How Should Leaders Deal With Heresy Outside The Church?

Transcription

1 How Should Leaders Deal With Heresy Outside The Church? The word heretic essentially means follower of false doctrine or teaching. One of our critical responsibilities according to Paul is to guard our church against false doctrine and error. As a matter of fact, nearly all the letters of the New Testament address various heresies that threatened to destroy the Christian faith during the first century. There are two areas of heresy: within and without. Within our own congregations, false teachings and potentially false teachers appear and how we deal with them is something we will talk about at length next week. This week, I thought we would chat about heresies without; in other words, heresies that affect our people principally through the media. If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I am pretty aggressive about the idea that pastors need to be savvy about social media. In fact, I have written a free ebook that you can receive just by visiting ministerstoolbox.com. It gives pastors sort of a basic course on connecting with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, as a means of reaching people with the gospel. Your congregation is on Facebook and Twitter all the time. They are exposed to national pastors and teachers. YouTube videos feature a variety of people preaching all kinds of things. The other day I was on a treadmill at the gym listening to a podcast on my iphone when I looked up and noticed a familiar face. I have to tell you that I was shocked to see this man on television after all these years. He built a very large following conducting an alleged supernatural healing ministry years ago. If you tuned in, you would see him close his eyes and ask if there was a Susan Johnson in the audience. The camera would pan to Susan Johnson and he would say, I am seeing arthritis in your left leg, is that true. Susan would start crying and affirming that it was true. Then he

2 would tell her God was showing him this so that she could be healed. He would pray for her in a loud voice and then slap her on the forehead and drop her on the floor. Visually, it looked like this guy had a direct hotline to God, calling out peoples names, diseases and life challenges. Later, it was learned that he had a sophisticated device in his ear that fed him information gathered by other workers in the ministry. Greeters would collect names and information about the target and feed it back to this minister s assistant who would write it all down and then feed it to him during meetings. An investigator was actually able to tune into the frequency of the technology so you heard all this going on as he closed his eyes and pretending to hear from God. It was pretty horrible to witness. So, imagine my surprise the other day, while I am working out at the gym, when this guy appears on the screen, 30 years later with a brand new toupee and what is he doing? Believe it or not, he is selling miracle water! No lie. On his program, he is preaching to the gullible that by purchasing this anointed miracle water, they will get healed. This dude rakes in millions of dollars each year owns a Porsche and Mercedes and lives in a home he acquired 10 years ago for $4.5 million dollars. Even though he has been publically exposed, he found a way to keep preaching and deceiving the public. I don t think there is anyone listening to me who would challenge me if I said that this man is a heretic, damaging the reputation of Christ and his gospel in the world. So here is my question: What is your responsibility as a church leader now that you have this information? In fact, what is to be our response to heresy in any public square? Do we name names and attack ministries? It is important you settle this because how you approach heresy in public will directly impact your church and the people you pastor.

3 We live in a very different world than the apostles and elders of the first century. What used to take days, weeks, months and years now takes seconds. The speed of access we have to any information we need is absolutely incredible compared to even 10 years ago. This information can also be dangerous if not handled properly. I regularly witness church leaders passing along information that is jaded or flat out untrue on Facebook and Twitter. We need to be very careful that what we proclaim via social media is accurate and keeping with Christ s wishes regarding his church. One popular picture that made the rounds on Facebook was Hillary Clinton shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. First of all, I really caution you not to use social media to promote a candidate of either party. To the degree you do that, you will also be held responsible for whatever they do or say and that can get embarrassing. Politicians are not all about advancing the Kingdom of God but gaining power through whatever means necessary. Secondly, this picture is photoshopped. When people learn the truth about the photo, what does that say about your reputation? If you are putting falsehoods out there, should people trust you as a leader? If you are not already aware of it, there is a website you can use to check any rumor to see if it is actually true. You can get a link to our website, ministerstoolbox.com I use this site regularly to test facts. Oftentimes, some of these fabrications will be so bold as to say they have been vetted by experts. You usually find out that this claim is also a lie. If you are going to use social media, make sure you get your facts straight. Another popular picture making the rounds on social media is a fisheye lens view of Lakewood Church in Texas pastored by Joel Osteen. The captions typically criticize the church and call people to feed the homeless instead of building big churches.

