The boys at The White Horse Inn are starting a new series for 2008 on “Christless Christianity”.
Recently on the program, Ken Jones said the following:
“[preachers] are in the awkward position of saying that the truth claims that we hold to are exclusive. And while certainly I think our personal testimonies have been problematic, I think the thing that’s most offensive is not our testimonies (because as long as I’m telling about what happened to me, and how I overcame this and how I overcame that, at that point I sound like a testimonial for any other product that could clear up your skin or that could help you in a particular way).
But the thing that is offensive is the idea of exclusive truth claims.”
I listened to a recent sermon in which a woman’s testimony was used to ostensibly illustrate the church’s program’s effectiveness in her life. She described a time of hardship in her life and how much it meant to her to be in church and how good it felt. The problem was, she could have just as easily been talking about being in a Buddhist temple, a mosque, or in Joel Osteen’s arena in Houston. There was nothing distinctly Christian about her experience – the testimony was inserted in a Sabbath sermon as a tool for “reaching” the audience emotionally, to say, “See, we comforted her and she felt good here”.
The practice of preaching propositionally and making exclusive truth claims that offend the goats is being lost and forgotten in most evangelical churches in America.
Posted by Hed Taggard 