Is Vision Casting Biblical?

Fighting for the Faith

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You know, you hear people say, well, why do you go to that church so I can be fed? You don't come here so you can be fed. You come here to help me and tap and fulfill his vision.

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That is, if God called you here, you hadn't been called so you can be fed the word. Now, if you get fed in the midst of it, that's good, but you've been called to find your part in bringing this vision to pass in the earth.

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That's why you've been called to the church. So if you're just kind of sitting around being fed but not understanding that you have a part to play in this vision coming to pass, that's why

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God called you. When God calls a person to a church, you're called to that church to help that pastor fulfill that vision.

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Now, you see, Creflo Dollar, that's Creflo Dollar, famous Word of Faith teacher, he just comes out and says it.

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He just comes out and says what your pastor might be thinking. You're not here to be fed.

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You're here to fulfill my vision for this church. Creflo Dollar will come out and say, and his people will clap, and they nod their heads, and they say, yeah, we're part of the vision.

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Vision has, well, I dare say it's a word that has more or less taken over many congregations nowadays, and what is perpetrated, if I could use that word, and I think it's safe to say, what's been perpetrated in the name of the pastor's vision, the church's vision, our vision, the mission's vision, whatever it may be, in the church is really reaching disastrous proportions.

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And you don't have to go to a Word of Faith church to hear your pastor talk about his vision or the congregation's vision and your place in fulfilling that vision.

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Greetings and welcome to Issues, etc., we're coming to you live from the studios of Lutheran Public Radio in Collinsville, Illinois.

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I'm Todd Wilkin. Thanks for tuning us in. Chris Roseborough will be our guest for the first hour of the program on this

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Tuesday afternoon. It's the 19th of June. We're going to be talking about vision casting in the church. It used to be vision casting was something that the pagans and the heathens did.

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Now, apparently, the Christians are doing it, too. Chris Roseborough will be our guest in the second hour of the program.

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We'll spend that hour responding to our earlier interview on Rapture Theology with Dr.

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Thomas Ice. Dr. Kim Riddlebarger will be our guest. He's authored several books, including A Case for Amillennialism, Understanding the

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End Times. That's hour two of Issues, etc. Now, you can join us for the next two hours, 1 -877 -623 -6943, 877 -623 -6943, send us an email, talk back at issuesetc .org,

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Chris Roseborough is a regular guest. He has a degree in religious studies from Concordia University, California.

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He's host of the daily Internet talk show called Fighting for the Faith. Chris, welcome back. Thanks for having me back,

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Todd. You heard Creflo Dollar there. He says to his people, you're not here to be fed by God's word. If that happens, it's okay.

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But you're here to fulfill the vision. What does he mean? What's your reaction? Well, first of all, my reaction is that that's nowhere taught in scripture, nowhere in the

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Bible do we hear in regards to the pastoral office that we're to expect that pastors are to receive visions from God as to what they're supposed to be doing in the church.

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He's basically doing something that's far above his pay grade. But the other piece of that is that what he's doing is taking a business concept and attaching to it a prophetic interpretation in the business world that we have mission and vision statements.

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For instance, the Fortune 500 companies, you can go onto the website and you can find the most successful companies out there have mission and vision statements.

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These are basically statements that tell us the direction of a company, what they're supposed to be focusing on so that they don't get off track and wander off of what they're good at or outside of their core competencies.

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But as this has got brought into the church, it's taken on a prophetic overtone, if I may undertone it, an overt prophetic overtone, that God is the one who's given a vision to individual congregations, that they're supposed to then do specific things or do church a particular way in a particular cultural setting, and that you can't question this then because it comes all the way from the man upstairs.

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Now, you said it's nowhere in the Bible, but I've often heard, I mean, dozens of times, even in our own

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Lutheran circles, pastors say and justify their vision casting with Proverbs 29, 18, without vision, the people perish.

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Well, I find it very disconcerting and very disappointing that a Lutheran pastor with an education from Concordia, Fort Wayne or Concordia, St.

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Louis, would engage in such a roughshod treatment of the biblical text. I mean, I have a degree in religious studies and biblical languages, and I can tell you most clearly that when somebody just quotes half of a sentence or a third of a verse, they're not correctly quoting it in context.

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Proverbs 29, 18, by the way, the whole thing from the English Standard Version says, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law of the

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Lord. When you put the rest of the verse to that statement, it's clear what's being talked about there is not vision casting or that we're to expect a pastor receiving a prophetic vision.

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Instead, it's talking about the prophetic vision of God's word. That's why the Torah is mentioned there at the end part of that verse.

