Church Growth Tactics Are Not Evangelism, Part 4

There are yet two important topics we should cover to help us better understand the danger of the power and expansion of the Church Growth Movement.

The first is the Church Growth Movement’s ties to and roots in the New Age Movement. Tim Keller, who recently died, is known for claiming he had special knowledge or had a source of knowledge. He was one of the founders of New Calvinism and represents the wider influences of the experience movement, contemplative prayer, spiritual formation, and mysticism. Such are the teachings from the likes of Richard Foster, Winfield Bevins (see my book review), Bernie Siegel (who influences Rick Warren and others), and a host of others.

We should note that there is nothing particularly Calvinism about New Calvinism. Some of the influential leaders claimed to be Reformed, however, others do not. Some of the most influential leaders are intertwined with Emergent Church and Acts 29, which is how we can identify as part of the Church Growth Movement.

We should also understand that none of this is new. Special knowledge, secret knowledge, or salvation through knowledge was originally known as Gnosticism. The Gnostics have been around since the early church, and the early church fathers condemned them. We would tend to think the Gnostics were an old sect which perished long ago. However, Gnosticism has remained alive and well down through the centuries. What we are seeing today is merely a reinvention of ancient heresy.

Today, it is manifesting itself through the New Age Movement, which is securely planted in the church as a whole. It influences many of our modern books about Christian spirituality. Within Gnosticism and the New Age Movement is a need for self-actualization. This, at its core, drove Peter Drucker, Sigmund Freud, and others who continue to influence us today.

While I am not Catholic and do not endorse their belief system, good further reading on the danger of the New Age Movement in general can be found at https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/new-age-movement-highway-to-hell-9660

The second important topic is that the Church Growth Movement embodies the Biblical understanding of idolatry. Only when we expose the need for self-actualization and its heavy reliance on works-based tactics can we really see the evil behind the Church Growth Movement, the New Age Movement, and other similar movements impacting the church today.

There is a constant quest for knowledge and a constant appeasement of self. At its core, it is designed to drown out guilt, appease the conscience, and elevate self. Walk into any mega-church today, and the rock music alone along with the motivational-style hyped-up individual speaking is aimed at making the self feel good and forget about reality. This is the role of such things as syncopated music. There is also constant entertainment which is merely a distraction and not an aid to worship. Like narcotics and alcohol, more and stronger doses of entertainment are needed to remain effective.

In the first part of this series, I pointed out how Christ is to be the real draw, but within the Church Growth Movement, something else is always the draw. It is commercialism, secularism, entertainment, rock music, secular-based programs, and a host of other socially-oriented endeavors which draw us because of how they move the self.

This is idolatry. It is a modern exhibition of the same idolatry God commanded against in the Ten Commandments. Seeking secret knowledge, desiring to be amped up by music, craving a motivational message, and aiming to draw people to church by appealing to their sensual desires are all forms of idolatry.