Selling more than 7 million copies and spending 49 weeks on the NY Times best seller list, The Shack has been a stellar success for William (Paul) Young. The book has generated its fair share of controversy, yet there can be no doubt that Paul’s book has struck a chord with millions of people. The following is the 1st part of 3 ten minute clips that reflect the bulk of my phone conversation with Paul. Paul offers practical insight concerning some very controversial issues of social change, the Gospel and culture. There are even a few answers that may shock you!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCB95mugEW8[/youtube]
This is the First interview in the series, “One Voice for the Generations” Stay tuned over the coming months for more great conversations.
Archive for the ‘Religion’ category
William P Young is One Voice for the Generations Pt 1
June 29th, 2009
Simple Church ™
June 25th, 2009Inspired by my friend Alan’s post “Go Make Disciples ™“, I am convinced that church is meant to be simple. All the institutional stuff has really hurt our Faith. Here is my new motto:
Church–So Simple That Anyone Who Follows Me Can Do It!
Why do we hold men above Christ?
Seminary trained pastors set themselves up as experts by writing books that teach us all kind of pagan things about leadership and community when all we truly need is the Bible. I am so convinced that the Bible is ALL we need, that I am commissioning a team of writers with no seminary training and who have never lead anything to write a book that everyone should read. This team of experts (with names you are sure to recognize) well give everyone all they need to know about how not to be a leader and how to avoid training so you can start a Simple Church. Oh, and we will have a magazine too!!
Why do we need all those conferences for “professional” clergy?
Those conferences are corrupting the church and taking away the priesthood of all belivers. To counter this spiritual-tragedy, I would like to invite everyone to a new conference starting next year. The conference will be titled, “No More Conferences“. We will feature worship bands (unprofessionally led of course) and lecturers who will teach us how sermons are bad because they feature just one guy talking with everyone in chairs facing forward. Our conference will be held in a theatre where everyone will have nice chairs facing the stage so they can enjoy our featured experts. Come to the conference and you will get trained by our totally uneducated and fully untrained experts on how to be a Simple Church leader.
Why do we make paid preaching/teaching the center of our faith?
I think it is terrible that we listen to sermons and download them and sell them when the Gospel should be free. If you want to learn more, check back tomorrow and I will have a recorded talk you can download for a small fee or you can always order the CD. The Apostle Paul never sold his letters to the church and next year I will also have a new copyrighted book out on Amazon that will tell you all about it for just $9.99. These teachings will explain how we are destroying the church by trusting preachers who sell stuff all the time. (BTW, since I am not a paid preacher, I am allowed by the New Testament to sell this stuff… besides, my motives are pure unlike those other guys.)
Why have we made it so difficult to be the Spirit-led Church?
Men have put themselves out as leaders and make us think that unless we read what they write, we cannot be a valid church. That is just not how God words. So I am announcing the launch of a new blog that will feature all my books and all my recorded messages from conferences and weekly posts. My site will teach you how not to follow after the teachings of men. Trust only the Holy Spirit and follow me.
Why do we follow denominations?
Simple church will be all about rejecting denominations and seeing everyone as our brother and sister in Christ. To help you figure out which churches are truly simple, and not heretical like those institutional ones, we will set up a network of Simple Churches. We will have memberships and everything and promote our approved network of churches from our website.
Why do we meet in big buildings?
Anyone who reads the New Testament, or church history, knows that aside from meeting in public buildings or in Synagogues or caves, the church only ever met in homes. If your church is meeting anywhere but a house, you are corrupting God’s simple church because the house is God’s designated place for church meetings. A house is the only place that does not restrict the moving of the Spirit and A house is the only place where people won’t get corrupted by all the bad stuff. (You will learn more about this at next years’ big conference)
Church is Simple and anyone can do it!! So keep reading. listening, conferencing, networking, meeting in homes and downloading my stuff and I will teach you all the things you need to know about how to keep church simple and avoid the institution.
Oh, and don’t forget, if you don’t read all my stuff and listen to all my messages and go to my conferences, you will never know what stuff is forbidden by the New Testament and you will never be free from all the institutional stuff that holds you back.
The Church is Not Your Sugar-Daddy
June 23rd, 2009The church in the West is undergoing rapid change. We are shifting from an Enlightenment worldview to a Post-modern philosophy. The positive side of change is a stripping away of cultural encumbrance that has kept us from fulfilling the Gospel. The downside of our current transformation, is that we are all-too-often exchanging one cultural norm for another. One form of church is torn down, only to be replaced by a newer more culturally acceptable form. One set of political mores, is replaced by another.
One example of transformation comes under the rubric of Social Justice (ie. poverty, homelessness, AIDS, etc…). In serving the needs of the world, one of the key purposes of the Church–Evangelization of the lost–has been replace with the purpose to befriending the lost. The call to demonstrate the mature love of Christ has been supplanted by a childlike fascination with wordly-compassion.
