Tag Archives: Rick Warren

Dear Pastor, If You Need Rick Warren to Tell You What to Preach, Quit Today

And if you don’t receive any or sufficient guidance from the Holy Spirit to utilize Biblical texts in expository sermons, leave the ministry- you are unfit.

Pastor Rick Warren encouraged hundreds of local Southern California pastors and ministry leaders attending a pre-release screening of “Son of God” at Saddleback Church Tuesday to use a six-week study the best-selling author created using scenes from the movie.

Who does he imagine himself to be?  Does he think he’s actually qualified to use scenes from a movie as subject matter for sermons?  This is heresy.  It has nothing to do with Christianity nor does it have anything to do with the preaching office.

What an abomination.  So, pastor, if you need Rick Warren to tell you what to preach- or you follow his unscriptural advice and wretch a text from a film- then you really should quit today.  Warren is simply a salesman, selling himself, materials with which he is connected, and he’s selling out the ministry.

What an abomination.

This Is Why I Admire And Appreciate Mark Goodacre: He Stands His Ground

And I find that refreshing.  Even if Mark is essentially alone in defending the Mark Burnett ‘The Bible’ miniseries, he continues to highlight those aspects of the show which he deems proper and correct.

So, while the series is (rightly) panned, especially by Old Testament scholars and those who are more than a little uncomfortable with the fact that Rick Warren and Joel Osteen also served as consultant, Mark insists that it has redeeming qualities.

His stance is the only thing, in all sincerity, which hinders me from complaining about it more roundly.

So, Mark, keep doing what you’re doing- because you’re earning tons of respect for it.  You may even persuade some of your colleagues that they’ve been too harsh on the series (though I too have to be honest and say, I don’t think so).

Three cheers for Mark, one of the genuinely good guys.

No Wonder Newsweek Jumped the Shark… Its Reviewers are Lunatics

Look at the bottom of the Amazon page for one of NT Wright’s books:

garbage

Says who????  Based on what????  What nonsense.  Calling Wright the world’s leading NT scholar is like calling Rick Warren America’s Pastor.  I realize Amazon wants to sell books and they can be forgiven for unfounded and silly exaggeration- but Newsweek has jumped the shark and rightly belongs under the same umbrella as ‘The Daily Beast’, along with whatever reviewer (probably a sports journalist) who wrote that silly line.

Twitter Theology That Makes Me Sigh

This gem from Rick Warrern- unsurprisingly.

sigh

There’s so much wrong here.  First, it isn’t liberal or conservative theology or even theology of any kind that sustains congregations, it is the Holy Spirit.  Evidently Rick doesn’t know that.  Nor does he know that theology of any kind can kill churches because, according to Scripture (read the first 3 chapters of Revelation, Richard) churches are in the ‘hand of Christ’.  What kills churches is anthropocentric pseudo-theology because when man becomes the center the organization in question ceases to be the church and accordingly dies of its own weight.  And finally, liberal theology (whatever that is) survives (whatever that means) due not to tenured academics (whoever they are and whoever they are supposed to be) but to liberal Christians.  But Rick has to have some non-existent straw man to whip.

Rick Warren is just the worst thinker in any high profile pulpit in the country.  He really is ‘America’s Pastor’- for he’s just like America: biblically illiterate and theologically uninformed.

In Which Rick Warren Proves, Again, He’s Only Interested in One Thing: Self Promotion

fraud

For Warren and those of his tribe- the publicity seekers and self promoters- any publicity is good publicity.  Here Warren sees a chance to point out to folk that he’s been mentioned by Newsweek and he’s nearly giddy over it because he desires nothing so much as he desires public notice.  Rick Warren is rick warren’s ‘gospel’.   Warren is utterly incapable of uttering the words of John the Baptist- ‘He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease’.

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Oh That’s Just Sad Pandering For Publicity

How sad that things have come to such a state at Pepperdine, a formerly great school, that it has had to stoop to inviting the king of publicity questing ‘pastors’ Rick Warren to ‘lecture’ simply, apparently, to get itself in the news.

Telling is the advert, which mentions God not at all but Warren’s ‘achievements’ instead.

It’s a sad day for Pepperdine.  Surely it doesn’t need to be in the public eye that badly.

Another Pseudo Pastor Prowling the Pews for Conquests

An ex Microsoft exec decides there are greener pastures in the flock of God and so he starts his own Warren-esque ‘Purpose Driven’ ‘church’– for the apparent purpose of satisfying his perversity.