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Real quickly, someone's going to say, well, there's a difference, Chris, between Creflo Dollar, who does say he literally receives visions, private revelations, from God, because he's

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Word -faith, and that's part of that kind of mixed -up theology, and my local pastor, I even read a bio of one, they just elected one district president in the

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Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, whose bio in his former congregation was, he was seeing your pastor in charge of fashioning and casting visions.

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In that particular case, I would say that qualitatively there is no difference, because when you're casting vision, you're basically claiming the authority of God behind your vision, and you are protecting that vision as if it comes from God himself.

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It's a form of enthusiasm. So in that case, just because the pastor or leader in question doesn't have the credentials of Creflo Dollar as a

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Word -of -Faith televangelist doesn't mean that he doesn't have something in common with him. And the two things that they would have in common are enthusiasm.

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They're basically shremeri who are believing that they are receiving direct revelation from God, or that God has somehow put his imprimatur and stamp of approval upon their vision, and therefore it is to be guarded and protected as, you know, well, basically a prophetic vision from God.

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We're going to hear a lot in the course of our conversation here from a man named Jim Sutherland of Church Transitions, Inc.

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What do we need to know about Sutherland? Well, it's Dan Sutherland. Dan Sutherland, he's one of the guys who is the go -to guy in the purpose -driven communities with the

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Rick Warren's organization. And for more than a decade, Church Transitions, Inc.,

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and Dan Sutherland has been the guy who's been teaching the seminar that is used to take pastors from having traditional congregations to having purpose -driven congregations.

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In fact, Dan's written a book called Transitioning that was published by Zondervan and had the foreword done by Rick Warren himself.

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So this is a guy who is way, way, way up in the purpose -driven community as far as, you know, taking somebody from a traditional church to a purpose -driven church.

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So let's hear how Dan Sutherland of Church Transitions, Inc., defines vision. Here's the definition of vision.

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Vision is a picture of what God wants to do. That's all it is. It's a picture of what

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God wants to do. Okay. How do you respond, Chris? Well, that's how they define it.

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It's a picture of what God wants to do. Now, in the purpose -driven setting, it's also important to note that they have taken the mystic, enthusiastic teaching of Henry Blackaby.

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He's a kind of a Baptist mystic, that this idea that you've got to go and find what

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God is doing in the world and join Him, and that God is not going to bless your plans, you have to find what

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God is already blessing and join Him in that. That's a key component of this. And so these people literally believe that God has a picture of what

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He wants to do at your church, and that He's ready to give it to you, but you've got to make yourself worthy to receive this vision.

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You know, salvation might be by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ's work alone, but receiving a vision, that's all based on law and works and how far along you are in the sanctification trail.

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Is that the same Henry Blackaby of experiencing God's fame? It's the exact same

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Henry Blackaby, and the experiencing God curriculum is a core component and major foundation theologically of the whole concept of vision casting.

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Here's Dan Sutherland again, he's asking people, what percentage of the vision God wants you to see?

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I'd like you to do this. I'd like you to answer this question for me. Rate yourself from one to a hundred on how much you're praying for the vision and the future of your church.

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Not the present, not the problems now, how much are you praying for the vision and the future of your church?

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If you're so busy with the present that you're not doing that at all, then that's one. If it's keeping you up late at night and staying on your mind all through the day, that's a hundred.

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Rate yourself. If you're embarrassed by your number, add 50 to it. Write a number down, would you?

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I want everybody here to write a number down. If you don't like your number, write it in code. Your neighbor doesn't have to see it. Write a number down.

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Everybody got a number? Now, would you do this? Add a percentage sign after your number, a percentage sign.

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And here's the wild statement. That's the maximum percent of what God wants to do.

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You're ever going to see. If I pray at a 25 % level, then

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God can only do 25 % of what he wants to do in my life and my church. All right, Chris, you got a minute.

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What the heck is Sutherland saying? Basically, it's, it's all up to you. God wants to give you the vision, but if you're only 25 % committed, then

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God's hands are tied. He can only give you 25 % of the vision. So the more obedient you are, the more clear and the more content of the vision that God's perfect picture of what he wants to do in your church in the future, he'll give to you.

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Where are they getting this stuff? About 30 seconds. They're making it up. These are the delusions and teachings of men.

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This is nowhere taught in scripture. Chris Roseborough is our guest. We're talking about vision casting in the church.

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Maybe your pastor has spent some time casting his vision. Maybe some of what you're hearing here from Creflo Dollar or Dan Sutherland.

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We'll hear a little bit from Mark Driscoll a little bit later. Maybe it sounds sadly familiar to you.

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Keep listening. Chris Roseborough, our guest. We're talking about vision casting in the church on this Tuesday afternoon, June the 19th.

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Visit our website, wittenbergacademy .org to find out more. Number two, we are united under the visionary.

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Now the visionary here is Eric. The Crossing is built on the vision that God gave pastor

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Eric, and we will aggressively defend that vision. Now, what does that mean? You're aggressively defend that.

