Resistance is Futile: You Will Be Assimilated Into the Community

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December 10, 2012

Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith (http://www.fightingforthefaith.com) lectures on the source and details of the ideology / worldview that is the driving force behind the Seeker-Driven Church Movement. The powerpoint slides and further resources are available here http://bit.ly/J4ZBqV

00:12: It's time for another edition of Fighting for the
00:18: Faith, Friday, May 11, 2012. Quick thank you to all of you wishing me happy birthday today.
00:32: Yes, I am now 44. Thank you for tuning in.
00:55: You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which, helping you think biblically, helping you think critically, and help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the
01:11: Word of God. No shortage of crazy things being said and done out there by people whose minds don't seem to be held captive by God's Word.
01:20: Now that's not a good thing in the Christian church. We expect that type of stuff, well, from non -believers, people outside of the church.
01:27: But it becomes a real problem when the people doing that are, well, pastors.
01:32: They shouldn't be doing that. Pastors are supposed to be qualified to be in the pulpit.
01:39: And if they're not qualified, or if they're off doing their own thing, that disqualifies them.
01:45: You know, you think about, you know, with the Olympics coming up, you know, I gotta tell you, over the years
01:50: I have been a, well, a big fan of the Olympics. I like watching the Olympics, so I'm looking forward to the
01:55: Olympics, the Summer Olympics in London this year. And you know, when you go to Olympic competition and you watch, like, at the track and field event, there are people who end up being disqualified for different reasons.
02:09: Maybe they've been taking performance -enhancing drugs, or they're disqualified right there on the line because they've left the starting block early too many times.
02:21: You know, so there's all kinds of things that could get somebody disqualified. Well, pastors who are not bound by the
02:28: Word of God, who will not abide by what it says for the pastoral office, and teach things that are contrary to God's Word, they're not qualified to be
02:37: Christian pastors. The job of the Christian church in those situations is to, well, not tolerate them, but disqualify them and put somebody qualified in their place.
02:49: Well, that doesn't seem to be happening at all lately, so we've got a big problem in that there's a lot of guys running around who shouldn't be in the pulpit saying things from, well, the stage that they shouldn't be saying.
03:04: So we do the discernment work and do the comparative work. Now what we're going to do on today's edition of Fighting for the
03:10: Faith, I'm just going to go ahead and steer in this direction so you know what's going to be happening today. We were able to get audio last night from the event at the
03:19: Worldview Boot Camp held at Harbor Shores Church up there in Cicero, Indiana. It was a great event.
03:25: I'm very thankful for everybody who turned out. And those of you who came to hear me speak last night, thank you for coming, and thank you for supporting
03:36: Pirate Christian Radio. And what we're going to do tonight is we're going to play the audio from that lecture.
03:43: Now, that being the case, I'm going to make a special request. I don't normally make requests like this on the program, but I'm going to make a request.
03:53: And that is that before you listen to this edition of Fighting for the Faith, go to our website,
04:01: FightingfortheFaith .com, and look for the post from May 10, 2012.
04:07: The headline reads, Resistance is Feudal. Now don't be confused by the one that's going to be posted for May 11, where it's going to have the full title,
04:18: Resistance is Feudal. You will be assimilated into the community. That will be the name for tonight's episode of Fighting for the
04:25: Faith. But go to the one from the day before, from May 10, that says Resistance is Feudal.
04:31: And there I've posted a link to my PowerPoint slides. And I think it will help you to be able to look at them while you're listening to me deliver the lecture.
04:44: I think that will help. And so you need to do that.
04:49: So head on over to FightingfortheFaith .com and click, I've put a link for the PowerPoint slides.
04:54: I've also put links to different resources. And the idea is this, is that what
05:02: I'm going to be saying, or what I said in the lecture last night, I understand is going to be and is controversial.
05:12: However, I am not saying this for the sake of controversy. And I'm not saying anything in this lecture, and I haven't said anything in this lecture, to tarnish the name of somebody by lying or slandering.
05:28: That's not what I've done. Instead, I have spent years researching this subject and carefully, carefully assembling the basically, you know, primary source materials on this.
05:45: And so think of it this way. I've provided free downloads of information that you can get.
05:53: I've also linked to books that you can follow up on. So the idea is think of it this way. I'm presenting to you the answer to a problem.
06:03: But if you've been in a high school algebra class, then you know that many high school algebra teachers, it's not enough for them that you turn in your homework with all of the answers in the correct boxes or whatever.
06:18: They actually want to see your work. And so because I am not an ideologue,
06:24: I am not. This is not about some, you know, me being an ideologue, you can't challenge or question me.
06:30: Instead, what I'm going to basically do is say this, is that I want you, if you don't believe what
06:36: I'm saying, or you have any doubts that I'm correctly seeing what I'm seeing, that I'm pointing you to the resources that helped me get to the conclusions that I've come to.
06:48: And so I'm providing for you my work. Okay. These are the resources that help me understand and frame this issue in this way.
06:58: And I am making those available for you. Some of them are free. Some of them require you to purchase them if you want to purchase them.
07:04: But the idea is this. Take a look for yourself. Check my work.
07:12: And ask yourself the question, have I correctly understood this problem?
07:20: And the answer that I put forward. If not, then send me an email and lay out your case.
07:28: Where did I go wrong? Where did I miss the point? Now I personally don't think
07:33: I have missed the point here. But I understand that what I say in this lecture is extremely controversial.
07:41: Again, it's not for the sake of controversy. I have no desire to lie or slander or to basically demonize somebody and their position.
07:53: Instead, I've taken great pains to carefully lay this all out in a way that is faithful to what they have said.
08:03: And I say they because there's many people I'm talking about here. So with that in mind, we are going to dive into the program proper.
08:11: Again, you can grab the resources right off the Fighting for the Faith website and follow along PowerPoint -wise.
08:19: It will help you. I must apologize. The lecture is complicated. It is complicated.
08:26: If you were to think what advanced level this is, is this high school level, college level?
08:34: Well, it's not either of those. This is like a graduate -level lecture.
08:40: I apologize. That's just how it is, unfortunately. I don't think it's possible to make it any simpler than I've made it in this presentation.
08:50: So the name of the lecture is Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated into the community.
08:58: And with that, here's my lecture from last night. Here we go. I was asked to speak tonight on the state of the church in 2012.
09:06: Usually heads of state give topics like that. Here's the thing.
09:13: In the last 25 years, we've seen tectonic changes in the church, and so many of them make no biblical sense, like none whatsoever.
09:22: Worse, they don't make any rational sense either. My question is, what are they thinking?
09:29: Mega -church pastors in the Seeker -Driven Movement berate Christians for coming to church with the expectation to be fed the
09:35: Word of God. You're going to actually see that for yourself tonight. These same pastors claim that their churches exist for non -believers and the people who are not there.
09:48: Does that make any sense to you at all? These same pastors are aggressively anti -doctrinal.
09:57: It's not that they're a -doctrinal. They're actually anti -doctrinal. I'll explain. And they claim that their churches are communities of small groups.
10:08: I challenge you when you get home tonight, go onto Google and do a search.
10:14: Type in the words, community of small groups.
10:20: You will find almost 50 ,000 hits on that search, all of them churches.
10:29: Community of small groups. Strange language. We'll talk about that. What else are they thinking?
10:36: Well, they're openly pushing for unity in the visible church with men who are Word of heretics and are modalists or worse.
10:46: They are recognizing, they're reorganizing churches so that they are community resource distribution centers rather than places where sound biblical doctrine is taught and proclaimed.
10:57: Their leaders have zero accountability to the people in the congregation, but the people are accountable to the leaders for accomplishing the visions that they cast.
11:09: We've had to learn a whole new set of terms. I remember when I had to learn how to order coffee at Starbucks.
11:17: It was quite an ordeal. Had to learn a whole new language. I'd like a tall mocha latte cold, no whip.