4 These cheap shots are really common in social media, but as a church leader, I would really caution you on that stuff. First of all, do any of you know how much that church raises for missions or ministering to the poor? I am going to guess no one. We see a ridiculously large church and fall into the media-driven narrative that somehow this church is heretical and deceiving people. We need to be really careful about that. Joel is the whipping boy for all things heretical. He is constantly misquoted and misrepresented by the media. Many, many church leaders regularly condemn him for something he allegedly said believing the media s account of a recent statement. His wife was in the news a while ago and Christian people - even pastors maligned her for statements that were taken completely out of context. When I went back and listened to what she actually said, it was clear that the media did a hit-job on her. Nothing she said was out of line, but pastors jumped on the bandwagon to join the secular media in condemning her! I find it amazing that by and large we as leaders never trust the media to properly represent secular news, but we are quick to believe it when it tells us something bad about a church leader. I am no apologist for Joel Osteen. I do think however that many pastors despise him, not for his doctrine, but because he has the largest church in America. Many pastors labor day after day and week after week serving small churches that never seem to grow. Joel keeps increasing the size of his membership and the scope of his ministry. Instead of thanking God that more people are being reached, we rip him apart as a heretic. Once again, you may have serious disagreements with what he has taught or said. That is your right. But should you be using his name on social media or in sermons to warn against heresy? Is God asking us to do that and what is the fruit? By and large, we don t have any evidence that Jesus or the apostles outed people they did not know by name for heresy. We do have instances where

5 Paul identifies men like Alexander and others as spiritually dangerous men, but he knew them personally. We ll chat about that more next week, but there doesn t appear to be any evidence that the church fathers called out any leader for heresy that they did not know personally. I have to confess. There is one national leader that I just don t like. I don t appreciate his teaching, his approach or his methods. I believe much of his teaching is false. This man fills stadiums where he goes. (Not Joel Osteen) He has dedicated followers who read every book he writes and contributes heavily to his ministry. I believe that some of his teachings are dangerous to the body of Christ. That is my view. Is he a heretic? My dislike for him would say yes, but my integrity says, no. I just disagree with some of his conclusions. Do I preach against him? No. Do I mention him in the pulpit or in social media? No. I am called to preach Christ, not Christ and attack the heretic de jour. We don t strengthen our churches by continually knocking down other ministries. We need to be extremely careful who we label a heretic in any public way. I have been amazed at how freely church leaders condemn national ministries or infer they are corrupt. We need to understand that the current media loves to display Christian leaders attacking Christian leaders. They are only happy to provide you with misinformation so that you make snap judgments and feed their media hype. When you label someone a heretic, you are saying something extremely serious. You better be completely sure God is backing you on that judgment or the same judgment will come back on you. (Matthew 7:1) The approach Paul, Peter, James, and John took toward heresy was to teach the truth and contrast it with an error. Teaching people how to recognize the counterfeit is ultimately more effective than launching personal attacks against national ministries.

6 I hear and read about ministers attacking the quote, prosperity gospel all the time. Do you actually know what that is? The bible has a lot to say about prosperity. Instead of attacking rich ministers, why not use the opportunity to research and then teach what scripture says about prosperity? A biblical view of prosperity will show that God delights in prospering his people. He loves to bless them. Prosperity is entirely wrapped up in advancing God s purposes and agenda, however. Trying to manipulate God to get rich is heretical; we all know that, so why not teach it and leave national ministries alone? If you are a pastor of a struggling church, it is easy to condemn a pastor of a mega-church that has a Lear jet at their disposal. Attacking them for having a jet plays into the hands of the enemy who wants to bring scandal and division. You don t know the circumstances, the challenges, the opportunities or the calling of leader or leaders in that megachurch. Pray for them and thank God for them. They are not heretics because they own a piece of expensive metal. We are approaching some very difficult days ahead if things do not change in our culture. It is extremely easy to use photoshop and other tools to misrepresent churches, people, and events. That is one reason James cautions us to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to get angry. It is all too common for church leaders to go on a tangent and verbally attack other ministers. How is that advancing the gospel? I started the show today telling you about a fraudulent minister selling miracle water on television. I am not going to call this man out as a fraud, but I may teach and warn about his methods. I cannot judge the man s heart or motives, though I would certainly like to. As Romans says, who am I to judge another man s servant? (Romans 14:4) I am called to teach, preach and warn against false doctrine. Selling miracle water is nonsense. It has no basis or support in scripture but can

7 become a teaching opportunity to train people in our congregations about discernment. Well, there is more to say on this subject, which is why we will plan to speak about this next week. We end with a quote. This one is going to be a little different. The author of this quote is Mark Twain, himself a well-respected author. I want you to get the effect of this quote and I will briefly comment on it. He said, I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader, and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. Now, did his criticism stop you from wanting to read Jane Austen? No! If anything, it might have tarnished your opinion of Mark Twain. What would Mr. Darcy think?