Category: Church

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Church Evangelical Stuff SBC

Russell Moore Accuses SBC Conservatives of Supporting Child Molesters, Rape, and White Supremacy

It looks like JD Hall’s prediction a couple of weeks ago that Russell Moore would throw the SBC under the bus within 90 days was about a year too late.

In a letter leaked by an Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission trustee, Russell Moore blasted conservatives within the Southern Baptist Executive Committee for their investigation into the damage the liberal ERLC has done to the SBC – specifically church giving to the Cooperative Program. Moore’s letter was written in February 2020 as pressure was mounting from Southern Baptist pews and the online discernment community to hold him accountable for the leftist positions publicly advocated for by the ERLC, including support for Critical Race Theory, liberal politicians and political causes, egalitarianism in ministry, and a lack of support for the God-given duty of churches to obediently gather for worship.

Moore – a lifelong Democrat, never-Trumper, and notorious race grifter – accuses the SBC Executive Committee of forcing him to live in “psychological terror” during his tenure as president of the ERLC. Claiming opposition to his tenure was the fault of a “tiny minority” and Executive Committee chairman Mike Stone (although Stone, who is currently in the running for SBC president, is not actually named), Moore wrote that opposition to him was not because he was anti-Trump, but because the Executive Committee was complicit in covering up sexual abuses in churches and Moore was too insistent on exposing these abuses.

Additionally, Moore claims SBC opposition to him was due to his commitment to so-called racial reconciliation and writes that “my family and I have faced constant threats from white nationalists and white supremacists, including within our convention. Some of them have been involved in neo-Confederate activities going back for years. Some are involved with groups funded by white nationalist nativist organizations. Some of them have just expressed raw racist sentiment, behind closed doors. They want to deflect the issue to arcane discussions that people do not understand, such as ‘critical race theory.'” He fails to provide any examples of who these white supremacists in the SBC are but blames those in the convention who think appointments should be based on credentials and merit for opposing his insistence in 2011 that the SBC choose a president based on skin color.

Moore’s letter is full of nameless accusations, manipulative emoting (such as a poetry recital and personal storytelling), and suspiciously has not come to light until well over a year after it was written and he has left the SBC for more liberal pastures.

The opposition to Russell Moore and the ERLC is theological in nature and has nothing to do with his stated support for sexual abuse victims. Moore has shown no ability to correctly apply the Word of God to the ethical and cultural issues of the day and instead has come down on the opposite side of faithful Christian churches, including on the issue of race. He has also done grave damage to the SBC by lying in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court, where he claimed that churches and state conventions were SBC entities, which would give abusive SBC organizations legal protection against disputes from autonomous churches.

In the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2021 Book of Reports, Moore brags that the ERLC defended religious freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic:

The ERLC has consistently and repeatedly advocated that the state treat churches the same as similar activities, businesses, and spaces consistent with First Amendment protections, while recognizing that God has given the state the authority to manage activities, businesses, and spaces during a national health crisis.

2021 Southern Baptist Book of Reports, page 191

You read that right. Moore bragged in the report about letting churches be treated like businesses, and about his recognition that businesses can be “managed” by the government. So much for supporting religious liberty.

Now in addition to his appointment as a “public theologian” at Christianity Today, Moore has been welcomed with open arms to Ray Ortlund’s church Immanuel Nashville as a so-called “minister in residence,” a church that practices the very un-Baptist tradition of sprinkling babies:

So much for being a “faithful son of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Russell Moore was and is an enemy of the visible church and particularly confessional Baptists. He is a career faith-grifter and the SBC Executive Committee was right to pressure him to the point where he took his wolfish unfaithfulness elsewhere.

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Church Evangelical Stuff Money Grubbing Heretics News Scandal

Head Honcho Brian Houston Addresses New Hillsong Sex Scandal- Calls Details ‘Very Disturbing’

In a soberingly familiar move, Hillsong Global Pastor Brian Houston has released a new statement on the continued flurry of scandalous revelations at his American Hillsong Ssattelite churches, commenting on the new allegations that disgraced Pastor Carl Lentz was molesting pastrix Leona Kimes when she was working as his nanny several years ago.

Calling Kimes’ experience ‘very disturbing’, the letter thanks her for coming forward in light of the investigation that was launched into Hillsong New York, explaining that they knew about her situation, but was respecting her privacy so that she could reveal it on her terms.

