 |
Adventism’s Latest Offshoot Part 5: Jesus for Church Planters (Pt. 2)
by Larry Kirkpatrick. Originally published on GreatControversy.org on August 25, 2004.
When We Plant a Church
A church plant is actually the organization of a group of believers into a local structure that is connected to the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide structure. The web of local structures connected to larger ones means that God’s people are effectively hyper-linked to one another, like the internet. Again, we are bound together in a covenant. The covenant includes Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the organization that God is especially working through today on earth, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the individual believer.
Our form of church governance is representative. Sometimes it works better in theory than in practice, but it works. The church has determined that according to Scripture we do not ordain women as ministers. In part, it is because our structure works that the movement has grown on other continents so rapidly. Those in North America who were blocked by these Bible-believing sections of the world church are no longer inclined to support them financially. We see manifest the polarization between first and third world, with some first-worlders folding in upon themselves now, rather than supporting an ideology they feel is backward. Our western liberals are blocked. The third-world has come to the rescue. Now if godly church leaders who are committed to the Third Angel’s Message will lead, we will be fine.
For years, however, while serious Adventists have warned about theological foundations for the problems, they have been largely ignored. A false view of the gospel has infiltrated our churches, a form of Adventist-Lite. This false gospel has in it the seeds of inevitable collision with Jesus. That’s why we titled this, “Jesus for Church Planters.” Somehow, many of us have forgotten that our business is not to plant churches. You read that correctly. Our business is to be used of God in the preparation of people for heaven. The Church is the ekklesia, the called-out. Her work is not only evangelistic, but more. Somehow we have shrunken our vision down to one line. We have, through slow rot in our publications and presentations, been led to view our work as chiefly evangelistic. This has been a mistake.
Edification
Now I know some of you can’t believe you just read that. But besides the evangelistic part, our work is to edify, to build up the people of God, to prepare them for ministry. More than to prepare them for ministry even, our work is to cooperate with God in their preparation for heaven. We are preparing for eternity. How about Paul? Can we hear Heaven’s speaking through him?
Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment (Hebrews 6:1, 2).
Paul says we should be well past sorting out doctrines like when we baptize someone, whether we ordain women, or our understanding of the judgment. He says we should “go on unto perfection.” What is interesting is that generally, you can line people up and many of the church planters will fall into the same camp: limited baptismal preparation, pro-ordination of women, anti-investigative judgment, anti-character perfection. Adventist distinctives receive minimal attention, not being perceived as relevant. Topics like the investigative judgment as presented in the Bible and the book Great Controversy are unlikely to be presented. The close of probation doesn’t fit church planting salvation theology either. Even the place where prophecy and salvation intersect has not, in the eyes of church planters we have interacted with, been viewed as important.
What You’re Thinking Right Now
I know what you may be thinking right now. Certainly not that you’ve been planting any aberrational church! You think you have planted a truly Adventist church, the real-deal, just an updated one. You’ve been influenced to think that the church is not winning the seculars. You’ve been provoked to think the denominational structure is archaic, that the schools, the printing presses, the missionary work overseas, the health work, the literature work—mostly are an enormous weight of overhead. You have been led down a garden path focused on one thing, the theory that the most effective method will result in a mighty wave of people joining the Church. Yes, I know.
I sat in the same classes, heard the same lectures. I’ve been serving as a minister in churches now for many years. You know what gets our people out here truly excited? Not someone selling non-Adventist church planting ideas with selected Ellen White quotes. Not eating from the Gerber’s jar of someone who claims he has read everything in the Spirit of Prophecy, only to teach that we cannot harmonize with it. Not being assigned by Russell Burrell to read Purpose Driven Church. Nor is it setting up the great rent-an-evangelist plan and bringing in the reaping expert to do a four week series.