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That means that we do church the way he wants us to do it. And me as a campus pastor, I can't go up to Zimmerman and decide that I'm going to preach on Sunday because that's not the vision that we have for this church that God gave to Eric.

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And we defend that when people go, well, maybe we should do it this way. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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You don't understand. God gave Eric this vision. We do it this way because we don't want to argue with God.

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Basically. We don't want to be like, you know, Eric's not God. We're not saying Eric's God. He's not God. He's got a vision from God and we have decided with our lives that we're going to follow that vision and we're going to stick to that.

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And if we ever just decide that we don't want to be a part of that vision, then we can go find a church and serve somewhere else.

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And that's, that's okay. We're not telling anybody that they have to unite under this vision that, that Eric got from God.

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You can do whatever you want, but we think that it's a really cool vision. We're on board with it and we're going to defend it and we're going to stick to it.

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That's Pastor Jason Keech of the Crossing Church in Elk River, Minnesota, articulating what it means to live under one man's vision.

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We're talking about vision casting in the church. Chris Roseborough is our guest. I'm Todd Wilkin. This is Issues, etc.

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Chris, that sounds, well, on the one hand, it sounds like if you want to be a member of this church, you are going to do what that guy says, because he says he's getting what he says from God.

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Yeah, that's exactly right. You'll notice that as soon as somebody says that they've received a vision from God, he has the authority of God behind him.

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And to question the vision, to challenge the leader, to ask questions or cast doubt on the vision is to cast doubt on God himself.

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I mean, you might as well have said that the word of the Lord came to the prophet Eric Dykstra or to the prophet

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Mark Driscoll or whoever these vision casts. And therefore, I mean, you've got to tack this on to the end of your

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Bible now. We're getting direct revelation, according to these guys, as to what God wants to do. And if you challenge that, you're challenging

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God himself. You've become an enemy of God when you question these visions that these guys are claiming to be receiving.

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In practice, I mean, he says, I can't decide to preach on Sunday because that's not part of the vision. It sounds like the vision is not just some kind of amorphous, we're going to be the best church ever, and we're going to worship dynamically, and we're going to reach out to the community.

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It sounds like it's pretty darn specific. God decides who preaches on Sunday. Well, yeah, a lot of it's written down, and a lot of it's highly focused.

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And these seeker -driven pastors are really coached to make that vision as sharp as a

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No. 2 pencil can possibly be. But at the same time, you know, there's always a trump card there. You know, if somebody challenges something, you can say, that's not part of the vision, and so you get all the stuff that gets lumped into it, and therefore you can't challenge

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God. But the other piece of it, you're right, it's very specific. There's a lot of details in it, and a lot of times the vision will be something along the lines of, we've received a vision from God to do church for the unchurched according to the cultural and pop culture mores and preferences of people living in Austin, Texas.

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And so, you know, we're going to do cowboy church or something like that. And so, you know, it's always in a cultural setting.

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And so, you know, there's community mores that kind of get thrown into all of this. And so there's very specific things that get thrown into the mix there.

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But it's all part and parcel of the seeker -driven approach to so -called growing the church.

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Now, again, what we heard there from Jason Keech of Crossing Church was rather overtly stated.

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I mean, he just flat out said, this other pastor here has got a vision from God. We don't question

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God, therefore we don't question that pastor's vision. If you don't like it, you can go someplace else. It's not often stated in such stark terms.

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And yet, isn't exactly the same kind of vision -casting mentality at work in a lot of congregations where the pastor doesn't have the guts to say, follow my vision or else?

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Yeah, you're exactly right. It's the same mentality, but whether or not the pastor has the chutzpah to hang it all out there the way a lot of the seeker -driven guys are,

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I think it might depend on the biblical literacy of the people that they're teaching.

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For instance, Pastor Jason has never been to seminary. I mean, he was just kind of an ordinary Joe who was promoted to associate pastor, but he's never been to seminary.

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So it's a little bit easier. But when you've got a congregation or you're in a denomination where you've got a lot of people who really know their stuff biblically, to talk this way in that setting is to commit suicide.

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You're going to find yourself meeting a lot of stiff biblical opposition. So what they'll do is they'll save this kind of talk for behind closed doors and not be so overt.

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It just really depends on how biblically astute your congregation or your setting is.

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Let's listen to what Dan Sutherland had to say about experiencing God by Henry Blackaby.

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Now, Henry Blackaby has taught me more about this idea than anyone else.

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How many of you've done Blackaby's study, experiencing God? Killer stuff, killer, killer stuff.

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You ought to do it every three or four years just to be reminded. Tell me the principle behind Blackaby's study, those of you that have done it.

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What is it? Yeah, see what God's doing in the world and joining and joining.

