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The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

 

Rick Warren and Purpose-Driven Strife: Pastor's unconventional approach inspires some, alienates others

Source: ABC News

 

March 8, 2007 -- Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California may be the best-known pastor on the planet. His book, "The Purpose Driven Life," has been translated into 56 languages and has sold 30 million copies. However, the idea behind "purpose driven" is not something Pastor Warren takes credit for creating.

 

"The history of this idea — 'purpose driven' — is not something I thought up in the first place," Warren explains. "There have been hundreds of books throughout history that talked about worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism."

 

But while these five purposes are biblically based, there is no denying that Warren has popularized these purposes around the world. He says he has trained 400,000 pastors worldwide to start purpose-driven churches. But it's Warren's untraditional use of the Christian language that may be the reason for his enormous following.

 

"I like to teach theology to people without telling them it's theology and without using theological terms," he said. "Simple does not mean simplistic. Simple does not mean superficial. Simple means it's clear."

 

But Warren's "outside in" approach to church growth is now causing rumblings. This past fall, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled "'Purpose driven' methods divide: Some evangelicals object to 'Madison Avenue' marketing of churches that follow author's advice." In North Wilkesboro, N.C., one church exemplifies this schism.

 

Tom Bartlett is the pastor of Celebration Church — now a purpose-driven church. When he arrived in 2004, the church was more traditional and was in a poor state.

 

Bartlett said that when he first came to Celebration Church, the congregation was small and shrinking.

 

"There were 40 people my first Sunday, and I think the church had gotten down to about … 25 to 30 in attendance."

 

It was a small showing. But then Bartlett began to apply Warren's five strategies for church growth. He started with contemporary worship and, like in hundreds of other purpose-driven churches nationwide, out went the hymns and in came the drums and guitars. Within two years, the congregation at Celebration Church grew from 30 congregants to 300.

 

"We've taken a particular style that we think reaches the people that we're trying to reach," Bartlett said. "There's a generation of people that we're not reaching by and large. And predominantly, they're younger, and we see them leaving the church in droves."

 

But not everybody in Bartlett's congregation was excited about the change. One of the first people to leave Bartlett's church was a retired pastor, Joe Owings.

 

"Their music took on a much more contemporary effect — pop music," said Owings. "[Bartlett] began to use, basically, the 'Saddleback Valley approach' to church growth and so forth. It was during that time that we began to get uncomfortable with the music. The emphasis seemed to be more on younger people and a new generation, and we just felt like we did not fit in."

 

Warren says on his Web site that "Purpose driven is not about a particular worship style." But many who follow Warren's approach tend to jettison traditional forms of worship.

 

And what about those people who don't want to hear guitar music, who prefer a quiet, reverent worship?

 

"Well, that's why there's different churches for different folks," said Bartlett. "And we realize that we're probably not going to reach every person."

 

But beyond ageism, there's more serious criticism that's now leveled at Warren and his purpose-driven churches: that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity are being mixed with popular psychology to help produce an evangelical version of "self-help."

 

Comments:  Is this contention just about old folks versus young set Christians?  Old style hymns versus Christian Rock?  Another generation gap like in the 1960s when anyone over 30 was considered over the hill?  (Today, that age is 60.)

 

Renown prolific Christian author Dave Hunt knows Rick Warren from having spoken to him and Mr. Hunt believes Mr. Warren to be a sincere brother in the Lord who has a conviction that he’s doing God’s will.  The results surely have been phenomenal when you look at the exponential growth of seeker sensitive congregations.  No longer content seeing church goers simply sit on their duffs each Sunday and then live for the Devil the other six days, Mr. Warren sought out Peter Drucker and emulated Drucker’s business techniques of gauging what the customers want and then give it to them.  It’s a consumer driven business plan that’s been modeled for churches that’s caught fire in the U.S., Canada and in Australia.  Mr. Warren gives 90% of his profits back to his Saddleback Church for the furtherance of the Lord’s work.

 

His detractors have criticized his use of questionable methods such as Drucker’s principles, rock music, pop psychology (it’s not about you yet it’s all about you), and Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase titled, “The Message” as the defacto Bible.  Mr. Warren has irked Christian conservatives with his emulation of the late rocker Jimi Hendricks’ “Purple Haze” (alluding to mind altering drugs), his 5-point social gospel P.E.A.C.E., his highly publicized trip into Syria, his welcoming of Democratic Christian Barack Obama to Saddleback, etc.

 

As pertaining to rock music worship services, this has led to many old-timers leaving their longtime churches because they believe that rock music and God’s sanctuary aren’t congruent.  The youth in the 1960s used to ask, “Why should the Devil have all the good music?” when referring to rock music.  That still applies today in seeker sensitive churches.  Without the entertainment aspect, the young people will leave in droves.  Rock music as a worship medium will be a point of contention until all the old fogies have died.  The new way of doing church is here to stay, like it or not.