Somehow you church planters have been taught that while we cannot use Babylon’s interpretation of prophecy, we can use Babylon’s salvation-understanding. And that is a mistake. True, we do not have a corner on truth. We can learn from others. We can dig in the garbage bin to find that one untainted, delectable donut. But isn’t it about time that dumpster-diving behind Babylon’s churches end for Seventh-day Adventists?
What Really Works
Do you know what really works? Carry literature with you. Be friendly. Invite people to your church. Give them interesting Bible studies. Every week in our church the sanctuary rings with testimonies of the witnessing opportunities God has given. Our members tell of the Bible studies they have presented, of literature handed out.
Every Sabbath, without fail, we have non-Adventists as guests in our church. We are continuously studying with people, continually baptizing people. All in spite of our deficiencies. We are working on those deficiencies, but we have seculars in our church every Sabbath. We are not working to make baptized seculars; we are cooperating with heaven to produce Seventh-day Adventists.
There is no compromise here. No rock music, no theatrical presentations, Only rarely PowerPoint, no Willow Creek or Purpose Driven stuff. Just straight up Adventism. We don’t claim to be a model. But we wouldn’t trade in what God is doing here for anything. Often, our congregation is well-populated with young people. Some of our members drive past 50 Seventh-day Adventist Churches to come here on Sabbath morning (this is densely populated Southern California). In our own faulty way, there is something here they hunger for, and they come to get it: a Seventh-day Adventist message that leads to Jesus.
And those ministries that you thought were deadweight? Many of those, conducted aright, are effective long-term soul-winning agencies. All those ministries exist because heaven counseled God’s Church to develop them. They did not spring up spontaneously because our people were bored or because they didn’t know Jesus. They were following Jesus.
To Successfully Introduce to Others
What if I told you that Rick Warren (Saddleback and Purpose Driven Church) said, “You must respect your own faith in order successfully to introduce it to others”? How can it be that you respect your own faith when you view it as only an outdated, horse-and-buggy era faith? How can you successfully introduce it to others when you are pitching a version of it that hides all the “sharp” parts? Look at Jesus. He was up-front:
“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.” Jesus warns saint and seeker alike: don’t look for the easy path. Don’t expect to take the world in along with you. Don’t plan on being half-converted in My kingdom.
He not only warns how confined the authentic way of the kingdom is, but how wide is the way of the world. But maybe this is why Jesus didn’t plant any churches. Instead, He died for the Church. Not to widen the door, but to demonstrate where swings the door. And it swings at Calvary. The law is confirmed there, not removed there. God’s character is confirmed there, not removed there. The way into the most holy is opened there. Jesus can commence His high priestly ministry, which means no less than the cleansing of, the removal of, sin from people and sanctuary.
Well, it wasn’t Rick Warren. Mrs. White said it:
You must respect your own faith in order successfully to introduce it to others. By example as well as precept, you must show that you reverence your faith, speaking reverently of sacred things. Never allow one expression of lightness and trifling to escape your lips when quoting Scripture. As you take the Bible in your hands, remember that you are on holy ground. Angels are around you, and could your eyes be opened, you would behold them. Let your conduct be such that you will leave the impression upon every soul with whom you associate that a pure and holy atmosphere surrounds you. One vain word, one trifling laugh, may balance a soul in the wrong direction. Terrible are the consequences of not having a constant connection with God (Ellen G. White, Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 194).
Kind of loses its luster, doesn’t it? But that’s because the contemporary Adventist church planter has no bias against Rick Warren. On the other hand, Mrs. White is not always so readily received.
The road to heaven does not widen out as we near the end. It narrows. Acts 17:30: “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.” I ask you, O church planter, Are you doing peace and safety? Are you fulfilling prophecy, just not the way you intended? Have you been planting a Seventh-day Adventist church? Or have you been planting a Quasi?
Planting a Quasi
If you’ve been planting a Quasi-SDA church, Is it too late to change course and plant an authentic one instead? What method shall we use? Again, we listen to Jesus:
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).
The first thing to realize when planting a church, is that you can’t leave behind even one shred or snippet of Adventism and still plant a legitimate church. You could plant a Lutheran church in the 16th century and you were on the cutting edge. You could plant a Baptist church in the 17th century, and you were tracking with the Holy Spirit. You could plant a Methodist church in the 18th century and that was riding God’s wave. But from the 19th century till now, present truth has moved to the last notch. Now you must plant a Seventh-day Adventist Church to be following the Lamb wherever He goes (Revelation 14:4). In 1844 Jesus crossed the line.
But something has happened since the pioneer days. The most demanding elements of our faith have been trimmed down. The Investigative Judgment, focusing on consecration and eradication of sin from the life has been defanged and revised to become the Pre-Advent Judgment with a focus on not what we do but when it began. The humanity of Christ has been refurbished, from being a humanity so like to our own that Jesus living in His flesh conquers sin in our sinful flesh, to one in which Jesus is only like us in a very limited sense. The atonement has been altered from one presently underway to one completed at the cross. The concept of the remnant has been largely discarded. In its place we have become the lag-behinders, catching-up to contemporary evangelical Christianity.
So when we go out to plant a church, what are we found doing? Copying. Not Jesus. Not the narrow way. Copying the marketing methods of Babylon. The result is (at best) a Quasi-Seventh-day Adventist church.
Now that Jesus is cleansing the sanctuary, all pre-1844 Christianity is outdated. We cannot return to it. We stand at that veritable place on the map where the arrow declares, “You Are Here.” We must advance into truth and we must not retreat into error. We must not refuse to acknowledge that our unbelief, worldliness, unconsecration, and strife, have led us here, back around the desert these 40 years. Are we ready to cross Jordan at last, or shall we add another lap?
All this, when the heaven-intended trend is from many separate groups, to one united group: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16).
Conclusion
Things don’t have to end this way. Perhaps you haven’t realized—many of our people have gone through a very excruciating experience these past decades, their private “great disappointment” if you will. They’ve watched as their own church largely hid its heaven-assigned message, and pretended that the way home was an eight-lane interstate freeway, a wide way. They watched as some of you church planters planted Quasi-Adventist churches. And they wept.
But now we hold out our hand to you in your hour of disappointment. Some of you are seeing that years have been wasted, opportunities lost, souls who might have been won to heaven, mis-influenced. Now, in the gathering storm of new breakaway ideas, you see where tended the strange fire you for awhile embraced. If God will grant us the grace to reach out to you (He will!) and if you will just reach out to us (please do!) God will help us walk from right here together into the end-time—in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
I testify to my brethren and sisters that the church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it may be, is the only object on earth on which He bestows His supreme regard. While He extends to all the world His invitation to come to Him and be saved, He commissions His angels to render divine help to every soul that cometh to Him in repentance and contrition, and He comes personally by His Holy Spirit into the midst of His church (Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 15).
Let me encourage you. Jesus is waiting for those who will build up, edify, the authentic Seventh-day Adventist Church, and those who will build this kind of church in places where there isn’t one. But throw out your Rick Warren books, burn your Bill Hybels books, toss you Phil Yancey books, and trade your church growth books, for The Great Controversy, The Desire of Ages, Ministry of Healing, and Steps to Christ. Most of all, return to the Scriptures. Go out into the desert for a few years like Paul. Get your head on straight. Then return, and build God’s Church in God’s way. Resistance to God’s methods is futile.
Why will you kick against the pricks and persecute your Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus is for church planters who will plant authentic Seventh-day Adventist churches. Won’t you come up onto the platform of truth and help us live and give the Third Angel’s Message? The hour is later than we thought, and Jesus is calling. Now, as we near the finish-line, won’t you join us, and lay hold of Jesus’ hand? Jesus is for church planters. What kind are you going to be?
Next: Adventism’s Latest Offshoot Part 6.
DOCUMENT HITORY:
Minor editorial corrections, August 29, 2004.
