Andy Stanley Disrespects First Baptist Atlanta / Father's Ministry? Made People Cynical & Critical

Hello, and thank you for listening to the

Testing the Spirits Podcast. Today we're going to be talking more about the seeker -sensitive churches, the seeker -friendly, you know, rock -and -roll churches, and how they really have a level.

I'm going to show you, based on the statements of one of their leaders, I'm going to show you how they really have a level of, not just disrespect, but a level of contempt, disgust towards traditional

Christians, traditional churches. They even make fun of traditional Christians.

I'm going to show you that in this clip by Andy Stanley. So you may have saw the thumbnail, and that's why you clicked on it.

You said, did Andy Stanley really disrespect his father's ministry? Did he really speak against – well, yeah.

This is kind of hard to believe. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I mean, I know Andy Stanley has disrespect in these mega -churches, the seeker -sensitive churches.

They have disrespect even for the Bible. So I guess it shouldn't surprise me. But Andy Stanley is going to talk about his upbringing and how he was brought up in the church.

And you'll see how he has, it seems like, disgust for traditional ministries.

And of course, the church that Andy Stanley was brought up in was his dad's church, First Baptist Atlanta.

So disrespectful. But I'm going to show you, this isn't just about Andy Stanley. It's the problem with these mega -churches, these rock and roll churches, even the smaller churches that tried to emulate these guys.

And he's going to say, you know, we started growing, and a lot of smaller churches, they wanted to grow too.

So they kind of followed along and did what we did. And yeah, now every church is like this.

And of course, it's not every church, but let's just listen to what Andy Stanley had to say. And yeah, wow, just seems totally disrespectful.

Listen. We grew up in church, and we don't want to be church for church people. We've done that. We saw where that led.

It makes people cynical and critical. Come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus, and rescue us and rapture us out of this horrible cesspit so you can condemn all, you know, just not even, that's definitely not biblical.

So notice he says, you know, we grew up in church. And Andy Stanley grew up in his dad's church,

First Baptist Atlanta. So we grew up in this environment, and it made people cynical. And he's going to talk about how people, they were just judgmental.

And you can hear it in his voice. He has disdain for all of this.

So now that his father is gone, for him to say something like that, I just think it's disrespectful.

Number one, but that's, this is a good window into the thinking of these rock and roll mega church pastors, the seeker sensitive movement.

You say, what is the seeker sensitive movement? Basically Andy Stanley is going to describe that here in this clip.

Watch. So then what happened? What do you think happened? Well, when a bunch of churches like ours begin to grow quickly, everybody's like, hmm, we want to grow quickly.

So all the hens ran to the other side of the hen house. It's like, we want to do this too. And suddenly casual was cool and bands are in and choirs are out and handbells are like way out, you know, except for traditional.

Then do you remember this? You don't see this much anymore. For years and years and years, you'd drive by a church, contemporary service, you know, nine o 'clock.

Cause you know, you gotta give the older people their 11 o 'clock service, traditional service. Everybody's going to do both of these.

What were they doing? Well, they were this, they saw this as a church growth strategy.

Okay. So this is a church growth strategy, Rick Warren. And this is the sermon where Andy Stanley was defending

Rick Warren. That's what got the most attention in the sermon. But he's talking about this.

Yeah. It's a church growth strategy. Rick Warren wrote the book, the purpose driven church. I know

I read that book. And if I remember correctly, Rick Warren said in order to build a successful church, you need to find out what the people want and then give it to them.

And it was all based on business strategies. And Andy Stanley once said in the past that we need to get rid of the idea of a pastor, you know, like a shepherd, like give me a break.

That's like 2000 years ago, they had shepherds, pastors, get rid of that word.

Leaders of churches should be CEOs or more like CEOs. And that's how these guys,

Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, that's how they run churches. They're like CEOs. It's a business and they find out what people want and they give it to them.

