Featured 5 Scary Trends that Shipwreck the Church

Funny that the multichurch guru should say it could shipwreck the church. BTW, I generally agree with his 5 cautions.

 

The others are:
2. Cocky reformed attitude
3. Worshiping worship
4. Planting irrelevant churches with recycled membership from other churches
5. Puffing up the pastor

 

It's the rock star pastor thing, like the blog said. However it happens, the larger a church grows, the less approachable/touchable the pastor becomes, especially for those who never knew him before his rock star status.

 

I have. In fact that's the way it is in the church I left last year. And that church is small, having a membership of about 250. The pastor is put on a pedestal and whatever he says is gospel, no matter how wrong it may be. I got sucked into that mindset myself, to my shame.

If he can't preach, due to sickness or whatever, I have seen people actually leave the building and go home because someone else was preaching in his place.

 

He is a very good preacher and preaches with authority. He has a big personality and people are attracted to his teaching and preaching. I had come from a church where I wasn't getting fed (I thought) and he seemed to fill the need.

I have matured since then and learned that the bible is my authority and not a preacher. I'm not proud of it.

 

I posted the Worshipping Worship thingy on my Blog. (Gave credit where credit is due). Good stuff

 

Are you telling us you cannot walk on water? I'm shocked!

 

Absolutely. I don't think the pastor needs to be quite as "all things" as Perry Noble appears to be, but yes, he needs to make his fellow brothers and sisters know that he is one with just as many "like passions" as they, just to begin with.

 

This thread reminded me of my first Pastor after I accepted Christ.

We had a church of about 200 and had a testimony service on both of our evening services. Occasionally someone would get up and say how wonderful the Pastor was. Before their second sentence, the Pastor woud jump up and say we will have no more of that. His reasoning was that if people praised him, God would cause him to fall; so they would get their eyes off of him and back to worshipping God. I really respected him for that.

BTW, that Pastor retired from that church after pastoring there for 35 years with no major problems in the church.

 

Quite a thought-provoking article. Thanks for making me think. Ooooh, my head!

I was interested in how you would treat the Reformed folks. I can remember when I discovered Calvinism. I thought it was wonderful. So wonderful that I wanted to talk about it to anybody who would listen. I'm sure many of my friends hated to see me coming.

Even my pastor got the "deer in the headlights" look when I would head in his direction.

I suspect that this is the case for the (as somebody called them) "young, restless and Reformed." Then can easily obsess on it. Newly Reformed folks can be a pain in the neck. But they do eventually grow up.

And young Calvinists have to be careful about arrogance. The old "I've found the truth and you can't see it" syndrome. The problem is that none of us who believes in a Sovereign God, (Calvinist or not) has any room for arrogance. Calvinists should be exhibit #1 for humility.

Good stuff, gb, I appreciated the article.

 

interesting to me is that the fastest growing churches in America were the Mormons and RCC, and in the World pentacostal/charasmatic churches, so guess 'sound doctrine" not a requirement!