11:27: You have to learn this entire language, right? Well, there's a whole new set of terms that have been brought into the church.
11:34: One of the terms is vision casting. What is that? Why hasn't the church been talking about vision casting for 2 ,000 years?
11:43: You'd think if it was in the Bible, we'd all be doing it, right? Well, we've had to learn this whole new term, vision casting.
11:49: Hopefully I'll get an opportunity to talk a little bit about this. So questions come to mind like, what is this?
11:56: Where did it come from? You know, these are good questions. What is its nature? Now, if I can make an allusion to, in fact,
12:04: I'm going to quote from a movie that not a lot of Christians quote from, Silence of the
12:10: Lambs. If you remember, it was the Academy Award winner that year.
12:16: Why, I don't know. It's just like not my favorite movie ever. But compelling, interesting storyline to say the least.
12:24: And Hannibal Lecter is a convicted serial killer.
12:30: And Jodie Foster's character Clarice comes to visit him in prison because she's working on a case.
12:37: And she thinks that he might be able to help her profile, psychologically profile this killer so that they can figure out who he is.
12:46: And so she brings this case file into the prison and sits outside of Hannibal Lecter's cell.
12:54: And Lecter says to her, everything you need to find him is there in those pages. And Clarice, Jodie Foster's character, says, well, then tell me how.
13:05: Lecter, in his bizarre, creepy kind of way, says, first principles, Clarice, simplicity, read
13:10: Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask, what is it in itself?
13:20: What is its nature? What does he do, this man that you seek? Clarice answers, well, he kills women.
13:29: Lecter, no, that is incidental. What is the first thing he does?
13:35: What need does he serve by killing? Clarice says, well, anger, social acceptance, sexual frustrations.
13:43: Lecter says, no, he covets, that is his nature.
13:52: Now, that is an illustration that we need to grasp onto here, because what I intend to do tonight is answer the question, what is the nature of the seeker -driven and purpose -driven movement?
14:05: We've seen what it does, but what it does doesn't tell us what it is.
14:12: And what it is must be grasped if we are to mount a solid defense, biblically, against what this thing is.
14:24: And what this thing is, is frightening. Let me explain. I said it was gonna be complicated.
14:33: I have to use a timeline. So I'm gonna put on my historian hat. I only have a minor in history, so if I fail at this, please understand.
14:41: It's not because I didn't try. Okay, we're all familiar with 1776, the year of the
14:48: American Revolution. Well, the American Revolution went on, and then with some other notable wars,
14:55: World War I, World War II. The present day is up there. We all know the events that occurred on those dates.
15:03: The question is, what were the thoughts behind those events? Well, we could talk about the
15:09: Enlightenment. And if you've been to college, you've probably had to take a class or two talking about the age of reason and the
15:15: Enlightenment. And you've probably heard of guys like Locke, Barclay, Hume, and others, right?
15:21: Well, we can't discuss the American Revolution apart from an understanding of the philosophical ideas that were in the water, if you were, in the milieu of everyone's conversations at the local pub, okay?
15:36: But here's the thing about philosophy, it's kind of an unwritten rule. And here's how it goes, one era has its philosophy.
15:46: And the next generation that comes along, their job is to undo or to debunk the philosophy of the guys who taught them in college.
15:58: It's a time -honored tradition, okay? Well, that being the case, the
16:04: Enlightenment gave birth to the counter -Enlightenment. And this is the thing that should keep you up at night.
16:15: Because the counter -Enlightenment worldview is what's at the beating heart of the seeker -driven movement.
16:22: I'll continue to explain. In the Enlightenment, basic ideas, okay?
16:28: We talk about epistemology, how you know what you know what you know, okay? Well, when it comes to the
16:33: Enlightenment, they had some ideas regarding truth. Truth is, well, it's objective. It's outside of the subject.
16:40: For instance, if I wanted to figure out what 2 plus 2 equals, I don't go traipsing into my heart and do a psychological in -depth thing with my counselor to figure out what 2 plus 2 is so that I can feel it, right?
16:54: I look outside of myself, and I learn that 2 and 2 equals 4. So truth is objective, and it's outside of the subject.
17:02: That means that truth is knowable by the subject, and that truth is transcended.
17:08: It applies to all subjects alike, okay? For instance, 2 plus 2 equals 4 for me as well as for you.
17:17: 2 plus 2 is 4 in China. I don't know if you knew that, but it's true, okay? That's the idea behind transcendence, okay?
17:26: So the basic idea is that there's a correspondence theory when it comes to truth.
17:32: You correspond to it. It's outside of you. It's objective, it's knowable, and it's transcendent. And the idea is that any sane, rational person would align their mind to correspond to a proper understanding of truth.
17:45: Well, this makes things possible, like iPads and Wi -Fi networks and mocha lattes.
17:52: Okay, but along with the Enlightenment, there was a lot of talk about individual, the individual having inherent axiomatic rights.
18:02: Keep in mind that at the time the Enlightenment occurred, politically,
18:09: Europe was controlled by monarchs. And there were these arguments put forward that basically, humanity had to obey their monarchs, okay?
18:18: Well, this led to a revolt of sorts. And John Locke is to be kind of considered one of the major philosophical thinkers behind the
18:27: American Revolution. Let me read this. I apologize. It's not the easiest way to give a presentation, but you gotta get this.
18:34: Locke said that, well, actually, Locke is among the most influential political philosophers of the
18:39: Enlightenment. In the two treatises of government, he defended the claim that men are, by nature, free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch.
18:52: He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property. They have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society.
19:01: Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property, since government exists by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and to promote the public good.
19:28: Governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.
19:34: Now, we're all Americans, and we go, well, yeah, duh, right? Isn't that what our
19:41: Declaration of Independence stated? We hold these truths to be self -evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
20:22: Right? So the idea is that you exist as an individual, and you as an individual have inherent rights.
20:34: So the rights of the individual, today's average American assumes this idea.
20:40: I mean, of course, everyone believes this. It's self -evident, right? And this is where the battle's being fought today.
20:50: You don't even realize it. Those who believe in the rights of the individual are actually losing this battle because they don't even realize what's going on.
21:01: You don't get it. You don't understand that this is a debatable topic, and that there's a whole host of people out there who actually believe, as a worldview, that you, as an individual, do not exist.
21:23: And the pastors of the churches in some local places actually hold to this as well.
21:30: We'll talk about that. So certain churches are belligerents in this battle, and they're not fighting for your individual rights.
21:38: Quite the contrary. So let's talk about the counter -enlightenment now. We've talked about the
21:43: Enlightenment. By the way, it's really tough teaching an entire philosophical concept in just a few minutes.
21:50: So this is a flight over the battlefield, OK? Counter -enlightenment. Truth is subjective, experienced, or felt.
22:03: It's imminent. It's not transcendent. It's imminent. It's here and now.
22:10: But more importantly, the individual does not exist.
22:16: The community is the organic, living thing, not the individual.
22:28: So therefore, truth, see if this sounds familiar to any of you, truth is experienced in conversation within community.
22:39: If any of you have ever run into somebody who is a follower of the emergent church movement, this language should sound eerily familiar to you.
22:46: But it's not new. Let me continue. Counter -enlightenment philosophers. Just a note.
22:53: Immanuel Kant, who gave us the epistemology here. The idea of how you know what you know.
23:01: Immanuel Kant, during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, was a Lutheran pietist. Nothing good comes from Lutheran pietism.
23:09: I just want to let you know that. And I'm a Lutheran. I'm a confessional Lutheran. I'm not a Lutheran pietist. Bad things happen with Lutheran pietism.
23:16: And unfortunately, we've unleashed some pretty nasty viruses on the church. So I apologize for that.
23:23: But Kant, rather than manning up and facing the Enlightenment head -on, retreated into pure subjectivity.
23:31: And he came up with an epistemological concept that the truth out here in the objective realm is not knowable.
23:40: It's not knowable. You can't know it. OK? Truth is only something that happens in this little space inside of your head.
23:48: It's experienced. It's not objective. It's subjective. OK? Real quick, if you want to kind of understand what that's about, two movies to watch,
23:57: The Matrix or The Truman Show. OK? If you're familiar with those movies, that's
24:03: Immanuel Kant's epistemology in a nutshell. OK? You don't know what reality is and what isn't.
24:10: OK? Jean -Jacques Rousseau, talk about him a little bit more in a minute.
24:16: He's one of the foundational thinkers behind the idea that the individual doesn't exist. Hegel gave them a way of understanding how truth is synthetic.
24:26: Truth exists in thesis and antithesis and then synthesizes into a new thesis, and then a new antithesis arises.
24:32: And so there's no such thing as transcendent truth. Truth is always synthetic at a time and point within a particular conversation.
24:41: Friedrich Nietzsche, his important work here is The Antichrist. This was an angry and crazy man.
24:50: And the idea that he brings to the table is that morals are determined by communities.
24:58: And he hated the morals of the Jewish community because their morals were crafted in slavery.
25:04: So he constantly referred to the morals of the Judeo -Christian religion as slave morality.
25:12: That prohibits a community, remember the community is the organic living thing, from being able to experience greatness.
25:24: Kierkegaard, existentialist. Schopenhauer builds off of Kant. Martin Heidegger, another existentialist who's also credited with giving us language deconstruction.
25:36: And then you'll notice the postmoderns, Michel Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida. I can also put in others, but you get the point.
25:44: I understand this is complicated. Work with me here. Jean -Jacques Rousseau.
25:51: Let me read to you about him. He taught us that whatever human existence there is, whatever freedom, rights, and duties the individual has, whatever meaning there is in the individual life, all is determined by society according to society's objective need of survival.
26:13: The individual, in other words, is not autonomous. He is determined by society.
26:19: He is free only in matters that do not matter. He has rights only because society concedes them.
26:27: He has a will only if he wills what society needs. His life has meaning only insofar as it relates to social, the social meaning, and as it fulfills itself in fulfilling the objective goal of society.
26:41: There is, in short, no human existence. There is only social existence.
26:48: There is no individual. There is only the citizen. By the way, it's
26:58: Rousseau's philosophy, which I think is the reason why the French Revolution went the way it did.
27:06: Okay? There's no individual. You don't exist. You don't have any rights.
27:14: Society gives them to you. Society is the thing that lives. Now, this is important.
27:21: Depending on the worldview you have, there are political systems that naturally work, then, with your worldview.
27:29: If you were to think of a worldview like this, okay? Y 'all own laptop computers or home
27:37: PCs or whatever, right? Some of you are Windows users. Some of you are Apple users. Now, I happen to run
27:42: Macintosh. I am an Apple guy. But it's important to note that I'm capable of running
27:47: Windows on my Macintosh. It feels like an abomination. I just wanna let you know that, okay?
27:53: It's important to say this. However, I can do it. I can wipe the hard drive or I can run something called
27:59: Boot Camp and then turn my laptop over to Microsoft. And wouldn't you know it, weird things happen on my laptop computer.
28:08: Worldviews are like operating systems, okay? So the idea is that if you have a particular worldview, it processes information a particular way and it creates a particular user experience.
28:24: So when you think of the Enlightenment worldview, think of it as an operating system. When you run your brain on it, automatically it moves towards particular political systems.
28:34: But if you run your mind off of a counter -Enlightenment worldview, okay? And it's not just enough to say that they don't believe in the individual.
28:42: It is inherently anti -rational on purpose, okay? Then all information that comes to you is translated and mutated into something that you can't understand unless you can figure out how to run that operating system in your brain.
28:58: And it hurts. It hurts, let me tell you that, okay? Political systems. So philosophical worldviews determine political systems.
29:08: If you are a follower of Enlightenment rationalism, the natural tendency is to head towards liberal democracy, okay?
29:19: Our government, constitutional government in the United States is a liberal democracy based upon an
29:27: Enlightenment worldview, okay? The truth is noble. You can correspond to it that the individual has inherent rights.
29:34: Now, this is important. This is gonna be somewhat controversial. With this, you have to keep in mind that communism must be understood as a rationalist reaction against the inequalities of capitalism.
29:50: Marxist ideas are still rational. They're not anti -rational, okay?
29:58: So that's something you have to keep in mind. Counter -Enlightenment irrationalism, if this is your worldview, there is a name for the type of government that you will push towards.
30:10: And it is a name that we have got to start using again and we need to start using it right in its historical context.
30:18: And that word is fascism. Now, here's the problem.
30:26: That is the ultimate F word, okay? As soon as you use that word, apparently all argument stops because it's the ultimate epithet.
30:35: It's the ultimate insult, okay? What is a fascist? Well, if I were to ask most of you, you'd say, well, a fascist is a racist.
30:42: You ask somebody who's a liberal in the United States who a fascist is, they'd say it's a conservative. You ask a conservative who a fascist is, they'd say it's a liberal.
30:52: And none of them actually know what it is. And this is not good. This is not good at all.
30:59: If I can use an example from Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings, it's like forgetting who
31:06: Sauron was and how dangerous those rings are, okay? We have got to get back to understanding what this is.
31:18: I'm not saying was, is, okay? Now, funny enough, fascists like always using this term.
31:27: They always refer to themselves as the third way. You hear people talking like that? Because they're the third way between capitalism and communism.
31:39: When you hear people talk like that, that's a tip off as to what their worldview is. Okay, now, when was the last time somebody quoted
31:47: Benito Mussolini in a church? Okay, I get to do that. Let me read to you from Mussolini.
31:54: By the way, this is available as one of the free downloads from the resources I've made available. Download it and read
32:00: Mussolini. If anyone's gonna tell you what fascism is, the fascists will tell you, right? Okay, let's go to primary sources.
32:07: Primary source, Benito Mussolini. Would anyone here contest the fact that Benito Mussolini was a fascist?
32:13: Nope, good. All right, here's what he says. This is kind of Yoda speak.
32:19: Anti -individualistic the fascist conception is for the state. It is for the individual only in so far as he coincides with the state.
32:29: Universal consciousness and will of man in his historic existence. It is opposed to the classic liberalism, that would be liberal democracy, which arose out of the need of reaction against absolutism and had accomplished its mission in history when the state itself had become transformed in the popular will and consciousness.
32:49: Liberalism denied the state in the interest of the particular individual. Fascism reaffirms the state as the only true expression of the individual.
32:59: That last sentence is key. Because keep in mind, fascism does believe in an individual, but the individual is the community, not its atomistic little pieces, okay?
33:12: Giovanni Gentile, another Italian fascist philosopher.
33:18: In the definition of fascism, the first point to grasp is the comprehensive, or as fascists say, the totalitarian scope of its doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and feeling of the nation.
33:36: Is fascism therefore anti -intellectual as has been so often charged? It is eminently anti -intellectual.
33:45: That is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action, of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice, fascism is hostile to all utopian systems which are destined never to face the test of reality.
34:02: It is hostile to all science and all philosophy which remains matters of mere fancy or intelligence.
34:08: It is not that fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action.
34:20: Yeah. You think fascism is anti -intellectual? This guy did, and he was a fascist.
34:27: By virtue of its repugnance for intellectualism, fascism prefers not to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself, but when we say that it is not a system or a doctrine, we must not conclude that it's a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method if by a system or philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal character, daily revealing its inner fertility and significance then fascism is a perfect system with a solidly established foundation, with a rigorous logic in its development, and all who feel the truth, notice the words, all who feel the truth and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development.
35:18: It denies the existence of the individual and it is rabidly anti -intellectual. Fascism is about emoting, about living, about being, not thinking.
