WWUTT 205 Hillsong Church?

Hillsong Church out of Australia, also a lot of other branches around the world. They are famous for a lot of popular songs that we sing in church today.

But is the teaching that is coming from that church really sound? We can know when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand the Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And don't forget our website, www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. It is Friday, and taking questions from listeners today, well, one question from one listener, because it's going to take me the duration of this episode to answer this question.

This comes from Fabrizio in New York, although he says he's attending Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So from New York, but in Kentucky.

He says, Dear Pastor Gabe, first of all, I just want to say that When We Understand the Text has been a huge blessing in my life and in my walk with the

Lord. So thank you for providing such a great resource. I don't know you personally, but I can see that you love

God and you love the truth. Well, thank you so much, Fabrizio. I really appreciate that. He says, I am currently a student at the undergraduate school at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I wanted to know if I can have your thoughts on an interview that GQ did with Carl Lentz, pastor of Hillsong Church in New York City, because I don't seem to see anything wrong with it, but I may be mistaken.

Thank you again for all your labor for the kingdom. Here's the link. And then he gives me the link to the video. And I did respond to Fabrizio, and I said that I had never seen the video until he sent it to me.

But I did read the interview that Lentz did with GQ. I'm going to play that video for you here in just a moment and kind of jump in the middle of it piece by piece to kind of show you some of the things that you can be looking for regarding a pastor who might say some things that sound right, but what are some red flags to be looking for?

It sounds OK, but I know there might be something wrong with this. So we'll we'll go through that here in just a moment.

The interesting thing about this response that I gave to Fabrizio, this was through Facebook.

So right after I responded to him just a couple of days later, news came out about the naked cowboy making an appearance at a women's conference held there at Hillsong Church in New York City.

Did you hear about this? I'm going to talk about that here at the end. But first, let's just focus on the question as it is given in the and the timeliness in which

I had responded to it before all this other stuff about Hillsong came out. All right. So Hillsong Church, in case you don't know, popular for many songs that you have probably sung in your church,

Mighty to Save, Cornerstone, Shout to the Lord, This is

My Desire or Lord I Give You My Heart, I guess is the name of that song. The Stand. I mean, just tons of songs.

You have probably sung some of these in your church. They come out of Hillsong Church based in Australia, but they have some other church plants in different places around the world.

In the United States, there is one in New York City. And Carl Lentz is the pastor of that church.

So here is Lentz, this interview that he did with GQ. Here's the video. And then I'll jump in the middle of it and kind of give some responses to some things that are being said here.

This is what's happening in our world today. We are trying to get God to change in our image.

And we can't figure out why our lives have no power, why the word has no power in our lives. It's because we don't want to believe the stuff that makes us uncomfortable.

Our obedience is not so we can get more, because we already have way more than we deserve.

Jesus wanted people to know so much, I am so real, and I am so all -consuming, and I am so unbelievable.

That if you will give away everything you have and take all of me, you will never thirst and you will never be hungry and you will never need another thing in your life.

But you can't have half of this. You need to have all of this. Yeah, as you can tell by the crowd cheering, they're a huge church.

And Carl Lentz is massively popular, hangs out with NBA stars. You probably heard a story about him baptizing

Justin Bieber. So yeah, he's one of those hip, cool -looking guys. He's got the look in the video.

It sounds all right, right? I mean, what was wrong with any of the things that he said there?

It's pretty similar to stuff that I've said, that we can't just give parts of ourselves to Christ. We have to be all in or not at all.

Going to Revelation 3, where Jesus says that you're either hot or cold. If you're lukewarm,

I will spit you out of my mouth. Lentz even talks there about how we're trying to worship a

God that we've shaped in our own image. We've tried to make him like us. All of that sounds pretty solid.

But as we go on, we'll find out that there are some problems with some of the things, some of the ways that Lentz actually says this stuff.

Come as you are, knowing that God loves you too much to leave you like that. If you want to wear a hat, wear a hat.

If you want to look like you just rolled out of the club, so be it. We're just glad to have you. I'm going to stop it right there.

Red flag number one. Now, this is not going to be a red flag every single time, but more often than not, this will be the case.

When a church pitches itself as come in whatever you're wearing. If you're wearing a hat, come in a hat.

If you're wearing PJs, come in PJs. And he said, if you're coming like right out of the club, come on in.

When a church pitches itself that way, here's what they are communicating. Come in whatever you're comfortable wearing, and we're not going to make you uncomfortable.

This is just right after we heard Lentz preaching that we pull the parts of Scripture that we like, that make us comfortable, and we ignore the parts that make us uncomfortable.

