A young evangelical preacher known for his no-frills sermons didn't go soft when it came to rebuking pastors who are preaching something other than the Gospel and those who are pretending to be godly.
Matt
Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas,
addresses Southern Baptists at the Pastors' Conference, June 14, in
Orlando, Fla.
"I, unfortunately, with a great deal of sorrow have walked away from the idea that all of you are men and women of the Word," Matt Chandler of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, told a group of Southern Baptist pastors Monday. "I've just come to find that a lot of you are really good at clichés and really bad at tying in the Word."
Chandler, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy for brain cancer, was in Orlando, Fla., as one of several well-known speakers during the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors' Conference.
A pastors event is held every year just ahead of the denomination's annual meeting to encourage and refresh those who lead congregations in the largest Protestant denomination in the country.
Though Southern Baptists overall are recognized for being conservative evangelicals, Chandler took the group back to the core of their faith - the Gospel. After all, someone can grow up in the church, go to Vacation Bible School every summer and participate in all the programs and still not understand the Gospel, he indicated.
Chandler has found some pastors to be preaching the Gospel as a means of justification but failing to teach the Gospel as a means of sanctification. That results in churches primarily focused on evangelism and having "no care in the world for the depths of spirituality and understanding the nature and character of God."
Though active in bringing people to Christ, churches are not deepening and strengthening believers.
Consequently, many people end up leaving the church or becoming "dechurched," he lamented.
Also, by leaving out the sanctification part, many pastors start to preach "Christian therapeutic moralistic deism," a term he borrowed from author Christian Smith. In other words, they preach, "This is how a Christian behaves, this is how you don't behave," though they might not use that exact language.
But that's basically setting believers up to fall short when trying to obey all the laws, the young pastor noted. In fact, Scripture spells out that no one can follow all the laws.
"If you've preached a lot of moralistic deism and haven't trained your people in what the Gospel is, then you will find them doing a slew of different things to try to mortify their sin and grow in godliness, most of which do not work and have no power," Chandler stated.
SOURCE: Christian Post - Lillian Kwon
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