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The Circle Maker – Take heed that no man deceive you – Part I

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Mark Batterson is a colorful and imaginative writer and pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C. Batterson is the author of The Circle Maker, a bestselling book that promotes the practice of praying in circles that has become widely accepted in American evangelical churches. People are taught to draw circles around the things they want, or even to walk in circles around the things they are sure the Lord ought to grant them. Whether walking or drawing circles, circle makers are to pray for those things they have circled and in that way claim them for the Lord. Batterson’s idea of prayer circles came from a story of the life of Honi Ha-Ma’agel, a Jewish scholar who supposedly lived in the first century B.C. […]

General Council of the Assemblies of God 2017 – Sin in the camp – Part II

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The Church Growth philosophy initiated by Norman Vincent Peale, developed by Robert Schuller, and massively marketed through the organizations of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels now dominates the evangelical scene in North America and many other parts of the world. The movement’s philosophies, methods, and techniques are pervasive, unchallenged, and saturate the evangelical narrative being presented in substantially all denominations and fellowships. The Assemblies of God must be included in that number. To understand the extent to which the Assemblies of God has fallen in step with the Church Growth orthodoxy, one need only look at the program for the General Council’s next biennial gathering to be held in early August 2017. The theme is “Influence Conference – Influence Your Community.”[1] To accomplish its agenda, […]

General Council of the Assemblies of God 2017 – Sin in the camp – Part I

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I have loved and been a part of the Assemblies of God for seven decades. In recent years I have watched as the Assemblies have followed the downward path chosen by numerous other evangelical denominations, fellowships, and churches. This is the path of accommodation and tolerance of sin and worldliness in their midst. It is one thing to privately believe there is sin in one’s camp, but to say this publicly is a much more serious matter. Many critics will argue that such a public declaration causes division and strife, but the Bible is plain with regard to sin, both in and outside of the church. Paul warned the church, “And have no fellowship with the unfaithful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” [Ephesians […]

The death of reverence – Part III

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The theme of this three part series is that reverence for God and the things that represent His person and presence are dead or near death in many American churches and the lives of Christians who profess to be a part of the body of Christ. The church is being called to recognize and take actions to remedy this loss of reverence. It is through these things which represent God’s person and presence that Satan often attacks the church—the sanctuary, worship, and music. In Part II it was noted that the American church is making two serious mistakes with regard to music in worship. There has been a loss of sacredness in worship music and that worship has been humanized and redirected toward man and […]

The death of reverence – Part II

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The theme of this three part series is that reverence for God and the things that represent His person and presence are dead or near death in many American churches and the lives of Christians who profess to be a part of the body of Christ. The church is called to recognize and take actions to remedy this loss of reverence. In Part I, it was noted that there has been a general demise of respect for authority and hierarchy in culture which has greatly contributed to the decline in reverence for God. Also, there is a loss of the fear of God among His people which is revealed in two ways. First, there is a loss of reverence for His majesty, holiness, anger against […]

The death of reverence – Part I

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Reverence for God and the things that represent His person and presence are dead or near death in many American churches and lives of those who profess to belong to the body of Christ. In some instances reverence and respect may be used interchangeably, but they are not identical. While respect is a special regard, esteem, or consideration, reverence has a much narrower focus and rises to a higher level such as worship, adoration, awe, veneration, or devotion. The demise of respect for authority and hierarchy Without a doubt, the decline in reverence within the church and the lives of individual Christians is a reflection of the decline of respect for authority and hierarchy in the larger culture and has led to a general loss […]

Resistance thinking – Part VI

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The third and final prescription for the church is to seek a broad spiritual awakening across the body of Christ as well as revival of individual Christians and the local church. The pattern of sin and falling away from God followed by repentance, revival, and restoration of His people is a recurrent theme in the history of God’s dealings with the Israelites in the Old Testament. This pattern is illustrated in Psalm 80 as the author pleads with God to once again revive and restore His chosen people. Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself. Your vine is cut down, it […]

Resistance thinking – Part V

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In Part IV, we saw that resistance thinking is an essential prescription for what ails the evangelical church in American and Western civilization and is a characteristic of God’s prophetically untimely people who have the courage to give voice to a message that stands against the church’s cultural captivity by the humanistic spirit of the age. The second prescription for the church is a return to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements found in the first century church. Restoring New Testament Christianity There are several norms or hallmarks that give shape, definition, and context to New Testament Christianity. All of the distinguishing elements found in the early church (except for the writing of the New Testament Scripture) are available to the […]

Resistance thinking – Part IV

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The American church is dying and parts of it are already dead. If one needs proof of its condition, a re-reading of Part II will reveal the severity of its illness. This is not to say that Christianity is dying for Jesus said, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matthew 16:18. KJV] [emphasis added] The remnant church will always survive, perhaps bloodied and bent for the moment, but it will survive. There are three prescriptions for what ails the evangelical church in the West: development of the art of resistance thinking to challenge the forces of cultural captivity (conformity, popularity, and a […]

Resistance thinking – Part III

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One eminent European scholar at Oxford University asked the question, “By the end of the 1970s who will be the worldliest Christians in America?” Following the silence of his stunned audience, he answered, “It will be the evangelicals and fundamentalists.” At the time this assessment was made, it seemed almost irrational because evangelicals and fundamentalists were considered to have been at the vanguard of understanding the dangers of the world and worldliness which had been exhibited by their forthright resistance to such for almost three centuries. The form of this legendary resistance was both rational and cultural, that is, their inner thought life and their outer life within the culture had stood as the bulwarks against a rapacious world and worldliness. But in the intervening […]

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