The August 7, OCRegister headline read, Rick Warren hopes to redefine presidential politics. The issues that will be addressed are of a social nature, curing AIDS, poverty, sickness and will likely avoid such questions as same sex marriage, and abortion. As the article notes:

“It is a lot more sterilized and socially acceptable to be concerned about people who got HIV in Africa – because they acquired it in a heterosexual way – than to discuss the real, core issues of why Americans are getting it, which have to do with sexuality, poverty, lack of education, drug use,” said Rodriguez, president of the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County board. “These are segments of the population that don’t really get people votes.”

Earlier this year we also saw the birth of the Obama Bill: 845 Billion more for global poverty. I am not certain that McCain would be opposed to this since both he and Obama endorse Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. Plan:

Warren noted that McCain and Obama have endorsed Saddleback’s PEACE Plan, a strategy to mobilize churches to fight global problems such as illiteracy, corrupt leadership and disease

Rick Warren seems very comfortable and enamored with the political left. He is dedicated to the idea that contrary to Jesus’ claims that we would always have the poor (Matt. 26:11; Mk. 14:7; Jn. 12:8), we humans can eliminate poverty, hunger and sickness from the face of the earth. He seems so consumed by this that he seems to convey it is the church’s mandate to do so but the church doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to fulfill Warren’s mandate. He seems to be of the view that the Federal Government should steal the money from its citizens in order for the church to fulfill Warren’s dream. Will 845 Billion more for global poverty. be the ticket? Will McCain (more…)

A few days ago my wife Joy read an article which she thought should be mentioned in this week’s E-Letter and sent me the link. I opened up the WorldNetDaily article Apologetics: Cure for America’s social ills, and the first thing I noticed is that a friend (Anthony Horvath) authored it. Anthony, like so many others we have met over the years, became involved in apologetics and discernment out of a desire to reach the lost. His burden for the current state of affairs in the church is all too familiar:

No sooner do we put our attention on our apologetic and evangelism efforts do we come to some very hard truths about the state of Christian education. Indeed, when we compare the overall thrust of the youth and education programs of many churches with the nature of the challenge arrayed against us, there can be little doubt as to the extent of the problem. If we wanted godly young men and women who could carefully discern how various legislative endeavors threaten to hurt and harm millions of people – even as we speak, or in a generation hence – one cannot see how cutesy skits, movie nights and glorified Sunday School curricula will achieve that goal.

At the same time Anthony and others are raising this concern Brian McLaren is traveling the country and doing his Deep Shift: Everything Must Change Conference and the trailer “The Shift” film (not directly related to McLaren) came out. Watching the trailer and thinking about McLaren took me back to my child hood days when my mother would sometimes say to me, “If Johnny jumped off of the edge of a cliff, would you jump too?” It may not seem at first blush that all of this is related but let’s see. (more…)

Many love Brian McLaren and his books. It comes across as a breath of fresh air to them. Most probably are simply aware of his name and that he is popular but beyond that don’t really know what he has to say. Some are wondering if he is a Christian though few would dare to answer that negatively. It just wouldn’t be good P.R. After all, he is promoted by Willow Creek Community Church, Saddleback Community Church, Christianity Today, Rob Bell and many other big names. I suppose in order to answer the question we would have to know what one’s definition of Christian is. If the definition is someone who was born in the United States, attended an Evangelical or Fundamentalist church and then went on to pastor an Evangelical church the answer would be yes. If the definition is someone who wants to call all people to social action, eliminate poverty, eliminate sickness, redistribute the wealth, and create a Utopia on earth in the name of God, then yes he is a Christian. If the definition is someone who has accepted the atoning sacrifice and physical resurrection of Christ it becomes more questionable. As Brett Kunkle points out in Essential Concerns Regarding the Emerging Church McLaren doesn’t know why Jesus died on the cross and floats out the option of that being an act of “divine child abuse.” McLaren writes: (more…)

Although the media seemed to forget to assault Christianity over the time leading up to the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection this year that doesn’t mean questions about the faith weren’t on the air in various ways. Col. Muammar Gadaffi asserted that the ‘original Bible’ had been tampered with. How do we know that? There are no references to Muhammad in the Bible. Since he knows they were in the original and they are not in any manuscripts we have it must have been taken out. There was no real questioning of his claims by the media and the comment went largely unnoticed. No Christians were burning down mosques or torturing Muslims in order to force a retraction and acceptance of Christianity. Meanwhile in Canada the Rev. Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church in Toronto was busy Taking Christ out of Christianity.

