Part Two of the series examining the damage wrought by the Purpose Driven Church.

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And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. -- Acts 2: 42-47 (ESV)

This week we are exploring the palpable changes within the church culture as a result of the Purpose Driven Church and the ensuing theories of church growth that have exponentially grown since the 1995 publication by Rick Warren. It seems nearly every up and coming pastor today is trained on the Purpose Driven model. The problem with this is that the model is wildly unbiblical and has in fact been leveraged quite brilliantly by Satan in these last days to cripple the church and create swaths of unregenerate goats that have been promised a salvation they do not possess. We examined in Part One, the shift of how the lost are viewed. Prior to the Seeker Friendly Industrial Complex, the lost were considered unsaved. This meant the thing that was lacking, which the church must focus on, was salvation. Now Rick Warren teaches that we should refer to these people as "unchurched". The devastating results should be expected and obvious. A church that no longer truly focuses on salvation can dumb down the sinner's prayer to nine words, as Rick Warren literally did in the Purpose Driven Life. A church that is no longer focused on the salvation of lost souls can get easily distracted and bend more readily to the world. When we allow the goats to dictate what church ought to be that is how we end up with cross-less churches, bloodless churches, and churches that simply do not have the power to actually save anyone. Beloved, Matthew 7 teaches us that there will be plenty of churched people in hell but when someone is saved, they are with Jesus in Paradise.

This brings us to Part Two of this series and today we will continue in this line of thought to examine how the shift in viewing the unsaved has actually resulted in an unbiblical church that goes against the principles God has laid out. The church has a purpose, to use Warren vernacular. Jesus spoke very clearly about the role the church is supposed to play. We are supposed to be a shining city on a hill. We are supposed to be the light in a world filled with darkness. We are supposed to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the only power of God unto the salvation of men. The world is supposed to see us as a peculiar people. We are supposed to be different. We are supposed to love where they hate. We are supposed to turn the other cheek where they seek vengeance. We are supposed to be at peace where they panic. Why? So that they would want what we have. So that they would ask about this God we serve that allows all of these flesh denying characteristics. Beloved, time is running out and we are instructed to be very wise when dealing with the lost because the time that is left must be redeemed:

Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. -- Colossians 4: 5-6 (NKJV)

It is because the church is so vital to the plans God has, that the Bible is filled with cautious instruction about it. How many gifts of the Spirit can be displayed and in what order. Qualifications for elders, deacons, and pastors. Correct gender roles in a service. Then there is the actual blueprint for the church found in the key verses today. Taken from the second chapter in the Book of Acts, the key verses show what the early church was like. It shows the model for how it should operate. The sheep devote themselves to the apostle's teaching and to the fellowship. Today, the apostle's teaching is the Bible. We are to commit ourselves as a church to devotion towards the Word of God. We are to study it. We are to go deeper in the Word with each passing day. When you follow the purpose driven model however you cannot go deeper in the Word because your target audience still thinks the things of God are foolishness. This is why we see people like mega-church pastor and purpose driven guru, Perry Noble, refer to people who want to go deeper in the Word as the "jackasses in his congregation." This is the same guy that thought it would be fun to play Highway to Hell from ACDC during a church service. This is the same guy who played Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball during worship. Yes, the same guy who preached a sermon once where he rewrote the Ten Commandments to make them more palatable. This is what the purpose driven model does to young pastors. To Perry, the people that want to go deeper in the Word of God are the jackasses in his church. How pathetically sad when we consider that the true model for the church is to always go deeper. Perry doesn't follow the Bible though. He follows the Purpose Driven Church:

FINALLY I was reading something about a church that I believed could and should be taking place"and the Lord used your writings as a catalyst to spur me AND encourage me. I would say that the Lord used you to"

Teach me what church CAN be

Show me that if you do not have a plan in ministry that it will be obvious to everyone that you have no plan!

Teach me patience as I read all 399 pages"and then I did it again!

Show me how to stay focused"no matter what people say about me! (I am still learning this!)

Show me that people CAN receive Jesus--even if the pastor wears Hawaiian shirt!