35:32: It's about action, right? That's the reason why we see the dictators going, you know, when they're talking, right?
35:40: It's all about inspiring and whipping people up, whipping them into a frenzy to stop thinking and to be, to exist and to feel, right?
35:51: Now, that is called der Glasenmensch, the glass man.
35:58: During the Nazi era, that was put together by a physician as an art exhibit and the whole idea behind it was this, that was an icon of the
36:11: Volk, the Volk and Mein Schaft, the community. The community you can see all of its little parts make up the whole.
36:20: That wasn't an individual human being, that was an icon of the living thing. The living thing is not you, not me, the living thing is we, okay?
36:33: The glass man, der Glasenmensch, okay? Now, when Hitler came to power, those of you who know history, everyone was wondering, what would
36:43: Hitler do? I mean, we'd never seen a fascist government. In Germany, nobody knew what they would do because you try to nail down a fascist, what are you guys gonna do?
36:52: They didn't have a set of doctrines and political actions that they had thought, they didn't know what they were gonna do.
36:59: They would figure it out because they would feel it and then move forward. Well, when Hitler came to power, the thing that he spent a lot of time doing in the first couple of years was having these huge outdoor rallies, okay?
37:17: In fact, some of his critics said Hitler came to power and the first thing he did was put on a flag -waving ceremony and parade, okay?
37:25: And so you look at the early years of Hitler, you'll always see him, he'll be a speck in a car waving his hand or doing this and he's surrounded by all of these people.
37:35: I always had these panoramic shots like this because that is the thing that existed.
37:44: That was the individual, the Volk, the community, right?
37:50: Now, if you hold on to this worldview that that is the living organism, the organic community, then there's certain things that begin to happen in your mind regarding morals.
38:07: Let me take a second here and digress. The Nazi eugenics program which led eventually to the
38:13: Holocaust, what was the moral idea behind it?
38:18: Because at the Nuremberg trials, when they put those doctors on trials, okay, those doctors didn't believe for a second what they were doing was wrong.
38:28: They actually thought what they were doing was right, that it was moral and good.
38:35: I mean, how do you take a society, one of the most advanced civilizations at that time,
38:41: Germany was an outlier as far as its medical practices, its scientific discoveries and the things that it was doing in mechanization and industrialization, it was a world -class society.
38:54: How do you take a group of people like this and turn them into mass murderers? You have to convince them that what they're doing is good.
39:05: So here's the idea. That's the individual, right?
39:11: The community is the living thing. So we have to protect the living organism.
39:20: Well, we can't have useless feeders eating our resources and not producing anything productive for the health of the community.
39:32: So that would mean that we can kill people who are mentally disabled, elderly, infirmed, sick, and see, here's the idea.
39:49: Those Jews, they were responsible for giving us transcendent slave morality that's kept us back from greatness.
39:57: Those Jews are a bunch of illnesses and we need to get rid of them so that we can be healthy.
40:05: Right, well, the community is the living thing, right? We've got to stay healthy.
40:11: We don't want to be sick. We don't want people feeding off of us and not producing.
40:18: As soon as you deny the rights of the individual, the Holocaust becomes moral.
40:28: You see it? And that's what happened. So here's the question.
40:35: What does this have to do with the Holocaust? What does this have to do with the church? This is a great history lesson. Thanks, Chris. 20th century was really icky, all right?
40:44: Well, it actually has everything to do with the church. Let's go back here.
40:50: You'll notice the big red dot between World War I and World War II. We have to go back in history a little bit, okay?
40:57: In the height of the conversation, the philosophical discussion that was taking place in continental
41:05: Europe between World War I and World War II. And keep in mind, with the defeat of Germany in World War I, there was a lot of people trying to figure out what went wrong.
41:21: And all of a sudden, the fascist philosophers were making sense. It's the fault of liberal democracy.
41:30: All of these individuals kept us from uniting and they're responsible for making us lose the war, right?
41:39: That's the conversation that's going on. Well, in the middle of that conversation, in a magical land known as Austria, in a place called
41:48: Vienna, there was a young lad. And his name was Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker grew up in a well -connected family in Vienna during the years between World War I and World War II.
42:02: Jack Beattie, in his biography of Drucker, notes that Drucker's father hosted a dinner party every
42:08: Monday night and that the weekly guests included economists, musicians, civil servants, international lawyers.
42:17: Aside from this, Drucker was also the habitu of a salon presided over by one of the Drucker's closest friends, where he listened to and interacted with leading playwrights, authors, philosophers, and culture critics of the era.
42:28: Drucker grew up hearing, conversing, and interacting directly with Europe's intellectual elite and their counter -enlightenment ideas.
42:40: He grew up right in the thick of it. And he bought it hook, line, and sinker.
42:50: This had a profound impact on the formation of his worldview. Here's a direct quote from one of his books called
42:58: The End of Economic Man, written on the eve of World War II. Capitalism has proved to be a false god because it leads inevitably to class war among rigid, defined classes.
43:11: Socialism, this would be Marxism, has been proved to be false because it has been demonstrated it cannot abolish these classes.
43:18: The class society of the capitalist reality is irreconcilable with the capitalist ideology, which therefore ceases to make sense.
43:26: The Marxist class war, on the other hand, while it recognizes and explains the actual reality, ceases to have any meaning because it leads nowhere.
43:34: Both creeds and orders fail because their concept of the automatic consequences of the exercise of economic freedom by the individual is false.
43:48: Does he sound like somebody that would like to have a beer with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison?
43:56: No, he wasn't. Another quote, this is from his essay entitled
44:07: The Unfashionable Kierkegaard. It is one of the links that I put up on the resources at fightingforthefaith .com.
44:14: You need to download it and read it, and I apologize it takes about 10 readings before you start to get it.
44:21: It's really complicated, I apologize. Here's the important part.
44:28: Drucker said this, this is what he believed. Existence in time is existence as a citizen in this world.
44:37: Who does that sound like? Rousseau, that's Rousseau. In time, we eat and drink and sleep, fight for conquest or for our lives, raise children in society, succeed or fail, but in time, we also die.
44:51: In time, there is nothing left of us after our death. In time, we do not therefore exist. As individuals, we are only members of a species, links in a chain of generations.
45:06: The species has an autonomous life in time, specific characteristics, an autonomous goal, but the member has no life, no characteristics, no aim outside of the species.
45:17: He exists only in and through the species. The chain has a beginning and an end, but each link serves only to tie the links of the past to the links of the future outside the chain.
45:28: It is scrap iron. The wheel of time keeps on turning, but the cogs are replaceable and interchangeable.
45:33: The individual's death does not end the species or society, but it ends his life in time. Human existence is not possible in time.
45:43: Only society is possible in time. Quick question.
45:58: How would you like your pastorhood to have been trained by this man? You don't exist.
46:10: This is where the fight's at. I'll keep explaining why. Now, someone might say, wait a minute, wasn't
46:19: Drucker an outspoken critic of totalitarian fascism, aka the
46:25: Nazis? I mean, if you go to Drucker's website, and they make a point of telling you he was against the
46:31: Nazis. Yes, but it's one thing to be against the
46:38: Nazis because you believe in the inherent worth of the individual. It's a whole other reason to be against the
46:45: Nazis because, oops, they forgot something. They're right for the most part, but they forgot an important element.
46:52: When you study Drucker, you find out he completely buys into the same worldview as the Nazis, with one important exception.
47:01: Let me explain. He said, I do not believe in the materialist interpretation of history.
47:09: You see, he was a Kierkegaardian existentialist. And so, when you read the unfashionable
47:16: Kierkegaard, he tries to explain to you where the Nazis went wrong. You know where they went wrong?
47:21: It's because they were materialists. They didn't believe in the spiritual. Like, that's really easy to get people to believe in anyway.
