The latest Fire In My Bones article ( Fri. July 27, 2007) from J. Lee Grady is a must read: “The Deadly Virus of Celebrity Christianity”.
Paul and Barnabas and later Silas use to walk from town to town and were known to even work occasionally to support themselves. Jail was more often than not their reward for preaching in their ‘marketplace’ conferences. Now in 21th century USA, those who consider themselves ‘more than Apostles’ demand worship, 5 star hotels, luxury cars to drive, and manicurists?
That the Charismatic/Pentecostal community puts up with such as these is more than I can bear. It is almost enough to make me wish that I was a cessassionist. Where are all the humble servants of the Lord? How long will the Lord suffer such idiocy in his name? I believe that judgment is on the way for such as these. Hear me now! Along with revival comes judgment for all unfaithful servants.
J. Lee Grady ends his article with the following:
New Testament Christianity is humble, selfless and authentic. And those who carry the truth don’t preach for selfish gain or to meet an emotional need for attention. May God help us root out the false apostles and false teachers who are making the American church sick with their man-centered, money-focused heresies.
May the Lord bring revival to this land and save his church from all the egotistical man-centered so-called ministers. Lord, let all the humble servants that you have prepared to finally rise to the top and have their day in the sun. *Top
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A simple AMEN! will suffice.
AMEN!
Very well spoken…uh, written…indeed.
Dear Dr. Davis,
I would say “AMEN” too. As a matter of fact, we are facing the same problem as well in Indonesia.
Last month i attended Asian Pentecostal Society (APS) meeting in Surabaya, and was asked/assigned to read Dr. Matthew Clark’s article because he couldn’t come to Indonesia. You know what, he wrote also out of his deep concern on Pentecostal leadership nowadays. It has the same tone with what you have in this post. he basically said that modern Pentecostals have been doing a form of “syncretism” in many areas of leadership. One of them is “the acceptance by many church leaders that the dominant paradigms of consumerism and of media and celebrity culture can simply be adopted (some even term it “sanctifiedâ€) by the church in its operations and liturgies.”
When i read it in the meeting, the participants all were smiling because this article is so provocative and, of course, true. If you are interested to read this article, just drop me an email. I would love to send you. Just for you to know, it will be published in the next issue of Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies (AJPS).
Anyway, I really enjoy reading your blog. Thanks for commenting my post on “Open Theism”. I would love to discuss this issue further with you. God bless you
Ekaputra: Thanks for your comments. I am concerned that these trends will be exported around the world. I recently read several articles that indicated that African churches were infected with similar problems.
I purposely decided to address the American problem first since so many seem to follow both our good and bad examples.
May God bless your ministry and the Indonesian Church.