North Point Community Church ‘impastor’ Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of unhitching the church from all the scriptures and proliferating his bizarre and sub-biblical hermeneutic, claiming that he purposeful preaches in a way so that pagans will feel comfortable not believing the gospel message, and purposefully encourages them to “check out” when he’s only talking about Christian issues.
You’ll recall that Stanley previously said that it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable, and that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible. In 2018, he got shellacked from all sides for saying that Christians needed to unhitch themselves from the Old Testament and in a recent sermon told Christians not to follow Jesus through the Old Testament, but only through the Gospels. Just a few weeks ago, he also said there’s no ‘Clear Divine Standard’ of God revealed to mankind.
Now, on a recent ‘He Gets Us’ podcast with Ed Stetzer and Albert Tate, Stanley explains his novel approach.
Stetzer: Okay, you’re saying to give them permission not to believe, but you are calling them to something, you’re calling them to a belief? How do you do both of those things?
Stanley: It’s a great question and tell me when I’m talking too long. The invitation is to follow Jesus. That’s it. The invitation is not to believe something. I’m not sure you can make yourself believe something you don’t believe-that’s a big discussion for another day.
The invitation is to follow Jesus. This was his invitation before they even believed, before they knew anything about Jesus; follow me, take a step, follow me through the Gospels. So changing, you know, it affects our apologetic, it affects our invitation, it affects our approach, it affects everything once we decide, you know what, we are creating a safe place.
And of course, we’re going to challenge people, but the great thing is this: a practical sermon works for anybody that’s willing to practice it, whether it’s on marriage, relationships, fixing a relationship, money, whatever it might be. So there’s a way to approach it, and one of the things that I’ve just gotten in the habit of doing is I’ve just, I’ll say in the middle of a sermon. ‘Hey, if you’re not a Christian, what I’ve said so far, knock yourself out. This will help you. From this point on, you may just want to check out because this is really just for us crazy Christians.
I mean, I will be that specific because I want them to know I know they’re there, and I have no authority over them, and I’m not expecting them to do anything. They’re a guest in our home. This is how we do it here, but we’re so glad you’re here.
And again, that’s my language. I think the better we get at that, the easier it is for people who are exploring faith or reexploring the faith after maybe a bad church experience. So yes, there is a call to action there is a challenge
h/t Andy Stanley
