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Category Archives: Ecclesiology

Church Marketing Sucks (part three): CC’s Tips

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by cc_ in Church, Ecclesiology, Seeker Sensitivity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

church growth, church marketing, churchmarketingsucks, evangelism, Rod Rosenbladt

Church Sign: Church Shopping? We're open on Sundays

Church Sign: Church Shopping? We’re open on Sundays

Since I argued against all the church marketing tips in parts one and two, I thought I would offer up a few church marketing tips of my own. I promise you, mine are less complex, far more cost-effective, and a bit more scary than Jeremy Harrison’s were.

First off though, I want to discuss the idea of church marketing in general.

A proper ecclesiology would help us to understand the Church is the body of believers, and the Church service is when the believers gather together to hear the proclaimed word of God, to receive the sacraments, to worship God in song and prayer, and to be equipped for ministry and good works.

That being said, most church marketing is advertising the wrong thing to the wrong people, as we saw in the previous two posts. If we market to non-believers we would have to offer them something they want. But, the bible makes it clear that they don’t want Jesus! Continue reading »

Church Marketing Sucks (part two)

05 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by cc_ in Church, Ecclesiology, Seeker Sensitivity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

church marketing, church signs, churchmarketingsucks

Church Sign: Do you know what hell is? Come hear our preacher

Church Sign: Do you know what hell is? Come hear our preacher

In part “Church Marketing Sucks (part one)” I addressed the first post by Jeremy Harrison on the Church Marketing Sucks blog. In his second post Harrison gives tips for better ways for churches to market themselves. I want to address those tips and in my next post I will give a few of my own.

1. Identify people groups in your community based on their passions.

Most people in your community are not thinking about going to church. But what are they thinking about? What are they passionate about? What are they excited to pour their time into when they get home from work? Get a diverse group of people in your church to brainstorm… you will quickly come up with a dozen or more groups of people.

That would be great if one were marketing a coffee shop or a recreation club. However, the Christian Church is a different animal altogether. Continue reading »

Church Marketing Sucks (Part one)

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by cc_ in Church, Ecclesiology, Seeker Sensitivity

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

church marketing, church signs, churchmarketingsucks

Church sign: Tired of being a loser? Turn to God

Church sign: Tired of being a loser? Turn to God

One thing that often gets to me is church signs and church marketing. Well, not so much the sign, but how irreverent the message put on them usually is. You know what I’m talking about, the corny puns and bad theology present on most of them.

A few days ago someone in my Twitter feed pointed out a blog called “Church Marketing Sucks.” In particular, they linked to this post by Jeremy Harrison, and then a follower pointed out his followup post.

The author of the posts came across a church sign that said, “The church for people who don’t like church.”  I have touched on Seeker-Driven Pelagianism in a recent post, so I won’t address that here so much, but rather I’ll address Harrison’s comments about it and then I will address his tips for better marketing. Continue reading »

Finding a Biblical Church – Resolved 2012

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by cc_ in Ecclesiology, Preaching

≈ Comments Off on Finding a Biblical Church – Resolved 2012

Tags

finding a church, Steve Lawson

This was preached at Resolved 2012 this week. Resolved is a conference for college students.

Steve Lawson talks about finding a good church. This is very important and helpful, not only for college students.

Unfortunately, embedding has since been disabled for this video. The link below still works.

[Link to video]

Descent from Arminianism to Seeker Driven Pelagianism

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by cc_ in Ecclesiology, Seeker Sensitivity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Calvinism Rant, Ed Young, entertaining churches, Fellowship church, Pelagianism, sinner's prayer

 

Ed Young Junior performs the “Baby Shark song” at Fellowship Church

Ed Young Junior of Fellowship Church made news this Sunday for his absurd rant against Calvinism that he gave as his “sermon” this week. His argument is a total strawman, and even then I think it got a few hits in on him before he took it down.

His rant lead to a lot of discussion about his theology he holds to and the effects of it.

Calvinists believe that “salvation is of the Lord.” That is, that God does all the work in regards to a person coming to repentance and faith for the forgiveness of their sins. God the Father sent His Son to die in our place, God elects who will be saved, and the Holy Spirit carries out the work of regenerating the heart of the sinner and giving them faith so they will repent and trust in Christ the Savior.

The Arminian view differs somewhat in that they believe that at the regeneration stage the sinner is restored to the point that they can choose whether to repent and trust in Christ. Thus, ultimately the sinner can still choose to defy God and not be saved.

The Arminian view still credits God with most of the work in salvation, but tries to maintain a semblance of man’s free will.

When the Arminian view isn’t taught correctly, or more commonly, isn’t really taught at all in churches that hold to it. People tend to start believing in something different, that is Pelagianism. This heretical view believes that man, by his own volition, can choose to repent and trust Christ on his own at any time, or rather can  choose to obey God at any time.

In evangelism Pelagians and many Arminians tend to try to do the work of the Holy Spirit themselves, believing that it is their job to convince a man to repent and trust the Savior. Victory for them tends to end in convincing someone to repeat an unbiblical “sinner’s prayer” to “ask Jesus into their hearts” and then they are affirmed in their salvation by the pastor who lead them in this prayer. Where is the Holy Spirit in this? Hopefully he convicted their hearts and regenerated them that they may repent and believe. But, typically there is little concern for true contrition.

When this is combined with a misunderstanding of the purpose of the church service, the church service becomes a time of evangelism rather than a time of feeding and equipping the saints.

This leads to what is known as the “seeker driven church.” Ed Young’s church is a fine example of what a seeker driven church is. It is a church for the unchurched, that is, a church for the purpose of evangelism to the unconverted and not for the saints.

Unfortunately, unbelievers don’t tend to have the desire to sit under solid biblical preaching. You know, because they haven’t been regenerated and all that. They are by nature haters of God, so hearing Christ preached to them just doesn’t really fit with their desires.

Ed Young Junior uses his Ferrari as a sermon illustration

To combat this the seeker driven churches tend to stop preaching Christ, ignore the proper use of the Law (that is, to show our guilt and need for the Savior), and replace the Gospel with a system of works. To attract the unbelievers they try to be relevant and cool. For example, Ed Young believes that the way he dresses and the  car he drives can influence who will come to his church. So, he wears a girdle and got Botox to make him more attractive, drove a Ferrari on the stage at his church to show how cool Jesus is, brought wild animals into the church as gimmicks for his sermons about the traits of these animals, does the “Baby Shark song” with his congregation as part of the sermon, and spends a night on the church roof with his wife to show people that they need to have more sex in their marriages. The typical seeker driven sermon allegorizes the biblical text to make it about the hearer, and gives practical life tips to make your life better.

The idea then is that if he can get people into the church with these gimmicks he can keep them there by entertaining them and get them to “follow Jesus” by being obedient. There is no need for the Holy Spirit in this work, because there is no Gospel, and no forgiveness of sins, just the command to obey a watered down version of the law and God will make your life better.

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