Dear church,

After the termination of the former Lead Pastor of Hillsong East Coast, it was clear the issues were significant and because of our concerns, we initiated an independent and lengthy investigation into the culture of all four Hillsong East Coast locations.

In the process of seeking clarity, hearing Leona Kimes’ experience was very disturbing. We have respected Leona’s privacy and her deeply personal story. She has now decided to share her experience so that she and her husband can continue moving forward as a family.

It will be a long process and they have our full concern and pastoral support.

We know that Leona may face criticism for her story and her choice to share it. In that light, we commend her for her courage and have assured her of our utmost compassion in their journey forward.

Abuse of any kind, in any circumstance, is always deplorable. As a church, we are committed to learning more about how to identify such trauma and bring meaningful support to anyone who has experienced it.

As we work to rebuild Hillsong East Coast, Leona’s experience will be central in our processes. Earlier this year, we made this commitment to update our suite of infrastructure services including increased HR training and the requirement of our policies to be standardized across our network of churches and we hope to improve accountability and communication even further.

We ask for your continued prayer as we seek to bring Godly wisdom to what has been a difficult and heartbreaking situation and season.

With love,
Brian and Bobbie

This surely won’t be the last revelation to come out.

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Church Cursed Headlines Featured

The Gospel Coalition Promotes Book on The ‘Theology of Periods.’ Yes, Those Kinds of Periods

Gospel Coalition writer Emily Cobb has written a review of the book A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, really): An Adventure for the Curious into Bodies, Womanhood, Time, Pain and Purpose—and How to Have a Better Time of the Month By Rachel Jones, recommending that Christians everywhere get this book in order to understand the theological implications of what it means to have Christian women undergoing a menstrual cycle, and how that affects their relationship to Christ.

Published by the Good Book Company, which is generally regarded as a conservative publisher who carries such authors as Tim Keller, Matt Chandler, John Piper, Alistair Begg and Sinclaire Ferguson, Cobb quotes Jones then explains:

…for roughly 50% of the population, for a large section of our lives, periods are a regular reality. 400-500 times in your lifetime—and for 60 days of the year—you’re on your period (p.10).

What a staggering statistic. A women’s period shapes her choices, her emotions, her energy-levels, and in our churches—generally filled with more women than men—it means that, on any given Sunday, many are experiencing their period, or the lead up or aftermath of it.

Cobb assures her readers that “God isn’t afraid to talk about blood,” and this book is so valuable because Jones “urges her female (and male!) readers to see a woman’s monthly period as a testament to the gospel. When we feel unclean, it isn’t really because we are having our period and shedding blood; it is because our spiritual condition in and of itself is unclean.”

I do need to remember it; because it’s only when we’ve appreciated the depth of the problem—when we’ve felt appropriate shame not at menstruation but at our unclean spiritual condition—that we’re ready to hear afresh the words of peace offered by our Saviour. (p.65-66)

Noting that a proper understanding of one’s period is a way to properly understand the gospel, Cobb concludes by saying this is a must-read for both men and women because:

…a woman’s period doesn’t just affect her. It affects men she comes in contact with too, and I believe a book like this can help men become educated on a Biblical view of this topic just as it is for women. May we start seeing wonderful resources like this as a way to equip us as saints in gospel-living. When we lift the veil on these topics, we allow God to shine his wisdom on parts of our lives we often keep hidden.

We await for her some young enterprising man to write the sequel, The Theology of Seminal Emissions: What the Shooting of Sperm has to Say About our Faith, Fears, and Being Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which would use 90% of the same argumentation and bible verses to justify its existence, so that the church may be doubly and richly blessed by this exceptionally necessary works.

Just….whyyyyyyyyyy?

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured News

Athesim Society Issues Press Statement after Leader Gets Saved and Resigns

Atheists in Kenya secretary Seth Mahiga has resigned his executive committee position after converting to Christianity and being saved, according to a press statement by the Godless organization which is the largest athist organization in Africa, representing nearly 5 million people.,

Citing the fact that he “found Jesus Christ and is no longer interested in promoting atheism” the group thanked him for his time with the organization, before announcing that the position was vacant and that they were looking for a new person to join their team.

Mahiga made the announcement as well to Life Church International in Nairobi, explaining that he turned to Christ after experiencing “difficulties” in his life.