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Now, here's what we do in our churches. We say, hey, God, I've got a great plan for my church.

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Will you come down here and bless my plan? No. God has never done that.

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God will never do that. God stands instead way over here and says, well,

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I'm already blessing these things. Why don't you join me in what

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I'm already blessing? Oh, Lord, you don't understand. My plan's original. My plan's unique.

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My plan's mine. Won't you come bless my plan? Here's a key, key truth.

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It took me 20 years to grab this. God never joins us.

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Never. He invites us to join him.

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Okay, that's Dan Sutherland talking about how the God vision thing works here.

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Chris, I find his statement the height of irony because he's essentially, when he says, well,

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I've got an idea, no God has an idea, by claiming that he's got God's idea, how is he sure that it isn't just his idea that he thinks is

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God's idea? Because there's no objective way of measuring this whatsoever. Well, they would point to growth in the seeker -driven way of thinking.

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The assumption is this. Every living thing grows and changes.

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So if your church is truly alive, then it's going to grow numerically and it will change.

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It will not stay the same. And so they would then say, with that assumption,

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I can now go and look out there in the church landscape and see what God is blessing based upon what's growing and what's changing.

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And wouldn't you know it, the seeker -driven church model, you know, doing church for the unchurched and small groups and being pragmatic in your preaching and teaching and all, that's growing and it's changing.

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Therefore, that must be alive. That must be what God is blessing. So God's not going to bless my plans.

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So I need to dump all of that and I need to join that movement of God where God is already at work.

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Where is the Bible in all of this? Well, you'll notice that it's supplemented.

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The Bible is there, kind of, but, you know, we've got a direct word from God, from a vision, and we've got this

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Henry Blackaby stuff that says, I can experience God by finding what he's doing in the world and joining him. So we've got the

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Bible and it's Bible and direct revelation, Bible and vision from God.

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And so they would say, listen, we're following what God has commanded us to do. But it's not found in the scripture.

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It's found in the vision that came down from God to our leader. There's also a dark side to this.

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Let's listen to what Dan Southerland has to say to people who oppose the vision. So I said,

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I'm allowed as the moderator to speak to this. And here's what I say. I'm not going back. God's given us a new vision to do church for the unchurched, and I'm not going back.

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Now, you men can vote to take the church back. And if you vote, yes, we want the church to go back to the way we used to do it.

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I will resign tonight. The other two pastors will resign in the morning. We'll go across the street to the empty field, rent a tent, put it up, and we'll do church for the unchurched next week right here in Fort Lauderdale, because that's what

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God has called us to do. Now, you guys can vote however you want. But I've got to do this.

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What's Sutherland saying there, Chris? I've got a vision from God. I have to obey God. It's not in the

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Bible. I got it directly from him. And if you oppose the vision, you're opposing God. But I'm under orders from God himself, from the vision

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I received. Therefore, I've got to be obedient to it. And if you're opposing me, you're being disobedient to God.

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So his vision, in this case it would be Dan Sutherland telling the story, his vision trumps anything anyone in that congregation would think or believe or read in the

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Bible. That's absolutely correct. And the way these guys in practice work that out is that they exercise, in the truest sense of the word, excommunication for anybody who challenges, questions the vision, because by doing so, you're questioning

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God. And so now we've got a new category when it comes to church discipline.

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In the biblical sense, church discipline is reserved for those who persist in unrepentant sin, even when challenged and called to repentance, or those who are teaching doctrine contrary to sound biblical doctrine.

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That's what church discipline is reserved for. These guys have a brand new category. The new category is the center of the vision.

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And that results in immediate and swift and merciless excommunication.

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Chris Rosebrough is our guest. We're talking about vision casting in the church. Your pastor may talk about the vision.

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It may sound kind and gentle, but this is what is lurking behind it. Make no mistake about it.

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The people who take vision casting seriously, who take it to its logical conclusion, this is what you get.

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It's Tuesday afternoon, June the 19th. I'll call the number 1 -877 -623 -MYIE, talk back at issuesetc .org,

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and stay informed, more informed than you've ever been. We are united under one vision.

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Elevation is built on the vision God gave Pastor Stephen. We will aggressively defend our unity and that vision.

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Just an excerpt from promotional video featuring Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's called

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Elevation Code, oddly enough. That just sounds creepy to me.

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I mean, I've listened to stuff from the Scientologists and I'm having a hard time telling the difference.

29:41

We're talking about vision casting in the church. Chris Rosebro is our guest. Am I right to be kind of creeped out by this,

29:47

Chris? Yeah, you really, really should, because this is not a biblical teaching.

29:53

Nowhere in Scripture are we told to expect that pastors are to receive specific visions from God and that the job of Christ's sheep is to get behind the vision or be excommunicated.

