The lack of worldview training is showing the modern day church. I hate to beat a dead horse, but our focus on proof texts on the theological front isn’t working to build truly mature Christians who can apply the realities and promises of God to their everyday lives. This isn’t just about Bible teaching; pastors are people who’ve have at least 40 hours of classroom time working in the Scriptures. The solution isn’t going towards an emotional “purpose driven” model, either. It’s going back to really teaching the Word, rather than verse bites.
The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.
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The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.
…When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points. All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals — and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe. The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books — we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment.-Albert Mohler
But perhaps the most shocking news coming from these surveys concerns the men (and women) in the pulpit. In any given month at least 50% of priests, pastors, and ministers have visited at least one pornographic website. If that many who are leaders of the church of Jesus Christ are being promiscuous with porn is it any wonder those who still fill the pews are experiencing a real lack of the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit from those who are commissioned to preach God’s word?
Albert Mohler has an excellent article on how liberal crudge flows into the Church, appropriately titled, Air Conditioning Hell.
First, a doctrine simply falls from mention.
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Second, a doctrine is revised and retained in reduced form.
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Third, a doctrine is subjected to a form of ridicule.
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Fourth, a doctrine is reformulated in order to remove its intellectual and moral offensiveness.
If this sounds an awful lot like something from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, you would be right in making that connection. There is at least a connection between this process through the dialectic process, and there is probably a more direct connection through a conference or meeting or “theological process.”
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