Show me that pastors can be on television and represent Jesus in such a way that the rest of us do not look stupid!

This is an excerpt from a public letter to Rick Warren by Perry Noble. Gushing and praising him for writing a book that he could believe in. That old Bible thing? Nah. No reason to go deeper in that when you have Rick Warren teaching you what a church CAN be. A church CAN be a breeding ground for heresy and false conversions. A church CAN be a place where a pastor calls his sheep jackasses. Or you can follow the Bible and see what God says the church can be. But look at the sheer and utterly carnal nonsense Perry Noble learned from the Purpose Driven Church! That you have to have a plan for ministry. Never mind the Bible, which is the plan God gave. We need a scheme. He learned to not listen to people who are rightly critical of him. To essentially become unteachable and unreachable. Does the Bible teach no accountability? Apparently another lesson he learned from the Purpose Driven Guru is to dress however he likes. Perry routinely preaches in tee shirts. Warren prefers Hawaiian shirts. I do not think clothing matters too much but it is interesting that these are the things Perry learns that stand out to him. Nowhere is there anything about doctrine, the Bible or God. Just mecentric blather.

The flip side of the responsibilities of the church is what role God plays. The final verse from the key verses today indicates quite clearly that God adds to the overall number who are saved. We must remember that salvation is always the work of the Lord. For example, on the Day of Pentecost there were 3000 people saved. Peter preached the Gospel but God saved them. The analogy of church growth I like to use is simple horizontal and vertical growth. Horizontal refers to the overall number of people in the body of Christ and the vertical growth refers to their spiritual maturity in Christ. In the traditional model as God has ordained, the pastor is responsible for the vertical growth of the sheep the Lord has entrusted to him. The horizontal growth of his individual ministry is entirely up to the Lord.

Not so according to Rick Warren.

The purpose driven church works on the opposite tenets. It turns the church into a business. It turns the pastor into a CEO. It turns the congregants into customers. It relies on carnal metrics to measure success. Let's deal with some of this today. First of all the church is not supposed to be a business. It is not meant to be focus grouped. It is not meant to have marketing schemes developed for it. Possibly because to the unsaved individual the things of God are still utter foolishness. The Gospel is not meant to unite people. It was meant to divide and offend. Jesus came to bring a sword but most seeker friendly pastors turn that sword into a giant lollipop He just wants to share with everyone. You must realize that because the Gospel is the power of God unto the salvation of men it also has the power to drive people away. People do not want to hear they are a worthless sinner. They do not want to hear that they have to be obedient. They do not want to hear that they are not God. These are the things the Gospel has to offer them and the problem is that you cannot market that. You cannot sell it. So you tone it down. Maybe you do not mention sin and repentance. You sweeten it up. Maybe you only talk about how much God loves us and how we all have some glorious purpose. You no longer actually represent the true Gospel. The result is that you are now targeting goats instead of sheep. But goats are not going to worship God! So instead of worship we will entertain them. Dazzling light shows. Dramatic smoke machines. Countdowns to service. Secular music during worship time.

Because the real Gospel will cut a sinner to shreds we have to take the edge off. We spoke last time about Bill Hybels removing all crosses from his church because the goats found them offensive. We mentioned Perry Noble changing the Ten Commandments. We spoke before about Rick Warren advising to not preach the Gospel at Easter so you give your visitors a reason to come back to your church. All despicable schemes of the devil and running rampant in our churches today. That is why the majority of preachers today no longer exposit the Word to hear from God. Instead they engage in proof texting so they can prop up the pre-decided topic they wanted to speak about. Those topics range from the outright silly to simply unbiblical. During the summer time, many mega-churches do a series on the popular summer blockbuster movies. Sure they toss a little Jesus into the mix but they are essentially expositing James Bond or Han Solo.