And yet, the very first thing he says about Hillsong Church is come wear whatever you want, whatever you're comfortable in, just come to the church.

Now, let me be clear about something. My church does not have a dress code. There is not a requirement to dress a certain way.

We just expect you to wear clothes. We do extend the dress code that far, and appropriate clothing.

If somebody came in with a T -shirt that had a swear word on it, we would make them change it. That hadn't happened yet, but in case it does, we've got a policy in place.

But anyway, so we don't have a dress code. Some people come wearing suits and ties.

Some come in T -shirts and shorts. As a matter of fact, we've got a deacon, a deaconee, a trainee, a deacon trainee right now at our church that we've poked fun at because I believe every day that he has been at our church for the past six years, he's always worn shorts.

So we kind of poked fun at him for that. So that's the way our church is. We don't have a dress code. However, we don't pitch the church as come in whatever you're wearing.

Whatever makes you comfortable, whatever you're comfortable wearing, come to church. We don't sell the church that way because a person will come in the doors with the impression that the church is not going to do anything to make you uncomfortable.

Yet when sin starts getting addressed, we start naming specific sins.

We say you need to turn from this and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and be forgiven of your sins. Person's going to start feeling very uncomfortable and they're just going to get up and walk out because they were given the wrong impression about this church's approach.

And so that's the problem with a church pitching itself as just wear whatever you want to wear and come make yourself comfortable because we're not going to make you feel uncomfortable.

That's a red flag. If you see a church pitching itself that way, they have very likely softened the gospel to a degree that it won't make a person who is worldly feel too uncomfortable in their worldliness.

All right, let's continue on. There's no cathedral. There's no pews. There's no bells and smells. There's no weird guy giving you communion because you're not worthy of taking it.

Stuff like that. What I love about it is you can't say this is a white church, this is a black church, this is a rich church or a poor church.

You have to look at it and go, this is a pretty eclectic mix of people. And I think that's cool because it's reflective of what the gospel is about.

I just felt so outcasted. I just felt so different. As I came to Hillsong and I felt the presence of God and I felt his love.

I was just like, this is home. Okay, red flag number two. When the testimonials of the people from that church are all about how they feel.

Well, I feel like I'm at home. I feel great about this church. I feel the presence of God.

But what they're not saying is I hear the word of God clearly taught to me.

I hear my sin being named. I am convicted in my heart. And then I hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I repent and I cling to Christ all the more. Knowing that I am a filthy depraved wretch without him who is going to hell.

If not for the fact that I've been saved by his atoning blood and sacrifice on the cross.

And now it is through Christ that I have peace with God. And I desire to live for him all the more each day.

Now that can indeed give you a great feeling. But that's not why you go to church.

You go to church to be with the people of God. And to grow together with the people of God in the knowledge of God's word.

So we need to be very careful about feelings based churches. People that come out of those churches talking about how the church makes them feel.

What are they learning? What is being spoken to them? What do they hear coming from the pulpit? Is it the word of God?

Or is it just a message to give you the warm fuzzies? I started coming to Hillsong because of the music.

But then it was actually the sermons that I fell in love with. And it just, I had to come back.

When I started coming here, I was just like, why is there so much love? Everyone is so happy. And I'm like, why am

I not happy? And you just walk in and it's like, whoa! The presence of God is right here. And it's all about Jesus. That's the bottom line.

And it's cool. Yeah, really cool. Yeah, once again, did you hear in any of those testimonials?

What they're learning? What's being taught? Conviction of sin? It's just all about what they feel. I feel great here.

I love the music. Red flag number three. When somebody stumping for the church says that it's cool.

Because the church is actually going to look very uncool in the eyes of the world. And that's the way this guy is saying that.

Hey, here in New York City, this church is cool, man. They're hip. We fit in with the rest of New York City. We're not set apart, which is exactly the way that we are supposed to be as the church.

We will be set apart from the rest of the world. Just finished up a study in Romans 12, verse 2, is where it says,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

In 1 Peter 2, verse 4, Peter says this, As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious.

We're not going to look precious in the eyes of the world. We look precious in the eyes of God. Later on in chapter 4, verse 4,

Peter says, That they will be surprised when you don't join them in their debauchery, and they will malign you.

Paul said to Timothy, Those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while the rest of the world goes from bad to worse.

We are not going to be cool. Now, that doesn't mean that our ambition is to be uncool.