Tokunboh Adeyemo writes a salient response from an African perspective in this article entitled, “Contemporary Issues in Africa and the Future of Evangelicals”
To the world, the Church has the responsibility of witnessing for Christ and discipling the nations (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:19). This does not preclude works of charily which are an intrinsic part of the good news. However, caution needs to be exercised in this area. The Church is not an organisation for social and political asylum, nor are we to use divine resources to bribe people into God’s kingdom. Since the Church is in the world but not of the world, she should not be indifferent to the social, political, and economic struggles of mankind; neither should she sacrifice her ambassadorial function at the altar of social involvement. Our Lord Jesus Christ liberates the total man: the material and the non-material. Thus he says: ‘If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed’ (John 8:36). The Biblical sequence begins with an internal spiritual regeneration and reconciliation of man to God, manifesting itself in an external physical transformation and reconciliation of man to man in society. The task of the Church therefore is to confront (not maintain dialogue with) the world with the claims of Christ as deposited in the Bible. This mission, central to the heart of God, his Son, and the apostles, must be the mission of evangelicals to the world. The New Testament Church was a missionary Church; and so must be ours. We must go forth (i) with a thorough-going Biblicism which does justice to the claims of the Scriptures, and (ii) with a Biblicism that is both contemporary and relevant.
* World Evangelical Fellowship. Theological Commission., vol. 2, Evangelical Review of Theology : Volume 2, electronic ed., Logos Library System; Evangelical Review of Theology (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Paternoster Periodicals, 2000, 1978), 12.
Does the love of Christ include tangible expressions of kindness? Yes! But, our mission is more than alleviating the temporal pains of this world. We, the followers of Jesus, have a greater call to give the world a hope beyond the ‘now’. We are ambassadors of God’s Kingdom to this passing world and we must live accordingly.
Lest we forget…
Thirst is not quenched by micro-loans for building wells, but by the eternal wellspring of the Spirit.
Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14))”
The hunger for meaning is not satisfied by wheat–bread, but through Jesus–bread.
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But I told you that you have seen me and still do not believe…
50 This is the bread that has come down from heaven, so that a person may eat from it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began to argue with one another, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him (John 6:35-36; 50-56).
The longing for love is not fulfilled in giving trinkets and bobbles, but in the person of God who IS love.
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. 8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world (1 John 4:7-14).
I know how some folks will respond, “this kind of faith is not practical.” But therein lies the problem.–Faith in the West is impotent. The power of Christ, through His Spirit, to transform the world has been entrusted to preachers, politicians and pop-stars. The church must not give Her grand place in the Kingdom to become the Sugar-Daddy to the world. Do we really believe it? Are we able to live it!
The Home is No Place for Church
May 30th, 2009
Here is an interesting story out of Communist China (ooops, I mean San Diego County, California USA).
A San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.
“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”
The pastor’s wife answered yes.
She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.
And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.”
For my brothers and sisters in Christ who are involved in the house church movement, or for any church that promotes home group ministry, this could become a barrier.
Broyles confirmed the county official followed through on his threat. The pastor and his wife received a written warning ordering the couple to “cease/stop religious assembly on parcel or obtain a major use permit.”“The Western Center for Law and Policy is troubled by this draconian move to suppress home Bible studies,” said the law center in a statement. “If the current trends in our nation continue, churches may be forced underground. If that happens, believers will once again be forced to meet in homes. If homes are already closed by the government to assembly and worship, where then will Christians meet?”
On a personal note, Broyles added, “I’ve been leading Bible studies in my home for 13 years in San Diego County, and I personally believe that home fellowship Bible studies are the past and future of the church. … If you look at China, the church grew from home Bible studies. I’m deeply concerned that if in the U.S. we are not able to meet in our homes and freely practice our religion, then we may be worse off than China.”
Broyles also explained to WND that oppressive governments, such as communist China or Nazi Germany, worked to repress home fellowships, labeling them the “underground church” or “subversive groups,” legally compelling Christians to meet only in sanctioned, government-controlled “official” churches.
“Therein lies my concern,” Broyles said. “If people can’t practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own homes with a few of their friends, that’s an egregious First Amendment violation.”
WND contacted a spokeswoman for San Diego County, who acknowledged the description of the incident seemed “bizarre,” but who was unable to locate the details of the account. She simply could not provide comment yet, she said, until she could become familiar with the case.
No matter how this turns out, I want to encourage my church-Family not to fear. Look at China, they are hindered by the law, imprisoned, beaten, and killed…. yet the church under Communist oppression has grown faster than in any other nation. Yes, we must be aware of how Government seeks to constrain our Faith, but we should not fear it, but trust in Jesus!
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