Is your pastor just a life coach?

Listen to any message by Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer and there will be plenty to make you feel good about yourself. Guidance on how you can live your best life now, how you can have a balanced life, how to build relationships and have a more healthy lifestyle. An ultra positive message designed to help you fulfil your potential and empower the inner you. If you are to look to any of the other proponents of the prosperity gospel you will find that the message will be the same; positive confession and the promise of financial and personal success. Yet although their words are dressed up in Christian terminology in truth they differ little from the message that is provided by a secular life coach or motivational speaker. Their message is simply a Christianised psychology. They talk of what God can do for you in your life, yet not what Christ has done to give you new life.

Should a church be seeker sensitive?

A popular model for many churches today is the 'seeker sensitive' approach to evangelism and conducting church services. One of the most high profile exponents of this is Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Church was released almost 20 years ago. The seeker sensitive advocated by Warren and many other involves changing church to something which is more friendly, culturally sensitive and appealing to the unchurched, a church experience which is non threatening and which will give them what they want from church. Old style hymns and worship will be replaced with a more modern worldly style of music, including pop, rock and rap. Long expository sermons will be diluted down into a shorter story based talk that meets the perceived needs of the hearers, with biblical doctrines such as sin and repentance being rarely mentioned. The focus of the message will instead be light on doctrine, centred on man and with the Lord Jesus Christ presented as the means of you improving yourself and filling that void in your life. Essentially it is church done the way the unsaved want it to be done, a way that does not cause them to feel uncomfortable or threatened. The seeker sensitive church will also provide for the social needs of the area with numerous programs aimed at improving the lives of those living in the community. These churches have been very successful in seeing large congregations built up very quickly, with thousands of people in attendance and multi-million pound programs being run by the congregation. The question is whether the seeker sensitive approach to doing church is one that we should adopt, and whether it can be supported by scripture.

The need for a 'breach of the peace'

Twice within the last week baptist pastor Josh Williamson has been arrested in Perth, Scotland whilst preaching in the open air. The allegation was that his preaching was causing, or was likely to cause a breach of the peace. What many people do not realise is that a 'breach of the peace' is exactly what the United Kingdom currently needs. By that statement we do not mean that there is a need for public disorder or violence, but that there is a a need for people to be shaken out of their indifference to the gospel, their lives disturbed and changed by the preaching of the word of God. Throughout our land the vast majority of people are peacefully unaware of their need of salvation. Their lives are comfortable and they have all the possessions that they require. They are living for pleasure and for self, and have no desire that anyone would disturb them. The same is true also of many Christians. They have become indifferent to the spiritual condition of the land and are content to drift along through life without seeking to win the lost for Christ. Just like the lost their peace also needs to be disturbed and their conscience awakened to the need of the hour. Are we involved in behaviour that liable to cause a breach of the peace in a spiritual sense? If not then we ought to be, that people would find true peace and rest for their souls. Let us commit ourselves to disturbing Britain's peaceful neglect of spiritual matters and may there be regular breaches of the peace throughout our nation as men and women are directed to the cross.