Pastor Dale Lee McFarland was an up-and-coming star in the “Purpose Driven Church” movement, having left his position as a Microsoft executive to launch a thriving megachurch in Arizona and travel the world with evangelical superstar Rick Warren to train others in the methods of “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Notice the language, which lacks any basis in New Testament theology or exegesis: he ‘launched’ a ‘thriving’ ‘megachurch’.  None of those terms are Biblical, not even ‘thriving’ as apart from the indwelling Holy Spirit and obedience to his guidance there is no true life and hence no sort of ‘thriving’.   ‘He traveled the world… to train others in the methods…’  These ‘purpose driven’ churches are purely anthropocentric exercises in self aggrandizement and enrichment.  They are ‘pyramid schemes’ gone spiritual.  The New Testament doesn’t teach us to train each other in the ‘methods’ of pastors- it teaches us to imitate Christ (which at the present moment, for me, means driving these filthy money-changers out of the Temple of God).

McFarland’s congregation, Radiant Church in Surprise, Ariz., had even boasted of receiving the Church Health Award from Purpose Driven Ministries and had grown to be one of the largest Assemblies of God churches in the country.  But earlier this year, a couple in the church filed a lawsuit, Courthouse News reports, alleging McFarland told the wife to have sex with him with “God’s approval” and divorce her husband.  Derek and Jody Gallagher claim McFarland “breached his duty as a pastor and counselor when [he] began manipulating a vulnerable Jody for his personal, perverted sexual pleasures.”

What are we to expect though?  These ‘congregations’ are founded upon anything but the work of the Holy Spirit- instead, they rest upon the ‘charisma’ of the ‘pastor’ who in too many cases, like Mr McFarland, lack any substantive theological training or expertise in biblical interpretation and instead rely on themselves and their personal magnetism to fleece the flock.  In McFarland’s case, that fleecing being sexual perversity, because he is a sexual predator.

The Gallaghers’ sordid story includes charges McFarland told Jody her husband was “dangerous” and convinced her to change her home’s locks, sent her salacious and pornographic messages, exchanged nude photographs with her and manipulated her into having sex with him in the church building, even while he was offering the couple marriage counseling.

Christians in these sorts of ‘churches’ need to flee Gomorrah before fire descends.  They need to find a church to attend where God is the central personality and not the pastor.

Rep. Wolf, I Can Answer Your Question

Congressman Frank Wolf, who has been a champion of human rights, is hard pressed to understand why U.S. churches are silent when it comes to advocating for persecuted Christians. The Republican Virginia rep. specifically called out big-name pastors such as Rick Warren and John Piper for their non-activity, especially at a time when Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Egypt are at greater risk for persecution. “The church in the West is relatively silent,” Wolf said on “The Janet Mefferd Show” this week. “Where are the (Dietrich) Bonhoeffers (20th century German Lutheran pastor who stood against Nazi dictatorship)? Where’s Rick Warren? Where’s John Piper? Where are the people? Why aren’t they speaking out on this? “I just have a hard time wondering why more in the West are not speaking out.”

Congressman, the answer is simple: raising the issue won’t help Rick Warren or John Piper boost their public image or raise funds for their financially faltering mega-‘ministries’.  Persecuted Christians in the Middle East aren’t a topic they care to address, furthermore, because it would require that they contradict their Christian Zionist supporters who insist that only Israel matters.

In sum, there’s nothing in it for them and the rest of the mega-churchers.  And if there’s nothing in it for them, if there’s no way to turn it to their P.R. advantage, they just don’t care.

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Idolatry at Southwestern ‘Baptist’ ‘Theological’ ‘Seminary’

I have the words in ‘scare quotes’ in the title of this post intentionally, for SWBTS has – it seems- ceased being Baptist, teaching theology, or being a Seminary at all.  Look at a stained glass window they’ve installed:

Rick Warren in stained glass… At a Baptist school? Are they completely unaware there that Warren is a false teacher? Or do they now simply pander to the mentality of the mega-churchers and so care nothing for whether or not someone is a faithful teacher of the Bible?

What profound absurdity- the exaltation of a heretic. SWBTS, I’m ashamed of you.

No, Facebook, If Rick Warren is Going to Be There I Definitely Won’t Be…

Not that I had any interest in attending something called @R12 (some ‘resurgence conference) – first, because I don’t waste my time on nonsense conferences which herald Rick ‘The Heretic’ Warren as a headliner and second because I wouldn’t attend an Emergent conference of any sort (which is what this nonsense must be if the soul-patch and / or goatee wearing hipsters organizing it have labeled it @R12).  Aren’t we all tired of @ being tossed around for every occassion like vomit spewing from a sick baby’s mouth?  It’s proper on Facebook and Twitter as indicator of address- otherwise, it’s just pompish hipster reprobation.

Facebook ads…  so dreadfully aimed.

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Twitter is Insane

I searched a bit ago for the Catholic Biblical Association (wondering if it has a twitter feed. It doesn’t. Why not?). Anyway, the fact that it came back and recommended the likes of Rick Warren and TD Jakes shows just how insane Twitter is. Warren and Jakes are to Catholic biblical scholarship what a cockroach is to a tasty dinner.

