We Need A Church Council

Michael Spencer September 9th, 2008

My friends will all tell you that I have, occasionally, a very strange idea or two, often inspired by my interaction with Christians of other traditions.

For example, I'd love to see some form of evangelical monasticism. I'm serious. We need to understand the vocation of prayer, and the worthiness of dedicating time and place to prayer.

When I want to pray for a day, I can go to any number of Catholic monasteries. If I had to stick with my Baptist tradition for sacred ground, I'd get to choose between my church parking lot and my local Lifeway.

I have a set of Anglican prayer beads. I know, I know. I've got some Protestant-laundered prayers that go with them. I have to admit I do love the visual effect those beads have on some of my evangelical friends.

And I like decorated churches, which is definitely off-beat for a Baptist. One of my favorite places of earth is the chapel at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Around the dome of the church, there is a wonderful mural of all the saints of every age, every tradition, every denomination. Luther and Spurgeon. St. Francis and John Wesley. All looking down at the gathered people of God.

Well….here's my latest crazy idea: I want to have a church council.

I don't mean the kind of church council where your church decides where this year's picnic is going to be. No, I mean a real church council, where all the Christian leaders from as many churches as possible get together and do important stuff.

I know. It's impossible. But that has nothing to do with what I want to say. Let me dream. I have a good reason for all of this.

Church councils have marked those times the church got together to hammer out serious doctrinal issues- like the Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus- or deal with a threat to the church, like Arianism.

Now I don't want to have a church council just for a photo op. No, I want to have a church council to get all Christian groups everywhere together to say one thing:

The Prosperity Gospel isn't. The Gospel, that is. Or even Christian.

I want a church council to say the Prosperity Gospel is evil, spiritually deadly and a false Gospel to be avoided and condemned.

The Prosperity Gospel is , without doubt, the worst thing to ever come out of evangelicalism. One thing I'd like to see at this church council is a special meeting where the Catholics and Orthodox get to look at evangelicals and say, "Joel Osteen? What are you thinking?"

The Prosperity Gospel has corrupted thousands of churches and led millions of people down the road of deception and disillusionment. It's enriched a criminal class of snake oil salesmen. It's turned Jesus into Ba'al and turned the Bible into a get rich quick scheme.

It's taught us that God wants us all to have whatever the current version of financial success in our culture happens to be, and we can have that dream if we just get God's attention. It's sold millions of people of the gullible notion that the only things that matters in scripture are its various pronouncements of blessing.

The Prosperity Gospel has made us stupid, established our greed as normative, perverted the truth of the Gospel and made the church into a whore for the spirit of the age.

Short of burning people at the stake, we ought to do everything we can as Christians to root out the Prosperity Gospel. It's already in danger of mortally polluting much of the third world and it has taken a hold in many churches to the point that their entire identity is wrapped up with the visible wealth, healing and prosperity of their members.

I'd love to say that most pastors have the spine to call out this nonsense, teach what the Bible actually says about the sins of greed and materialistic idolatry, and name the false teachers who perpetuate the Prosperity lie….but it appears few are willing to do so.

When you turn on "Christian television" or "Christian radio" you hear the prophets of prosperity right alongside solid, trustworthy teachers of the truth. If the numbers publicly published are true, then millions of Christians have no problem sending hundreds of million dollars to "ministries" that have little more agenda than buying more television time to ask for more money for more television time. One Prosperity prophet- far from being the worst offender- took in over 50 million dollars in one year with no more ambitious agenda than financing more fleecing of the flock.

Most of these Prosperity pimps don't even do a passable imitation of a Christian minister. Millions of Christians don't seem to care, as long as there's a chance that the divine lottery ticket may be a winner.

The most blatant forms of Prosperity heresy promise this for that: give money and get money. I'm shocked at how many Christians who ought to know better believe some version of this racket.

So let's have a Church Council. Let's draw up an ecumenical creed that says the Prosperity message is wrong. Let's draw a line between historic Christianity and this seductive, poison counterfeit. Let's specifically flush out the theological cancer and name the parasites who are stealing the message of Jesus to enrich themselves and their empire.

We may disagree on many things, but all Christians should be able to set aside their differences in order to be united in rejecting the Prosperity Gospel heresy.

Contemporary evangelicals like to feel they are broad minded and tolerant toward the many varieties of Christianity, but this is one variety of belief that we shouldn't tolerate. The Prosperity Gospel is corrosive and destructive. It doesn't deserve toleration and its propagation needs to be opposed.

Now all we need is a place to meet. Anyone know a good buffet with a meeting room?

Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living in a Christian community in southeast Kentucky. He blogs at Internetmonk.com and most recently at Jesus Shaped Spirituality.

|

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Christianity, Evangelicalism, Heresy, Internet Monk, InternetMonk.com, Jesus Shaped Spirituality, Michael Spencer, Prosperity Gospel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.