Speaking at New Dimensions, The Shack, CFCFC Founders Day (Pastoral Emphasis for 3/19)

Join us again on Wednesday at 7pm for our Bible Study series called the Journey. This Wednesday, we'll look at Jesus sending His disciples. Christ calls us to take the Gospel to the world.

Our Spring Spruce Up is Saturday, 3/25, from 9am to noon.  Please come out to volunteer some time to help us clean and keep our facilities looking good.

Next Sunday, 3/26, I'll be preaching at New Dimensions Fellowship Church at 4pm for their 13th church anniversary.  I'd appreciate your support if you can attend and definitely your prayers.

So The Shack movie has hit the theaters (based on the best-selling book). It's Christian fiction and I would not even address it (there have been other fictional movies depicting God like Oh, God! and Bruce Almighty) except for the fact that it's being marketed as something churches should be studying. They have a 5-week campaign and study designed to "help people experience the life-changing goodness, grace, and presence of God". "Using engaging scenes from the film, paired with relevant Scripture, these resources are an invitation to experience the ultimate truth about love, loss, and forgiveness". So if the church is being told to study it, then we need to examine the ideas and theology in The Shack. Ideas have consequences. And there are a lot of theological errors in The Shack.

Here are three major ones:

• False view of the Incarnation. God appears as three separate persons in three separate bodies. God the Father appears as a black woman (named Papa) and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman. But we know that only the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus, had come in flesh.
• Unbiblical view of punishing sin: Papa says "I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It is not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it". But we know that God is holy and will punish sin for all who reject Jesus.
• False view of salvation: According to the author, Christ is just the "best" way to relate to the Father, not the only way. The "best" does not necessarily imply the only way, which then means that there may be other ways to relate to God. Such an assertion is contrary to Jesus’ claim, "I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes unto the Father except through me".

Go here for other theological errors in The Shack.  The author, Paul Young, has released his new non-fiction work called "Lies We Believe About God".  So if we want to know what Young really believes, we can now know for sure.  Here are some of the "lies" Young says that we believe:

• “God is Good. I am not.” (denial of human depravity)
• “God is in control.” (denial of the sovereignty of God)
• “You need to get saved.” (promotion of universalism)
• “The cross was God’s idea.” (denial that the Cross was a part of God's divine plan)
• “Sin separates us from God.” (denial of the nature and effect of sin)

Check out Tim Challies' review of Young's book "Lies We Believe About God".

Whether or not you go see The Shack movie, please don't take your theology about God from it. My advice: Stay out The Shack and stay in your Bible!

Christ First Christian Fellowship Center had their Founders Day program at 4pm. They honored their three founders, Pastor Larry Snead, Elder Kenneth Snead and Bro. Michael Pullum, who founded Christ First Christian Fellowship Center in 2008. I was honored to give my reflections of these men from their time at Mt. Zion and going to plant this new church.