And of course, today in a major city like Atlanta, it's a very liberal area.

The people want LGBT inclusion and that's what Andy Stanley is giving to them.

So Andy Stanley's church started to grow and grow and grow and a lot of small churches were actually tore apart because, you know, the older pastor would retire.

The young guy would come in and he would try to transition the traditional church into one of these rock and roll churches and a lot of church splits, but he goes on.

And so all the late comers and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of churches now everywhere you go, every church kind of looks the same.

There's no more steeples. The buildings are different. Everybody dresses casuals, right? And the modern church vibe they got, the feel, look and feel and cool and casual.

But I'm telling you, because this is what I do. They miss the heart and the passion of this movement.

Because our goal and the goal of the people who came before me even and before us, their goal wasn't growth, it was reach.

We set out, the reason we made the changes we did wasn't to be cool. We got accused of that all the time. You're just trying to be cool.

And we'll look at them and go, well, nothing much anyway, sorry. Okay.

So notice how he's making, he's making fun of like his dad's church. I don't know if he's making fun of his father and saying he's not cool, but I mean, that, that's essentially what he's saying.

Those traditional churches, those churches where the pastor dresses up, cause we're casual, we play rock and roll, we have bands.

So those churches where the pastor wears a suit and tie and they're singing amazing grace. I mean, they're totally not cool.

Ha ha ha. And everyone laughs. Doesn't that tell you how they feel? This is the thing.

These seeker sensitive mega churches, they have no respect for tradition. And we're not talking about unbiblical traditions.

We're talking about just being traditional. And really what we're talking about is believing the

Bible. Listen to what he says next. You know why we did this? We set out to remove obstacles. We set out to invite people to follow

Jesus. Uh, no, that's not what, that's not what they're doing. You can't be

LGBT affirming and follow Jesus. Okay. That's, that's not it.

So, but what are the obstacles that they were tearing down?

Well, the obstacle or the obstacles that Andy Stanley and people of his ilk,

Rick Warren, the obstacles they were tearing down were the teachings of the Bible. Listen to what he says about the

Bible in this clip. The truth is Christians are not expected to believe what we believe based on a collection of ancient manuscripts written by men who never met each other over the course of hundreds of years and a time when everybody was superstitious and everybody believed in the gods and there was no modern science.

So Christians aren't expected to believe these ancient manuscripts. Christians aren't expected to believe the

Bible. And you're like, I don't think that's what he was saying. Listen to this clip. Foundation of our faith is not the scripture.

That's what he's saying. The foundation of our faith is not the scripture. I don't know if you could hear that or not, but that's what he said.

The foundation of our faith is not the scripture. Why? Because he goes on in this clip to say that the Bible, a lot of it's not even true.

Even though, you know, it was something to appreciate. It wasn't necessarily something that was factual. And even though there were stories in here that were inspirational, they weren't necessarily true.

Okay. So now you're getting the picture. You're getting the idea of why these rock and roll pastors, mega church, seeker sensitive pastors, why they have such contempt for traditional

Christianity, because they follow the Bible. They follow the Bible and they have all these rules.

Those churches, this is what they often say. Those churches were legalistic. They have all these rules.

Oh, you mean like the commandments of God? Yeah. Let's, let's do away with all that, right? Let's unhitch from the old

Testament. So it's, this isn't just Andy Stanley. This is the typical seeker sensitive church.

Now, not all contemporary churches are like this. I said this in a previous video, just because there's a drum set on stage, doesn't mean the pastor feels this way.

And he has contempt for traditional Christians. I want to be fair. So not all of them are like this, but this is pretty common.

And you can see this, this contempt just kind of oozing out of Andy Stanley.

And really what he's against is the teachings of the Bible, but it just comes out and how he speaks about traditional churches that uphold biblical teaching.

One last clip. We grew up in church and we don't want to be church for church people. We've done that. We saw where that led.

It makes people cynical and critical and they turn their backs to community and everybody doesn't agree with them.