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Charismatic Nonsense Church Evangelical Stuff Featured

Ravi Zacharias’ Daughter, RZIM CEO, Admits she Made Serious Errors as she ‘Fully Trusted’ her Father

(Premier Christian) Sarah Davis, CEO of RZIM, the apologetics ministry founded by Ravi Zacharias, has apologized for not initially believing the sexual abuse victims of her late father saying she made “serious errors that only furthered deep wounds.”

Speaking in a video message shared on RZIM’s Facebook page, Davis spoke about her involvement in her father’s ministry saying at the outset it wasn’t something she intended to become part of despite her “deep admiration and love for my father.” Although a Christian since childhood, around 10 years ago she said she came to believe that “God loved me” and she felt a calling to lead the ministry. 

Speaking about her role within RZIM she said it was one of the greatest blessings of her life but went on to talk about the brokenness of the last few years.Get the latest Christian World News stories via email SIGN ME UPSee our privacy notice

Referring to serious allegations that first arose in 2017 and then in 2020, Davis said she was now “grieved” at her initial response to disbelieve victims and that she should have immediately called for an investigation.  She added that it hadn’t been her goal to cover up the “sins of her father,” who died from cancer in May 2020, to further a ministry.

“I believed this man, my father, whom I loved and trusted more than anyone else, could not have done these things … But I was wrong.

To continue reading, click here

Editor’s Note. This article was written by Chantalle Edmunds and posted at Premiere Christian Radio.

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Church In-person Church Righteous Defiance

Pastor James Coates Speaks at John MacArthur’s The Master’s Seminary Grad Ceremony

Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church in Edmonton, AB, gave a special video message to The Master’s Seminary (TMS) class of 2021, where Pastor John MacArthur is the Chancellor. Explaining that Coates’ “faithfulness during a time of government overreach and his willingness to obey God rather than man is a model for all Master’s Men,” the famed alum gave them a word of encouragement and urged them to resolve in their hearts where they stand in Christ, so that when the hard times come and persecution arises, their course of action will already be settled.

After a brief greeting, Coates tells the grads that he was “was able to strengthen my preaching and strengthen my ministry in my effectiveness in my ministry” on account of his time at TMS, describing it as one of his “greatest earthly blessings.”

Many would look at what we’ve gone through and what I’ve gone through personally over the last six months or so, and would wonder how I did that. And the reality is that, that there were many moments in preparation for that time when I would have to choose imprisonment, to obey Jesus Christ.

And those moments along the way required conviction, and resolve, and a steadfast desire and commitment to do what the Lord would require of me. And every moment counts. Every moment along the way was a moment of preparation, so that by the time that I got to the point of having to decide whether I was going to choose my comforts, or obedience to Christ, it was already settled.

It wasn’t easy. It was difficult, it came in the face of fear, and trembling. But the Lord at each point assisted me with a conviction to know what it was he was calling me to do, as well as the grace to carry it out.

Telling them what they “need to do is resolve in your heart to obey Christ, whatever the cost,” Pastor Coates warns them that it’s critical that they resolve in their hearts “that you are going to be faithful all the way to the end, and that you take up those moments that come to you as a fork in the road, and that you resolve now and prepare to obey Christ in those moments.”

Reflecting that the world is a more hostile place than it was a decade ago when he graduated, he concludes by encouraging them to be men of courage and conviction who will be nourished by the word and in turn herald Christ’s headship, for the edification of their souls and the sake of their churches.

I can’t think of a better time to be stepping out of seminary into ministry. I can’t think of a better time to be stepping into pulpits all over the US and this world, and a better time for you to exposit the scriptures with clarity, with accuracy, precision, passion, bringing exhortation to bear upon the people to whom you minister, laboring to build up the body of Christ, to even prepare them to suffer according to the will of God.

…Christ is the head of the church. And your responsibility is to uphold his headship. And you do that by ensuring that his word governs the life of the church.

And so uphold his headship, delight in his headship. Herald his headship, and be faithful in upholding it as a steward of the mysteries of God.”

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Church Critical Race Theory Featured Heresies News Social Justice Wars

The Wokefication of World Vision: Whites View Black People as Either ‘Pets’ or ‘Threats’

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Professor, North Park Theological Seminary, is leading the way in demonstrating the extent that Critical Race Theory is spreading throughout World Vision. Parks is the moderator and one of the leaders of the May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice course, whose stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church.”

