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Adventism’s Latest Offshoot Part 4: Jesus for Church Planters (Pt. 1)
by Pastor Larry Kirkpatrick, August 25, 2004, originally published on GreatControversy.org
Breaking News
Adventism’s latest offshoot, Mission Catalyst Network announced on August 24, 2004 that a couple were moving to Portland, Oregon to plant one of their churches there. According to the news release, the family that is moving “have been successfully church planting in Minnesota” (http://www.missioncatalyst.org/news.html, accessed on August 25, 2004, 4:11 p.m. PDT). We find his name listed here as pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist church in Minnesota. It is interesting how easily allegiance is shifted these days. One wonders how much things actually vary when a standard product of Adventist church planting as a conference church were compared with one of the new non-Seventh-day Adventist churches. Look’s like this is a comparison we soon shall be able to make. Oh, and they also wouldn’t mind your sending them $15,000 dollars to start their non-Seventh-day Adventist church. I grew up in the Portland area, and it is a nice location, but I would rather have the frigid winters of Minnesota and be in a church where all of present truth is presented than some lite version.
Jesus for Church Planters
If your personal ideology concerning the kingdom of God has been assimilated by the buzzwords “innovate,” “church planting,” “coaching,” “seeker-sensitive,” or “passion,” then this message is from heaven to you.
This sermon may feel different to you. You come to it not after having been warmed-up by a sequence of humorous comments, or loud, rhythm-accentuated music. There has been no drama or theatrical presentation beforehand. Your pump has not been primed by the use of gospel gimmicks. Your reason is, hopefully, still engaged; your consciousness has not been altered by anything besides prayer. God is calling you.
Jesus had a word. Have we forgotten it? “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13, 14). Dear listener, I tremble with concern when I hear some claiming that this order has been reversed, that broad is the way leads to life, that, as one church planting guru (who has just left the Seventh-day Adventist ministry to found an independent association of churches) writes,
When it comes to winning people to Jesus, I’m pragmatic. If it works, I say ‘let’s do it.’ When I find a method that works even better, I insist we do even more of whatever that is (Ron Gladden, The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Churches, p. 42).
But if we need to be doing “whatever works,” then by what measure shall we determine whether it works? Does “winning people to Jesus” mean taking a rapping, rock-and-rolling, smoking, movie-going, body-pierced, adornment encrusted worldling, and turning him into a rapping, rock-and-rolling, smoking, movie-going, body-pierced, adornment encrusted person, who now happens to attend church on Saturday and who’s name is now on the church books and who has now been told that he is saved by grace? It is settled for eternity that, “wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
Apparent Success
We must analyze with great care what we are doing. Our Lord did not say that better methods would draw larger crowds, poorer methods, smaller. He warned that as far as salvation goes, “few there be that find it.” Could it be that church growth specialists, searching for the maximally effective means of bringing people into the Church, perhaps in spite of our message, are looking for that which does not exist? And how will we be inclined to evaluate our own efforts? Will we be honest with ourselves?
There are in the ministry men who gain apparent success by swaying minds through human influence. They play upon the feelings at will, making their hearers weep, and in a few minutes laugh. Under labor of this kind, many are moved by impulse to profess Christ, and there is thought to be a wonderful revival; but when the test comes, the work does not endure. Feelings are stirred, and many are borne along by the tide that seems to be setting heavenward; but in the strong current of temptation they quickly float back as driftwood. The laborer is self-deceived, and he misleads his hearers (Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers, p. 382).
Where are these men? “In the ministry.” What do they do? They “gain apparent success.” How do they do that? By “swaying minds through human influence.” In what specific way are these working? “They play upon the feelings.” Is this just about the music or some pet method they are using, or does their unfortunate style manifest itself across their entire approach? “They play upon the feelings at will” (emphasis added). The emotions are touched, the impulses are tripped. Onlookers see the people emotionally moved. “There is thought to be a wonderful revival.” Minds have been swayed through human influence. There is what inspiration calls only “apparent success.”
“When the test comes, the work does not endure.” Mere driftwood has been created. Are these people glued to Jesus, or to a counterfeit Christ? Do they become members of the covenant community of God’s people, having been solidly instructed in present truth? Have they even been taught present truth?
At the Close of the Arc
A journey of 1000 miles begins with just one step. This is not just the contemporary Adventist church planting movement. Its roots run much earlier. It winds behind the celebration movement, it goes back to before the Ford crisis. It manifests especially with the corrupt work done in the 1950s that brought in substantial theological changes that for a generation affected the church. Even then the goal, was to please the fallen Churches, to hide Adventism’s distinctives.
Now the church has journeyed to the last leg of this arc. This is the phase where all the results begin to manifest themselves visibly. We near the finish line. But what is finally becoming clear, even to some who long have hoped otherwise, is that you cannot create a Seventh-day Adventist church without authentic Seventh-day Adventist theology. If Jesus is not in the vanguard, then it is not the Church of Jesus.
Let me share something with you. Turn to Revelation 22:17. This is the last appeal in the Bible. Hear what it says: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” Now the Spirit here is the Holy Spirit. He is calling people to come to Jesus, to come to Truth. And who is He working through? “The Spirit and the bride.” They are working together. What is this appeal by the bride? The Church is the bride, the Lamb’s wife. She too is calling. She is animated by the Holy Spirit, and she urges, Come! How many pure women are found in Revelation 12? One! Not two, or three, or seven, each one claiming she too is the bride of Christ because she thinks she is more efficient.
Isaiah 4:1 also touches our end-time situation: “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.” See, the image changes here. Here, the man is the legitimate husband, and seven women come to him pleading for just one thing, the one thing they do not have? legitimacy. They want the man’s name.
They will do everything else themselves! They will provide their own food. They need not the food God has given in the Bible, the writings of Ellen G. White, or the Third Angel’s Message. They already have their food in the writings of Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Max Lucado and Philip Yancey. Nor need they clothing. They will provide their own. They have devised their own gospel much in the line of the one preached by Desmond Ford. Minimal external demands are made, while justification, as a counted righteousness only, is maximized.
The question here in Isaiah 4:1 is legitimacy. Just as there is, representing the remnant only one woman, shown in Revelation 12, not several, there is only one bride who is in harmony with the Holy Spirit, calling in Revelation 22:17, “Come.” Could the one woman in white in Revelation represent this chaos of separate and differing structures? After all, you have differing ordination (men only in the Seventh-day Adventist Church versus men or women in the now forming liberal offshoots), with different storehouses, different doctrines, different human leaders, different methods, different history, and different viewpoints on the Spirit of Prophecy.
Does the Bible speak of remnant or remnants? Does the Bible speak of impure women—end-time apostate denominations and associations of churches in the singular or in the plural? So if there are multiple women, multiple separate groups of churches, with different doctrines on women’s ordination, salvation, refusal to acknowledge that Babylon is fallen, and an understanding of salvation in which you cannot keep the commandments of God and thus you must receive the mark of the beast, then what are those new women in white? They are costumed impure women, part of a Babylonian infiltration within now coming out of the closet. No wonder they want to wear their own clothes. They are a different dress size altogether!
Ours is a day for care. Methods have been brought in from Babylon that cannot produce Adventist churches. They are being sold to us with a few carefully selected Ellen G. White quotes. The time we are in is not one for celebration, but one for afflicting ourselves, searching our hearts, weeping between the porch and the altar.
Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? (Joel 2:16, 17).
TCTC
There is always someone out there ready to cling to a bankrupted method. But Jesus still says, “Narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it.” This should not lead us to have only small expectations or to think we can coast thoughtlessly along, always doing things as we always have. The problem is, those who have been entrusted to raise up new Seventh-day Adventist churches have already been raising up something else. Now we need to be intelligent and keep in view the total cost to the church (TCTC) presented by the whole situation.
Some have argued that the contemporary church planting movement is a success, that it has resulted in more than 1200 new churches, that only a handful actually have apostasized and left the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. But the actual number of groups planted is actually closer to only 400. We also believe that the number of groups leaving the Seventh-day Adventist Church organization, were they carefully and comprehensively tallied, is more than commonly acknowledged. Only some of the failed projects have been openly documented.
Nor has been tallied the long term costs of the whole attempted theological revision from the QOD era until now. Can we measure all those who have been provoked, through events directly connected with this, who have lost confidence in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, or even left it to become involved in earlier, conservative offshoots? Or shall we count the missing who have left the Church altogether? Who can count the cost in young people, now non-participatory in giving the Third Angel’s Message? The TCTC of a 40 year-long situation that led to the promotion of views never voted by a General Conference Session, that led to great sorrow and great feelings of betrayal, can never be counted this side of eternity. It is time to return to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is time to let the arc finish, and stop making laps along the track of desert wanderings just outside of Canaan. It is time to admit our mistakes, and cross the Jordan.
Next: Adventism’s Latest Offshoot Part 5: Jesus for Church Planters (Part 2).