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Andrew’s sign said, ‘Stop American Terroism’ – he spelled terrorism wrong. I felt empowered in the sea of people, most of whom were also carrying signs and chanting against corporations who were making slaves of Third World labor; and the Republican Party, who gives those corporations so much power and freedom. I felt so far from my upbringing, from my narrow former self, the me who was taught that the Republicans give a crap about the cause of Christ. (Blue Like Jazz, p. 19)

As I read Don Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz a few weeks ago and reflected on statements like these, I began thinking more about the overall direction of the emerging church and the market driven Evangelical leaders who are climbing on board their train. There seem to be certain themes that continue resurfacing as we witness the rise of the Evangelical left. One theme is that conservative Evangelicals are evil. That is because for the most part they tend to vote Republican, which is the very touchstone of the evil empire. According to Don Miller, conservatives are so evil they think that George Bush is Jesus Christ. If conservatives were Christians who truly loved Christ, the thinking goes; they would take away the wealth and freedom of “greedy corporations” and redistribute the wealth equally across the world. We could eliminate poverty in our lifetime and usher in Jesus’ long-awaited promise of heaven here on earth.

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There are six billion people in the world, three billion live on less than $2 dollars a day, 800 million people will not eat today, and 300 million in Africa alone do not have drinking water. So we as Americans are six percent of the population yet we consume 40 to 50 percent of the resources. We are the upper, upper, rich elite. And our way is taking over the world. So we have to first ask the question—how can we take all this wealth and give it away? All the technology and beautiful parts of capitalism and bless the world and the poor—or else we’re in deep trouble.

That’s a quote from the creepy man in the horn rim glasses. No I don’t mean the guy from the show “Heroes”, I mean emerging church guru Rob Bell. The quote is from the interview “Rob Bell on Sex, God, and Sex Gods” in the November 14 issue of the Wittenburg Door.

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Act 1: There has recently been a fair amount of concern amongst Christians about Don Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality . One of our supporters sent me a copy of the book because they were concerned about friends that were reading it. After the flood of phone calls and emails I received on the subject, I knew I needed to read it in order to be able to intelligently respond to the queries. As I read it, the 1979 film All That Jazz kept coming to mind. The main character, Joe Gideon (played by Roy Scheider) is no phony – he is plainly his “real self” for all the world to see. There is no pretense. He is a womanizer and has to pop pills just to get him up and going and through every day. Joe is a very creative and famous choreographer (the character was based on the life of the director of the film, Bob Fosse, who was himself a famous director and choreographer). While in his drug-induced states, he carried on conversations with a female god-type character who is completely loving, non-judgmental and only trying to help him see that he might have lived his life a little differently, perhaps remaining true to at least one of the women in his life, for example, or “being there” for his young daughter. All in all, Joe Gideon seems like a Don Miller kind of guy, someone Miller could be most comfortable with and accepting of. But, we mustn’t move too quickly or reveal too much at this point.

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Two weeks ago our blog article Willow Creek’s Mixed Signals voiced our concerns that Willow on the one hand seemed to say they were going to begin training people in biblical literacy but on the other hand are planning on training youth leaders in mysticism at their Shift Conference. I know several very solid believers at Willow and hoped that I was misunderstanding what was going on. Perhaps, I thought, Willow’s leadership doesn’t really understand what the Emerging leaders are advocating. A friend who is a long time member of Willow Creek and has been involved in volunteer leadership in a number of Willow Creek ministries over the years sent out an email of concern a few days ago which began:

As an attender of Willow Creek I will beg your prayers as I make decisions on how, who and when to talk with leaders. I have already started a process. I do not have a goal for outcome , just a responsibility to contend for the faith I have been entrusted with. I offer up this resource and my opinion on it for those who are interested:

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Last week a friend emailed me the Christianity Today article Willow Creek Repents? with the subtitle “Why the most influential church in America now says ‘We made a mistake’” With 12,000 member churches in the Willow Creek Association the question, “What was the mistake?” looms large. This really goes back to April and May of this year when Bill Hybels, Gene Appel and Mark Breaux did their series Unleashed: The Power of Multiplied Impact in which Bill and Gene revealed their shock after discovering through surveys and focus groups that people were attending church because they wanted to learn stuff about the bible. Gene Appel in the message Unleashed to Grow mentioned that they were beginning biblical literacy classes for 150 of Willow’s future small group leaders. I viewed that as a positive step. Willow Creek Repents? points out, the revelations of the survey and focus groups seemed to get Bill Hybels’ attention:

Hybels called the findings “earth shaking,” “ground breaking,” and “mind blowing.”

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The January 27, 2007 Edmonton Journal (Canada) ran an article with the blazing headline Tony Campolo wants to take back the evangelical movement from the religious right. Although there isn’t really anything new about Campolo in the article, it occurred to me that too few are aware of his claims and even less have challenged his views. Of course, to do so risks being labeled mean spirited, divisive, or callous to the plight of the poor. However, I don’t pay much attention to emotional blackmail, so I thought I might visit two excerpts from this article. First are his views on the “religious right.” (more…)