From remarks he made at a Black & Asian Christians United Against Racism conference on April 5th 2021 at the Apostolic Faith Church, and also reiterated in Session 9 of the course, Soong-Chan Rah explains that by default and intrinsically, white people view black people and Asians as either “pets” or “threats” and view Asian women as invisible or sexual jezebels.

For African-American communities, I’ve often described how the spiritual demonic power of white supremacy, the gaze of the dominant culture defines the black community, so that the rest of us have to play along.

So that when the white male looks at the black male, the black male is either a pet or a threat. The black male is a pet because the white community wants you to entertain them, wants you to be their comedians that make them laugh, the musicians that make them dance, and the sports athletes that make them jump up and clap.

But they also see you, if you’re not the pet, you become the threat. You are the unidentified black male that commits every crime in our city. You are the individual that is seen as the unsafe person in our society. And even worse, if you are the pet that becomes the threat.

Hypothetically, it could be an athlete who takes a knee. That pet has become a threat. Hypothetically, it could be pastors who decide we’re not going to play the game anymore – we’re going to stand against injustice. You’ve gone from a pet to a threat.

And it is the same scenario that Asian-Americans often find ourselves in. The gaze of the white dominant culture looks at the Asian male and says: you are a pet or a threat.

…They are the Chinese virus. They are the Kung flu. And how easily and quickly it became for that pet to become a threat. And we’ve seen this on the gendered side, as well. Bell Hooks says that when the white male gazes upon the black female, he categorizes the black female in two ways: the Jezebel or the Mammy.

The Jezebel, that is, the sexualized fantasy of the dominant culture, and the mammy that takes care of you and gives you what you need. You see that same paradigm now play itself out in the Asian community, as well.

…because you are seeing the Asian women as disposable and invisible. The ones that pick up the towels after you. The ones that feed you. The ones that take care of you. That’s what you’ve seen, the Asian women. You have sexualized or you have made invisible the Asian-American woman. This is the reality of white supremacy.

This is what world vision is teaching thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of people each week. It is not an unknown program.

To give one example, Willow Creek, the multi-campus 20,000 member church founded by Bill Hybels, announced months ago that they were participating in World Vision’s May We Be One year-long conference “in an effort to help equip all our staff to better engage justice and racism from a biblical perspective.”

Sadly, we have only scratched the surface of how deep this all goes.

h/t to @wokepreachertv for the find.

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured In-person Church Unrighteous Compliance

TGC Author: Believing in ‘Big-Government Overreach’ Is a Denial of ‘Objective Reality’

A Gospel Coalition is at it again. Mere months ago a Gospel Coalition writer condemned the consumption of all news that isn’t intensely local, suggesting that doing otherwise is Gnosticism, gives a God-complex, has no value, and makes one hate their neighbor. They said “anti-masking is not a “conscience issue,” but instead is sinful “civil disobedience” and suggested boomers are sinfully being “radicalized into conspiracies” by Ben Shapiro and Fox News.

This time, in an article by Brett McCracken, he posits that the “biggest emerging fissure in Western culture is not necessarily between political left and right” but rather between those who are “fiercely committed to reality” and those who “elevate the narrative above reality.”

He goes on to lists some examples of some beliefs that do not have a “good faith commitment to reality” but rather are committed to an untrue narrative, noting that “no level of scientific consensus or statistics will cause them to rethink or at least complicate their narrative.”

  1. “Nanny state” big-government overreach
  2. Corrupt Big Pharma
  3. Encroachments on personal liberty
  4. Vaccines as government control

None of these things are happening, he argues. None of those things occurred in the last 15 months.

That’s all just a narrative and conspiracy theories, and by believing they have happened or will happen, these men and women are not living in the real world, but rather are merely “allowing their entrenched narratives and biases” to “take precedence over objective reality.”

Where are the people who live in light of the facts about reality more than their feelings about it? Where are those whose understanding of the world is shaped more by evidence and logic than by narratives and anger? Where these people exist, they’re the true radicals…”

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Church Evangelical Stuff Featured SBC

SBC Loses 435,000 Members in 2020 in Historic Drop

The Southern Baptist Convention membership continues to plummet according to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) report, with the denomination suffering a record loss of nearly half a million members in 2020.

Though the loss of these congregants dips their total amount of members to 14 million, down from a peak of 16.3 million in 2006, it is in fact nowhere near an accurate number of real Southern Baptist members.

