North Point Community Church comes in at eight; pastor Andy Stanley presiding. The son of Charles, Andy has fallen quite afar from the tree. Most of what has already been discussed can apply to pastor Stanley. The hipster relevance. The phenomenal speech craft. The striving for secularization of the church. What he adds however is the complete destruction of the pastoral role. We had touched on this earlier but the Warren model requires that the pastor become a vision casting leader. He is worried about the horizontal growth of the church instead of the vertical growth of the sheep already there. Acts 2 teaches us that God is responsible for adding to the number of the church as He sees fit. Nonetheless, Andy Stanley is the prototypical vision casting CEO as opposed to pastor. He is actually on record as advocating for the church to stop using the term "shepherd" because it is no longer culturally relevant. As if the Bible is interpreted based upon culture! The truth is that as long as shepherd is used, Andy Stanley is reminded how he is not one. This is crucial for the overall success of the great falling away. When the shepherds stop caring about their actual job they become the hirelings the Bible warns us about.
That was the top eight most influential churches and pastors in America today. It reveals quite a bit about why the church is in such bad shape. It reveals quite a bit about why the great falling away is already underway. I used to wonder how so many would be deceived but now I see that they will gather around them the deceivers they want to scratch their itching ears as the Bible says. The scheme of the enemy is brilliant. Instead of going after the sheep he went after the shepherds. He convinced them that it was their job to grow the church. He brought in experts from the world to teach them and thus keep them firmly tethered to carnality. He turned piety into entertainment. He turned worship into a nightclub. He turned the shepherds into CEOs, convincing them to work on their speech craft and vision casting instead of tending to the sheep. He placed greed in their hearts and taught them to place it into the hearts of their sheep. The result is the seeker-friendly industrial complex we see every Sunday in action. Fog machines, blaring music, relevant and hip messages, no sin, no repentance, no cross, no blood. The average time one spends in a mega church is just under three years because by that time most people can see the man behind the curtain. The problem is most of those people never return to any church - all part of the devil's scheme. Most were never saved to begin with and their theology is a mish mash of popular false teachings buoyed by a false conversion. They will die apart from Christ. The Bible says that few will find the narrow gate that leads to life. This is why. The great apostasy is well underway inside the church today. Many will not be able to see it because they have been taught what they do is church. They have been taught that their falling away is what church is supposed to be. Jesus warned that when we convince ourselves that our darkness is light, how deep is that darkness.
Reverend Anthony Wade - November 21, 2015