They're just wrong and they're going to hell anyway. And if you get saved, come on in, but we can't have anything to do with you. Like Peter going,

I know I need to go in there. I know I need to go in there, but I just can't go in there. There it is all over again. So unfortunately, this is why

I'm talking about this. Unfortunately, much of that progress that you were a part of creating at other churches, not just us, much of that progress is being undermined and reversed like crazy right now.

And that's true and praise God. And hopefully I'm one of those pastors trying to undermine the quote unquote progress, you know, being progressive, right?

It's not progress. They're actually just trying to unhitch the Bible from Christianity.

That's what seeker sensitive Christianity often becomes. Let's have the church. Let's have

Christianity without the Bible. That's really what he wants. And just to pick up, I just want to play that clip again.

Notice what he said. I'm going to show you the error here. We grew up in church and we don't want to be church for church people.

We done that. We saw where that led. It makes people cynical and critical. Again, what church is he talking about?

What church did he grow up in? His father's church, Charles Stanley's first Baptist Atlanta.

So again, total, totally disrespectful, but listen to what he says about,

I guess that church and churches like them. Listen to what he says about them. And they turn their backs to community and everybody doesn't agree with them.

They're just wrong. And they're going to hell anyway. And if you get saved, come on in, but we can't have anything to do with you. So these people turn their back on community.

No, they don't. There was a vibrant community within first Baptist Atlanta and a lot of traditional churches.

They have wonderful community, but yeah, he said, well, what he's implying is that they're just all these, you know, bad judgmental people and they're not cool.

And they're judgmental and it's really a straw man argument because he's being just as judgmental, right?

I mean, he's just judging them, but see, that's okay. Cause I'm right. And they're wrong, but he, he accuses them of thinking that, that we're right.

And you're wrong. Well, who gets to determine that? The Bible, God gets to determine what's.

So Andy is kind of the pot calling the kettle black. He accuses them of he's doing, but Andy is moving away from scripture.

So if anyone is more correct than the other, it was the people at first Baptist Atlanta.

I mean, you might have doctrinal differences and some people watching, I'm sure we'll have some things that they disagreed with from with Charles Stanley's ministry.

But I think one thing you have to admit, Andy Stanley is just way off the reservation. One last thing he says, you know, they're doing church for church people.

Well, the, the local church is for Christians. That's what the body of Christ is.

The congregation, the assembly of baptized born again believers. Yes.

We realized there's always unsaved people in the church. And that's why we preach the gospel, not only to reinforce it to people who already believe, but because there may be visitors and we want to be evangelistic, but that's church is for Christians.

I mean, just, this is ecclesiology 101, right? Church is the body of believers, but he thinks that church having church for church people is terrible.

You're turning your back on community. You need to reach the lost, which I would say, yes, we do need to reach the loss.

That's what evangelism is for. That's what outreach is for. That's why we have missions. That's why we have evangelists.

And yes, there's even that work of evangelism that goes on in the church. But these seeker sensitive churches, we'll just close with this.

This is maybe their biggest foundational error. The main foundational error is that they think church is for unbelievers.

That's essentially what he's saying. Church isn't just church for church people.

That's terrible. Church should be for unbelievers. That's why they have the rock and roll. That's why they don't open the

Bible. That's why they are going astray, because they're turning the church into not the flock, the pastor leading the flock, a flock of sheep.

Now with these churches, it's basically a wolf leading a pack of goats.

Now that's what North Point is. And I'm just going to tell it like it is. So stay away from Andy Stanley.

If you know anyone who is following him, yes,

I listen to him and I pay attention because I feel like I need to warn people.

But as far as people who just digest Andy Stanley sermons and they think this is where they're getting good

Bible teaching, wow, is he leading people astray. And again, very disrespectful the way he talks about his upbringing at his dad's church.

So there you go. A rebellious child and pretty sad.