Building Bridges to the Treacherous Waters of Evangelicalism

One of the reasons why most IFB churches will be emerging within a generation is that they are messing around with the treacherous waters of evangelicalism and/or the equally treacherous waters of contemporary worship music. I witnessed this on a recent preaching trip to the States. I preached two Bible conferences in Pennsylvania, but I also visited a couple of IFB churches with relatives in other places, and I was deeply disturbed by what I saw. One church was using a book by Randy Alcorn for the Sunday School lessons. Alcorn is a deeply compromised evangelical who glowingly recommends the writings of Mark Driscoll of Seattle, where they have champaign dance parties and rock & roll “worship” in a darkened building and the usherettes wear mini-skirts and where Catholic contemplative mysticism is promoted. This IFB church had books by other evangelicals for sale in its bookstore with no warning. If a Bible-believing church does use materials by evangelicals, such as those by Answers in Genesis, the people must be educated about the compromise that exists in these ministries.

Typically, though, in churches that are messing around with evangelicalism, the members aren’t properly educated, because the pastor himself is either ill-informed or enamored by what he finds among “conservative evangelicals.” When a fundamentalist preacher begins to give up on separation, he still claims to believe in it, but he doesn’t love it, and the compromise and softness of evangelicalism resonates with his own spirit. Another IFB church that I visited, which in past decades was solid, featured contemporary worship choruses and a special by the pastor’s daughter that used a backbeat CCM soundtrack. In both services, the pastor’s message was biblical, but there is death in the pot and these pastors don’t seem to have a clue about the danger that exists in their own churches. They regard themselves as solid and uncompromising, but they don’t want to hear warnings like this and they don’t encourage their people to read informational publications such as O Timothy magazine and the Friday Church News Notes. (For extensive documentation on this subject see the following free eBooks:  New Evangelicalism; The Path from Independent Baptist to The Shack, Rome, and Beyond; The Treacherous Waters of Evangelicalism; Why Most Independent Baptist Churches Will Be Emerging, and the following free eVideo downloads: The Foreign Spirit of Contemporary Worship Music, and The Transformational Power of Contemporary Praise Music, available at www.wayoflife.org.) 

(Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2012, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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