Today Suzanne Sataline of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports in a front page story HERE on some of the damaging effects of Purpose Driven teachings of Rick Warren within churches all across America. And despite Warren’s spin control to the contrary as you will clearly see in this WSJ article, all is certainly not well in the Purpose Driven nation of the new evangelicalism.

In this piece Sataline reports that evangelicals are dividing over this “purpose-driven movement.” She points out there are growing numbers who feel “it’s inappropriate for churches to use growth tactics” which are quite familiar to contemporary business “management tools.”

Many of us have been saying for months that these kinds of marketing strategies no doubt do increase the size of a church, but at the terrible expense of clear Biblical teaching and of the converting power of God the Holy Spirit.

It says quite a bit about the sorry state of our Lord’s Church when He uses a secular publication to focus further attention upon these Purpose Driven and man-centered methods within the professing Body of Christ. God’s displeasure with essentially being forced out of His Own Church to make room for human egos with their human goals should finally be apparent.

A very important consequence of which is also brought out by Sataline when she says that anger and division “over the adoption of Mr. Warren’s methods has driven off older Christians from their longtime churches [as c]ongregations nationwide have split or expelled members who fought the changes,…”

***NOTE***

Here now is the link to Sataline’s full-length Wall Street Journal Online article.