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I'll be blunt. I think this is a doctrine of demons. I mean, this is flat out. It has its origin in the pit of hell.

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Now, I've heard it twice then already from two different sources in these actualities that we've played, that here's the vision.

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We're going to defend it. What's going on there? Well, that's the idea. In a vision casting church, the role of the pastor has changed radically.

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In fact, Rick Moore himself at the Pastors .com website a couple of actually like a month and a half, two months ago, said this.

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He says, you must change the primary role of the pastor from being a minister to being a leader.

30:43

OK, and the idea is this, is that in a vision casting setup, the leadership model completely changes.

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And the idea is that the pastor then is the visionary leader. He's received the vision from God, this picture of what

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God wants to do. His job is to cast the vision to his leadership team.

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He surrounds himself with his own leadership team and each of the people on the leadership team.

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Then their job is to organize the people in the congregation underneath them to make that vision into a reality.

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So you don't go to church to hear God's word. You go to church to be organized into a movement to make the pastor's vision come about.

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And so their loyalty isn't to Christ anymore. Their loyalty is to the vision that they believe has its origin in Christ.

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But there's no biblical warrant for any of this. And their loyalty, it would seem, by extension, isn't to Scripture, because Scripture might disagree with the pastor's vision.

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That's correct. In fact, what you find in these types of churches or where this leadership model is employed is that those people who bring up biblical arguments, they're immediately attacked with ad hominem arguments themselves.

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They'll say, oh, that person's a Pharisee. See, that person's just a Bible thumping Pharisee, and they need to shut up and get busy behind the pastor or get out.

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So what you find over and over again is that those who are bringing biblical objections, they are marginalized, viciously attacked, and if they don't catch the drift that they're going to, that they're in trouble, they will be ejected from these congregations.

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And it's also not uncommon for those who are vociferous in their objection to what's going on, to having restraining orders filed against them, you know, things like that.

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I mean, they are literally hounded out of these congregations. And you cannot, under any circumstances, challenge the vision or the visionary leader.

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Here's an analogy that Dan Sutherland offered on how to treat members who don't agree with the pastor's vision.

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Now, I grew up on the farm. Anybody else in here grew up on the farm? Anybody? Maybe y 'all can help me. What do you do with a wolf?

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If you're herding sheep, what do you do with a wolf? Thank you. Shoot him.

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That's the answer. You know what we try to do? We try to convert the wolf.

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Oh, nice wolfy. Why are you gnawing on my arm? That's it.

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Quit. Why does down on my neck? Yeah. Quit eating my sheep. If you be a good wolf, he will let you stay in our church.

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Shoot the dang wolf. Jesus said the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

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Folks, I'm telling you, I've worked sheep. I have done the physical work of herding sheep.

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Any shepherd worth his salt carries a rifle and shoots the critters that eat his sheep.

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OK, the creepy list level is I didn't think it'd go creepier than Elevation Church and Stephen Furtick, but Sutherland passed it by.

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What's going on? Well, see, in the order that this is presented, you know, you got you kind of have to get the idea.

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Sutherland has already told people how to prepare to receive the vision from God, how to define the vision once they receive it, how to cast it.

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And now we're to the point of what do you do with people who oppose the vision? This is dealing with opposition. And so immediately anybody who opposes the vision automatically, by definition, is challenging

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God. They are they are considered to be in a wolf, a wolf. And they must be shot.

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Notice the violent metaphor there. You got to shoot the sheep. And it's weird that he would say that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, because that's a reference to Jesus.

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But if I'm not mistaken, when you shoot a wolf, you're making the wolf lay down its life, you're not laying down your life for the sheep.

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So even the biblical metaphor doesn't make any sense. But what they're doing is inculcating a culture of ideologues and demagogues.

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That's what they're creating. These visionary leaders are taught and trained, according to Sutherland and others like them, you don't, under any circumstances, tolerate any opposition to the vision that the person who opposes is a wolf.

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They have to be shot. They have to go. They have to go. They have to go. So you can't you cannot, under any circumstances, challenge the vision or the leader.

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And this we're not just playing isolated audio from some kook out there. Dan Sutherland sits at the top of a very influential machine in American evangelicalism, one that is cranking out material, and his word is being taken as God's truth by many people outside his own circles.

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That's correct. And Dan teaches this. He's taught this for over a decade all over the country to packed houses of pastors.

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These are pastors who are being taught this. And so, I mean, people in the Willow Creek Organization and Leadership Network and the

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Purpose Driven Network, all of the churches that are members of that, this is a standard curriculum for them.

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Other books that are included in the genre would be Andy Stanley's book called Visioneering, where he teaches similar principles, but he's teaching a different aspect of vision casting.

