Below is a telling segment from a recent question and answer session at Twin Cities Fellowship where Bob DeWaay is pastor. In addition DeWaay is author of Redefining Christianity—an excellent refutation of The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, which Apprising Ministries heartily recommends.

In his answer DeWaay gets to the Arminian root of the Church Growth Movement currently paralyzing the advance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the American Christian Church. Today one will often see people toss around soli Deo gloria. This Latin term from the Protestant Reformation basically translates as to God alone be the glory.

However, the Christian Church in this supposed postmodern nation is largely Arminian and teaches a gospel of synergism—on some level man co-operates with God is the process of salvation. The Reformers, in stark contrast to apostate Roman Catholicism teach a gospel of monergism—man has nothing to do with his salvation. And this is what they meant by soli Deo gloria.

The bottom line is: If one truly believes soli Deo gloria then they would have nothing to do with the semi-pelagian, pragmatic, man-centered synergistic non-gospels preached by men like Rick Warren and Rob Bell and Joel Osteen. Each of these teachers of a false Christianity encourage people, in similar words, to make some kind of a decision to follow the way of God in Jesus.

However, apart from regeneration and repentance—and the Bible teaches it is that order—it is simply impossible for a human being to live as Christ did. Which in closing brings to mind one of the greatest preachers of God’s Gospel, a man used mightily during the First Great Awakening—an actual revival—George Whitefield.

Whitefield was once asked why he would continually say, “You must be born again.” Whitefield answered, “Because you must be born again.” And a good question is: When is the last time you heard this preached by leaders within postevangelcalism and the emerging church?

Ok, the question is: “Is there malice or are [those in the Seeker Sensitive Movement] just deceived?” I don’t know the motives. I think this can happen though. If what happens is…what I think may be true because [Rick] Warren says one of the great influences in his life was Donald McGavran’s book The Bridges Of God. In his first book he said that.

If somebody…ok, if I believed in human ability; I mean some of you don’t understand where we’re coming from and I’m very patient, and I’m not forcing anybody to have to take my side on the Calvinist/Arminian debate. Ok? But…I lay the blame for this whole movement on Arminianism. Why? Because if you think there’s something in man that can be stirred up so that their human ability would kick into gear, and they would choose to become a Christian, then everything Rick Warren’s doing makes all the sense in the world.

Because you’ve gotta…what do they say? I’ve talked to them. I sat in a seminary under the professors that believed this! They say, “you’ve gotta get ‘em in the door or they’ll never be a Christian. You’ve gotta get ‘em in the door. Gotta get ‘em through the door; gotta get ‘em to come, so you’ve gotta give ‘em what they want.” And then you give them a watered down idea that: “Well, wouldn’t you like to be a Christian? Sign a covenant.” And all of the things in this movement are designed to work with what people already are in their unconverted state. All right?

Now you don’t have to be a Calvinist. I don’t even care that much about Calvin, I like Luther better. But…but, and this is what I say, and I got into this debate at [a recent] conference cuz there were some Arminians there…and it always comes up so we were going around on it. I said, “All right, let’s agree on this: If we proclaim the Gospel according to the terms of the Bible, God will use it to save people. Do we agree?” All right so, you can, in your mind think they made a free will choice, and I can, in my mind, think God converted them by His sovereign grace, either way they are actually converted.

And so if you don’t tamper with the terms of the Gospel, you can stay an Arminian and God will use you and He will convert people. And if you’re a Calvinist, and you [do] dip into hyper-Calvinism and start thinking in your mind, “God’s gonna save all the elect anyhow, why should I worry about it?” Then God won’t use you either. You’ll be just dead in the water as Rick Warren or anybody else. You’ll be useless to God.

But if you believe in your mind God saves people by sovereign grace but, He always uses means, and the means He uses is the foolishness of the message preached; so therefore if I don’t want to stand before God in judgment when I die, I better proclaim the Gospel according to the terms in the Bible and let God do the work.

You can download and listen to the entire question and answer session by Bob DeWaay here.