I've been on the bad list of the relevance crowd for a couple of days now for questioning the veracity of Oak Leaf church's claims that "39 people decided to follow Jesus! 39 people who are now Christians!" on Sunday. Today their pastor responded to my post, and unfortunately Michael creates a strawman argument out of what I said, stating that my criticism revolves around "the fact that those decisions were not real and lasting". In a similar vein, Pastor Henry (Rick) Frueh blogged that he "made a decision for Christ [at a Billy Graham crusade in 1975] and Old Truth would have judged me as unsaved back then". But none of that is ranking very high on the honesty meter. Some such 'decisions' COULD be suggestive of conversion, I never said NONE of them were real; Frueh overlooks and Michael never mentions how I said "Praise God for any true converts that may be in the bunch of 39". Contrary to the claims of one Emergent blogger, I never said that I somehow know which of the 39 are saved and which aren't (I pray that all of them are!). By the way, if I were to agree with the theology of "confess with your mouth = genuine salvation" in all cases, I'd have to accept that the million salvations attributed to the pop-singer Carman are all legitimate. Does anyone REALLY believe that? Today Michael seems to be backing off somewhat from Sunday's counting of unhatched chickens by saying that "some" might not "stick" (hatch). Unfortunately, statistics suggest that in the Oak Leaf type churches (of which I used to attend) that it's more than just SOME of these "decisions" that likely won't stick beyond 5 years. It's also worth noting again that none of the upset bloggers made an attempt to grapple with the passages that I gave. So here's a challenge to Pastor Michael: Write a post on your blog that reconciles the will of man described in Romans 9:16 and John 1:12-13 with the notion that people can change their eternal destiny by an act of human will. Michael calls this a "useless argument" but noteworthy theologians of the past have rarely thought that. The bible is not a pick-and-choose buffet, and one of the long time criticisms of Seeker Sensitive churches is that they avoid scriptures like these, and ones like Romans 3 that say "no one seeks God". What does it mean, and how does that reconcile with repentance and belief? For more opinions on these things, why not consult some of the historic Confessions and Catechisms of our protestant forefathers? Contrary to the motives that some assign to me, I'm vocal on these things because I believe that false-assurance and easy-believism are soul-effecting topics.
Update 12/12: Henry Frueh emerged on Michael's post with more talk of the ubiquitous Reformed boogey-man. Maybe he'll surprise us on his blog with some actual discussion of the scriptures that I presented above. I'm beginning to think that Henry has a Ronco 5 Pointed Axe Grinder on his Santa list this year :-)... [Read Link]
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