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Vision casting is a core component of this leadership model within the church. And again,

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I have to reiterate, this model is not the biblical model for the pastoral office at all.

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So someone listening to us says, well, my pastor just got back from this big conference at Willow Creek. And just for instance,

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I'm not sure that Dan Sutherland wasn't one of the speakers there. They would've heard something like this. They would've been taught something like this.

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That's correct. So I guess I've got to wonder,

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I don't want to apply this label too cavalierly, but if these weren't, quote unquote,

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Christian leaders, we'd call this cultic. Well, I think it's important to note that a lot of the guys who are most outspoken about this, many times the people who've been drummed out of these churches, when you listen to their stories as to what happened, their stories parallel.

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And I mean, all the way from psychological abuse and other things, they parallel a lot of the stories we hear out of cults, where there's a cult leader at the top who thinks he's the man of God.

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I mean, Sung Yong Moon and others come to mind. There's a very eerie psychological as well as methodological similarity to the cult leaders that we've known about as being dangerous and what these seeker -driven guys turn into.

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So, I mean, if this were, I'm just trying to think of this in terms of very basic life.

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If I, as a parent, if my kid got involved in a group, any group where the rule was the leader of the group, his word goes.

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And if you disagree with his word, at the very least, you'll be drummed out of the group, but you may also be psychologically, spiritually abused on the way out.

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I would try and keep my kids, anyone I knew, as far away from that as absolutely possible.

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And yet you say this is happening in big box churches and other congregations all over the country.

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Yeah, all over the country and around the world. Who else is...

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Can you give us some other names of people who have bought into this? You've mentioned Warren's organization, the

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Willow Creek Organization. We've heard a lot from Dan Sutherland. Where else is this happening? Well, this is this is taught and advocated by Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, Bill Cornelius, Craig Groeschel, Perry Noble, Stephen Furtick.

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I mean, the list is like a list of who's who within the entire secret -driven movement.

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Is this why you mentioned Stephen Furtick? Is this why when you see occasionally videos from his sermons at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, he kind of...

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Well, not kind of. He does. Does Brow beat his congregation on a regular basis because they're just not getting what he's casting?

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Well, you'll find that in the major big box churches, including Granger Community Church, Mark Beeson's church, and others, there's a regular interval at which they will give a sermon whereby they kind of reiterate and kind of inculcate in the culture of their church this idea that somebody who comes to church with the expectation of being fed

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God's Word and wanting to go deeper in God's Word and complaining about the lack of biblical depth in the preaching.

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Those people are from the stage in these churches ostracized, shunned, made fun of, browbeaten.

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So what happens is in these churches is that the entire culture that if somebody says they want to go deeper in the

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Bible, that they're immediately on people's radars. Oh, it's a troublemaker. They're a

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Pharisee. Oh, this is a religious person. Oh, yeah, you and your Bible. So there's a culture that's inculcated.

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Don't you be going deep in Scripture expecting depth? Because if you do that, you're just selfish. You are a server.

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You have come to church with the expectation of being served rather than serving.

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You've got to get busy, get behind the pastor and his vision and make that come about. When we come back, ten more minutes with Chris Roseborough on this

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Tuesday afternoon, the 19th of June. We're talking about the dangers of vision casting in the church. He's host of the daily

40:44

Internet radio talk show called Fighting for the Faith. Christological.

41:08

My friends, Jesus comes only for sinners. Historical. I believe in God, the

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Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, given unto death for your sins. To find a

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Christological, historical and sacramental church near you, go to issues, etc, dot org and click find a church talk radio for recovering evangelicals, you're listening to issues, etc.

42:07

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42:13

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42:41

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42:47

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Kimberling Boulevard in Kimberling City, Missouri. For more, see our website at S .O

43:05

.T .H .L. Dotcom. And I'm releasing you to take a small portion of your church's budget, build a catapult, put it in the church parking lot and load it regularly.

43:24

I think we can shoot this one right out of our county. There's Dan Sutherland of Church Transitions Inc.

43:32

talking about what you do with people who disagree with the pastor's vision. We're talking about the dangers of vision casting in the church.

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Chris Rosebrough is our guest. One thing you won't hear vision casting pastors do very often is following the historic church here.

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Why? Because it doesn't focus on their vision. It focuses on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not usually a part of their vision.

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Not usually a big part, at least, of their vision. The issues it said are a book of the month for June is called

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Ordering Our Days in His Peace by Pastor Heath Curtis. I just had someone on Facebook ask me, do you know of a good resource for the festivals of the church?

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Yes, I do. It's the issues it said are a book of the month for June, Ordering Our Days in His Peace. Find out why the church has historically counted time the way it does.

