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Posted on 10/21/2014 8:59:06 AM PDT by Gamecock
Full Title: Hillsong Church, Relevance & Pariahs. Hillsong's pastor, stressing the church's need to stay relevant, declined to give the church's position on same-sex marriage
There’s a good piece by Andrew Walker in First Things on a popular international church network called Hillsong’s apparent equivocation on marriage. At a recent New York press conference, the ministry’s leader, Brian Houston, declined to answer whether the ministry affirms the biblical position. Instead, he stresses the church’s need to stay “relevant.”
Earlier this year the pastor of Hillsong’s New York’s congregation, the ultra hip Carl Lentz, shared similar views with CNN. His wifeadded: “It’s not our place to tell anyone how they should live. That’s their journey.”
Hmmm. If it’s not the church’s place to tell anyone how to live, then what is the church’s purpose? Entertainment? Affirmation? Socialization? And if it’s not the church’s role to counsel how to live, then who or what should? Perhaps it’s the central message of our age that each autonomous individual chooses his/her own path without reference to others.
But of course, absent transcendent authority, individuals, no matter how independent, hearken to temporal influences in their life choices, often the passing fads of their culture and age. Typically transient fads are not helpful, reliable guideposts for life fulfillment. So most of humanity does and has looked to religion, at least at times, for more permanent guidance.
All religion, even its most permissive forms, aims on some level to tell its adherents how to live. Otherwise it has no purpose. Certainly Hillsong preachers must fill their sermons with admonitions. A sermon from Lentz in 2013 spoke of complete surrender to Christ: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” He added: “When you take a bite of me, when you really follow me, everything in me goes in you—you can’t pick and choose.”
Indeed, but the more recent Hillsong comments imply there can be some picking and choosing, at least on sexual ethics. Perhaps the Hillsong preachers still privately adhere to Christian teaching on marriage but don’t want to risk public controversy. At his New York press conference, Pastor Houston explained:
“And to me, the world we live in, whether we like it or not is changing around and about us. Homosexual marriage is legal in [New York City] and will be probably in most Western world countries within a short time. So the world’s changing and we want to stay relevant as a church. So that’s a vexing thing. You think, ‘How do we not become a pariah?’ So that’s the world we live in.”
The challenge is that the Cornerstone, Founder and Lord of the Church was crucified as the ultimate despised pariah, and He warned that His followers would often be pariahs. Yet somehow this collection of pariahs, across the centuries, in every culture, preaching the Gospel of an executed but risen pariah, has made His message the most “relevant” message of all time, everywhere.
The Gospel is simultaneously reviled, resisted, acclaimed, and revered. Millions hate it, and millions would also give their lives for it and its hated Preacher. It not only tells people how to live, it tells them to walk a very narrow path, often strewn with sorrows, but also crowned by glory, in this world, and in the world to come.
Among the Gospel’s central themes is that true relevance, the kind the world actually respects, risks not only contempt but also life itself. In Christ’s words: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.”
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I love Hillsong’s worship music. I’ve seen them in concert and hope to see them again.
Silence is consent.
And Jesus does not like the lukewarm.
Collect tithes.
Fundraising.
A few years ago there was a lot of debate among the Prods here regarding the adaptation of buzzwords and phrases by the church. Calvinists and many conservative Prods came out against these buzz phrases because we said they cause ambiguity in the message. We were shouted down for not being pragmatic enough. Not wanting to reach the world.
The phrase relevance is one of those terms. Who defines relevance? Relevant to whom? The most relevant message we have is that Jesus died for sinners. Instead, in this instance, relevant is being driven by the world and this “pastor” is afraid to preach from the whole counsel of God.
“stay relevant” = “keep the money rolling in.” By whatever means necessary
So the primary purpose of this church is to "stay relevant"?
Relevant to what? Relevant to whom?
Somebody should remind them the word of C.S. Lewis.
To be relevant with the times, don’t focus on the times, focus on eternity. Because “All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out Of Date”
There Music is great but that’s as far as it goes.
I see the same spirit behind both Osteen and Bergoglio (or any other pope for that matter) and he’s not the Holy Spirit.
PERHAPS HILLSONG NEEDS TO OPEN THE BIBLE
“When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
1The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons…3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. (II Tim 4:1, 3-4
“1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5HAVING A FORM OF GODLINESS BUT DENYING ITS POWER. AND FROM SUCH PEOPLE TURN AWAY.” (II Tim. 3:1-5)
“3knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” (II Peter 3:3-4)
9”Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. 10And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 11Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24:9-12)
Fruit of the ecumenical movement!
When you "see them again",
let us know what you see.
Wow. Brian, did you ever read the New Testament? Ever notice what happened to Paul, John, or Jesus?
This seems to border on heresy.
That said, I'll give these Hillsong guys the benefit of the doubt somewhat...I think they don't want sound bites out in the media saying, 'Hillsong is anti-gay!', 'Hillsong opposed to gay marriage',etc., thinking that if they can get homosexuals in the doors of the church they might be receptive to the gospel. Whether that works or not is up for debate I suppose.
I love their music as well but this is very disturbing.
Church’s should not be “relevant”. They are by nature, NOT relevant.
Being in the world but not of it is what we’re called to. If Christians don’t stand up for the truth, nobody is going to. The world sure the heck is not.
Yes, I agree, of course.
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