The SDA church in North America has a pattern of praising progressive pastors and churches. They think it makes them culturally important. Here’s an example.
Back in 2001, Bill Knott of the Adventist Review interviewed Greg Nelson about his new church plant in downtown Seattle (called AnchorPointe). Much ado was made throughout the NAD about this ‘cutting-edge’ ministry, and it was seen as heralding a new millennium of radical evangelism in large cities.
But, things that begin with a big bang (or fanfare), often end with a whimper, and that was the case here, as Nelson and his assistant ‘pastor’ Shasta Burr, got a little too close for comfort and added something else that God hates, divorce, to their adultery—breaking up two families in the process. Bill Knott should have had the moral awareness to run a follow-up article in the Review titled “We were Wrong” denouncing the NAD’s celebration of AnchorPointe as a cutting edge ministry. But he didn’t.
Another example is how the Hollywood SDA church and its super-woke pastor Ryan Bell (now atheist ex-pastor) were praised by liberal entities in the church, like the former Ohio Conference president, Raj Attiken. It all went south when Bell turned atheist and divorced his wife (seeing a pattern here?).
I’m not comparing NelsonGate to a woke church in Wisconsin, but a couple months ago, the NAD News site ran a story on the Reedsburg, Wisconsin SDA church, written by their pastor, Stephen Hall. The article is long and rambles a bit, so I will summarize it here.
Hall, the ‘woke’ pastor wanted to show his support for BLM (Black Lives Matter) and convinced his Reedsburg (Lake Union) church to put “Black Live Matter” on the church sign. He was so excited. After all, the Lord had himself told Hall to put the message on he church sign. To not do it would be sin. Putting BLM on your church sign is like Jesus healing the woman with the issue of blood in Luke 8 (don’t ask me, he said it). Black people suffer systemic racism and abuse by the police. Endorsing BLM (and their message) is the loving thing to do. According to Stephen Hall.
The article by Hall was also printed in the Lake Union Herald and the NAD news site. Sure it was. It was just the sort of progressive wokeness that the NAD and its Unions love to trumpet. It proves that we are a politically-correct, culturally-woke, cutting-edge relevant social justice church.
But that’s not what we should be doing. We should be asking:
“Where and how should we be sharing the Everlasting Gospel right now?
Also, are we effectively sharing the Three Angels' Messages right now?
Just because our world is in turmoil, the main metric of Adventism didn’t change. Our goal as churches and Christians is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those who are lost. And that trumps everything that would get in its way. It trumps our safety, it trumps our political correctness, it trumps our cultural self-righteousness, it trumps everything.
****
”Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come…”