When I first heard of the Seeker Friendly Willow Creek church, I was baffled that something so wrong could be accepted as true Christianity. \u00a0Next came the Emergent church that appeared to take the church growth philosophy of the Seeker Friendly movement to its next logical step. \u00a0The conclusion is a brand of Universalism that even declares salvation for cults and other false religions. \u00a0Now there are mega churches that form their own belief systems. \u00a0Some of those belief systems faintly resemble Christianity while other ones are far outside the boundaries. \u00a0It finally dawned on me how and why these aberrations have occurred.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0But the bulk of the blame lies upon people that never made it into the spotlight.\u00a0 Most Christians have never heard of them and would not recognize their faces if they saw them. \u00a0However, almost everyone would recognize their work. \u00a0They were the shadow leadership in churches that nudged them into the latest fads and concepts of church growth. \u00a0However, 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).<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0That premise led to the belief that children and young people had to be drawn into the church meetings by other means. \u00a0There were many gimmicks employed including attendance contests and handing out free gifts. \u00a0\u00a0However, there were individuals, some that worked in denominational headquarters and other ones that were free lance writers, who initiated a plan. \u00a0They had decided that children and youth should not attend the adult meetings. \u00a0That was the first and greatest mistake. \u00a0It was a spiritually fatal blow to the next generations of leadership in evangelical fundamentalist churches. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0Most of those churches produced biological Christians that simply inherited religion from their parents and\/or grandparents. \u00a0However, 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.<\/p>\n
Obsessed with church attendance, these pencil-pushers and denominational hirelings convinced most pastors that numerical value superseded or at least equaled spiritual quality. \u00a0The concept was that more children would come if church was more attractive, fun, exciting and entertaining, and the adults would follow. \u00a0They decided that the \u201cSesame Street\u201d presentation of the Gospel was the best way to reach them. \u00a0Thus, 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. \u00a0They reduced the Bible to puppets and cartoon stories. \u00a0Christ also became a cartoon figure. \u00a0And then there were the fun and games with the customary sugared treat at the end. \u00a0However, 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. \u00a0I must be clear that although many children and youth ministries committed this error, not all of them did. \u00a0Another disclaimer is that for very young children, that method of teaching may well have been appropriate.<\/p>\n
However, the mediocrity and shallowness continued.\u00a0 In fact, they were never deemed ready for the main service.\u00a0 After several years in that paltry mire, the children graduated to Youth church. \u00a0Youth church was about more fun and games with a benign and diluted gospel that convicted no one. \u00a0In many Youth churches they learned that Christianity was cool, and there was no need to change anything to become a Christian. \u00a0They developed their own music based on what they were listening to from the world.\u00a0 They formed their own doctrines, and consequently their own non-offensive soteriology based on what fit in with the world system. \u00a0Nothing they heard in Youth church fed them, strengthened, or equipped them spiritually.\u00a0 Their belief systems remained in flux throughout their participation in Youth church. \u00a0\u00a0Consequently, not only did they never possess a strong faith, they never had a salvation experience.\u00a0 Like most liturgical professing Christians, they were simply biological Christians without the indwelling Spirit of Christ.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Many of the ones that went to college became agnostic or atheistic.\u00a0 The ones that later on began attending church meetings again usually wandered into a Seeker-Friendly, Emergent, or \u201claunch\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Now that generation has reached adulthood and is in control of most of Christianity. \u00a0\u00a0It is no wonder that they have broken with true Christianity and are systematically rejecting time-honored biblical doctrine and practices. \u00a0They have never heard, witnessed, or experienced any of it. \u00a0What they are now doing is based on their experiences in children and youth ministry. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0It is what they have known all their religious lives. \u00a0Most of them have never had a salvation experience or witnessed anyone else being saved.\u00a0 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. \u00a0In the place of rejected truth, they have inserted bizarre heresy and even pagan practices.\u00a0 The seeds of altered, mingled, and mangled truth were planted in them long ago. \u00a0Those seeds have now become the Seeker Friendly and Emergent Movements and more.\u00a0 It is the New Christianity and it is mostly apostate.<\/p>\n
I have no doubt that cartoons and simplified Bible stories have some benefit for very young children. \u00a0However, children and youth meetings should have more of a supplemental role rather than being the sole or even primary source of spiritual input. \u00a0As they age, children must be taught the fundamentals of God’s truth in a more meaningful way. \u00a0Just as in public education, the teaching ought to mature as the student’s cognitive skills increase. \u00a0When they are old enough to rationalize and understand the difference between right and wrong, they are old enough to remain in the main service. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0In fact, revivals have broken out among the youth that revitalized entire churches.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0However, they have stepped into leadership. \u00a0The results have to date been tragic in most cases. \u00a0One can only wonder how much worse it will become. \u00a0After all, the present generations of professing Christians were completely severed from its roots. \u00a0It has gone about to establish a completely different religion leaning lightly on the Bible and loosely called Christianity. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0It is tolerated today by the church-attending masses that have never known God, but are convinced that they know Him. \u00a0Deceived and under a delusion, some of their leaders appear to be following the god of this world.<\/p>\n
It is up to each parent to make certain that their children are not trained to follow these pied pipers of Hades. \u00a0A 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first heard of the Seeker Friendly Willow Creek church, I was baffled that something so wrong could be accepted as true Christianity. \u00a0Next came the Emergent church that appeared to take the church growth philosophy of the Seeker Friendly movement to its next logical step. \u00a0The conclusion is a brand of Universalism that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-ag","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}