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Is your church buying a New church building ? in the name of
"increasing church attendance" ?
Facts that Church consultants hope you won't think about.
-----------------------
The process taking place in your church - if they are using
the PDL/PDC material has almost NOTHING to do with the
material contained in the two books by Rick Warren.
YOU can't put your finger on it...because you do not know the
actual material that is causing your Pastor to change the
church.
What they will tell you is that they want the church to be
more "seeker-friendly".
That is nonsense.
-----------------------
The first thing that Warren consultants want is control of
your church.
SO go and ask your pastor (or leader) :
1. if warren consultants have come to your church and or
visited him locally.
2. if warren consultants have either flown him anywhere for
training, or offered to him any more "advanced"
training, either locally or not.
3. if Warren consultants have sent him any more training
materials, than simply the two books about the Purpose-Driven
Church and the Purpose-Driven life by Rick Warren.
========
Find out if your pastor hesitates on the answer.
Press for a direct answer to a direct question.
IF the pastor will NOT answer your question (I say this
because many are being told to NOT answer the questions of the
congregations...if the questions are specific),
Ask him:
1. If he has signed an agreement with the Warren consultants.
(IF he says Yes, ask him what the contents are/ IF he is
willing - ask him for a copy of the agreement, or to look at
it).
Once you get a copy of this agreement [if you do], Go straight
out of that church and make a photocopy of it, because that is
the ONLY time you will ever see that copy.
IF you do get a copy of that agreement, when you have time,
you will notice the FEE structure, and you will notice that
those fees are rather very high (they often go into the
thousands of dollars).
The nature of the agreement is basically that your church,
acting with the pastor as the legal agent of the church,
agrees to retain the services of the Warren Consultants for a
certain period of time.
2. IF you succeed in getting the copy of the document, your
pastor may talk straight with you.
It would be good IF you can find out IF the Elders have either
read or signed either the Agreement with the Warren
consultants, and if their contracts were the same as the
Pastors or different.
[in the great majority of cases, the board of elders is
deliberately kept out of the loop. They have no idea what is
taking place, and they do not understand WHY the changes are
taking place.]
====
If you talk with the pastor about this, expect a lot of
hostility and/or no communication. Warren consultants teach
that when the questions actually attempt to find out HOW the
process of change works,
That the pastors are to identify the person as a source of
resistance in the local congregation, and seek to isolate and
marginalize that person. (they have a book on this process,
which is part of the material that local church congregations
do NOT get access to).
If your Pastor has started talking about "numbers",
increasing church numbers, increasing the church attendance,
etc.,
the chances are Very high that he has already received
advanced training by the Warren Group (though in some cases
they instruct the pastor over the phone, and then use the fact
that their advice was already implemented...in order to entice
him into more "advanced" training).
The goal is to re-structure the entire church, and its
theology.
The goal is to flip the church leaders (internally) from an
allegiance to the Theology of the Bible, to a dedicated
devotion to the servicing of the Financial Debt that the
church is incurring.
You may ask:
Wait a minute - Our Church does not have any great debt. So
how can this be ?
The answer is that your church DID NOT (past tense) have any
church debt. In order to pay for their consulting fees and in
order to "grow" the church, warren consultants will
convince your pastor that what he really needs is A New Church
BUILDING.
It sounds odd, but talk to those who have already been through
this...
The theory is if you build it (the new building), they will
come...
That is NOT what the Bible says,
The BIble says if you PRAY, they will come.
But the goal is to force the pastor into a new set of
priorities, the priorities of servicing the new Church Debt
instead of his old theology.
Warren consultants are very good on the "future",
because their predictions are all "future based" (by
which time, they are long gone).
"IF you build a new church building, and IF you develop a
good marketing plan, then New church members will come".
The manner in which the pastor signs onto this is almost as if
he thinks that church members will come physically attached to
the new building.
Warren consultants are selling dreams without substance. But
the financial debt that will ruin the church and cause
hardship for the pastor, THAT is something that is both real
and permanent.
Many Pastors are signing on for THIRTY YEARS of Church Debt.
By the time that the process is finished (the process of
converting your pastor into the new theology of Church growth
by NUMBERS rather than depth of relationship with Jesus
Christ), this may take between 6 months to 3 years.
But at the end of this time, the psychological weight of the
new building often pushes the pastors into positions of being
VERY willing to tone down any offensive theology, or any
serious message, because they tend to accept the premise that
if people are convicted by the truth of the Bible, that LESS
people will show up to the church.
OBviously the premise in that case is that the less one can
offend others, the more people will be in church, to make the
payments and donations and offerings needed to service the
Debt of the Church.