That's just going to happen anyway. As we love the gospel, as we repent of our sin, as we don't do the things that the world does, and instead our worldview has been shaped according to what the scripture says, the world is going to hate us because of that.

We will be uncool in the eyes of the world. It is not a selling point for the church to be cool.

The Holy Spirit, come to me.

Come to me, heal me of pain. We chose this complicated city.

This is what we signed up for. And that doesn't mean there's not heartache in it. It doesn't mean there's not confusion in it.

It doesn't mean there's not pain in it. It just means that somebody has to do it. Somebody's got to do it?

That's his heart for the city, that somebody's got to do it? Does that even sound loving at all?

Red flag number four. When the church's mission for the city where they have been placed does not include preaching the gospel, convicting of sin, telling the people there that they're headed to hell unless they repent and follow

Jesus. That should be the mission of Hillsong Church in New York City.

They will be very uncool doing that. They will not have thousands and thousands of people flocking to their church.

But it's what the Bible tells us that we should be doing. When we preach the gospel, shining a light in a dark place.

And New York City is a very dark place. Some people would think a church would never work. Being New York City, so fast paced, people don't care, people don't stop.

We have so many different ethnicities, races. So I feel like we kind of have ambassadors in every different community.

We believe the Bible is the authoritative word on what is right and wrong in this world.

And I think the job of the church is to stand for what we believe is right, to not compromise in it, but have conversations throughout it.

He said among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or any kind of greed because these are improper for God's holy people.

How do we navigate this respectfully? How do we talk about what we believe in the middle of what you believe and not have you feel ostracized?

But the nature of the gospel is that it is defining. It is ostracizing. Jesus said,

I didn't come to make peace like this. I came to bring a word that will force you to decide.

Big difference. Okay, now this is going to be less of a red flag warning and more about using discernment to understand the words that are being spoken by teachers of the church that you are observing.

Okay, so not just Hillsong. Hillsong is the church that we're using as our example, but this could apply to any church where you're trying to figure out is the teaching sound or are they just trying to look cool in the eyes of the world?

I know that what Lentz said here sounded great. He says that the Bible is the authoritative word of God, but the thing is that he only believes that according to what he translates the

Bible to mean. The video shows Lentz reading from Ephesians 5 .3. There must not even be a hint of sexual immorality among you.

Yet he never defines what he believes sexual immorality to be. It's just a general term, but he doesn't clarify what sexual immorality is.

Well, we happen to know that the homosexual lifestyle, which the Bible strictly condemns, is accepted in Hillsong Church in New York City.

They had an openly gay choir director, Josh Canfield, for eight years, though Hillsong president or whatever his official title is,

Brian Houston, who's the pastor of the main Hillsong branch out in Australia.

He said that there are no homosexuals serving in leadership. However, we don't know what that means.

Canfield is a volunteer. So is he truly not in leadership or is he just not paid leadership?

Canfield and his gay partner have said that they are still there at Hillsong Church. In the

GQ article, when you're reading the actual article, not just the video, Lentz says that because of Canfield's homosexuality, he understands that there will be limited involvement in terms of leadership.

Limited involvement? It should be zero involvement. In fact, according to Scripture, if Canfield doesn't repent, he should be removed from the church altogether.

1 Corinthians 5 .13, purge the evil person from among you. And Paul says later on in chapter six that homosexuality is one of those sins that a person should be purged from the church for if they don't repent of it.

While Lentz does say that homosexuality is sin, it is mentioned in that GQ article.

He says your sin is not the biggest part of you. Yeah, it is.

Your sin is the very reason why you are under the wrath of God. Unless you repent and come to know

Christ as Savior and believe that his sacrifice on the cross has forgiven you of your sins and given you right standing with God and you now have peace with God.

Unless you know that and you believe that, then you are still under God's wrath because of your sin.

It is the biggest part of you. It is the very reason why you could spend an eternity in hell unless you know

Christ as Savior. So though a preacher or a teacher might say all the right words, you have to know what the definitions of those words are.

How does he define those words? In this case, how does Lentz define sexual immorality?

Yeah, he talks about it, but what does he understand sexual immorality to be and how is discipline regarding sexual immorality practiced in that church?

I was dealing and struggling with a lot of my sexual identity and putting a lot of my personal identity not necessarily in who

Jesus was, but a lot of sin, a lot of darkness. We can't achieve perfection, but we can try.

We also have to realize that we're broken and we're not perfect people. Okay, so that's a testimonial from a young man.

He talks about his sexual identity and he mentions sin, but the dots are never connected. He never says that the things that I tried to identify myself as sexually were sin, but I've taken off the old self and put on the new in Christ Jesus.

