Seeker Friendly -The Ooops Factor - and the Headless Bride.
A bit of a mishmash post for you today…
Seems that the seeker friendly program is being questioned by its own leaders. Why? Because those who have been ministered to in this seeker friendly way are not growing up or maturing. Bill Hybels from Willow Creek says…
Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.
And he goes on to say…
We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.
But have they really learnt from their mistake? Consider the following statement from Greg Hawkins from Willow Creek…
Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he’s asking us to transform this planet.
As Bob Burney points out…
Isn’t that what we were told when this whole seeker-sensitive thing started? The church growth gurus again want to throw away their old assumptions and “take out a clean sheet of paper” and, presumably, come up with a new paradigm for ministry. Please note that “rooted in Scripture” still follows “rethink,” “new insights” and “informed research.” Someone still doesn’t get it. Unless there is a return to simple biblical (and relevant) principles, a new faulty scheme will replace the existing one and another generation will follow along as the latest piper plays.
Well, I guess we will wait and see what the new insights will be, and if they are biblical or not.But just before I go. I quickly read some of the comments to the above article and one commenter replied by saying…
Has anyone ever said, “hey let’s see what the Bible says about growth and the gatherings?” And God added to them those who would be saved! You see the church back then were all in agreement and connected to Christ as the head,
And this got me thinking about something I read just yesterday from the ‘Extreme Prophetic’ website where a prophecy was given for this year and it talks about the headless bride (yeah, you read me right, the headless bride)…
This is the year for the Ecclesia – the true shining headless bride of Christ to come into alignment with His headship and authority.
Seriously, I really have a vivid imagination and when I read that, I immediately thought of the ‘Bride of Frankenstein‘. It scared me to even consider that the Bride of Christ has gone around headless for the last 2000 years.Perhaps they are not so far from the truth when you consider that these New Apostolic Reformers are speaking about encounters with the Watchers (Angels) and these encounters help to open up portals or gateways into the heavenlies and that these Watcher’s are wanting to ‘partner’ with them (the link I provided goes to a video). It is Ryan Wyatt from ‘Extreme Prophetic’ website talking about the watchers, the heavenlies and portals and other supernatural things…Errr, does this partnering sound a little too much like the Days of Noah to you! If you don’t know much about the Watchers the Book of Enoch writes extensively about them, it is an outside-biblical book. I have researched a little about the Watchers before here and here.I mean, perhaps their bride really doesn’t have a head yet, or perhaps this bride has been cut off by the Sword of Truth and is left floundering around in the dark because they are pretty much waiting for the watchers to partner with them and open the portal of heavenly light.Look I could go on, but for now I will leave it. All of this stuff, the seeker friendly and the obscure mystic New-Age Occultic move of a wannabe try hard god personally effects me, big time.
