Dr. Couch, have you read the "confession" of the Willow Creek Church and
Bill Hybels? It looks like they have admitted their mistakes in leading
people, pastors, down the prime rose path into the Church Growth
Movement!
Yes, I have read it. Their confession does not make me mad, in fact I
welcome it. But I really get furious when I look at all who followed
that garbage like mice and repudiated us who urged "Steady as she goes"
in remaining faithful to strong Bible teaching and exegesis.
Pastors like mice jumped ship and scurried
over to the latest piece of cheese. They had no biblical discernment of
their own. They follow fads and what is the latest. They have been
indoctrinated by the cultural and no one at the time could tell them
anything different. They "knew it all" and thought those of us who were
giving warnings were just old fuddy duddies. Those of us who have
remained faithful to exegesis had to take their criticism in the chin,
but more, we had to stand in silence as family after family joined the
mouse scurry to the "big" churches that had all the noise and the
modernity going on behind their walls. This makes me angry!
When Hybels started his church he admitted he began by wanting to give people WHAT THEY
WANTED in a church. He accommodated truth for entertainment, which is
what the "crowd" desired. The former ABC-TV newsman, Peter Jennings, did
a documentary on Willow Creek. It was tremendously revealing, but never
mind, the "sheep" and easily impressed Christian crowd still wanted the
new, the glitzy and the glamorous in the doing of church! You could not
tell them otherwise if you had gotten on top of a building with a bull
horn. At that "big" seminary in Dallas some of the professors went up to
Hybel’s mega-congregation "to learn" how to do church. They came back
to the students and spread "the word" on the "blessings" of Hybel’s
revelations! Many students were led astray and bought into the glories
of what was being propagated. What amazes me is that none of those
teachers or students noticed the smell of
"something-is-really-wrong-here."
The same repentance may someday take place in
the minds and hearts of the Covenant guys. Their eyes will be opened to
what God is doing, as promised in prophecy, with the land and the nation
of Israel. Some may abandon their Replacement Theology, and allegory,
and come to solid, biblical premillennialism and dispensationalism. Of
course, for now, they have the right to be wrong!
Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch
