It is the Lord that adds to the number of believers! The people are supposed to study the word and grow in spiritual maturity. This fact comes as a shock to many who have grown up in the purpose driven church but the church is not meant for the lost! Why? Because the things of God are foolishness to them! Should we still invite the unsaved? Of course because that is the only place they will hear the Gospel and only Gospel has the power to save them! Think now about the sheer idiocy of the purpose driven church model. The problem is not those pesky "consumers" in church every week. In fact, we need more consumers. That is what the early church did in Acts.
"Romans 12:1 says, "I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship." Whatever you do after you meet Jesus is spiritual. There's no such thing as secular when you receive Jesus. If you're saved, you're in the royal priesthood. You don't come to church to be ministered to; you come so that you can be equipped to minister." -- Kris Vallotton
Beloved, the Bible has meaning. God is speaking to us what He wants us to know and understand. The great sin of today's band of false teachers such as Vallotton is they use the Bible to prop up what they want to say. Then they slap a Jesus label on it and market it as the truth. One must do the work of a Berean, and trace back dutifully where they misappropriate the word of God and twisted it to fit their own end to understand why they are heretics. Let us reason together and understand how they get to this point. Kris Vallotton set out to write a piece about service to the church. Maybe the ministry ranks at Bethel are growing lower than expected and they need to drum up more volunteers. Whatever the reason, his goal is to write something affirming one of the foundation pillars of the false teachings of the purpose driven church. That if you seek to consume or be fed at church then you are selfish because it is not about you but about the unsaved. Biblically we have already shown how this is patently untrue and unbiblical but it is fascinating to watch how the false teacher operates to get his desired result. In order to convince his readers, Vallotton cobbles together verse fragments and pious sounding platitudes and throws them against the wall like spiritual spaghetti hoping something will stick. His end game is his false teaching point that you come to church to be a minister instead of being ministered to. Here are the individual strands of spaghetti:
* Romans 12:1 says present yourself as a living sacrifice as your service of worship
* Everything you do after you meet Jesus is spiritual
* There is no such thing as secular when you receive Jesus
* If you are saved you're in the royal priesthood
Let's start with the middle two notions that Vallotton just made up on his own. There is nothing biblical about either of these two notions. You can make the technical argument that everything that we do prior to Jesus is spiritual too; it just isn't the Holy Spirit. The fact that an unbeliever finds the things of God foolishness does not change the realities of the spiritual dimension. The world may find their own explanations but the reality is everything is spiritual on one level or another. I get where he is trying to go with the secular comment but it simply is a clumsy attempt to over spiritualize everything, which is the playbook at Bethel. Nothing is secular after Jesus? Really? Granted we should always be representing Christ and by doing so we bring the light into the secular.
The larger problem is always when the false teacher proof texts his point. Vallotton chooses Romans 12:1 because he likes that it calls for sacrifice of yourself as an act of service. Remember, he is trying to prove that you are supposed to be little ministers at church and not sheep who need to be fed. Of course Romans 12:1 has nothing to do with the point Vallotton is trying to prop up. The word "therefore" should clue you in that Paul is wrapping up previous thoughts which mean to find the proper context of this verse we must start in Chapter 11. That chapter has to deal with the standing of gentiles with God and how we are grafted into Israel and the mercy of God has now come to us! Fantastic teaching verses on the salvation of the Gentiles but nothing to do with the demands to be a minister within church. Then we see Romans 12 in the right contextual light. Therefore, now that you have been grafted in and given this merciful opportunity -- present your bodies as a living sacrifice. How reasonable is it to respond the grace of God by sacrificing our bodies and minds. Not in the Creative Arts Ministry at our church but in abstaining from the sins that so easily ensnare us. Vallotton cheapens the importance of this sacrifice and in doing so reveals one of the more serious flaws in the underpinning logic of Warren's work. The Bible is about God and reveals for us how we can live of our lives according to His will. It is deeply personal to us as believers. Warren strips out the personal nature of the Gospel and makes it just a treatise for the whole. Verses and instruction meant for us as individuals are morphed into broader applications they were never intended to be used for. This serves to depersonalize God in the life of the believer. The literal timeline for a purpose driven congregant is as follows:
