Purpose Driven Sadness....

Granger Community Church (the 6th most influential church in the country) and proponent of purpose driven/seeker sensitive models of ministry, released the findings of the church. This is an internal review of where the church is. You can listen to the sermon here (called "Change is Good") and the results are sad. Very sad. Here are a few sobering (the pastors own words) findings:
Granger’s own qualitative study revealed that:

47% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in salvation by grace.

57% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in the authority of the Bible.

56% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life.

If you see the service on-line, the worship feels like a concert. As a matter of fact they begin by playing Goo Goo Dolls song (without the words I might add-can't they go the whole way?) and to his credit the pastor does preach. He acknowledges that things need to change. Could it be that trying to be relevant and hip and well SEEKER SENSITIVE is the result of this whole fiasco?

Chris Rosebrough of Alittleleaven.com comments:

"47% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in salvation by grace. (This means they are NOT Christians, regardless of whether or not they identify themselves as those who are 'Growing in Christ' or 'Christ Centered')"

And most poignantly
"This is exactly what we should expect from churches that spend their time trying to be 'relevant' and scratch itching ears rather than preaching and teaching God's Word in season and out of season. Or to put it another way, Christless Christianity is completely impotent when it comes to making Christians and Christian Disciples. These survey results prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

These results are a complete train wreck and prove that it is time to abandon the circus church approach and get back to the 'boring' and 'irrelevant' work of preaching and teaching God's Word, the Lord's Supper and proclaiming Jesus Christ as crucified for our sins."

(You can listen to his Pirate Christian Radio show to get his full analysis-worth hearing)

I agree. I had to take a class on church growth at school and this was the kind of stuff they talked to us about doing. I wonder o=what my old Prof. has to say about this? If they did a survey of places like Saddleback, Mosaic, the Southern Baptist Convention in general and other places, I wonder if the results would be the same. This is proof that you can be big and not healthy.