Unbelievable

Author and speaker Brian McLaren recently spoke at a youth worker's convention at Willow Creek Church, one of the largest evangelical churches in America. Here are some quotes (his in italics, my response in bold)...

"Some of us came from a religious tradition or a religious background where our main role was to recruit kids to go to heaven, and that's a good thing. Mortality rates are still pretty high, and we all have to face that decision. But I'm here to challenge you to think bigger and deeper and in more layers and dimensions about your role."

Hmmmm. Bigger and deeper than recruiting for heaven?

"There are some ideas that are not truly ideas of the Gospel but are ideas of the modern understanding of the Gospel. The problem isn't the Bible. The problem is modern rings that we put around the Bible. And what we need to do -- some of us in our thinking -- is to find the courage to snip the ring so that our faith ... can really have a future."

Okay...which ideas is McLaren talking about? An article from today's Baptist Press quotes McLaren as stating in his most recent book...

"Many of us have been increasingly critical in recent years of popular American eschatology in general, and conventional views of hell in particular. Simply put, if we believe that God will ultimately enforce his will by forceful domination, and will eternally torture all who resist that domination, then torture and domination become not only permissible but in some way godly." Another statement reads, "This eschatological understanding of a violent second coming leads us to believe (as we've said before) that in the end, even God finds it impossible to fix the world apart from violence and coercion; no one should be surprised when those shaped by this theology behave accordingly."

Now hold your horses, cowboy! If we believe in hell, we are more likely to commit or foster acts of violence? Are you kidding me?

McLaren also said at this conference that youth pastors should not teach youth the faults of non-christian religions because...

"The kids walk out thinking, 'Man, I don't want to be a Christian because Christians are always attacking everybody else. So you end up giving the opposite message you intended to give because they're living in a world where to be critical seems like it's dangerous because they're worried that people are going to kill each other and blow each other up. We've got to realize the storm is occurring and the landscape is changing."

When a church with membership in the tens of thousands invites a speaker to come and tell youth workers to stop talking about (or believing in) hell and to never criticize false views of God, we know we are in trouble. I'll be hoping for a statement by Willow Creek's pastor, Bill Hybels, distancing himself from these statements, but I'm not holding my breath. This is why we should never evaluate a church based on its size, but based on its faithfulness to the gospel of Christ.