When you think that you as a pastor are responsible for the horizontal growth of your church then you have left the Bible. In order to fill God's role, you must get even farther away from the Bible. I saw one church this week giving away large screen TV's for Father's Day for example. Other churches have had gun giveaways. One church transformed the sanctuary into a rodeo and another into a motocross field. There was a clown service where everyone dressed up as clowns. Hillsong recently turned Silent Night into a burlesque number. At two different Women's conferences this year they had a pastor dressed as Austin Powers and another as the Naked Cowboy. This is what you are forced to do to draw goats to church. This is what happens when the unsaved become the unchurched. Because today's deep theology is this:

The church was not meant for the lost; it was meant for the saved.

I know this flies in the face of a lot of modern churches and the schemes they utilize for growth but this is what the key verses teach us. We have often heard the old adage that the church was not meant as a museum for the saints but rather an emergency room for sinners. While that may sound good on a tweet it is not biblical. The church is meant to be a community for the saved. A place where they can study the Scriptures and grow in Christ. A place where they can have everything in common with one another and be held accountable. Do we want the unsaved to come to church? Absolutely! Where else are they going to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is the only power of God unto their very salvation! That is the model! They come to church because they have seen how we have behaved as Christians and want what we have. They may not understand worship but they see the sincerity of the saved around them and they wonder about this God they clearly love so deeply. They hear the Word of God exposited correctly which means every verse always comes back to Jesus Christ. Every anecdote always comes back to the cross. They hear over and over again about Calvary. About their sins. About their need to repent. They will be drawn by the Holy Spirit. Most will not accept it. Such is the nature of man in rebellion to God. Some however will come to salvation and all of heaven will rejoice for that one wayward sheep that comes home. Remember that narrow is the way that leads to eternal life and few are those who find it. The mega church mentality has flipped everything on its ear. Suddenly if you lead a flock of 200 and they are all growing in the Lord and genuinely converted you are considered a failure even though you have stayed true to the Gospel. If you lead a church of 2000, where people are constantly being recycled and no one matures, you are considered a success. These are worldly measurements beloved not godly. The fact that 50,000 people come to hear Joel Osteen preach each week is not a sign of favor from God but rather favor from this world.

The other consideration is that when all of your marketing and preaching is aimed at goats then you end up starving the sheep. The sheep of the Lord know His voice beloved. They also know when they are not hearing His voice. When they continually are denied the spiritual nourishment that can only come from the true Gospel the only result can be spiritual atrophy. So many sheep are leaving the church today because they are simply starved out by the purpose driven pastors. Mega church heretic Andy Stanley said just this year that people who attend small churches are just selfish. That is was not all about them. Sorry Andy but it is about them to Jesus. He did not die so they might have life in mediocrity from a spiritual perspective. Go back to the key verses again! The pastor is responsible for the vertical growth of the sheep but the purpose driven paradigm shifts the focus to the horizontal growth of the church. You cannot be focused on both and according to God you do not have to be. You can shepherd the sheep entrusted to you and let God worry about who gets added to the number.

Beloved these are very dangerous considerations. The purpose driven churches in America, which comprise the vast majority of churches overall, have flipped the Gospel upside down. Instead of being unsaved people are considered unchurched. The unspoken goal is no longer to bring them to the cross but instead to the church building. Heck many of these buildings do not even have crosses! When the shift of focus within the church is towards the goats instead of the sheep the result is twofold. First you are forced to abandon the Gospel to draw the lost. You are forced to compromise the actual Gospel. No more talk about sin, the blood, the cross or the need to repent. Those are all seeker-unfriendly. Instead focus on material and temporal needs like improving marriages, finding significance, and improving self-esteem. Heck, take that even further and preach absolute nonsense about the hottest movie out today or dress like your favorite Disney character. Change worship into a concert. Get the best voices and musicians. Dim the lights and turn on the disco balls. Bring some secular music into worship time. Anything to entertain. Anything to make the "experience" worth coming back for. On the flip side, you will end up starving the very people God as entrusted to you. The true sheep of the Lord will not tolerate such unbiblical nonsense. Eventually they will walk out of the sheep pen and wander the Christian landscape as the church hurt people we see growing in numbers every single day. Purposefully driven away.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- June 22, 2016

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.