‘Throw Up’ Praise Song Hits Churches

Barf praise songs are apparently part of a new strategy to interest children in church. Vomit as a church growth strategy is clearly some untried territory. Not only is the song musical garbage with its three chords, this song is blasphemous. It lies about who God is. But this is how our children are being discipled now. Don’t miss the final moments of this song where the children mimic vomiting. And the wind whistles among the ruins…

WSJ Column: ‘Cool’ Churches are Failing

This column in the Wall Street Journal says everything about the epic failure of “cool churches.” They are not only failing to present the Gospel and the Jesus of Scripture, they are increasingly failing to find consumers in our jaded culture.

‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains. Read the column here.

Teens Blow Off Church Youth Groups

Fun junkie youth groups are so yesterday. Bemused youth pastors are scratching their heads trying to come up with something to attract the Facebook generation. Under the header, “Forget the Pizza Parties”, USA Today reports:

“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in. Read the story here.

Meet the Pastors: Welcome to Stonebridge Church

Infantilism is the name of the game in churches now. Not surprisingly, this is a Willow Creek Association church. Thank you, Bill Hybels, for mass producing these clown carnivals that mock and blaspheme the true church of Jesus Christ. Here is a promotional video for Stonebridge Church. It explains, even without the audio, the catastrophic meltdown of evangelicalism. It isn’t just Scripture and the preaching of the Gospel that have been abandoned. Adulthood has also been left by the wayside. The pastors are in diapers now.

An Attendee Reports on the Cornerstone Festival

Apprising Ministries brings us a report from a Christian who attended the Cornerstone Festival. This paragraph gives you something of a feel for the atmosphere:

I embarked on the journey after hearing stories – some good, but mostly bad. I purchased my ticket and organized my itinerary from the official Cornerstone website. The bands for this huge event were a strange assortment of artists from Screamo to Acoustic. Most notably were bands with names like Rodent Emporium, Sexually Frustrated, and Impending Doom… and a creepily-masked group called Grave Robber[2] who looked like they came off an episode of “Tales from the Crypt.”…

And this paragraph will help you get an even clearer glimpse of this freak show in a cow pasture.

It was impossible to attend every seminar, but there seemed to be some common themes among most of the seminars I attended. These were: social justice, poverty, monastic wisdom, environmentalism, philosophy, evolution, and Bono. I quickly learned that terms such as “Fundamentalist,” “Evangelical,” and “those King James people,” were spat out with bitter animosity. I was also quickly learning that: (1) Protestants and Catholics aren’t all that different because we can all agree on the Nicene Creed; (2) the Desert Fathers should be held in high regard; and (3) that getting people to be productive in their community seemed much more important than the condition of their eternal souls. On one occasion the following question was asked by a college professor who wanted to prove that we evolved: “How can we come to peace with having an ancestry of apes?”

I wish the college professor luck in coming to terms with his ancestry of apes. As for the rest of us who understand that man was created by a loving God, I would advise you to stay far, far away from this literal zoo of vine-swinging apostates. Read the entire report here. It gets much worse.

Pastor Ed Young Jr.’s New Rap Act

Meet the pastors. Really. Ed Young, Jr., from Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, known for his bed-on-stage sex sermons and his jammy-clad YouTube videos, now fancies himself a rapper. Here you can see his stunning performance in promotion of a Hillsong event. See Jeremiah 23. These are the hirelings, false shepherds, false pastors who “do err by their lightness.” Jesters in clown costumes, trampling holy things into the ground, making mockery of the house of God. He is a suitable pastor for today’s apostate church that is drowning in sensuality and flesh.

Let the goats be entertained by the braying donkeys in the corrupt pulpits of America. Christ’s true sheep know the voice of their Good Shepherd as they continue on the winding, difficult path to the Celestial City. Here is the story from the Museum of Idolatry.

Robert Schuller Hands Pulpit to His Daughter

*Update* And now Crystal Cathedral wants you to know that 83-year-old Schuller is not, in fact, retiring. Here’s the story.

The effeminized “gospel” of Robert Schuller is now fully illustrated by the new pastor entering the pulpit. The Sacramento Bee reports:

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California’s Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the “Hour of Power” televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire as lead pastor after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.

The 83-year-old Schuller told his congregation that Sheila Schuller Coleman will become sole lead pastor, after sharing that role with her father for the past year.

The elder Schuller will not be leaving the church. He’ll assume the newly created position of chairman of the church’s consistory, which is its board of directors, The Orange County Register reported. And Coleman told the Los Angeles Times that her father will continue to preach “until the day he dies.” Read story here.

Circus Churches On Steroids for Fourth of July

It looks like July 4th is fast becoming the next Christmas and Easter when it comes to pulling out all the stops at circus churches. Cornerstone Church decided to have an indoor rodeo in their sanctuary arena and also the biggest “indoor pyro show” in the state. The Museum of Idolatry has more.

Pat Robertson to Wives: Make Yourselves Beautiful To stop Flirting Husbands

And once again, an offering from the “You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up” file. Pat Robertson can’t seem to stop himself, can he? It’s long since time for this man to be off the air. Is this the biblical answer for a wife whose husband is flirting with other women?

Apologist Says Most Christians Cannot Explain Their Own Faith

Decades of circus church have done incalculable damage. The “gospel” itself has changed. Additionally, those who profess to be Christians are so poorly taught in the cardinal doctrines that they can’t even explain what they believe when asked. This article from the Christian Post points out how biblical Christianity is being lost.

The faith of most Christians, even that of many pastors, will not stand up to intellectual scrutiny, according to renowned apologist Josh McDowell.

This is a concern because pastors’ inability to present biblical truth comprehensibly and relevantly has led to children from Christian families leaving the church, research has shown.

In the United States, the age at which nearly all such children leave church has decreased to 18 years.

Not even the children of many successful ministers are spared.

McDowell made his comments at a recent networking dinner among various men’s ministries organized recently by Men-in-Covenant. MiC is the men’s ministry of Covenant Evangelical Free Church.

He recalled speaking with the pastor of one of the largest U.S. churches, a man known for his expository preaching. Confiding in him, the pastor said their church was losing its youth right after high school graduation.

In his 50 years of ministry, McDowell has asked several thousand pastors and leaders how they could be certain Jesus Christ said “I am the truth” and not one of many truths or a truth.

“Not one person has ever given me an intelligent, biblically-based answer,” said the author of The New Evidence that Demands A Verdict. Read the article here.