But there is nothing new under the sun. Saddleback and the Crystal Cathedral, Willow Creek and all the other evangelical megachurches that have had their time in the sun sell the same product: mind-power through talk-magic, which in secular packaging is just what all the innumerable therapies and self-help programmes on the market promise
Twelve-step programmes, beginning with Alcoholics Anonymous, appropriated the conversion scenario of revivalism, eliminating references to Jesus in favour of appeals to a generic "higher power". Later self-help programmes and therapies dispensed with supernatural intermediaries altogether. Learning the right tricks and gimmicks, thinking the right thoughts and acquiring the proper attitudes would directly, by a law of nature, make good things happen for you
Schuller, Warren and other new-style evangelical preachers, who focus on this-worldly improvement rather than otherworldly salvation, have not sold out Christianity in favour of secular self-help. They have simply reappropriated those bits of evangelical Christianity that cycled through the secularisation process and emerged as therapies, having in the process acquired the veneer of science.
Back to ‘man’ again. Their way instead of God’s Way. It’s the same old thing, just change the names. Deception comes in when The Word is allowed out.
God’s Word/His Way never changes. His Church never changes.
His church is His Body and each member of His Body has the Holy Spirit. They are the ‘temple/church’ of the Holy Spirit.
So churches can and will go bankrupt - but HIS CHURCH never will. He doesn’t live in buildings but in HIS children.