Twitter- you need better algorithms. Clearly.

Rick Warren’s Mentor Wasn’t a Christian

Interesting, isn’t it, to realize that Rick Warren’s guidestar admitted that he wasn’t a Christian.  And yet, he was Warren’s mentor.

… the late Peter Drucker, who’s had enormous influence upon the Seeker Driven/attractional camp, tell[s] you this [i.e., that he was never born again] himself in an exclusive AM video clip from that 2001 interview. … Here’s the critical point: Now just consider how much impact upon the professing Christian church this self-professed unbeliever has had through people like Rick Warren.

The video which follows that statement is must see. What all this shows is that, unfortunately, Rick Warren learned ‘ministry’ from a man who wasn’t a Christian. This means that he could not offer an authentic Christian minister any guidance worthy of that minister’s calling. The blind can only lead the blind.

Warren’s ‘spiritual’ lineage leads straight to the New Age movement. And yet he’s bamboozled believers into thinking that he’s one of them. He’s not. He’s a cultist.  Warren truly is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

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Rick Warren Is A Miserable Exegete Who Twists Scripture

If you trust his interpretation of Scripture, you know even less than he does (and that’s not much at all).  Take, for instance, his bastardization of the Book of Daniel:

The Bible is not a diet book. Study it as closely as you want, and you’ll never find anything remotely approaching “10 Tips to Drop 10 Pounds.” And yet that same Bible has helped 15,000 members of Rick Warren’s Saddleback megachurch drop a collective 260,000 lbs. The program the Saddleback members are following is known as The Daniel Plan, and in TIME’s health special this week (available to subscribers here), Jeffrey Kluger and I take a deeper look at just why it’s met with such success.

Warren’s ‘Daniel Plan’ is par for the course for this false teacher.  He takes Scripture and makes it into something it never was.   The Time essay continues

Daniel scholar and professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary Choon-Leong Seow represents a school of Christian thought that says Daniel is less a story of resisting rich food than a story of resisting a foreign king. (Full disclosure: I took a class on the consequences of Biblical history with Seow when studying for my Masters of Divinity.) Daniel and his friends resisted the king’s table, Seow says, as a tangible expression of their reliance on God’s power instead of the king’s. “They needed to establish their own identity. They even accepted silly names Chaldeans gave them,” Seow explains. “The one thing they could reject was the privilege of the king’s largess.”  If the text were actually about diet, Seow argues, there would be evidence that the king’s table violated Jewish food laws. A Jewish diet would have meant no pork, Seow notes, but most other meats, slaughtered properly, are O.K. Wine too is permissible. Nor does the text give any indication that the king’s food had been offered to idols, which is another thing that would have made it off-limits to the young Jews.

That a vegetarian diet has been recommended by even the likes of Calvin is well enough known but Calvin was himself no tea-totaler!  Warren is a perverter of the Bible.  He’s a salesman marketing his ridiculous books to an audience so bereft of theological training that they are willing to lap up the vomit spewed from Warren’s gaping maw.

His presence at Saddleback and his many minions proves right the Scripture which asserts that ‘in the latter days they will heap up for themselves teachers who tickle their ears’.

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Rick Warren’s False Premise Eviscerated and Exposed

Right here, where the essayist observes

Rick Warren, one of the innovators responsible for foisting the “Seeker-Sensitive Model of Church” upon the Body of Christ justifies his radical innovations by alluding to Christ’s statement to Peter that He’d make Peter a “fisher of men”. Evangelism, according to Jesus is akin to fishing. Rick Warren picks up on Jesus’ fishing theme…

But

What if Rick Warren’s fundamental premise about evangelism / fishing is dead wrong? What if Rick Warren has mixed his metaphors and has drawn incorrect conclusions about what it means to be a “fisher of men”? What if the fishing Jesus was referring to was not bait fishing but NET FISHING would that cause you to rethink the Seeker-Sensitive movement and question whether its methodologies are faithful to Jesus’ Biblical methods of evangelism? It should.

And then he goes on to show, in fine fashion, the absolutely bogus and misleading nonsense which Warren has managed to sell to the theologically inept.

Warren is a heretic who has misled thousands.  He has disciples only because ‘in the last days they will collect teachers who tickle their ears’.  With thanks to M.A. for the tip on FB.

At Rick Warren’s Church The Men’s Group Doesn’t Study the Bible, it Studies Joyce Meyer…

Two words:  wowwwwwww.  Rick’s off the rails again.  Joyce and her ‘word of faith’ heresy is naturally at home on TBN or CBN or wherever it airs but that Warren has aligned himself with it further demonstrates the theological bankruptcy under which he operates.  And Warren is seen as a leader by Christians and Pastors?  They’re as absurd theologically as he is.

