Winning the Lost.... Through Propoganda?

Let us all have the honesty to call the marketing of the church what it is: propaganda. Maybe it is propaganda dressed in good intentions, but it is manipulation none the less.

And when you feel like you have to market the church, what are you subconsciously admitting? Be honest. You don't believe that God will do his work unless it is through you. Deep down, you don't believe that the Word of God possesses the innate ability to change hearts and minds so it requires an external human agency to convince people of its veracity and worth. Why else would you go away from a defense of the faith (apologetics) and move into a marketing of the church and its brand (propaganda)?

I see no difference between the approaches of the marketeers of the modern church and propagandists. Their presuppositions, pragmatic approaches, rationalizations, and methods appear to be more similar than dissimilar. An obsession on packaging and emotional manipulation reveals that the presenter believes it is his job to convince opinions and change minds rather than just plainly state the truth.

Make no mistake. The church is not the propaganda office of the Kingdom of God. There is no biblical mandate for us to sell or build the church. We are called to "proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins" which is totally different than "winning people for Jesus" or "growing the church". That is God's job.

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
-Joseph Goebbels

The Power of Imputed Righteousness

The same voice that declared the universe into existence...
The same voice that declared the perfect holiness of the law...
The same voice that declared the seas to be still and they obeyed...

...declares that you are righteous and pure on account of Christ.

"Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." John 8:34-36

When God declares you forgiven. You are forgiven with the voice that said, "Let there be light" and there was light.

Not Enough Time to Preach Forgiveness

I stumbled upon this quote while flipping through the channels on TV. It was the closing comment of a sermon given by John Hagee.

"Now, I could preach for an hour and a half about forgiveness, but I won't because my time is up."
-John Hagee


...................................sigh. There are no words.....

...Never Saw This Before

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die."

But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."
-Genesis 3:1-6 [ESV]

See that crafty serpent and how carefully he lays the ground work for his tempting deception?

Before he tempts Eve to commit sin, the Devil lies to undermine God's Law and disarms it of all threats. All matter of evil is allowed to come from this self-affirming delusion: the foolish idea that "you will not surely die."

Make no mistake. This is a blasphemous, murderous lie. Scripture clearly teaches that the wages of sin is death. [Romans 6:23]

Wretched, disobedient man that I am! How often do I do the serpent's work for him? How often do I pave the way for temptation within my own heart by removing the threat of just punishment from my mind?

How often do I form these satanic words in my mind or even speak them on my lips so that I may build up enough self-confidence to indulge in my own desires without fear of divine judgement?

Mission Complete

Saddam (left) and me (right).

Mission Complete. This deployment is over. I am back in the United States.

Not the Same

Islam and Christianity are not the same. Today it is trendy to blur the distinctions between the two.

The teachings are not the same. Allah is not the same as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The description of humanity is not the same. The way a person is justified before God is not the same.

The way that God interacts with man is not the same.

It might be helpful to present a clear comparison for those Christians who are flirting with universalist tendencies just because this particular false religion happens to be monotheistic in flavor. I present two similar stories that I have found to reveal the striking difference between the one, true faith of Christianity and the religion of Islam.

Story 1 - Hadith

Imran ibn Husain, a companion of Muhammad and a Narrator of Hadith, reported that a woman from Juhiana came to Muhammad and confessed that she had become pregnant because of adultery. She said, "I am pregnant as a result of zina (extramarital sex)." Muhammad said, "Go back, and come to me after the birth of the child."

After giving birth, the woman came back to Muhammad, saying, "Please purify me now." Next, Muhammad said, "Go and suckle your child, and come after the period of suckling is over." She came after the period of weaning and brought a piece of bread with her. She fed the child the piece of bread and said, "Oh, Allah's Apostle, the child has been weaned."

At that Muhammad pronounced judgement about her and she was stoned to death.

Story 2 - John 8:2-11

Early in the morning [Jesus] came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law of Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord."

And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."

Indifference

Indifference is a prevelant and nearly undefeatable foe. It is also a seductive temptation.

My Satire and (hopefully false!) Prediction

We were talking about the excesses of commercialized, market-driven worship fads this evening. After everything I've personally seen and had the misfortune of hearing about, there remains one thing that a church has not done (to my knowledge). Should this happen, I would have to say that I would be surprised, shocked, and disappointed.

Anything short of this satirical prediction no longer phases me.

Let me know when a church...

...follows in the footsteps of major league ball parks and discovers that they can get a much larger worship center if they get a big sponsor to pay for the structure in exchange for naming rights. Examples could include:

1. Minute Maid® Temple
2. Pepsi Cola® Community Church
3. Our Lady of Hanes® Her Way™
4. Christ Is Our Nike® Tabernacle (I'm seeing a really nice logo with a cross and a swoosh)

...I will admit that these are probably unlikely--at least initially. We'll have to build up to Minute Maid® Temple. It is probably more likely that they will find pious companies to do business with before they do open business with the world. We will probably see one of the following first:

1. Christ's Church for Light and Inspiration (CCLI™)
2. First Lutheran Church and Free Methodist Credit Union
3. Christianity Today® Community Church

I hope I haven't just triggered any search committees or capital campaigns.

