On Saturday night I visited the city campus of Hillsong. As part of my training, I’ve been looking at pentecostalism, and where better to see this in action than at Hillsong. It can be easy to throw grenades from a ditch, so it was a useful exercise to make the trip over and experience Hillsong firsthand. I’ve been about five times before, but I’m not sure how discerning I was in the past.
To start on a positive note, the music was fantastic. I’ve long been a fan of the music of Hillsong (not all of it, but most of it) and it was great to sing new songs with great music. I would’ve been happy to spend the hour just singing, particularly given what came next.
Jerry Savelle was the speaker - visiting from the US. He started his talk by reading part of a verse, I think it was Mark 10:27 - “all things are possible with God”. From that point on, we left the Bible behind, and went on a journey to discover that we are barrier-breakers, that 2008 is our year to break through barriers that are stopping us from being who God wants to be. This main point was illustrated by numerous examples from the lives of people who don’t know Jesus, who were to inspire us to be barrier-breakers. It defies understanding that Jesus wasn’t mentioned once during the talk - particularly when he is the supreme example of barrier-breaking (to run with that awkward and contrived phrase) - destroying the barrier between us and God, destroying the power of sin and death. It was a terrible talk.
On a positive note, I’ve been listening to a number of talks by Matt Chandler over at the Village Church and
Mark Driscoll has been working his way through a series on Doctrine. I’m really thankful to God for people like Matt and Mark, who take the Bible seriously and accept it “not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
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Hey dude
I’ve been thinking about this post on and off since I first read it.
It isn’t the content that got me thinking , I’ve been to both Hillsong Church and Hillsong conference and concluded similar things. Their NASA preaching (preaching that starts grounded and then shoots off into space) irritates me, and it is easy to see how using and modeling this manner of dealing with the Bible they come to some of the conclusions they come to.
My issue is really with the title. “No Hope for Hillsong.” Brother, I’m not sure if it was the allure of alliteration or something more deeply seated that influenced your choice of words here but I want us all to exercise caution in our condemnation of Hillsong, because it isn’t our place to pronounce a denial of hope for anyone. Hope is the property of the Lord Christ and it is for him to decide whom he dishes it out to. You don’t want to be lumped alongside the 5 pointers who railed against the “Jesus Loves Osama” posters because they expressed an extension of God’s grace further than they were willing to admit it could be stretched.
No, Hillsong still has some hope. It needs corporal, not capital punishment. It needs to repent of a vast array of teachings not consistent with the orthodox faith. But we need to come along side our brothers and sisters in that church and alert them of this. We need to do this in the same way that we need to rebuke those in our own ranks guilty of similar NASA preaching.
Sorry if my comments don’t reflect your original meaning brother, come back at me on this if you want.
Hi Steve, thanks for the response. I think my title may have been a bit misleading. My intention was “No hope at Hillsong” as in “There was no hope offered to the congregation at Hillsong on the particular Saturday I attended” rather than “There is no hope for Hillsong”. Sorry to you (and anyone else) if this communicated something other than what I intended.
I felt sad as I sat there that Saturday night, because there were a couple of hundred people there, gathered to learn about God. And yet, the time of singing taught more about God than any other part of the service. What was worse, the speaker spoke of all the things that could be yours as a Christian, without explaining how they are made possible or how they can be ours (apart from the power of positive thinking). It felt like telling someone they don’t have to have cancer, and yet not pointing them in the direction of the cure. To offer people hope, yet not giving them any kind of detail on how that hope might be fulfilled in their life is cruel, I think. Also, the kinds of things the speaker proposed could be ours, simply aren’t guaranteed. A debt-free life? Is it possible? Certainly. Is it promised. Certainly not. So a couple of people wandered out of the building on Saturday night thinking that being a Christian means being debt-free.
I was only there on one particular week, and have only been there perhaps 4 or 5 times previously. It’s easy, but dangerous to make generalisations and on the whole it’s unhelpful to make anti-Hillsong comments. I was just feeling disappointed.
A couple of things are still mulling around in my head, and I’d appreciate your thoughts:
- at what point do can we say that something is ‘false teaching’ or that someone is a false teacher?
- if we determine teaching or a particular teacher to be false, what should be our response?
Good call Steve
After I wrote my initial post I wondered if that’s perhaps what you meant.
The difficult thing for us as outsiders is we don’t listen to 100% of the talks from that particular church so we can always be accused of generalising, when in actuality we are calling it as we have seen it, not unlike a supporter who doesn’t attend regularly.
In answer to your questions:
Ever the Pharisee Steve. Looking for a clear “us and them” demarcation. The trouble is this is really not spelt out for us. We have examples of false teachers scattered throughout the New Testament. For example I think we’d happily agree with Paul that if anyone said you have to be circumsised to be saved then those teachers are “them” teachers. The trouble is Hillsong doesn’t clearly teach a “gospel plus” gospel. Similarly we’d happily agree than anyone who denies the resurrection is a “them” teacher. The trouble is Hillsong doesn’t clearly teach a “gospel minus” gospel.
After that long winded exploration I’m going to give you a big I don’t know to the false teacher question. But I think there’s a difference between false teaching and bad or clumsy teaching. One of the things that I’ve noticed in my attendance of various pentecostal churches over the years is that the preachers regularly didn’t prepare for their talks to the same extent as evangelical preachers generally do. Thus they make these ridiculous bold assertions about how great being a Christian is without actually articulating our hope. This is reprehensible, because they are failing to correctly handle the word of truth, but it isn’t as abhorent as flatly denying the word of truth. I reckon to the attuned eye, spotting false teaching is like spotting pornography. It is really hard to define what porn is but you know it when you see it.
So what do we do when we feel that mainstream pentecostalism hasn’t thought through Biblical Theology when applying the promises of the OT to the modern reader?
I think we’ve got to pull them up, but I think evangelicals (and here I’m further constricting the term “evangelical” to evangelicals who hold a biblical theology) all too often start the argument way too far down the road. Sydney one of the few places in the world that teaches Biblical Theology. SMBC, Moore and I’m pretty sure the PTC are really trail blazers for this way of understanding the Bible and so we shouldn’t look down our nose at people who just don’t know any better. We need to step out the arguments slowly, as they were for us. Now exactly who is going to be ballsy enough to do this with Brian and Bobby, I’m not sure. :o)
Finally Brother, even though I don’t really like hillsong music because musically it isn’t my thing, I’m so glad that in most of their stuff these days, if you listen to the words you’ll hear the gospel. Even though I can’t bring myself to buy their CDs because Darlene and co are amassing private fortunes off the sale of these things and that makes me angry, I am glad that people are hearing the gospel in song.
What do you think mate?
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