44:20

You can browse before you buy it. Our website issue is etc .org or you can call Concordia Publishing House and order

44:26

Ordering Our Days in His Peace, 1 -800 -325 -3040, 1 -800 -325 -3040,

44:33

Ordering Our Days in His Peace, an introduction to the Christian church year. Chris, I'd like your response to the catapult comment made by Dan Sutherland there.

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Was he talking about how to deal with dissent in the church? Yeah, actually. And that was James McDonald of the

44:47

Walk in the Word and Harvest Bible Chapel. And he was speaking to a group of pastors and leaders of the

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Harvest Bible Chapel system. And he was talking about what to do with the divisive man.

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And the divisive man is defined as the person who questions, opposes, or challenges the vision.

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In this particular case, could be the individual pastors of a Harvest Bible Chapel system or of James McDonald himself and the vision that he has for the

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Harvest Bible Chapel system. And what do you do with them? I'm authorizing you to build a catapult and launch them into the next county.

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Get rid. You cannot tolerate, listen to, or give any credence to anybody who challenges the vision.

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They have got to go. Here's more on how to deal with dissenters.

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This comes from Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, talking about how to deal with those who dissent from the pastor's vision.

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Here's what I've learned. You cast vision for your mission. And if people don't sign up, you move on, you move on.

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There are people that are going to die in the wilderness and there are people that are going to take the hill. That's just how it is.

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Too many guys waste too much time trying to move stiff necked, stubborn, obstinate people.

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I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the

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Mars Hill bus. And by God's grace, it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus.

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Those are the options. But the bus ain't going to stop. And I'm just a

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I'm just a guy who is like, look, we love you. But this is what we're doing.

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There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the boss. They got to get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus.

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They got to get thrown off because they want to go somewhere else. There are people who will be on the bus, leaders and helpers and servants.

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They're awesome. There's also just sometimes nice people who sit on the bus and shut up. They're not helping or hurting.

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Just let them ride along. You know what I'm saying? But don't look at the nice people.

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They're just going to sit on the bus and shut their mouth and think, I need you to lead the mission. They're never going to.

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At the very most, you'll give them a job to do and they'll serve somewhere and help out in a minimal way. If someone can sit in a place that hasn't been on mission for a really long time, they are by definition not a leader.

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And so they're never going to lead. You need to gather a whole new core.

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I'll tell you guys what to you don't do this just for your church planning or replanting. I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now.

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We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus yesterday. We fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night.

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They're off the bus under the bus. They were off mission, so now they're unemployed.

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I mean, you this will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail.

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This is Chris, this is ruthless. This is heartless. This is merciless. This is ego run amok.

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Not only that, this is just patently evil. Talk to these people who've been run over by the bus.

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And you know what you find is a common theme in all of them. Many of them don't attend church anymore because they they feel because it would.

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This happened at the hands of a Christian pastor, that it was Jesus who was driving the bus.

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And so they will never set foot in a church again. And they think that God hates them and doesn't want to have anything to do with them because they were run over by a seeker driven pastor who mercilessly mowed him over for daring to challenge the vision or be not in accord with it.

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And as a result of it, they don't know about a loving and merciful Savior who bled and died for them on the cross.

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They only know of a Jesus who doesn't want to have anything to do with them because they dared to challenge a pastor's vision.

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So, folks, what do you think about vision casting in the church? Doesn't sound so innocent anymore, does it? One eight seven seven six two three six nine four three.

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You're hearing it from the horse's mouth. This is these are the people who are casting the biggest visions in the church.

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These are the men who are teaching your pastor when he goes off to that conference to cast a vision in your congregation.

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One eight seven seven six two three six nine four three. Talk back at issues etc dot org or send us a tweet at issues etc.

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Let's see what Cindy has to say in St. Louis. Hi. I didn't think that there was any thing.

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I mean, this is like nothing new is under the sun. I've I've lived this before and I'm probably going to have to take a blood pressure pill when

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I get off the phone. But this kind of thing has gone on before. But these guys are seem like from what you've said,

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I've not listened to them. But other than what you've played, they're slicker. And I haven't heard you say that they use the clincher that and the clincher for us was always touch not

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God's anointed. That's why you wouldn't challenge them. You sat there with your mouth shut because if you touch them, it would be like touching

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God. And oh, my gosh, you'd really be in trouble then. But but I'm not kidding you. We God was merciful and good to us and flung us right out of that place into the

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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. I am eternally grateful for that. Cindy, thanks for listening. St. Louis, what are your thoughts there,

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Chris? Yeah, the touch not God's anointed is kind of a passe phrase, but the same attitude is there.

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And the idea you don't challenge the vision because you do so is to challenge God. And so, you know, these guys, the touch not

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God's anointed is a little bit more word of faith and televangelist, but the same attitude that applies to that misuse of Scripture, these guys exude this in spades.