Is There A Spiritual Gift More Agonizing than Discernment?

I am starting to wonder if Job is the archetype of suffering... or was it Jeremiah? I'm not even really that good at discernment and the small bit of it that I have does nothing but assault my senses on a regular basis. In the case of most worship services, ignorance is truly bliss.

Discernment basically prevents you from having any fun at all in the popular church services of your day. It also causes you to be the wet blanket of the faithful that takes every lofty opinion and crushes it in the hands of its originator with pesky things like Scripture passages and plain reason. It makes you sound like Chris Rosebrough.

It's not something you get to turn off either. It causes you to appear ill in your pew (chair, theater seat, etc) and it forces you to involuntarily make disapproving faces when everyone else is waving their hands and blubbering with joy. It causes you to spend a great deal of time praying for patience and causes all of your friends to spend all their free time praying that your pessimism would be mercifully removed from your cold, spiritually-dead heart.

It causes you to say obnoxious things like, "I don't know why you liked that sermon so much. It turned me back to myself to fix my own problems. Where was Christ? Where was the atonement for sin on the cross? Where was the imputed righteousness and grace?"

This last Sunday I experienced a service that I am now calling "Heresy Week". This may seem harsh, but it is the best construction that I have been able to find thus far. My previous names for it were not so charitable.

We had a praise song that explicitly promoted the synergistic errors of Arminianism ("when you and I embrace surrender, when you and I choose to believe, then you and I will see...") This is no surprise since they announced the upcoming "revival" that they will be holding.

We had another praise song that was written by a trio of anti-trinitarian modalists (Phillips, Craig & Dean). I had a discussion about this before the service with one of the musicians. His comments proved that he is on the fence about the whole "a Christian has to espouse the Trinitarian dogma" thing. To add another twist to the knife, he is a self-identified Lutheran.

There was a baptism planned for the service, but there was a baptismal font malfunction. Can you imagine the headache of executing a full immersion baptism in a middle eastern desert during combat operations? Not fun. Everyone bemoaned that the baptism couldn't take place. I grabbed a 1 Liter bottle of drinking water and said, "Here let's use this, it's room temp. It worked in 100 A.D. Problem solved." ...the problem was not solved apparently. Anabaptists. Sheesh. :P

What is so ironic about this situation is that just a day prior everyone was gathered and talking about how "cool" it would be to do a baptism by water balloon. My solution was just as "cool" as that, but without the wacky party atmosphere. I was still shot down. My mode just wasn't relevant enough (even if it was practical, scriptural, apostolic, and feasible given our predicament.) As an aside: Someone got the tank to work (their irreverent phrase not mine), so the ceremonial ordinance could take place as scheduled.

But my personal favorite was when the preacher declared that God had to come down and become man so that He could understand what we were going through. It was so cumbersome in delivery that the conclusion that was inadvertently created was: "Is God's omniscience so limited that He could not understand the plight of His creation prior to the incarnation?"

There were other issues with the service, but--to be honest--I engaged my doctrinal autopilot after these were dropped in my lap. I only vaguely remember other things that made me wince and do not care to enumerate them ever again. Needless to say, people have stopped asking me what I thought of the service whenever we head out the door.

Yup. I'm a nit-picky jerk.



P.S. ...now that I look at that Chris Tomlin song, I'm starting to think that it's leaning more towards Pelagian heresy rather than Ariminian heresy. I say this because the song clearly places the Holy Spirit's calling and operation after "when you and I choose to believe". Only then "you and I will see who we were meant to be." It's confused because verse 2 seems to be a little more orthodox in its presentation... nevermind. I'm just going to drop it.

Thank You, Dr. Freude

A Freudian slip occurred at a memorialist version of the Lord's Supper. As the chaplain fumbled through the words of institution, he accidentally said:

"And our Lord took the juice after supper..."

You could tell by the look on his face that he was deeply embarrassed when he caught the error.

He tried to recover by making some vague reference to the fruit of the vine, but my grin of vindication was already too pronounced to hide. His slip had illustrated just how far from those words of institution his heterodox practice had taken him. There he stood with a plastic shot glass filled with grape juice that was nothing more than a shot glass full of grape juice. Was this really what Christ had instituted when he said "This is my body... this is my blood..."?

No. Because Christ did not take "the juice after supper..." That's just something that some people are doing in recent years as a novel bad practice. It stands against scripture's clear language and teaching. It isn't juice. It is "the cup of blessing" which truly is a "participation (koinonia) in the blood of Christ." [1 Cor 10:6].