"The Messed Up Church" (Testing The Spirits Podcast - Episode # 71)

Hello, and thank you for listening to the Testing the Spirits podcast. I've titled this episode, The Messed Up Church, or What's Wrong with Modern-Day Evangelical Christianity. We're going to cover several topics in Christian news.

Super Bowl-Themed Church Spectacle and Disrespect for the Bible

The first is an article from Protestia that kind of highlights this problem of why the church is messed up, the messed up things that happen. The headline reads, Ohio megachurch pastor punts the Bible across the stage for Super Bowl-themed church service.

You heard that correctly. The pastor, I think it was actually his assistant pastor who kicked the Bible, but he was supposedly receiving it, so they were treating the Bible like a football and kicking it around.

Yeah, it's that bad. So the article says, Crossroads Church is a multi-site megachurch in Cincinnati, Ohio, led by senior pastor Brian Tome. It is one of the fastest growing and largest churches in America, consisting of 40 ,000 plus members spread across 14 campus locations.

So I mean, this is the problem. The good local Bible-believing churches, you know, most pastors struggle with just getting the people on their membership list to show up and getting attendees and reaching people from the community is difficult.

And that's what the average real church is dealing with. But these megachurches are just filled with people. And Charles Haddon Spurgeon, there's a famous quote, I'll quote from him in a moment that kind of crystallizes what's happening.

But the article says, a seeker-sensitive, or they are seeker-sensitive to the extreme, their mantra is, anything short of sin is up for grabs. So whatever we have to do to get people through the front door, we'll do anything and everything short of sinning.

But I submit to you that they've crossed that line and it is a sin to kick the Bible around and play secular music about fornication and all this other stuff to do that in the worship service. I think that is sin.

I don't know. What do you think?

But here it says, the frequent abomination, that is their Super Bowl Sunday sermon series. Each year they transform their church lobby into a stadium or a tailgate party and a stage for Super Bowl. They call it the Super Bowl of preaching contests between pastors.

So they enter in like it's a MMA fight. Basically they run down the aisle like, woo, and the music's playing and it's all secular music and they're like showing off and yeah. So here's what they decided to do this year.

They decided to kick a Bible across the auditorium.

Watch.

Tom wins the toss, chooses to receive the Bible. Patterson back with the kick.

Oh my goodness!

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, the day will come where instead of pastors feeding sheep you will have clowns entertaining the goats. And that's what's happening here. And this leads to the next headline.

Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball as Church Entertainment

Pastor recreates Miley Cyrus wrecking ball moment for Super Bowl themed church. Church service, their halftime show, and this is what they're doing. They're taking the church service and in the middle of the sermon or the middle of the service they stop and they have like a halftime show and it's just like the Super Bowl and the pastor wears, as you probably saw in that video.

The pastor's wearing a football jersey and I think this is the same church. I think this is what happened last year. And let's just watch this clip from the Protestia YouTube channel. Watch what the pastor's doing.

He's swinging back and forth on a wrecking ball.

Watch.

Okay.

So, you know, you just think back to Charles Haddon Spurgeon's quote again, I mean, can you imagine going to church and your pastor is dressed up like a referee and he's swinging back and forth on a wrecking ball while Miley Cyrus is playing in the background?

No, you can't imagine that because you probably attend a real church. This is just an entertainment center. That's all this is. There's no amazing grace. There's no God honoring hymns or even contemporary songs like in Christ alone that really reverence Christ and have doctrine in the, no, you get Miley Cyrus.

Okay.

And obviously you should not be playing secular music in a supposed worship service for the.

Lord.

It's interesting. They're called Crossroads because we actually have a church in our area named Crossroads. And when it was first set up a few years ago, I went and I checked out their YouTube channel and for the first half of their service, yeah, they were playing 1960s rock and roll, just secular music.

They didn't change the lyrics or anything. And in the background they had this like psychedelic like screen in the back.

Yeah.

And apparently churches that are named Crossroads, this is the type of thing that they do. So this leads us to the next headline speaking, you know, it's going from bad I think to worse. This is the He Gets Us campaign.

The He Gets Us Campaign and the Missing Call to Repentance

So they ran an ad during the Superbowl. This article is from the Evangelical Dark Web website. Here's the title of the article. Under new management, He Gets Us, that's the name of the ad campaign, He Gets Us attacks Christians in woke Superbowl ad.

The article says one of the most talked about Superbowl commercials appears to be the one from the He Gets Us campaign. The company ran two ads last year and decided to upgrade from stock images in black and white to AI images.

Yet the messaging went from vapid to one far more subversive and hostile to actual Christians. He Gets Us has undergone a leadership change and they go on to talk about how it's the green family that owns Hobby Lobby.

They are the biggest supporters. So in this ad campaign, He Gets Us, it showcases people washing the feet of others. So there's somebody washing the feet of a woman outside of an abortion clinic and that's juxtaposed to Christian protesters.

So the message is, you know, those Christians, they're out with their signs, you know, choose life. And, you know, Jesus wouldn't support those Christians. Jesus would be washing the feet of the woman getting the abortion.

So if, you know, if you're getting an abortion, Jesus gets you. He understands. And then there was another image of, I guess, a pastor washing the feet of a homosexual or, you know, trans person. So again, Jesus would be accepting of them.

If you're gay, if you're transgender, Jesus understands. So I mean, that's kind of the message because the whole, the whole ad at the end, they, they said Jesus did not teach hate. So they have this pastor, I guess, washing the feet of a trans person.

And they said, Jesus did not teach hate. Well, anytime somebody uses that term hate in a Christian context like that, you, you know what they're saying, Christians are just a bunch of haters. So Jesus would, you know, he, he would be at that abortion clinic.

Jesus would be supportive and reaching out to that, washing the feet of the trans person. You know, it's these Christians that are terrible. Jesus wasn't like that. Jesus, his love is just unconditional.

No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, Jesus understands. I mean, that's, that's really the message that was getting across. Christians are bad and Jesus is nothing like you think he is. So this message, Jesus did not teach hate.

Well, he did hate sin, you know, and there's one word that's always missing from the, and by the way, I heard Andy Stanley is a big supporter of the, he gets us ad campaign. Andy Stanley is affirming of homosexuality.

So we, we know what they're trying to do, but the, the message that is always left out is the, uh, the word repentance, right? That's, that's not part of it. They're Christ, the Christ they're trying to portray.

He's okay with anything. So if you're at a church where the Bible is being preached and the pastor preaches against homosexuality or abortion or something like that, they're, those are terrible people.

Jesus, you know, Jesus is just, his love is unconditional. So no matter who you are, no matter what you believe, no matter what you do, Jesus understands. I mean, that's basically the message. Uh, the final, final article that we're going to look at speaking of what's wrong with evangelical Christianity, uh, basically Joel Osteen is the most famous pastor in America.

Joel Osteen, Prosperity Gospel, and the Need for Repentance

Now, this was a big story. A couple of days ago, there was actually a shooting at Lakewood church. From what I understand, a woman came in. She goes by the name Jeffrey. So people were thinking she's a trans woman.

She came in from what I understand with her child and her child actually was killed, but she came in with a, uh, AR 15 and it had a sign on a sticker on it said free Palestine. So I don't know if that stuff got reported in the mainstream media because, you know, she was a minority.

I guess she was Latino. She apparently may have been trans and she had a left wing, you know, free Palestine message on the gun. So none of that fit the narrative. If it was a white man, you know, who went in, it'd be a whole other story, but, uh, yeah, didn't fit the narrative, but basically Yahoo news because of this tragedy.

And it is a tragedy. Uh, the woman was shot and killed by the way, by the bad guy with a gun was shot and killed by a good guy with a gun, or he was acting as the good guy in this situation. But here's the headline from Yahoo.

And it says that this shooting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood church, it has put a new spotlight on Joel Osteen. So I'll read the article. Joel Osteen, it says is one of the most familiar faces in American religion.

The pastor who leads the Houston megachurch where a five-year-old boy was critically wounded in a Sunday shooting. I think the boy, I haven't heard last time I heard he wasn't expected to make it. But basically, uh, let's see, the boy was critically wounded in a Sunday shooting that also hit a man in the hip before the shooter was killed by an off-duty police working security, a police officer working security.

It is known, uh, Joel Osteen is known for his megawatt smile, wavy hair, and widely popular brand of Christianity. The 60 year old regularly preaches to about 45 ,000 people a week in the former basketball.

Arena.

And he's known to millions more through his television sermons. Osteen inherited a calling from his father and increased the size of his congregation. Almost five fold his book, your best life now, and seven steps to living your full, to your full potential sold nearly 3 million copies.

And in the mid 2000s, Osteen was viewed by more people than any other preacher in the United States. Here's the stat that it, I guess I'm not surprised, but it says Joel Osteen has reached 95 of all American households.

Wow.

I mean, that's massive influence his services over the years. They say he's drawn in blacks, whites, Hispanics, a diversity not seen in most churches across the nation.

Okay.

He's nicknamed the smiling preacher. Osteen told the associated press in 2004, that his messages of hope and encouragement resonates with people, but his laid back preaching style has drawn also drawn criticism.

For focusing on feel good messages over firing, fiery sermons. Now Osteen, it says follows a brand of evangelical Christianity known as the prosperity gospel. And you need to know that Joel Osteen does preach the prosperity gospel, which teaches that following God brings rewards to followers who devote themselves to him said Mark Ward, senior, a professor of communication at the university of Houston, Victoria, who writes about evangelical mass media.

He said, essentially this prosperity message teaches that God wants to bless you. And if you just have enough faith, you will, you will prosper. God will give you money, promotions, big car, big house, health and wealth.

And that is why people love Joel Osteen. It says authorities claim that the critically injured boy is the son of the shooter. Janice, I guess is her name, but again, she went by the name Jeffrey. So she may have been in transition.

That's what I've read in other places. Again, that's that part doesn't get reported because remember that shooter in the Christian school, they tried to bury her manifesto or his manifesto or whatever, because again, it doesn't fit the narrative.

But the reason I chose this article, not just for the shooting, which is big news, but Joel Osteen, basically they're, they're taking a second look at Osteen and they say that Joel Osteen decades before Sunday shooting, he said, Osteen said that he never dreamed that he would be a preacher and never imagined leading a flock.

So large Osteen had never preached before, and then never even had the desire to preach until the Sunday before his father died in 1999, John Osteen, who founded the charismatic Christian Lakewood church, he basically, he asked, he got sick and he asked Joel to preach for him that Sunday that he was in the hospital.

Osteen filled the pulpit, his father died, and he just stayed in the pulpit and became the pastor. Now here's the thing. The Bible says the first qualification for a pastor is you need to have the desire.

Joel Osteen admits he did not have the desire. Number two, a pastor is not supposed to be a novice. Joel Osteen was put behind the pulpit. The article says with zero experience. I mean, he was the cameraman.

He was into, you know, the tech equipment had no desire. He was a novice and yet he was made pastor while having no experience. And that really does show with his teaching. I mean, when Joel Osteen does teach doctrine, it's, it's even worse than his prosperity message, which that's false.

But when he teaches doctrine, he gets that even more wrong. So it says that critics, now that they're taking the second look at Joel Osteen, critics have taken Osteen to task for downplaying the sinful nature of humanity and the need for repentance.

I mean, that's why this story matters. This shooter, what is the highlight? The sinfulness of man, the depravity of man. And that's something that's a message that is straight through the Bible. I mean, that's the whole reason why Jesus came to die for sin.

But Joel Osteen doesn't preach about sin. He doesn't preach about evil because that's too negative. He only focuses on the positive. Joel Osteen actually said that he, he refuses to preach about sin. He doesn't mention sin.

Doesn't mention hell. Doesn't mention any of that. Doesn't mention repentance because why? Because he is positive only. So it said Osteen's mother, Dottie Osteen, told the AP in 2005, we don't preach the gospel.

Sad.

We preach it glad. Of course, the reality is they don't preach the gospel at all. To me, the author here says, Joel Osteen's theology is cotton candy theology. Dallas, this is, this is a guy who commented, he said, there's no meat.

There's no meat in his preaching. His sermons are just there to make people feel good.

Okay.

So that's the problem. That kind of preaching, positive only. We're not preaching through the Bible, not preaching what the Bible says. We're just going to scratch people where they itch, tell people what they want to hear.

That has led to these other things. Now, at least Joel Osteen isn't kicking the Bible around, around his, uh, his stage on Sunday morning. I mean, I guess you could give them credit for that, but, uh, there's no gospel message.

There.

And these churches, yeah, that are kicking the Bible around playing Miley Cyrus. This is messed up. This is the messed up church. And what's the takeaway for this podcast? Paul said to Timothy, second Timothy four, he said, preach the word.

If you're looking for a good church, find a church that preaches the word.

Why?

Because perilous times will come. The time is coming. Paul said, where people aren't going to want doctrine. They're going to want to have their ears tickled, or as he said, because they have itching ears, they heap up for themselves, teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.

So I hope you found a good local Bible believing church. You're sitting under a sound ministry and yeah, this stuff is crazy. And why, why cover it? Well, uh, just to show you how blessed you are. If you have a normal church where your pastor preaches through the Bible, maybe you think his sermons are boring.

Maybe you think the church could be better here or here, here, you know, everyone has complaints, I guess.

Right.

But be thankful your pastor isn't kicking the Bible around the stage. So I don't know, maybe that's a little consolation, but the more, if you think sermons are boring, chances are you haven't dug into the scripture yourself because the Bible is not boring.

Okay.

So read it for yourself. You'll find that once you start reading the Bible and studying it for yourself, it is so deep, so interesting. And you start to develop that hunger for the word, but you have to be in the word.

Otherwise you're not going to have that hunger. These people in these churches, they don't get it. They don't get it because obviously they're not in the word. If they were in the word, they would realize that what's going on in these ministries is, is not of God.

My name's Michael Grant. Thanks for watching. Till next time, may the Lord be with you.

Have a great day.