Okay, there's nothing like that. Now you might say, well, yeah, but the video is edited together. It's short.

There's not going to be a whole lot of time for that kind of testimonial. Sure, but this is still to emphasize that we've got to define our terms.

Don't just be listening for keywords. When you're looking for a church in particular and wanting to know if their teaching is sound, you've got to make sure that they are defining their terms.

Now, this next clip, Lentz is going to show a picture of himself and he's going to share his own testimonial here.

That's me at 19, and I just remember seeing the way dudes were living, and I'm like, man, these guys are miserable.

This stuff is pretty hollow, but I feel like I've walked so far from God, I don't know what to do. I got lucky because a couple of months after that photo,

I was in a church like ours, put my hand up like we still ask people to do today, saying I'm a sinner over here.

I need some help. I want to walk away from this life and really thinking that I was going to fail again.

Okay, red flag number five. When the teaching coming from a church about sin and repentance sounds nothing more than just a lifestyle change.

You heard it there in Lentz's testimony. He shows a picture of himself. This was me. I was living my life this way.

I discovered I was actually pretty miserable, so I raised my hand. I said over here, hey, a sinner. And then

I started my life this new way, and now I'm a lot happier than I was before. But there's no understanding of I was dead in my sins and my trespasses.

I was under God's judgment, but Jesus took that judgment for me.

And now, because of his sacrifice on the cross, now I am justified before God.

Okay, that needs to be the understanding, not that sin and repentance is simply a lifestyle change. You're actually kind of miserable the way you're living your life right now.

You need to come over here and be with Jesus, and you'll be a lot happier. That's not repentance. Okay, this next clip, we're going into Lentz's home, and we're going to hear some things going on with his family here.

Hey, hey. Hey, hey. Hey, girl. Hey. That almost looks like Lentz.

He's doing everything. Namaste, Lentz. Namaste, Nene. Namaste, Lentz.

Oh, yes. You did good. Okay, I got to describe what it is that we're seeing here.

So in the video, we just saw a clip of Lentz's daughter dancing in the kitchen to that song,

Watch Me Whip Nene. I don't know who sings that song, obnoxious song. And now that I've heard it, it's going to be stuck in my head the rest of the day.

But that's Lentz in the background encouraging her on, saying, go, girl, and doing that whole thing. Red flag number six, when you go into a pastor's home, and you see that he and his family are living like the rest of the world.

Once again, this is Lentz trying to show that, hey, we can be cool, and we can be just like the world and still worship

Jesus at the same time. But is there any display of understanding that we're not to conform ourselves to the rest of the world?

Now, I will say this about Lentz. The video shows him interacting with his kids, playing with his kids, loving on his wife and his family.

And I think it's great. But unless the teaching from the Word of God is solid, it's just moralism.

Family within the church is so important because there's room at the table. There's grace for mistakes. There's love in good times and bad times.

So you never want to get caught having a church that's good, but your family's kind of dying. Go get dressed.

Go. If we take care of our marriage and our family, church will take care of itself because that's the best thing we could ever do to lead people is to embody what we believe.

That doesn't mean have a perfect marriage or perfect kids. It just means have real kids and have real marriage stuff.

Red flag number seven. When the pastor says the church will take care of itself. That is not the calling of a pastor.

First Peter chapter five. So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you not for shameful gain, but eagerly not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Now, I do believe that Lentz is being a good example to his congregation and the way that he loves his wife and family, at least as far as we see in the video there.

But if he has this attitude of like, I just need to focus on my family and the church will take care of itself, then he does not truly understand what it means to be a pastor.

This is also one of the downsides of having such a huge church as big as Hillsong NYC is, is how can a pastor focus on everybody?

He can't. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with megachurches, but it's a whole lot more difficult for a pastor to provide any oversight for his church and any true genuine care in shepherding his flock when there's so many people that he can't give that much time to all of those people.

Now, my first priority as a pastor is my family, loving my wife and my children.

Next, it's my church. But in no way do I have this attitude that the church will take care of itself. I have been entrusted with the care of my church as a pastor, which means shepherd.

It's definitely harder, though, because we do put ourselves up in a place where we're saying, follow what we do, which means you better know what you're doing.

So we don't have a lot of room to not practice what we preach. The Bible says people who do what

I do will be judged more harshly. I don't have the right to have a bad day spiritually.

I don't have the right to be seasonal with my faith. I don't want to lead our people anywhere

I'm not going. The worse this city gets, the better it is for us.

