.

However, the mediocrity and shallowness continued.  In fact, they were never deemed ready for the main service.  After several years in that paltry mire, the children graduated to Youth church.  Youth church was about more fun and games with a benign and diluted gospel that convicted no one.  In many Youth churches they learned that Christianity was cool, and there was no need to change anything to become a Christian.  They developed their own music based on what they were listening to from the world.  They formed their own doctrines, and consequently their own non-offensive soteriology based on what fit in with the world system.  Nothing they heard in Youth church fed them, strengthened, or equipped them spiritually.  Their belief systems remained in flux throughout their participation in Youth church.   Consequently, not only did they never possess a strong faith, they never had a salvation experience.  Like most liturgical professing Christians, they were simply biological Christians without the indwelling Spirit of Christ.

Meanwhile, there was/is an angry and vicious world waiting to rip apart their weakly held belief in Christ and God. The consequences are that many of those young people abandoned Christianity after high school.  Many of the ones that went to college became agnostic or atheistic.  The ones that later on began attending church meetings again usually wandered into a Seeker-Friendly, Emergent, or “launch” churches that were based on the same paradigm. Consequently, they regularly hear a diluted and mixed gospel that they can easily accept, but that does not lead them into a relationship with the biblical Christ.

The ramification of replacing the anointed teaching and preaching of God’s word with entertainment, pabulum, and sensationalism, and even heresy, is that it completely altered the biblical paradigm of Christianity.  Now that generation has reached adulthood and is in control of most of Christianity.   It is no wonder that they have broken with true Christianity and are systematically rejecting time-honored biblical doctrine and practices.  They have never heard, witnessed, or experienced any of it.  What they are now doing is based on their experiences in children and youth ministry.  The driving motivation behind their dilution of truth seems to be to make the word of God palatable to people that do not really want Him, and to form ecumenical alliances with cults and other false religions.  It is what they have known all their religious lives.  Most of them have never had a salvation experience or witnessed anyone else being saved.  They have no relationship with God, and have never seen a demonstration of His power. They have no clue as to the divine continuum of Christianity, which explains why they so easily discard the truth that so many martyrs gave their lives rather than to deny.  In the place of rejected truth, they have inserted bizarre heresy and even pagan practices.  The seeds of altered, mingled, and mangled truth were planted in them long ago.  Those seeds have now become the Seeker Friendly and Emergent Movements and more.  It is the New Christianity and it is mostly apostate.

I have no doubt that cartoons and simplified Bible stories have some benefit for very young children.  However, children and youth meetings should have more of a supplemental role rather than being the sole or even primary source of spiritual input.  As they age, children must be taught the fundamentals of God’s truth in a more meaningful way.  Just as in public education, the teaching ought to mature as the student’s cognitive skills increase.  When they are old enough to rationalize and understand the difference between right and wrong, they are old enough to remain in the main service.  I remember (and other Christians my age and older will remember) when children and young people came to the altars during the main service and were genuinely saved.  In fact, revivals have broken out among the youth that revitalized entire churches.

There is no way that young people today can be ready to take their positions as church leaders when they have never experienced true Christianity.  However, they have stepped into leadership.  The results have to date been tragic in most cases.  One can only wonder how much worse it will become.  After all, the present generations of professing Christians were completely severed from its roots.  It has gone about to establish a completely different religion leaning lightly on the Bible and loosely called Christianity.  The truth is that it is a logical continuation of children and youth ministries that engendered a doctrinal system that none of the great Christians past would have tolerated from the pulpit.  It is tolerated today by the church-attending masses that have never known God, but are convinced that they know Him.  Deceived and under a delusion, some of their leaders appear to be following the god of this world.

It is up to each parent to make certain that their children are not trained to follow these pied pipers of Hades.  A good plan would be to teach their children the truth at home and find a church where they still allow children and young people to attend the main service.

3 Comments

  1. Rev. Paul Ratliff

    Yep. C. H. That is as accurate an assessment as I have ever seen, may I borrow this to hard copy and inclusion in future sermons etc?

    • C.H. Fisher

      Certainly.

  2. sandra brown

    My children were raised in the sanctuary. It totally exposed them to the truth of the word, salvation and the super natural acts of the Holy Spirit. All three were saved and baptised at very early ages. They continue to serve God and their children walk with Him. I believe your information is filled with truth!

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