Pragmatism
"In the past, the question of Church standards was answered with, “What sayeth the Scriptures?” Today that question has been replaced with “What works?” Are people being reached? Are people being helped? Are people getting saved? These have become the standards, rather than the Scriptures. How big your church is determines whether you are a good authority on what ought to be done. The current practice, rather than the truth, becomes the standard.
A man who pastors one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States is a man of mixed-bag theology. As far as I can tell he is a believer. This man is conducting a pastor’s conference at Dallas Seminary and Fuller Seminary and he is conducting a pastor’s conference for Robert Schuller. Now, tell me, What gives theological integrity to that mixed-bag? Dallas Seminary, Fuller Seminary and Robert Schuller can all use the same man to do a conference for pastors to tell them how they ought to conduct the ministry before God? Something is radically wrong! But hey-he has built one of the largest churches in the country. What more do you want?
What about theological integrity, for starters? Are we talking about drawing a crowd, or are we talking about building the Church of Jesus Christ? If you want a crowd, put on a rock concert! But crowd-pleasing is not the foundation for the true Church. People point out, “Well, isn’t he a believer?” Yes, that’s the first step. But is he a believer with theological integrity? Is he a believer with moral integrity? Those issues have to be resolved.
Pragmatism presses in upon us. It affects us. We look around and see other churches and say, “They are growing. Maybe we ought to do this.” We can make adjustments. We can change the lectern. Fine. We can change the time of service. Fine. But we cannot change the fact that we are called to minister the Word of God."
--Gil Rugh, Division and Diversion, 1990
A man who pastors one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States is a man of mixed-bag theology. As far as I can tell he is a believer. This man is conducting a pastor’s conference at Dallas Seminary and Fuller Seminary and he is conducting a pastor’s conference for Robert Schuller. Now, tell me, What gives theological integrity to that mixed-bag? Dallas Seminary, Fuller Seminary and Robert Schuller can all use the same man to do a conference for pastors to tell them how they ought to conduct the ministry before God? Something is radically wrong! But hey-he has built one of the largest churches in the country. What more do you want?
What about theological integrity, for starters? Are we talking about drawing a crowd, or are we talking about building the Church of Jesus Christ? If you want a crowd, put on a rock concert! But crowd-pleasing is not the foundation for the true Church. People point out, “Well, isn’t he a believer?” Yes, that’s the first step. But is he a believer with theological integrity? Is he a believer with moral integrity? Those issues have to be resolved.
Pragmatism presses in upon us. It affects us. We look around and see other churches and say, “They are growing. Maybe we ought to do this.” We can make adjustments. We can change the lectern. Fine. We can change the time of service. Fine. But we cannot change the fact that we are called to minister the Word of God."
--Gil Rugh, Division and Diversion, 1990
posted by kennyo at 10:17 AM
1 Comments:
Many, many , many of today's churches are depending on the "basic principles of this world" to accomplish God's purposes. This is in strict violation to what it says in Colossians 2:8 as follows:
"See to it that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the BASIC PRIINCIPLES OF THIS WORLD (emphasis mine) rather than on Christ."
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