SINGAPORE:
Ugandan Archbishop Blasts Prosperity
Gospel
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12442#.T-1a7YFheCk
By David W. Virtue in Singapore
April 21, 2010
The made-in-America health and wealth gospel, also known as the prosperity gospel, got ripped by an African bishop who said it is a huge problem for Anglican Christians in Uganda. Rather than bringing the blessings from God, it is wreaking havoc in the lives of families and undermining the true cost of discipleship.
Speaking to more than 130 Archbishops, Bishops, clergy and laity at the Fourth Global South Encounter, the Rt. Rev. Bishop Stephen Kaziimba said it is nothing but cheap grace and greed that has been baptized. The common false belief of “I am poor” makes this Gospel attractive, he added.
Speaking on behalf of Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi who could not attend because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland, Kaziimba said the prosperity gospel produces disciples who are like the seed that fell among the thorns. When the “worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke them,” they wither and die.
“We need to popularize a Biblical theology of wealth, stewardship, and material possessions. The only people in Prosperity Gospel churches who prosper are the pastors who take money from their members.”
Kaziimba said they do not preach the cross of Christ and the cost of discipleship. “This is a betrayal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, for us in Uganda, a betrayal of Archbishop Janani Luwum and our early martyrs who considered it better to die for their faith than compromise.”
The bishop said the Global South Provinces must think about mission from a Biblical starting point. “Mission is not about us; it’s about God! Mission is about participating in God’s work in the world today of drawing people to Himself who have been separated from Him. Mission is about participating with Jesus in inviting people from every ethnic group to become Jesus’ disciples and to be part of His Kingdom here on earth so they will also be part of His Kingdom in heaven.”
Kaziimba said mission obstacles still remain and need to be addressed along with mission opportunities, as they relate to Eastern Africa.
“One of the challenges we face as Anglicans is that our Mother Church in England is a State Church. While we are not in that situation in our own countries we have this problem that we think England represents ideal Anglicanism. The Church of England is declining; it is aging; there are few young people, and less than 1 million attend church on any given Sunday. I’ve read the statistics, and I’ve been there to see for myself that this is true. If you look at other countries that have State Churches, you will see very similar patterns. There are massive church buildings where once there was a thriving congregation. But, not any longer.”
The bishop said we must purge ourselves of the “State Church” mentality that we inherited from our Mother Church in England. “I see it all the time in my own Province, where we are often mired in bureaucracy and institutional inertia. Our capital city of Kampala is located in two dioceses – Namirembe Diocese and Kampala. The population of our city is growing rapidly, but we have not kept pace with church planting. We are paralyzed because of diocesan boundaries. We have churches in Kampala Diocese who could spin off daughter churches and plant them in growing sections of the city. But, those parts of the city are in Namirembe Diocese, and the process to establish cooperative and collaborative relationships is so cumbersome, that we get tired of the bureaucracy and give up. Recently, however, we have renewed our efforts and are formulating a new strategy for inter-diocesan cooperation in order to move forward church planting in our capital city.
“We must not equate pure Anglicanism with England and the English way of doing things. A major focus of the English Reformation, to which we are an heir, was to bring the Bible and worship into the language of the people. That value is at the heart of Anglicanism. We must not fear bringing the Bible and worship not only into the spoken language of our people, but also into the cultural language of our people.”
The bishop blamed what he called secularism through globalization. “We are experiencing this through the media, mostly television, movies, and radio. We are being bombarded with this message through international NGOs that have set up businesses in Uganda, with some who are masquerading secularism under the guise of human rights and development.
“Ugandans in particular and Africans in general, are religious and spiritual people. Secularism is not natural to us; it is quite foreign. The media worldview is, in general, secular. The current generation is growing up with this foreign influence and their parents and relatives do not understand it…they see only the impact it has on their children. Our institutions of higher learning have professors who have been educated in secular Western institutions and they pass on secularism in the form of “higher education.” Yet, our theological colleges have not kept up with the apologetics task of training our clergy and lay readers on how to respond in compelling ways to the challenge of secularism.”
Kaziimba said religious education, which has been mandatory in the schools, faces being eliminated because of secular pressure being put upon the government. “This is a big challenge for us. We have always considered ourselves partners with the schools in providing education, and a group of churches have come together to continue fighting this change.”
The bishop said the church still faced problems of dependency. “We in Uganda are a self-governing church. We are a self-theologizing church. We are a self-propagating church. But, we are not yet a self-supporting church. We are like a three-legged cow. When a cow breaks its leg, at best it limps. But, usually, we will just slaughter it. We are a limping church because we are so heavily dependent on outside funding. It is only by God’s grace and mercy that we have not yet been slaughtered. But, the potential to be slaughtered is a distinct possibility. Our mission in our local contexts and around the world is seriously hampered because of our dependency on others.”
Citing regional instability and conflicts the bishop said one of the main reasons the Gospel was able to spread so quickly and so far and wide during the first centuries of the Church was because of the Pax Romana – the peace that existed during the Roman Empire. “They had good roads and infrastructure. Our regional conflicts in Southern Sudan, Northern Uganda, and Eastern Congo have made it very difficult for the Church to accomplish its mission, and for people to move in those regions.”
“I would hope that we could leave this meeting of Global South Provinces having resolved together to make the next ten years a Decade of Mission in the Global South.”
Pride, Prosperity Gospel Preventing Revival: Pastor
http://sg.christianpost.com/dbase/education/777//1.htm
Monday, Mar. 22, 2010 Posted: 8:36:57PM HKT
Revival is not about a large
crowd but it is about broken people who want to get right with God, said the
Baptist pastor whose church made the hit films "Facing the Giants"
and "Fireproof."
Depending on the time, place and people, revival can look different, said Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. But all revivals share a few common elements: repentance, confession, restoration and brokenness.
“If we’re hungry and thirsty after God, if there is a desire for more, if there is a holy dissatisfaction with the way things are, believing that surely God died for more than what we are seeing in our typical church today – we start 11 o’clock sharp and end at 12 noon – those are the elements for a revival,” said Catt in an interview for his new book 'The Power of Surrender: Breaking Through to Revival', released in March.
Catt plainly stated that revival is not about church growth. Rather it is about church “pruning and purifying.”
“[T]aking the things that we swept under the rug and ignored and excused and bringing it out in the open and saying, ‘Lord, we have sinned against you and we ask your forgiveness for what we’ve done,’” said the pastor and film producer.
The prosperity gospel movement and its teachings, however, present a problem to revival because it confuses people, he noted.
Prosperity gospel, as defined by the Lausanne Theology Working Group, is the teaching that "believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the 'sowing of seeds' through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings."
Catt pointed to an article found in the December issue of the 'Atlantic' magazine. In the article “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” the secular magazine ponders if the teaching of the prosperity gospel played a role in America’s economic and housing crisis.
The prosperity gospel encourages people to buy things they cannot afford and do not need by justifying that God wants to materially bless believers, and if they just have enough faith then God will provide the means, the magazine criticised.
“Sometimes the prosperity gospel and the feel-good gospel tell people what they want to hear,” Catt said. “[But] when you lay that by the side of Jesus’ teaching [to] take up the cross – the only reason for the cross in the first century is to die – and to die daily, to crucify your flesh then you have to think how does this fit?”
The Baptist pastor said that for him if the sermon does not work in a “mud hut, third-world” country then it’s probably not true.
“I can’t go to a guy that only has a towel around his waist and lives in a dung hut and tell him the good news you’ll get a Mercedes and you’ll go from dung to stucco because it probably won’t happen,” Catt said. “But the power of the life changing Gospel can happen.”
In his book, Catt maintains that there is little in common between the “success, health, and wealth of the prosperity gospel and the Word of God.”
Providing an example, he pointed to the life of Apostle Paul
who “didn’t live in a mansion and cross the Mediterranean
in a luxury liner.”
“He spent most of his life running from town to town, being beaten up, attacked, chased around by the Gnostics and Judaizers, and chained to Roman soldiers,” the pastor wrote. “Not the glamorous life we see in preachers today.”
Apostle Paul, Catt said, clearly states in Romans 7:18: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” The apostle also writes in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
The pastor who earnestly wants to see revival in America says he wants to “warn the body of Christ about false teachings that soothes people’s hearts and smoothes over their sin, belittling the glories of life with God.”
“It’s not up to me to use biblical words and try to redefine them to appease the crowd or my seared conscience,” the pastor wrote.
Catt said pride is one of the biggest reasons keeping revival from happening. People are too proud to admit they need to be restored and to ask for forgiveness. The three hardest words for people to say are “I have sinned” or “I am wrong,” he said.
But over the past year and a half, Sherwood Baptist Church has seen elements of a revival springing up, its pastor shared.
This week some 75 middle and high school students from Sherwood church woke up early and went to three different schools to pray over the campus. Half of the students fasted this week for their lost friends and about half of the students met at Starbucks at 6 a.m. to pray before going to the campuses.
“That is not the norm,” Catt said happily. “God has just moved in on our students and just done a work on their hearts.”
The pastor further shared that many of the students come from families where the parents are divorced and they have gone to their parents to ask for forgiveness for their hatred and dividing of their parents.
“Only God can do that,” the pastor said. “Only God can change a person’s heart like that.”