 

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Israel on worldwide alert after disappearance of Iran official

Source: www.worldtribune.com

 

March 8, 2007 -- Israel has placed its foreign installations on alert after a newspaper reported the defection of a senior Iranian official in Turkey.

 

The alert was issued after Israel was blamed for the disappearance of a former Iranian deputy defense minister in Turkey. An Iranian delegation has been sent to Turkey and demanded the whereabouts of Ali Reza Asqhari, missing from an Istanbul hotel since Feb. 7.

 

The 63-year-old Asqhari, believed to have been a senior official in Iran's missile and nuclear weapons program, arrived in Istanbul from Damascus and had been registered in the Ceylon Hotel. But it was not clear whether he checked into the hotel.

 

On Tuesday, the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat reported that Asqhari defected and was taken to the United States. The United States has not commented on the report. On Wednesday, the Saudi-owned newspaper quoted an Iranian military source as saying that Ashqhari was taken to an unidentified northern European state where he was being interrogated on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

 

Comments:  Why is it that Israel (termed the Little Satan) and the U.S. (the Great Satan) got blamed for the unsubstantiated whereabouts of this Persian with nuke technology swirling inside his noggin’?  Perhaps, he has gotten hold of some Turkish Delight and is recuperating in a health spa playing the Four Lads’ song, “Istanbul not Constantinople...it’s mainly because of the Turks”.  Interrogate the Turks who are predominately Muslim although they’re still part of the West’s NATO.  Perhaps, they might know where this ex-general is.

 

Israel is always in a state of alert it seems.  This doesn’t exactly fit the Ezekiel 38’s description of a people living securely in the land of unwalled villages.  It’s a fact that wealthy Jews living elsewhere have bodyguards assigned to protect their children and properties.  Synagogues and cemeteries have been defaced and vandalized by fire attacks.  Some Jews have even changed their surnames to Anglo names such as Robinson and Smith.  Being a Jew can be dangerous to one’s health as fanatical Muslims target them for violence.  Iran’s president is itching for a provocation in order to stir up his people to take up arms and participate in the next “holy” jihad.  As we get closer to the Gog/Muslim invasion of Israel, we’ll be seeing and reading more stories of Israel being on high vigilance.

 

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You can't travel back in time, scientists say

Source: www.livescience.com

 

March 8, 2007 -- The urge to hug a departed loved one again or prevent atrocities are among the compelling reasons that keep the notion of time travel alive in the minds of many.

 

While the idea makes for great fiction, some scientists now say traveling to the past is impossible.

 

There are a handful of scenarios that theorists have suggested for how one might travel to the past, said Brian Greene, author of the bestseller, “The Elegant Universe” and a physicist at Columbia University.” And almost all of them, if you look at them closely, brush up right at the edge of physics as we understand it. Most of us think that almost all of them can be ruled out.”

 

In physics, time is described as a dimension much like length, width, and height. When you travel from your house to the grocery store, you’re traveling through a direction in space, making headway in all the spatial dimensions—length, width and height. But you’re also traveling forward in time, the fourth dimension.

 

“Space and time are tangled together in a sort of a four-dimensional fabric called space-time,” said Charles Liu, an astrophysicist with the City University of New York, College of Staten Island and co-author of the book “One Universe: At Home In The Cosmos.”

 

Space-time, Liu explains, can be thought of as a piece of spandex with four dimensions. “When something that has mass—you and I, an object, a planet, or any star—sits in that piece of four-dimensional spandex, it causes it to create a dimple,” he said. “That dimple is a manifestation of space-time bending to accommodate this mass.”

 

The bending of space-time causes objects to move on a curved path and that curvature of space is what we know as gravity.

 

Mathematically one can go backwards or forwards in the three spatial dimensions. But time doesn’t share this multi-directional freedom.

 

“In this four-dimensional space-time, you’re only able to move forward in time,” Liu told LiveScience.

 

Comments:  What a big letdown for science fiction aficionados! To be able to travel back in time would accord a person a chance to change his past and thus alter his future.  We all have regretted making ill advised decisions or not acted at all that have caused us much grief.  How many guys have lamented not speaking to that gorgeous gal back in his college days?  Plenty.  Or how many people wished they had invested their hard earned money rather than fritter it away at the racetrack or at the casinos?  In theory, going back into time can rectify all that.  But, God controls time and He knows the beginning and the end of each person’s life.  The free will of man was given to accept Jesus now or it may be forever too late.  In Hell, a lost sinner cannot cross that impenetrable gulf separating Hell from God’s haven of rest, love, happiness and Jesus.  You can’t go back and accept Jesus and then poof; you’re among those who have entered “the pearly gate” to join Peter.  Death ends all hope or it is the portal to an afterlife of immense euphoria.

 

Who would want to relive their life anyway?  I wouldn’t.  If you’re a Christian, the future will bring far more joy than you’ve ever experienced up to now.  Let the dreamers have their Back to the Past yearnings.  Like the Apostle Paul, we can say, “…forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” (Philippians 3:[13].

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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