SBC membership rolls are notoriously inaccurate and inflated, with purging the rolls viewed as thoroughly distasteful and far too humbling a task for most. Realistically the SBC would be lucky to have even 5 million members that could be found on any given Sunday.

The report further notes that “Southern Baptist churches also experienced a decline in worship attendance in 2020. Average weekly worship attendance declined by 15.44% percent to 4.4 million in-person worshippers.”

This is a far more accurate baseline of how many members they actually have.

Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, declares that COVID-19 and the mass church closures definitely had something to with the losses, noting that as Pastors reconnected with people after being shut down or online for so long, they “discovered some on their membership lists who moved away, joined another church, or no longer wanted to be a member.”

With bad news across the board, the only thing that did grow appears to have been “multisite congregations” who added 529 campuses.

Baptisms were also cut in half, from 235,748 in 2019 to 123,160 in 2020, with McConnel explaining that “socially distant behavior is helpful for containing a pandemic, but it hindered meeting new people, inviting people to church, and helping them take a step of obedience to be baptized,” 

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Church Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Featured

The Wokefication of World Vision: Jesus and Paul were ‘Code-Switching’ to fit into 1st Century ‘White Spaces’

Continuing our series in the ways that World Vision has gone woke, we bring you Session Nine of their May We Be One curriculum. Moderated by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal on May 20, 2021, it featured Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes speaking on the Asian American Pacific Islander Experience and why Jesus was “code-switching.”

In this session, Van Opstal introduces her guest by explaining that she can teach us all the ways “in which we have participated and or not known how our country has participated in the pain of the Asian American community and in being complicit…with the things that have happened to them.”

This is after Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained that white folk use their “white gaze” to view Asian people as either “threats” or “pets” and gave us the helpful diagram below:

She then introduces us to guest Dr. Michelle Reyes. She’s a speaker, author, activist, and the Vice President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative who has written for TGC and the ERLC. She’s all in on Critical Race Theory, writing in a blog post on her website:

White privilege relies on racialization, a system of values that says one group of people is superior to all others because of the color of their skin. This system has been weaponized to justify the cruel treatment of and discrimination toward non-white people throughout American history

….White privilege is both a cause and legacy of racism. It is a conscious act rooted in historic inequities, and it continues to reinforce systemic racism today. When it comes to racial trauma, displacement, the cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, or the country’s history of slavery, we have to acknowledge the role of white privilege.

….But if we aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.

Each of us needs to do the hard work of examining our own biases and actions. We cannot separate the past from our present. They are interconnected. Repenting for the sins of historic slavery and its current iterations in our society is a necessary step in beginning to work toward a more equitable and just future, both inside and outside the church. 

It is on this note that she tells thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of laymen listening in all about “code-switching,” explaining that Jesus and Paul did their own version of this in the first century.

All of us code-switch in different ways at different times. Sometimes it’s just about putting our best foot forward, like that the first time we go on a date with somebody, or we have a job interview or something like that. We’re trying to present ourselves in the best possible light. So the other person will like us, want to hang out with us, hire us, fill in the blank.

When it comes to minorities, when we talk about code-switching, this is that thought that pops into our brain, like ‘you’ve got this, just act white.’ It’s this way of saying, ‘I’m going to hide my own ethnicity, or my ethnic heritage, my cultural expressions. I’m gonna hide the way that I perhaps act at home so I can fit in within this majority of whitespace.’

And usually it’s not just about fitting in, it’s about trying to survive. It’s trying to not be made fun of, to not be shamed, to not be bullied verbally or physically. So there’s a lot of fear, and trauma that goes into code-switching, as well.

And so, as a caveat, and what I argue in that chapter of my book is that it’s important for historically disempowered minorities to understand that the Bible is not calling us to hide who we are, to be ashamed of who we are, to code-switch merely as a means for survival, and to sort of give in to the status quo.

She concludes by explaining that Jesus would code-switch in order to ensure that he doesn’t come across as “offensive” or so that people will be able to fully hear and receive his message.

But rather, I think we see in the life of Jesus, we see in the life of Paul, that they are able to code-switch. And by that, as I mentioned, they know that they are studiers of people.

They understand how people think, how people tick, theological difference, world differences, a worldview, even just sort of social norms, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate. When they step into a room or they step into a new town, they have those ideas at their forefront and say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to connect with this person, I need to shift in this way, or I need to adapt myself in this way so I don’t come across as offensive or that my message will be heard.‘

The original video can be seen here.