From the article:
“Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta, suggested that churches should not focus solely on converting people, as has been the emphasis for generations.
“If we were able to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity, I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted,” he wrote.”
Yes, make unrepentant sinners feel accepted. That’s FAR more important than saving their souls! Yeah, ignore that sin stuff. It’s so old school!
I wonder what Andy’s father, Charles Stanley thinks about his son’s views?
Yes, make unrepentant sinners feel accepted. That’s FAR more important than saving their souls! Yeah, ignore that sin stuff. It’s so old school!You can't save someone's soul by dragging them to church and getting them to cynically mouth pieties. Too many churches today produce Churchians, not Christians.
I venture to say that Andy Stanley’s remarks may have been taken out of context, but I don’t know.
I do know that he and Louis Giglio have done so much to reach the college youth of this generation. My son attended a 35,000 strong group of college kids (the Passion 07) led by Giglio (who was part of Stanley’s church leadership for years.) It was very evangelistic in it’s nature. They have promoted worship bands like David Crowder, Charlie Hall, Matt Redmon, and Chris Tomlin who play to the college kids and their main thrust is evangelism.
The problem is this. In modern America, most media push the ideas of relativism, that there is no fixed standard of right and wrong, so these kids don’t have a strong sense of themselves as sinners. Acceptance and love, combined with a “go and sin no more” doesn’t register as acceptance and love, but as condemnation. It’s a difference in perspective and the Christians have the right perspective. Each of these kids will face themselves as a sinner one day and, God willing, realize that the people talking to them about morals did so in love and with love and took a bit of a risk to do it.