Thanks to Paula Coyle of PurposeDrivel for sharing this newsletter from the Wretched Newsletter site. It is especially written to those people who came out of the horrible experience of leaving a church that decided to adopt the Purpose Driven Model, in light of the recent Warren-Piper situation where Dr. Piper invited Rick Warren to keynote at the 2010 DesiringGod National Conference.
How many people have been deeply wounded because of “The Purpose Driven Church”? If I were a betting man, I would guess millions have been driven from their beloved church because of the writings of Rick Warren.
That is the second reason I absolutely hate the decision made by a man I love to invite Rick Warren to speak at the Desiring God Conference in the fall of this year.
As Purpose has seduced over 300,000 pastors (that is not a guess) to leave the Jesus Model and follow the Rick Model, faithful sheep have been forced out of their church by their shepherd to make room for the goats. Devastating.
If you are one of those people, I am very, very sorry that one of the men who probably served as an anchor during your storm has seen fit to use his national conference to figure out how Rick Warren ticks. Frankly, we know how Rick Warren ticks. He may have file cabinet orthodoxy, but his public works are nothing short of lethal.
Perhaps you have suffered the effects of purpose poison and now your almost-healed scars have been ripped open. Many of us feel bad for you. Please heal fast knowing that you were not wrong, you were wronged.
You were not the bad guy when you left your church whimpering and scalded. You were right. Rick Warren’s pragmatic methodology is not Biblical. His use of Scripture is worse than a self-proclaimed “bishop” on prosperity TV. Rick Warren’s Gospel is no Gospel at all.
That is the number one reason why I continue to be saddened by this decision; the Gospel will suffer and more people will be hurt.
Honestly, I thought Rick Warren’s Purpose kingdom was one to two years away from joining Jabez on the ash heap of church trends. Unfortunately, Purpose has been given new life by a highly esteemed pastor.
Tragic.
—Todd
On Christianity Today, Collin Hansen pitches his thoughts on the Warren-Piper situation.
The Reformed ranks have swelled with the refugees of pragmatic evangelicalism. Piper threatened this united front by inviting Warren. But Piper, as the movement’s central figure, has always offered more than just critique. He put forward a compelling vision of Christian Hedonism. “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him,” he writes in his seminal book, Desiring God. As he explained in a video Q+A session, Piper does not want this Reformed resurgence to bear the mark of separatism, an overriding concern for fence building. With influence comes responsibility for guiding evangelicalism according to a compelling, constructive vision for theological reform and spiritual renewal. Piper’s critics may be right that Warren is not the best place to begin this effort. Only time will tell if the restlessly Reformed can settle down with a shared agenda that will captivate other evangelicals to work together and fulfill the charge from our Lord Jesus Christ to disciple the nations.
Read the whole: Piper, Warren, and the Perils of Movement Building: Why the debate over separatism still matters.
Lastly, here’s some great perspective from the Pyromaniac blog by Phil Johnson regarding Together4theGospel, Unity and N.T. Wright.
“After all,” Brett McCracken says, “[Paul] speaks of justification only in a few places (Romans, Galatians, etc.), while unity is a topic that shows up constantly in nearly everything he writes.”
Yikes. Seriously?
That’s about the worst summary of the Pauline perspective I have ever heard.
McCracken should have listened more closely to the T4G messages. His cynical description of T4G (“like a club patting each other on the back for their mutual buttressing of the ‘unadjusted gospel’ against threats from various corners”) puts his yearning for “unity” in clear focus. If we’re not willing to relegate all our differences with everyone who claims to “love Jesus” to the category of “theological minutia,” we are the “schismatic” ones—not the Anglicans (and their ilk) who have winked at (and even given their benediction to) virtually every kind of sin and apostasy, as long as their own bishops are involved.
The cost of that kind of cosmetic unity is simply too high. Far from being “a sign to the world” and “a message to the would-be rulers of the world,” it dishonors Christ. The artificial peace of compromise and mandatory-cease-fire solidarity isn’t authentic unity anyway. It is nothing like the kind of unity Paul called for. It certainly is not the kind of unity Christ prayed for.
Of course some points of doctrine are theological minutiae, and we don’t need to argue endlessly about them. Most of us don’t. But justification by faith is not one of those peripheral points. Luther and the other Reformers were driven by the unshakable conviction that the doctrine of justification by faith is the primary soteriological essential, the article by which the church stands or falls. Unless we’re willing to declare the Reformation a mistake (something Bishop Wright needs to do—and may yet do—in order to be consistent with his own rhetoric), we should resist these incessant pleas from so many quarters to see “church unity” through postmodern eyes. Instead, we need to keep striving for the kind of unity Scripture describes—a unity that is possible only when we are walking in the light (1 John 1:6-7).
Read the whole: Tom Wright, T4G and Unity: “Can We All Get Along?”
