Guest Post: How Is Your Church "Progressing?"

Around our place we have been bouncing around some thoughts about the self-named Progressive Church.  Wikipedia has a brief entry by that name which may be of benefit if you are not  familiar with the term.

Based on about forty years of observation, and a little background in ancient languages, ecclesiology and philosophy, I conclude the following.  Many of the teachings of the Progressive Church are not progressive at all,  but rather a movement back into the ancient heresies of gnosticism, antinomianism and universalism.  I know that's a mouthful.  Said another way, these guys are teaching some of the same stuff Paul, John, Peter and Jude had to fight against in the first generation of the Church's life.  But Progressive sounds so cool, doesn't it?  Reminds me of the Progressive Insurance Company and I wonder if they are actually innovative in any meaningful way.  Either one.

I'm serious about there being some glaring problems with the Progressive Church.  Let's make a baseball metaphor.

Let's "progressively" change some rules of the game.  Forget all those buzzkill rules about being "out" all the time.  We don't want those defensive positions around the field.  Oh, those guys can still stand out there, but it would be cooler if they would just clap a lot and yell things at the batter, like, "I affirm you, Dude."    And the pitcher should no longer be throwing so hard;  in fact, underhand delivery would be preferable.  We want every batter to hit a homer!  Hey, it's my game, so I'm going to name it Radical Love Baseball. If you love the game of baseball,  if you see the beauty in it just the way it is, messing with the rules would scandalize you.  The new rules above might be good for five-year-olds, but for die hard lovers of the game, such changes would be heartbreaking.

Now I do love baseball, but not in the way I love the Church.  And when I see the Devil fooling with it, I feel like I must scream a little.  Just reading a Psalm yesterday where the writer said something like, "God's people are all screwing up, and there are no prophets, so now what are we going to do?"  The Psalmist didn't say exactly that, but I'll bet my offering is better than the Message on that verse.  God, raise up some prophets!!

I use the baseball metaphor to underscore that what the Progressive Church is about goes beyond what is touted.  They seek to change some basic teachings of the Bible.  Someone should be blogging every day, exposing their false teaching with the Light of God's Word.  I promise to find you some links. . .somewhere out there a bright, straight-up, Truth-loving scholar, preferably with a double PhD in Koine Greek and Church History, may be blogging on this and I don't know about it.

I'll ask you one question, then quit for today.  In your church, do you hear clear teaching about holiness, the destiny of the lost, the abortion plague, sexual boundaries, the end times?  Really.  We all need to be involved with a group of Believers who challenge one another to obedience to the Whole Counsel of God.

Wait.  I have to throw this in.  In the Wikipedia article mentioned above, the author made a list of perhaps thirty or so people they described as notable Progressive Christians.  First name on the list is Barack Obama.  Now that is. . .  it's just. . .  I mean, lots of people (like Madonna, for example) assume he is a Muslim.