The other part of this is that this often happens where
churches are supporting missionaries and other ministries.
Those ministries no longer have their previous support, since
the churches divert those funds in order to service that new
Debt.
It is a method of enslaving the Church and especially the
church pastor.
You would need to move Very very fast to begin to counteract
this. Often when they sense that change or resistance is
serious, they accelerate the time-table.
The goal for them is to get your local pastor to agree to
indebt the church.
It may sounds like some of this is crazy. By the time that the
process is finished, all of what has been said here will be an
understatement.
Most people who have tried this, have been kicked out of their
churches. It is still worth the effort. But the warren group
often makes inroads before churches understand what is taking
place.
The Impact of Church Debt on Church Theology & Worldview development
Its not really the funding that they are after, I do not
think. They use the funding because it helps them go further.
But it seems that their goals are to use the churches which
subscribe to their views to change the core beliefs of the
congregation.
That would be very bold, but keep in mind that this started as
a sociological experiment with mass marketing techniques. In
order to have a chance to alter the beliefs of the
congregation, they would first have to alter the beliefs of
the Pastor.
One of the most Un-Biblical beliefs is that the Size of a
church is an indication of spiritual growth, or that spiritual
growth is to be measured by numbers rather than by the
spiritual knowledge that each person is attaining, in their
own relationship to God.
In other words, thanks to the message of "Church Growth =
Large Numbers" already supported by many evangelicals,
the beliefs of that pastor would not have to be altered much,
since many pastors ALREADY believe this.
The next task is for the Pastor to agree to the concept of NOT
teaching either 1) any Major doctrine or 2) any point of
controversy on Sundays in the main service.
[That would be rather unfortunate if pastors Did agree to
this, because it is giving up one of the few times when people
actually set time aside to come to church to be instructed
from God's Word. What people need is more instruction, and
more sound doctrine, not less. ]
But what is being called "Seeker-Friendly" actually
is often being interpreted by Warren Consultants & PDC
Pastors as a willingness to Not make any waves or say anything
which is controversial.
It is not likley that the Holy Spirit was consulted much on
that decision. What He says often can offend. It is God's
truth that We must adjust to. Instead PDC churches are trying
to adjust their proclamations to man's truth. That is both sad
and an abandonment of the Pastoral Call to PROCLAIM the
gospel.
It is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that often brings
repentance. If church attenders are not confronted with
spiritual truth, then how will the Holy Spirit be able to use
that information that they will not be receiving ? Faith comes
by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God....
Warren Consultants will simply take advantage of the church's
willingness to pay them. How far they take this probably has
to do with their demographic and financial studies of each
church. THey can taylor packages to each church....
The question is who has authority over financial matters for
the church. The next question is who would either confront or
stand up either to the Pastor or to the consultants - IF
confronting them was the right and Biblical thing to do.
But often, church financial matters are handled by
accountants,and very few people know the financial state of
their own churches (though it is good where this is NOT the
case).
As others have pointed out, the churches that withstand or
resist the process are the churches that have the conservative
members in it.
But remember, Warren consultants usually establish two Church
services. THey say that this is to appeal to a younger crowd,
but according to their own documents, the true purpose is to
compartmentalize and segregate the more
"fundamental" members of the church...into their own
[traditional] church service.
Those people then are under the impression that they are still
part of the church, because they still have a church service.
But what happens within a matter of weeks is that the
"traditional" church service is discontinued,
especially where the majority of the church has made the
transition to the new church service.
The "traditional" church service is then
discontinued, and then the traditional church members have
nowhere left to go. They are then further marginalized and
ignored. The goal of the process is not only to alter the
church, and its theology but also to do all of this with the
least amount of resistance and confrontation possible.
What is really going on is that the traditionalists are being
outmaneuvered by the Warren consultants, and traditionalists
do not resist the process, because they do not know what is
going on nor how to confront what is taking place.
American evangelicals need to be honest. Despite all of the great accomplishments that we tout, all of our incredible resources and all of our imposing statistics, we have made very little impact on our world and culture. In fact, just the opposite is true. The world has had far greater influence on our churches than our churches have had on the world. And while the world is getting worse and worse, the church has lost its voice. Consequently, we live in desperate days.
Continued at: The Need for Expository Preaching
Recommended Booklist in dealing with PDL/PDC Issues
For any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us at xofcbooks@yahoo.com .
XOFC: Truth for the Skeptical Mind
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Please
Note: We do try to be accurate. If you see anything which you believe Is
not correct on our website, please do bring it to our attention. Thank
you (XOFC Staff)
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