50:58

And, you know, you challenge them. They will run you over in the name of Jesus. A quick phone call from Tennessee where Jan is listening.

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Hi, Jan. Hi, Chris, I had one question.

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How is casting vision different than, say, a church working together with a committee to form a mission statement?

51:19

Good question, Chris. Yeah, I would I got to tell you this whole mission statement thing.

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I understand organizationally it's good to organize organizations around a purpose and a vision.

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Where it becomes problematic is that somehow we think that we have the ability to do this on our own steam.

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The church already has a mission. The mission is found in Matthew 28. The mission of the church is to disciple the nations, to baptize and teach.

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We don't get to deviate from that. And these guys, oftentimes their competing visions are visions that get us off of discipling the nations, baptizing and teaching and on to something completely different.

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I am not a fan of vision statements and mission statements. I think we need to get away from them. The church has survived for 2000 years, in fact, thrived without them because we already have it in Scripture.

52:07

We need to go back to that and stop doing this nonsense. Only only one minute here, Chris. What would you say to someone listening to us right now whose pastor has been drinking deeply from the wells of Mark Driscoll and Dan Sutherland and the other vision casting leaders out there, and he thinks he's got a vision for his congregation, what would you say to a person who is under such a pastor right now?

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Confront him if he repents. You've saved the congregation. If he refuses, understand you're going to be thrown out.

52:33

But that's the risk you've got to take, because you've got to take a stand. What these guys are doing is not biblical. It's destroying the body of Christ.

52:41

This is not the pastoral office. This is something completely different. And so you've got to take a stand and be counted.

52:47

Chris, what are you going to be talking about tonight on fighting for the faith? Only about 30 seconds here. Oh, I got a segment on Stephen Furtick.

52:53

I'm going to be talking about how he's applying a biblical passage about Jesus to himself. Yuck. Okay.

53:00

You can listen to Fighting for the Faith after the conclusion of issues at piratechristianradio .com. Chris Roseborough has a degree in religious studies from Concordia University, California, and he's host of the daily internet talk show called

53:12

Fighting for the Faith. Chris, thank you very much. Thank you, Todd. There are congregations now that are putting their budgets together, and they're doing this.

53:20

We have a modest request of your congregation. I know a thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money, but if you spread it out over an entire congregation and an entire year, including a thousand dollars for issues, et cetera, in your congregation's budget really isn't that much.

53:33

But boy, does it help us. The Issues Etc. 300 is a growing group of congregations that not because we say we have a vision or force anybody to do it, not because we say if you don't do it, you are somehow opposing

53:45

God. No, we're just asking for your generous and free will and faithful support of issues, etc.

53:51

as a congregation to join the Issues Etc. 300. Find out more at our website, issuesetc .org.

53:58

Click support. You'll find a one page flyer right there that you can print off. It'll explain everything. It doesn't put you under any compelling word of God that you have to do this.

54:06

You just simply, if your congregation is able and willing, join the Issues Etc. 300. Issuesetc .org.

54:12

Click support, download and print that one page flyer and take it to your congregation. When we come back in hour two of Issues Etc.

54:19

on Tuesday, whew, another very busy hour. We're going to spend it with Kim Rydelbarger, pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Pasadena, California, and co -host of the weekly radio program called the

54:29

White Horse Inn. We're going to be responding to our interview on Rapture Theology with Dr. Thomas Ice.

54:35

Now you can join us as well. 1 -877 -623 -6943. Hour two,

54:40

Dr. Kim Rydelbarger responding to Rapture Theology with Dr. Thomas Ice. The minute your pastor says,

54:48

I've heard from God or here's the vision and I think God gave it to me or us or God is telling me or here's the vision,

54:57

I'm casting it now. You have to catch it. You have departed from the clear word of Christ. Your pastor needs to be gently rebuked, called to repent and pointed back to the only vision

55:07

God has ever given to any pastor or congregation, the clear word of God in Scripture.

55:14

We'll be right back. Listen weekday afternoons to Pastor Todd Wilkin and guests on Issues Etc.

55:21

Issues Etc. is a listener supported program. Your financial support is vital for the continuation and expansion of this worldwide outreach.

55:30

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55:39

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55:49

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56:00

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56:05

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56:11

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56:17

Find out more about the Issues Etc. 300 at issuesetc .org. Click support and publicize your congregation to the world.

56:26

How does the church year teach us the fundamental narratives of salvation's story?

56:32

The Issues Etc. Book of the Month for June is Ordering Our Days in His Peace, an introduction to the church year.

56:38

It's written by regular guest Pastor Heath Curtis. You can check out Ordering Our Days in His Peace at issuesetc .org.

56:46

Or you can purchase our Book of the Month by calling Concordia Publishing House 1 -800 -325 -3040.