Destructive Church Trends In North American Christianity - a podcast by Pro Church Tools

from 2019-05-09T07:00

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Christian churches in North America are facing a crisis. Attendance is down, giving is down, young people are leaving churches at alarming rates - but that’s not the worse part. The worse part is that our Christian churches are exacerbating this crisis thanks to a handful of shoddy beliefs. And by the end of this video, you’ll know what those beliefs are - and how to resist the pull of them.

 

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What's In This Session?

  • Branding is what others think about you - before our churches can truly reach our city and/or community - we need to understand how we are perceived (2:22)
  • #1. Persecution Complex (2:55)
  • More than 245 million Christians in the world are highly persecuted for their Christian faith. 1 in 9 Christians worldwide experience high levels of persecution (2:59)
  • White evangelicals think they’re super persecuted (4:23)
  • God’s Not Dead feeds the narrative (4:43)
  • Don’t belittle the real persecution of others by manufacturing fake persecution for yourself (5:10)
  • James Harden comparison (8:48)
  • #2. Theological Certainty (11:14)
  • Hundreds of denominations and translations and you’re certain yours is the absolute correct one (11:18)
  • Theological certainty is a symptom of trusting beliefs more than God (12:47)
  • Surrendering the need to be right, and our pride opens the door for empathy and compassion (15:47)
  • Judge them by their fruits? The Protestant quest for theological certainty has led to a staggering number of different denominations and sub-denominations that disagree sharply about how significant portions of the Bible should be understood (19:35)
  • Things that matter: incarnational living, selflessness, laying down one’s own life for others, generosity, bringing life to death, bringing heaven to Earth, redemption, reconciliation, love being the uniting/redeeming/ultimate force in the world to do good (20:06)
  • #3. Celebrity Worship (22:25)
  • Canadian commercials versus American commercials (22:49)
  • The face of American Christianity is Donald Trump, Mark Driscoll, Perry Noble, Bill Hybels, Pete Wilson etc. (23:46)
  • The true danger of each of these beliefs is that they are ancient sins masquerading as Christian virtues (31:29)

 

Show Notes & Resources Mentioned:

 

Further episodes of The Pro Church Tools Show with Brady Shearer

Further podcasts by Pro Church Tools

Website of Pro Church Tools