47:29: Okay, see, in Drucker's worldview, the idea is this, is that man existed in paradox. Here in time, in the time and space continuum, well, the individual doesn't exist.
47:41: But see, in eternity, in the spirit realm, the society doesn't exist.
47:49: Only the individual exists one -to -one before God. Now, he argues in the unfashionable
47:58: Kierkegaard that that's the reason why the Nazis went wrong. Because they didn't recognize the other end, the spiritual side, the part in eternity.
48:11: Well, who can blame them? Who sees that, right? Because I don't know about you, but I live in a time -space continuum, okay?
48:19: Some of you may not. If you don't, keep it to yourself. Okay? So, here's what he said.
48:27: I do not believe in the materialist interpretation of history. I believe that the material, far from being the foundation of human society, is but one pole of human existence.
48:36: It is of no greater, though of no less importance than the other pole. The spiritual corresponding to man's dual nature as belonging, at the same time, to the end and the kingdom of heaven.
48:47: So, he was metaphysically spiritual. And see, he really believed that if you recognized that other pole, then you could do fascism right because you would then still maintain a concept of value of the individual so that you don't kill everybody that disagrees with you.
49:07: Okay? Thanks. So, he was actually kind of pushing for a kinder, gentler fascism.
49:14: That's really what it boils down to at the end of the day. So, in other words, Drucker held the same worldview as the counter -Enlightenment philosophers and the fascists, but he was not a materialist.
49:25: Yay, Drucker. Now, this is important. At the end of his book, The End of Economic Man, published on the eve of World War II, okay?
49:36: In fact, if you were to pick up this book, The End of Economic Man by Drucker, read the last chapter first, then read the rest of the book, okay?
49:44: He makes a very important statement in the last chapter, and here's what he says. The Western democracies have to realize that totalitarian fascism, that would be the materialist fascism of Mussolini and the
49:57: Nazis, cannot be overcome by socialism, by capitalism, or by a combination of both.
50:04: It can only be overcome by a new non -economic concept of a free and equal society.
50:12: A new non -economic concept of a free and equal society? What's that?
50:19: Okay? Now, I don't have time to get into all the detail. Suffice it to say this, this becomes
50:26: Drucker's project for the rest of his life. His goal was to create a whole new basis of society that wouldn't be based on economics, capitalism or socialism or something like that, a third way, if you would, okay?
50:44: And he later referred to his ideas, he called it communitarianism.
50:51: Now, if I told you I was into individualism, you'd know what that is, right? I'm a rugged individual. I'm a communitarian.
51:00: I'm a rugged community guy. Communitarianism is just the new brand name for fascism.
51:12: Okay? But remember, it's a non -materialist form of fascism. It's a spiritual kind of fascism that acknowledges the existence of the individual in eternity, not here, but in eternity, okay?
51:25: So this becomes his project. Okay, non -economic society.
51:30: Here's kind of the details. So he wanted to create a new non -economic society, this was his lifelong project, society that does not recognize the inherent rights of the individual.
51:41: The individual does not exist in time, only the community exists. In fact, it's a global community that he's trying to create.
51:48: It's anti -rational, imminent, not transcendent, governed using the leadership principle.
51:56: Okay, I don't have time to really unpack this. Look this up on the internet.
52:01: It's called the Führerprinzip. That's the leadership model. It was developed by the fascists.
52:07: It's the same thing, okay? Okay, 1994,
52:13: Peter Drucker writes a book, and one of his last ones of this type. The Post -Capitalist
52:19: Society, okay? What's the smallest unit in a post -capitalist society?
52:25: Well, it's a society of organizations, not individuals, you don't exist, okay?
52:32: Now, at the end of his life, Drucker, what happened is Drucker went after, he left
52:38: Germany before World War II, comes to the United States, attends the
52:43: Keynesian Economic Lectures. He goes to work for General Motors, writes a book called
52:50: The Concept of the Corporation. What he's trying to do, this is when he launches into, he's going to find a way to create this new society, okay?
52:58: He starts off in the business world. And this is, by the way, you can find this article.
53:04: It was written, it's called The Business of the Kingdom. It was written in Christianity Today of November 1999.
53:10: And this is the section called Problem of Community. From the very beginning of his work, Drucker understood that the growth of industry had torn people out of community, where once, as farmers or tradesmen or craftsmen, they worked within their community, they now spent the most important part of their day working with people who did not live in their neighborhood or go to church or to know their family.
53:29: Industry efficiently produces goods, but it just as efficiently destroys traditional communities.
53:34: Yet community is a fundamental need for humans. That's why when Drucker wrote about General Motors in his first large -scale study of the organization, he recommended that companies try to create a plant community.
53:45: You see what he's doing? He comes to the United States, goes to work for General Motors, decides to go to work on creating community, because the individual doesn't exist.
53:54: His idea was to create community on and around the job. He has long since realized, however, that community will not come from business.
54:02: In an era of downsizing and outsourcing, the plant community has become almost laughable. 50 years ago,
54:07: I believed the plant community would be the successor of the community of yesterday. I was totally wrong. We proved totally incapable, even in Japan.
54:16: The reason is that everybody does the same job. What holds them together is what they do from nine to five, not what they aspire for and what they live for and what they hope for, what they die for.
54:26: That's a community. So Drucker goes so far as to say that in his book, Managing the
54:31: Nonprofit Organization, the nonprofits are the American community. Nonprofits give disengaged workers a place to make a contribution through serving others.
54:42: They draw rich and poor into a web of common concern. Churches play a particularly critical role. The community needs a community center.
54:48: That's the role of the church. The role of the church is to become a community center. I'm not talking about religion now.
54:55: This is a direct quote. I'm talking about society. There is no other institution in the
55:00: American community that could be the center. Drucker gladly stresses the church's spiritual mission, but he notes that churches also have a societal role.
55:08: That's what he meant when he told Forbes that pastoral megachurches are surely the most important social phenomenon in American society in the last 30 years.
55:17: Let me sum it up. He tried to create community at work.
55:23: It didn't work. So in order to make his new society emerge, he switched from business to church.
55:32: The goal, he basically wanted to have the churches be the vehicle by which this new non -economic society would emerge.
55:44: Got it? So the churches are basically the carriers of this virus. That article, by the way, goes on to say, over the last 20 years,
55:56: Drucker has had a good deal of interaction with what he calls pastoral churches.
56:03: Pastoral churches. These include megachurches like Bill Heibel's Willow Creek or Rick Warren's Saddleback Community, Bob Buford's Leadership Network.
56:13: I call them the Druckerite Unholy Trinity. They're all basically packaging using their own brand the same knowledge products that were developed by Peter Drucker.
56:26: All of these products, these ideas are designed to create a new society where you as an individual don't exist.
56:39: So they've invited Drucker to speak at conferences of large church leaders and has linked him to many pastors seeking advice.
56:45: Drucker calls these pastoral churches because their size is not nearly so significant to him as their orientation around meeting needs.
56:55: They find their guiding light not from church tradition or doctrine.
57:04: How can a church not have an emphasis on doctrine? Doesn't make any sense. Doesn't Paul write to Titus, you must teach what's in accord with sound doctrine and rebuke and refute those who contradict it?
57:17: So Drucker's got a whole new idea here. So these pastoral churches are not from tradition or doctrine so much as their analysis of their target audience.
57:29: Hybels is a leading example. Before beginning Willow Creek, he went door to door asking unchurched people why they didn't attend church.
57:36: Because they're pagans. They're unrepentant, unregenerate. They're born dead in trespasses and sins and they're at war with God.
57:43: That's why they don't go to church. Sorry. Almost preached there.
57:51: So you're gonna ask pagans why they don't go to church. Okay, and then he built Willow Creek around their answers.
57:58: Pastoral churches waste no time regretting a changing world but see it changes their opportunity for ministry.