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Rick Warren Proves His Theological Ignorance, Yet Again

Apparently Warren hasn’t ever read the Bible, or any decent theology. If he had he would know that of all the created things on earth, only humanity receives the ‘breath of life’, and ‘becomes a living soul’. Therefore, mankind occupies a special position in relationship to both God and other created things. Plants don’t have souls and neither do animals (fish, dogs, cats, goats, cows, etc.).

Tapper relays a Facebook question: Do dogs go to heaven? Said Warren, Absolutely yes. I can’t imagine God not allowing my dog into heaven. Cats, too, Warren added. “Why not.”

I realize that many folk, like Warren, aren’t sufficiently informed concerning things theological and because they love their pets want them to live forever; but it just isn’t scriptural. Wishful thinking won’t make it so. When beasties die, they just simply die; just as do plants. Warren is a miserable theologian. He may be a Christian; he may even be a real Pastor; but he is no theologian nor is he a scholar of the Bible.

If ‘I can’t imagine God not letting my _______ into heaven’ is the criterion, then boy do I have a list of both ins and outs.

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Rick Warren Caught With His Pants on Fire

When an Orange County Register article about Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church’s mission to heal differences between evangelical Christians and Muslims was published, some of the pastor’s critics saw it as more evidence of a blurry vision of “Chrislam,” a blending of Christianity and Islam, despite his repeated denials. The Feb. 23 article cited Saddleback documents that see similarities between Christianity and Islam. One co-authored by Jihad Turk of the Christian-Muslim Consultative Group in Los Angeles and Abraham Meulenberg, pastor of Interfaith Outreach at Saddleback claims the two religions “worship the same God.”

Of Course Ricky blames the reporter for getting it all wrong… but as the essay makes plain, that’s typical of Warren’s m.o.  Say something theologically suspect and then blame someone else for it.

Steve McConkey, of bigworldwatch.com, a news gathering site, said of Warren’s response to the article: “A person should not say one thing one time and another thing later and then blame the reporter.  “The problem that we have is that he has a case of doublespeak. Warren denies the Orange County Register article’s contents, but the document he signed ‘A Common Word Between Us and You’ says differently,” said McConkey.  McConkey was referring to a much publicized 2007 document signed by Warren, among many other Christian leaders. Within the first few lines it says that “many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors.”  “Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world,” the document states.

Warren speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

Saddleback and Warren declined numerous WND attempts to speak about the issue. But in the Christian Post, he responded.  The publication asked, “Are you promoting Chrislam?”  “Of course not. It’s the lie that won’t die,” he said.  Yet his staff has acknowledged the Register article is correct, he had a role in the “King’s Way” document and he signed “Common Word.”

Rev. Duplicity, your pants are on fire…

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A List I’m Not On, But Rick Warren and Creflo Dollar Are

Because, let’s come to terms with it, the guys on this list are crooks and liars- manipulators and deceivers.

… most spiritual leaders of small towns and big cities across the United States earned meager salaries, with annual pay for Catholic priests and imams ranging from $25,000 to $30,000 and the average Protestant pastor making $40,000 a year, according to a recent survey.  Yet, even in difficult times, some churches and pastors are soaring. While not a definitive guide, HuffPost Religion has compiled a slideshow of some of the best paid pastors in America. For several, their high income comes not only from employment as pastors, but also from TV appearances, book sales and charity management.  For the lucky few, being a pastor can mean being a multi-millionaire.

Yes, but only because they aren’t pastors, they’re thieves.  No pastor worth his salt would live in a mansion, accept an outrageous salary, drive a supercar, or pretend that it was all ok because God wanted him to live so far above the flock he’s supposedly shepherding (but which he is actually fleecing for all he can get).

Kenneth Copeland: This televangelist’s campus includes a private airstrip and hangar, both of which it needs because the ministry also owns a $17.5 million jet and unspecified “other aircraft.” The most recent salary information, from 1995, puts his annual wages at $364,577 and his wife’s at $292,593.

Creflo A. Dollar: Yes, that’s his real name—and it fits. As pastor of one of the biggest churches in the US, he drives a Rolls-Royce, flies around in a private jet, and owns one $1 million Atlanta home and another $2.5 million New York City apartment.

Charles E. Blake: This bishop reportedly makes $900,000 a year and lives in 10,000 square feet of Beverly Hills luxury … while most of his congregation lives in the poor area of South Central Los Angeles.

Joel Osteen: He no longer takes his $200,000 salary, but still earns tens of millions from his popular books. He and his wife live in a $10.5 million mansion that is a whopping 17,000 square feet.

Rick Warren: Like Osteen, he no longer accepts paychecks, but he’s also made tens of millions off his books, including A Purpose Driven Life. But, the pastor says, he gives away 91% of his income.

These guys, to a man, are wolves in sheep’s clothing and they have followers who are, tragically, too blind to see it and too ignorant of the Bible to know it.