Confessing Into Apostasy

This week I read a commentary by Paul Edwards titled, “The New Confessing Church.” This article gives an example of how the church is taking another leap towards apostasy.

It seems more and more churches are taking up the banner of apologizing for everything and confessing the “sins” of the Church. A problem that I have with this nonsense is that the Church has not sinned. People sin, but the Christian Church as an institution founded by Christ has not sinned.

Kensington Community Church in the Detroit area is one of the subjects of this commentary. From the description in the article, Kensington is “a seeker megachurch.” That description says a lot! Seeker-sensitive assemblies are all about making people feel good and not getting too deep into doctrinal standards, while maintaining an entertainment-oriented focus in their services. Kensington’s home page shows they are also a program-oriented church, and they even offer “Christ-centered Yoga,” which itself is an oxymoron. (Just how does one have “Christ-centered” Hinduism?) Much of their site discusses how church is all about having fun.

Kensington is now teaching a series of lessons under the title, “Confessions of a Sinful Church.” While I couldn’t find any real information on their site, Edwards linked to a blog that lists the following sessions:

October 19: "We're Sorry for Being Self-Righteous Hypocrites."

October 26: "We're Sorry for Judging You"

November 2: "We're Sorry for Being Too Political"

November 9: "We're Sorry for Despising Homosexuality"

November 16: "We're Sorry for Caring Only About Converting You"

November 23: "We're Not Sorry for Following Jesus"

Edwards mentions a couple of other churches doing this sort of thing:

Rolling Hills Community Church in Danville, CA. Earlier this year they confessed sins of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, support of racial segregation, mistreatment of homosexuals, fighting crusades and claiming that the earth is flat.

Tillman Road Church of God in Ft. Wayne, IN. Last month they began a series confessing hypocrisy, being anti-homosexual, being judgmental, being too focused on getting converts and being too political.

Did you notice the commonality with subject matter? It seems that whatever the unbelieving world wants to attack Christians about, we now have confessions of sin in that area. How much of this stuff is nothing more than trying to get the world’s approval rather than following the Word of God?

If in some rare event an entire assembly was committing a sin, it would be as a result of leadership failing in their job, and the leadership should be doing the confessing, as well as any member who has participated in a particular sin. However, how can a church in California confess the sins of claiming the earth is flat (that was a sin?) and of the Crusades?

(And while I’m talking about the Crusades, I’m finding more and more people accepting the liberal revisionist history about them. The Crusades were important in stopping the advance of Islam, and I hope most intelligent people are glad they are not under Islamic rule!)

I would certainly hope every Christian assembly teaches God’s word about homosexual behavior, and are focused on getting converts! The rest of these “sins” being confessed are all subjective ideas about what is or isn’t correct; do we have examples of being “judgmental” or of “being too political,” or even “hypocritical”?

How many more assemblies across the nation are into this self-flagellation? If your church starts this apostasy, I recommend you try to get it stopped. If you are unable to do so, then run, don’t walk, out the doors and shake the dust off your feet!

The Church of England

I’ve previously had articles dealing with the U.S. branch known as the Episcopal Church (2/1/08, 2/5/08), which is about as liberal of a denomination as one can find, but I’ve never specifically mentioned the Church of England as such except as a comment in these articles.

The Church of England has become more and more apostate and very liberal in all their theology for years. I have a file folder that is fairly thick with both the English and the American branches. Homosexual behavior is supported almost enthusiastically by these churches, and in the American branch we have the arch-heretic Bishop John Spong who has never been censured by the church (at least not to my knowledge). In the Church of England we have the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams who endorses corrupt Bible versions (As Good As New and the Manga Bible) and is an evolutionist who says non-Christians can go to heaven. And of course there is the Bishop of Oxford who claimed that Christian creationists “harm religion” and that Christians should accept evolution, because evolution, “far from undermining faith, deepens it.” Oh, and let us not forget that Church of England leaders claim that calling God “He” or “Lord” encourages wife-beating!

Anyway, here we go again with something goofy from the Anglican Church. It seems that Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, wants churches to use hits by bands such as the Beatles in their worship services so as to reach the “younger generation.” Of course his book, Finding Faith, has the backing of Rowan Williams.

Baines says, “They are able to open our imagination to a way of thinking about God that we’ve become deaf to in church language.” He also says, “Songs get more into the soul than simply reading an ancient book.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t see using songs from a group whose spirituality consisted mainly of Eastern religious beliefs or none at all, let alone the whole drug culture of which they sang (Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, e.g.)

Well, I am more of the opinion that we need to reach the “younger generation” the same way every generation has been reached - with the truth of the Gospel that saves. We don’t need to rely on music that builds up emotional responses that are fleeting, rather we need to rely on the Word of God.

Mortuary Evangelism?

I have just read about probably the most bizarre "evangelism" ever: visiting mortuaries to raise the dead for evangelism. The information came from one of the apologetics ministry e-mails I receive daily, which then linked me to this wonderful website that exposes this false teaching:
http://slaughteringthesheep.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/melissa-fisher-mortuary-outreach/

Patricia King’s Extreme Prophetic is about as aberrational as any "Christian" ministry can get. You really need to watch the video and listen to Melissa Fisher or you will never believe she actually teaches this stuff. As one commenter posted, what happened to evangelizing the living?


Too many people are following these kinds of teachers, teachers who disgrace the name of Christ. It is this sort of nonsense that leads unbelievers to mock Christians in general. Satan is having a field day!