58:03: This is precisely the approach that Drucker has urged on businesses, non -profits for decades. In many ways, pastoral churches echo the management thinking that Drucker has long emphasized.
58:14: Okay? In another interview, this one with Christianity Today, 10 years before the one
58:20: I was just reading from, from April of 1989, Drucker says, more and more churches are what
58:26: I call pastoral churches. Their purpose is not to perpetuate a particular liturgy or maintain an existing institutional form.
58:35: Instead, they are asking what my business friends would call the marketing question, who are the customers and what's of value to them?
58:45: So we're gonna ask pagans, unregenerate people who are at war with God, what's of value to them at church?
58:52: And then we're gonna give it to them. Well, here in the United States, pagans like value. They like, well, entertainment and they like sex.
59:00: Seems to be the things that the secret -driven churches obsess on but hey, they're making a difference, right? There's life change going on.
59:08: So who are the customers, what's of value to them? They are more interested in the pastoral question, what do these people need that we can supply?
59:16: Not a crucified and risen savior, but community outreach, right? Then in theological nuances, how can we preserve our distinctive doctrines?
59:27: This isn't even a subtle attack against a doctrine. This is a full -on, full -frontal attack against it.
59:34: And it's hidden in plain sight. I didn't have to get through a firewall to download this article.
59:43: Google it, you can find it on your own, it's really easy. He continues, these churches are growing partly because the younger people need pastoring and not just preaching and partly because very bluntly, people are dreadfully bored with theology.
59:59: They can't appreciate the subtleties and I sympathize with them. I taught religion, I didn't teach theology.
01:00:07: I've always felt that quite clearly, the good Lord loves diversity. He created 2 ,500 species of flies.
01:00:16: If it had been like some of the theologians I know, there would have only been one right species of fly, but there are 2 ,500.
01:00:23: Some pastoral churches appreciate the importance of diversity. Doesn't matter what doctrine you believe, does it?
01:00:33: The Lord loves diversity. No, that means the Lord loves modalists.
01:00:39: He loves prosperity heresy. The Lord loves Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.
01:00:45: He loves Muslims and Buddhists. He loves diversity. We need to go and make a difference in the world and stop quibbling over doctrines.
01:00:56: Is that not what he's saying? So Drucker's dead, okay?
01:01:05: He died, what, 2004, five, six, something in there, right? But Drucker's project to create a new non -economic society has been picked up by Drucker's disciples, and the church is the vehicle for its emergence.
01:01:21: The project continues, okay? A society, remember, that does not recognize the inherent rights of the individual.
01:01:31: Individuals do not exist in time, only the community exists, a global community at that.
01:01:38: Anti -rational, which in the church would mean anti -doctrinal pastoral churches that focus on the imminent, the here and the now, not the transcendent, okay?
01:01:54: Today I'm standing outside of the House of Industry where I'm gonna go in and be the keynote speaker for the 100th centennial of Peter Drucker.
01:02:05: On November 19th, 2009, leaders from the business and public sector, scholars, teachers, economists, and representatives of the non -profit sector from all over the world gathered in Vienna, Austria to commemorate the 100th birthday of Peter F.
01:02:20: Drucker. Peter was far more than the founder of modern management.
01:02:27: He was far more than a brilliant man, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
01:02:35: He was a great soul. For nearly 25 years,
01:02:42: Peter was a mentor to me and had a profound influence on my life in the particular area of leadership and personal development.
01:02:50: Richard Strong, founding president of the Peter Drucker Society of Austria, noted that the participation of Rick Warren at the centennial event is a testimony to the breadth that Drucker associated with the concept of management.
01:03:04: I think as we begin these two days together talking about the principles of Drucker, we can also learn from the person of Drucker.
01:03:14: And may we honor him on his 100th birthday with a new commitment in our own lives to integrity, to humility, and to generosity.
01:03:28: Thank you. You think
01:03:40: Rick Warren believes the individual exists in time? I bet you dollars to donuts he doesn't.
01:03:48: I don't know where that term came from. Synonyms.
01:03:54: Language is important. I'm gonna run a few minutes long. Is that okay with y 'all? Drucker Society of Organizations.
01:04:06: Remember, the smallest unit's an organization, not an individual. Okay, that's what
01:04:11: I noted. Here are the church translations. Community of small groups.
01:04:18: It's the same thing. The smallest primary unit in a
01:04:23: Drucker church is the small group, not the individual. Faith communities.
01:04:32: You ever talk to somebody from another church, oh, what faith community are you a part of? Which tribe do you belong to?
01:04:39: Navajo. Joking. Cellular church.
01:04:45: That's another one. That's an antiquated term, but it's the same thing. Okay. Because here's the truth, friends.
01:04:54: If you love Jesus, you have to love the church because Christ gave himself for the church.
01:05:00: And what can happen is sometimes we think it's just me and Jesus. It's not. The majority of the books of the
01:05:06: Bible are written to churches, not individuals. So the application is often for the church, not just for the individual.
01:05:13: There are individual applications, but it's us together. And we even teach our kids falsely.
01:05:19: Jesus loves who? Me, this I know. We should sing Jesus loves us, this we know.
01:05:29: We're teaching our kids falsely if we teach them Jesus loves me? By the way, that's
01:05:37: Driscoll. That's Mark Driscoll. He's an outspoken critic of Cartesian foundationalism.
01:05:47: He may have thrown his emergent buddies under the bus, but he's just as postmodern as they are. You can't trust him.
01:05:56: Okay, don't trust him. Back in September 12th of 2005,
01:06:04: Malcolm Gladwell interviewed Rick Warren on the
01:06:09: Cellular Church. Aside from one of the funny things that he said in there, that he said that he,
01:06:15: Rick Warren in this article told Malcolm Gladwell that he was Rupert Murdoch's pastor.
01:06:22: Now at the time this was published, I actually put out a press release calling for Rick Warren to discipline
01:06:27: Rupert Murdoch publicly for all of his porn distribution on his satellite networks in Europe.
01:06:35: Because Rupert Murdoch is one of the greatest distributors of porn in the world. And since Rick Warren said publicly in the
01:06:42: New Yorker that he was his pastor, I called on him to discipline him and call him to repentance.
01:06:48: To which Saddleback said, oh, he can't do that. No joke, okay.
01:06:55: Now, here's the fun part. What's the purpose of small groups, okay, in a cellular church?
01:07:03: In a church where the individual doesn't exist? Remember, doctrine isn't important, okay?
01:07:11: This is Rick Warren's answer. Churches, like any large voluntary organization, have at their core a contradiction.
01:07:17: In order to attract newcomers, they must have low barriers to entry, but they must be unintimidating, friendly, and compatible with the culture they are a part of, notice the emphasis on community.
01:07:30: In order to retain their membership, however, they need to have an identity distinct from that culture. They need to give their followers a sense of community.
01:07:37: And community exclusivity, a distinct identity, are all inevitably casualties of growth.
01:07:44: As an economist would say, the bigger an organization becomes, the greater free rider problem it has.
01:07:50: If I go to a church with 500 members in a magnificent cathedral with the spectacular services and music, why should
01:07:56: I volunteer or donate any substantial share of my money? What kind of peer pressure is there in a congregation that large?
01:08:02: If the barriers to entry become too low, and the ties among members become increasingly tenuous, then the church, as it grows bigger, becomes weaker.
01:08:10: One solution to the problem is simply not to grow, and historically, churches have sacrificed size for community.
01:08:17: But there is another approach to create a church out of a network of lots of little church cells. Not individuals, church cells.
01:08:25: Exclusively tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another's homes during the week to worship and pray.
01:08:31: The small group, as an instrument of community, is initially how communism spread.
01:08:38: Sign me up. Really? By the way, the whole 40
01:08:44: Days campaigns that Rick Warren's famous for, he's publicly said he got that from communism too.
01:08:52: I don't like that. Well, why dip from that one? Anyway, in the post -war years, Alcoholics Anonymous, this is where it gets fun, in its 12 -step progeny perfected the small group technique.
01:09:04: The small group did not have a designated leader who stood at the front of the room. Members sat in a circle.
01:09:10: The focus was on discussion, interaction, not one person teaching and the others listening.
01:09:16: And the remarkable thing about these groups was their power. An alcoholic could lose his job and his family and could be hospitalized.
01:09:23: He could be warned by half a dozen doctors and go on drinking, but put him in a room of his peers once a week, make him share the burdens of others and have his burdens shared by others, and he could do something that once seemed impossible.
01:09:37: So we don't get together in a small group to, well, have somebody teach us doctrine. No, no, no. Share our thoughts and our feelings.
01:09:45: How's it going? I'm struggling with this. That's great. So here's the deal.
01:09:52: Think about this for a second. Listen on any given Sunday to a Saddleback Sermon. You got eight to 12 verses ripped out of context teaching you such important life principles as how to better manage your time, how to budget your money, including tithing, how to have a better relationship in the bed at home, how to have better behaved children, how to feel like you're important in the world and do better in your career.
01:10:18: None of that is actually sound biblical doctrine or a correct exegesis of the Bible. And then, the question then is this, where are you actually gonna learn the
01:10:26: Christian faith and what the Bible really teaches? Well, in the small group, right? Wrong, that's not what the small group's for.
01:10:35: Who needs doctrine, right? All right, let's see here.
01:10:46: So, this is a quote from Rick Warren recently from something he wrote on his pastors .com
01:10:53: website. I'm gonna just mention this in passing. In order to make a church grow, you must change the primary role of the pastor from minister to leader, direct quote.
01:11:04: You must change the primary role of the pastor from minister to leader. Where did he get the authority to change the job description of a pastor?
01:11:15: I thought that job description was laid out in scripture, inspired by God the Holy Spirit. Last time
01:11:24: I checked, that's above his pay grade, okay?
01:11:33: He says, so what's the difference? Well, in leadership, you take the initiative. In ministry, you respond to the needs of others.
01:11:39: If you wanna grow your church, you can't be responding to the needs of others. So, let me translate this for you. Translation, he wants pastors to be führers.
01:11:49: Don't be afraid of the term. It's simply the German word for leader. So, a seeker -driven pastor is a führer, not a minister, by definition, okay?
01:12:11: And here's how this works. The way seeker -driven pastors are made, it goes like this.
01:12:16: They're taught that they need to show God that they're serious about receiving from God a direct vision for what
01:12:26: God wants them to do in a specific community setting, as far as planting a church and meeting the needs of the people in the community.
01:12:35: So, he has to make himself worthy to receive the vision, and the way he shows God that he's serious about this is through prayer and fasting and getting other people to pray and fast.
01:12:46: Then what happens is God is up in heaven doing this.
01:12:54: Okay, I think he might be serious or, yeah, he's serious, but not serious enough. So, I'll give him part of the vision, something like that.
01:13:01: So, God gives him a vision, right? He gets the vision.
01:13:08: His job then is to assemble a leadership team, and he shares, God gave me the vision, here it is, this is what we're gonna do, and he casts the vision.
01:13:19: And then his leadership team obviously takes notes, because here's the deal. In the
01:13:24: Führerprinzip, in the leadership principle, the accountability always goes downhill, never comes back up, okay?
01:13:34: So, his leadership team is responsible to him, and their people under them, in the rest of the congregation, they have to then cast the vision down again to them, and everybody gets to get behind the vision as a community, and it's the job of the little people to make the vision come about, to happen.
01:13:56: So, when you go to these Führer conferences, leadership, they're constantly reiterating the importance of casting effective vision.
01:14:07: Cast vision, cast vision, completely talk about the vision, right? And so what happens is, is that it's the job of the people to make the vision happen, you've got this guy who's somehow plugged into God, and then here's the fun part.
01:14:25: Anybody who questions the Führer is an illness in the community, and they must go.
01:14:35: I'm not making this up, because if you become a member in these churches, you sign a membership covenant, and there's a clause in every one of these covenants that says, if you disagree with the vision that the
01:14:50: God gave this pastor, you agree to leave. You are contractually obligated to go.
01:15:00: So, you go, wait a second, that guy's twisting the scripture, he's not teaching the Bible right. Hey, pastor, what do you? Get him out of here, because to question the vision is to question
01:15:13: God himself, and that is not an overstatement.
01:15:22: Let me continue, gotta move quickly here. Synonyms, anti -intellectualism, anti -rationalism of the counter -enlightenment, church translations, anti -doctrinalism, deeds, not creeds.
01:15:37: Remember Rick Warren's famous, we need a second reformation, a reformation of deeds, not creeds.
01:15:44: Head knowledge versus heart knowledge, this is not a biblical category, by the way, that is a truly fascist category.
01:15:52: Unity of faith community, regardless of doctrinal belief, remember God likes diversity, and plurality of truth, that's what they talk about.
01:16:01: Let's talk. You showed up to church this morning, did you show up with a bless me, feed me, make me fatter preacher, I don't intend to do a thing you say, but I'm gonna listen to you, and if you dadgum say one thing
01:16:10: I don't like, I promise I'll cross my arms and cross my eyes at you the rest of the sermon. Did you show up to file a little bit more religious information in your already overloaded hard drive so that you could do absolutely nothing about it?
01:16:20: The church is full of pot -bellied Christians waiting to shove their spiritual food down their mouth one more time, but they don't intend to do anything to bless anybody, you are a
01:16:33: Pharisee, you sit on the front row, you might even take notes, but you take notes so you can argue with them with your roommate after church, and how
01:16:40: I don't really believe in all that. Yeah, but if we ever start turning in this front row Pharisee crowd, I don't think the teaching's deep enough,
01:16:47: I would like a little more hermeneutical explanation on the original languages in the Aramaic and the Hebrew. Jesus says, shut up, help somebody, bless somebody, heal somebody, serve somebody, pray for somebody.
01:16:56: Why don't you do something? Why don't you bring a lost friend to church with you next week, watch Jesus change their life, and then you won't be worried about how loud the music was, you'll just hope that they meet
01:17:04: Jesus! That'll be the only thing you can think about. It'll consume you! But some people say,
01:17:13: I wish you wouldn't preach all these topical sermons, I wish you'd just preach verse by verse through the book of Galatians so that we can understand the full propitiation of the justification by faith.
01:17:21: No, here's what you wanna do, you wanna pull your fat butt up to the table and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat, and some of y 'all even double dip, because you go to three churches, you don't serve at any, and you're fat, and you need to get on a treadmill and do something for Jesus.
01:17:37: Quite the furor, isn't he? Not a pastor. Always some yahoo in the crowd who climbs up in this chair, and they don't get it!
01:17:52: They climb up in this chair and they go, feed me! Wait, pastor, pastor, feed me! And they throw a little baby fit, wanting all the attention, they get up in this chair, oh no, this is not the high chair, this is the high chair!
01:18:12: It's all about me, it's all about me! They sit here whining, oh, I want more, deeper, deeper worship,
01:18:20: I want more Bible study, feed me, feed me! Big, wimpy, soft, baby, sissy, these people wear me out, and I talk to pastors all over the country, and they say, what do you do with the needy people?
01:18:40: I say, the needy who don't yet know Christ, they don't know they matter to God? No, no, the needy, mature
01:18:45: Christians who always want it deeper. This is normal.
01:18:55: This is a recurring theme in every prominent, purpose -driven, seeker -driven congregation that's part of the
01:19:02: Willow Creek Organization, the Purpose -Driven Community, or the Leadership Network. I got so many sermons like this in my archive,
01:19:09: I've lost track. Here's my favorite. They say,
01:19:17: Perry, what about the jackass in the church? The jackass in the church is the person that always screams, I wanna go deeper. You know what
01:19:26: I tell people that say that around here? You're only as deep as the last person you served. You wanna talk deep?
01:19:32: Let's go check your tithing record and see how deep you are. Deep? Deep?
01:19:41: Most Christians are, John Maxwell said it, most Christians are educated way beyond their level of obedience anyway.
01:19:47: What you're really saying is you want me to stand on the stage and confuse the heck out of you so you don't have to apply what I teach on Sundays.
01:19:52: I could do that. I want more worship. You got six other days.
01:20:09: If you were full of Jesus when you walked in here, it wouldn't matter to you how much we sang. By the way, that was at a leadership conference held at his church, and the audience was full of well, about 3 ,000 pastors.
01:20:26: I happened to be in the audience that day. And later, just a little bit before this, actually, he called me a jackass.
01:20:32: So if you come to church expecting the pastor to open up the
01:20:38: Bible and preach the Bible and you go deeper in the Bible, pardon the term, but if you're a noble, makes it clear, you're a jackass.
01:20:48: It's not, they're not a -doctrinal. They're anti -doctrinal. There's no need for it.
01:20:54: Action, emotion, feeling, making a difference. Who needs the transcendent?
01:20:59: We gotta focus on the eminent, right? To the heart of God.
01:21:07: It's not about the people in the house. It's always about the people outside the house. That's why we call ourselves a church of people who don't do church.
01:21:16: Because our church exists for those that don't sit in the seat yet. The church exists for the people who don't sit in the seat yet.
01:21:26: Here's some more examples of some crazy stuff. I don't know much about this.
01:21:31: I was asked to leave. There's Rick Warren preaching to the
01:21:37: Islamic Society of North America. This is a photograph.
01:21:44: The guy on the right, that's Abraham Muhlenberg, the former pastor of interfaith relations at Saddleback.
01:21:54: On the left over there, that's Jihad Turk of the Islamic Society of Los Angeles.
01:22:01: I had a conversation with him, by the way. And they're discussing, prior to Christmas of last year, a document called the
01:22:06: Kingsway Document. A path to end the 1400 years of misunderstanding between Muslims and Christians.
01:22:15: You see? And what did the Kingsway Document say? Well, the
01:22:20: Orange County Register published part of it. So, who?
01:22:25: We believe in one God. God is one. See Mark chapter 12, verse 29, as well as Muhammad 47, 19.
01:22:32: God is the creator, Genesis 1, Al -Shura 42, 11. God is different from the world. Look at all this common ground we have with Muslims.
01:22:40: Who knew? You know, if we just get rid of doctrine, then we can just all get along. Because remember,
01:22:46: God likes diversity. And it's those theologians who tell us that, you know, if it was up to the theologians, they'd tell us there's only one correct species of fly.
01:22:54: Right? And that's Abraham Muhlenberg teaching kingdom circles in France. The scariest part of this is the societal part.
01:23:07: This is actually from Rick Warren's website. Okay? Remember I told you they're trying to create a society.
01:23:13: I'm gonna show you the scariest quote in all of this. Dr. Rick Warren launches purpose -driven
01:23:19: Living in Uganda campaign. Okay? From March 29th.
01:23:25: The important quote is just a little bit later, and here it is at the bottom. Pastor Rick has partnered with President Kagame, that's of Rwanda, to make
01:23:33: Rwanda a purpose -driven country. What's that? And why would a pastor be involved in such a project?
01:23:40: I ask, why not Uganda as well? Archbishop Orambi challenged an unprecedented gathering of 450 national leaders at a banquet gathered to hear
01:23:50: Dr. Warren speak. Quote, Uganda could be a purpose -driven nation as well, but it takes people of purpose to build purpose -driven churches, purpose -driven communities, and a purpose -driven country.
01:24:01: Someday, we will have a purpose -driven continent. And I go, what are they up to?
01:24:12: Well, the answer's simple. Drucker said he wants to create a new society, not based on economics.
01:24:19: The project continues, and Warren is the one who's picked it up. I just wanna show this little video. Hi, everybody, and welcome to News and Views for March 27, 2012.
01:24:28: I am so glad to be back home. You know, I've been overseas. We have been in Rwanda for about nine days, and I wanna tell you,
01:24:38: I'm more excited about purpose -driven and the peace plan than I've ever been because I saw an amazing result.
01:24:46: I'm watching an entire nation being transformed because of you, Saddleback Church, because of your commitment to the peace plan, amazing things are happening in Rwanda.
01:24:57: Did you know that in the last five years, we've been there now about eight years, in the last five years, one million people are no longer in poverty.
01:25:05: That's 10 % of the nation that's in the nation of Rwanda, 10 million people. One million people have come out of poverty since the peace plan started there.
01:25:14: The president was flat -out overjoyed. I spent two days with the president's advisory council, which
01:25:20: I serve on. I spoke to a national prayer breakfast to about 400 of the leading government leaders.
01:25:27: There was great enthusiasm. In fact, they've asked me to train their leadership. I had private meetings with the president of the central bank, the governor of the central bank, and the prime minister, of course, with the president, and these men have asked me to do leadership training for that nation with the government because they've seen what's happened with our pastors.
01:25:46: You know, we began training pastors in Rwanda a number of years ago. That's the first step.
01:25:51: We start with equip servant leaders and promote reconciliation, the
01:25:56: P and the E of peace, and we now have over 2 ,300 pastors in this small country of Rwanda who've gone through three solid years of training, and that is an amazing effect.
01:26:11: I did two graduations, one in the south, one in the north, for about 90 in the south and about 80 in the north of these pastors who had gone through, finished three years of training, and these people are so excited about building the class system, about doing the peace plan, and they are reaching out in their community, and they are changing that nation.
01:26:34: We're watching it literally change before our eyes. We also, while we were there, graduated about 3 ,000 of our healthcare workers, which you know we've been doing this project in Karanji where we took members of churches, trained them, they trained others, they trained others.
01:26:50: We now in just two years have over 3 ,000 of these trained. Each of these community peace servants visits seven families a week, and they go out and they visit, and they do healthcare, and they take care.
01:27:02: This is in a region that had very little medical infrastructure, only a few doctors and nurses and stuff like that, and we're going into villages that have never had a doctor, and the church is providing healthcare because of the peace plan.
01:27:18: The president of Rwanda asked me to personally thank those of you, over 1 ,000
01:27:23: Saddleback members have gone to Rwanda. Can you imagine that? Over 1 ,000 of you have served in Rwanda, and I see your handprints and impact literally everywhere, in the business sector, in the farming sector, in the health sector, in the government sector, and of course in the church because everything we do is in and through the church.
01:27:43: We saw a number of new projects that we're starting, including training, setting up preschools in churches, a project on helping people learn to do savings together.
01:27:58: You know, 90 plus percent of Rwandans have never had a bank account, and we're helping them set up savings accounts between each other in the church where they pool their money and they help each other out, and they're serving each other, and the return on the investment is about 50 % to these.
01:28:15: Not individual savings accounts, community savings accounts.
01:28:21: My question is, how many of those folks in Rwanda have been brought to repentance of their sins in faith and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins?
01:28:33: All this stuff on the here and now, nothing about facing the wrath of God. First principles,
01:28:42: Clarice, simplicity. Marcus Aurelius, of each particular thing, when we ask, what is it in itself, what is its nature?
01:28:51: When we consider the seeker -driven church movement, ask yourself, what is its nature?
01:28:59: Thanks for letting me talk. So what'd you think? I'd love to get your feedback.
01:29:04: If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so at my email address,
01:29:12: TalkBackAtFightingForTheFaith .com, or you can ask to be my friend on Facebook, it's Facebook .com forward slash PirateChristian, or you can follow me on Twitter, my name there, at PirateChristian.
01:29:21: Until next week, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.