There’s a very blunt commentary on the web site of the Henry Institute, posted this weekend by Russell D. Moore, taking serious issue with Willow Creek allowing Brian McClaren to promulgate nonchristian teaching on their platform.
Willow Creek hosted a conference on youth ministry, and featured author Brian McLaren as a speaker. At the conference, McLaren called on his hearers to rethink some doctrines of the faith, to decrease their focus on eternity in favor of social justice in the here and now.
First of all, we are now well past the time when Christians can claim ignorance of the agenda of Brian McLaren. He has made repeatedly clear his hostility to the most basic aspects of the gospel message. McLaren’s comments at Willow Creek are not themselves surprising. What is surprising is that a Christian conference, especially one growing out of a movement designed to reach “seekers” for Christ, would invite him to speak.
When McLaren questions the existence of hell and the hope of the Second Coming, he is not a “new kind of Christian.” Such things are neither new nor Christian. They are instead a repetition of the voice of a snake in a long-ago Garden: “Has God said?” and “You shall not surely die.” It is tragic that one of the world’s most renowned evangelical churches would highlight this kind of Serpent-sensitive worship.
Second, McLaren’s comments about the biblical doctrines of hell and the Second Coming leading to violence and domination are particularly unfortunate, indeed absurd. It is these doctrines, in fact, that actually keep Christians away from such violence and domination.
See also the longer news story posted on Baptist Press.
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