The darker a room, the brighter the flashlight. And I wish I could be excited about that, but I just cannot.

I do not believe that Hillsong Church is a Christ centered church, nor do

I believe that the work that they're doing there in New York City is for the gospel. I think that they're just there entertaining people.

OK, so there's the seven red flags that I presented there using Hillsong Church as an example.

So those are the things to be looking for is you're listening to a church and you're going, you know, it kind of sounds right, but something might be off.

Look for those things and see if that might help you to discern what that church is teaching a little bit better.

So I said that when we would get to the end of this year, I would mention the big controversy that came out about Hillsong related to the naked cowboy.

So I responded to this message from Fabrizio. He wanted to know what was it about Hillsong New York City that just seemed a little bit off.

And I kind of showed him some of these things. And then a couple of days later, we got loud and clear what's wrong with Hillsong New York City.

I believe that Chris Roseborough of Pirate Christian Radio was the first one to break this story. There was a women's conference that was held there at Hillsong in New York City.

And at the end of the conference, they had their big musical number. It was New York, New York, the Frank Sinatra song.

And the guy that was standing center stage was was depicting the naked cowboy.

In case you don't know, the naked cowboy is he's kind of iconic to Times Square. He's a guy dressed in a cowboy hat and he's naked for the most part, playing guitar songs and people will get their pictures taken with him or they'll request songs from him and all these different kinds of things.

That's how he makes his living, singing these songs as the naked cowboy in Times Square. Well, there was a guy impersonating the naked cowboy at the end of this

Hillsong conference. So you see the video. He's standing right out there on stage, pointing to the crowd and doing his whole gestures and all this kind of stuff.

Well, it was it was a big deal. It caused Brian Houston, the lead leader.

Once again, I don't know what his title is. President, leader, head pastor. I don't know the guy that started

Hillsong or the guy that's the main pastor behind Hillsong out of Australia. His dad started it.

But anyway, so he's the guy. He's he's the Hillsong guy. He came out, issued this apology and this whole bit.

And he said, this guy did this and we didn't even know he was going to do it. Turns out it turns out that this guy who is impersonating the naked cowboy at this women's conference is one of Hillsong's pastors.

Yes, indeed. Folks, there is so much going on with Hillsong that is so wrong.

It is so much like the world. It is debauchery. There's other things that I could show you that Hillsong's doing.

And you would be looking at that going, that's a church doing that. Yeah, there's plenty of other things.

In Hillsong, London, they had Austin Powers. I think one of the pastors impersonating

Austin Powers or one of the speakers or something. Anyway, I could show you tons more stuff that even looking at it, you would be going, that's wrong.

Hillsong is so steeped in this stuff. Take my advice and stop singing

Hillsong tunes at your church. I know they probably sound good. The theology is really not that deep in those songs anyway.

But stop singing them because your church is paying royalties on those. If they've got a license with CCLI, which legally they're supposed to.

So Hillsong does get royalty from that. Stop using them. Stop using

Hillsong tunes. Let's pray that that church would repent of some of this sinfulness that they're in.

I'm praying right now for Ronnie Floyd, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I, of course, being a

Southern Baptist minister. He is joining with Hillsong and the Pope and various New Apostolic Reformation preachers at Together 2016, which is this conference that Hillsong is putting on.

Ronnie Floyd has no business being with any of those speakers. And I hope that he makes a statement and pulls out of that saying that,

I know that I should not be partnering with these guys. I don't think that he will, but I pray that he does.

In fact, let's pray right now. God, I pray for Hillsong Church, and I pray that they will realize the things that they are doing to try to align themselves with the world instead of being grounded upon what the word of God says, being so committed to the word of God that that's what they preach, calling people to repentance and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power to save.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, as we read in Romans 1 16.

So I pray that that's what they would be grounded upon, and they would lead people to the truth. As long as they stay in this feel -good message of trying to be like the world,

I pray that people would not be fooled by this, but with discerning hearts, they would understand what the word of God says and that what

Hillsong is doing does not line up with the word of God. I pray for Ronnie Floyd. I pray that he would be a principled leader in the

Southern Baptist Convention and would set an example, not partnering with some of these false teachers, but he would pull out of this conference and really send a message that we need to be grounded upon the word of Christ, not confusing people by partnering with those that don't believe in the true, sound words of the gospel of Christ.

Help us to be loving in the ways that we call people to correction. And again,

I pray that for all of us, those listening to my voice, even myself, that we would be steadfast in the faith fixed upon the true words of Christ our

Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt