FROM THE DESK OF PASTOR WILL: Apostasy & Declining Christianity

[Rev. William Griffith]

I have been confronted recently by a number of my colleagues in ministry, many of them friends, most of them acquaintances and all of them pastors. They contend that "open and affirming churches" are a part of the "Great Apostasy" and falling away from the faith. They contend that pastors of LGBT ministries and churches are apostates in the eyes of their religious elite.

Apostasy in the institutional church, regardless of denomination, is not wrapped in the LGBT debate, nor are open and affirming churches and ministries responsible for it. The apostasy of the church is found in the anti-Christ, religious idolatry saturating the Body of Christ and keeping people who don't fit the religious traditions of a particular church culture from entering their doors and sanctuaries.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: "...respectable, self-indulgent, self-satisfied religious celebration. This sort of idolatrous religion stirs up the flesh which is accustomed to being kept in check by the Word of God. Such sermons make for libertinism, egotism, indifference. Do people not know that one can get on as well, even better, without religion?..."

Bonhoeffer's theology was that of a "Redletter Christian". He believed that it was time for a new monasticism, which had nothing to do with the old forms, and that should be based on following the Sermon on the Mount as its very foundation.

Today, the great apostasy, the great falling away from the faith, is not those who are reaching the LGBT community with the love and Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is rather found in the lack of love as a practice and condition of our faith, the stringent religious legalisms of the institutional church elite and the total neglect of those ostracized from the church and left on the fringes of society.

The belief that in following the teaching of Jesus Christ somehow equates religion shows total ignorance of His very teachings. Jesus loathed the religious establishment and elite leadership in His day. He loathes it still. In fact, He turned the existing religious order upside down, along with the world, by offering ALL human beings a personal, intimate relationship with God, through the salvation of the cross.

Those crying the loudest about "apostasy" while pointing fingers and posing for holy pictures at the expense of LGBT people are responsible for the decline of Christianity as a faith and a practice. They have created a religion of elitism, when the very Christ they claim to follow warned them against becoming such. These elite have conformed to the very world that Jesus warned them NOT to conform to. They have abandoned the teachings of Jesus Christ with self-made and self-serving doctrines and denominational in-crowds, displaying a blatant and total disregard for the demands of discipleship and the cost of being a follower of the teachings of Jesus.

For those pastors who have told me that LGBT people can not be followers of Jesus, let me respond here as I responded to you face-to-face: You can not deny anyone their faith and inheritance in Jesus Christ. You can not withhold that which is not yours to give. Only Jesus Christ can offer and affirm our salvation. And through Jesus Christ, His blood covers those who believe, follow Him and keep His commandments. What are the greatest of all the commandments?

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The great apostasy facing the church today is the total lack of and disregard for LOVE! The love Christ demands of us for even our enemies. If there is a falling away from the faith, it is found in those churches that cast out any human being who doesn't fit their elitist congregations. It is found in those churches who show utter contempt and self-righteous indignation toward any human being, rather than with the perfect love with which Jesus displayed for all of us on the cross of Calvary.

If there is to be revival in the church of Jesus Christ, that revival will be launched and take root through a revival of love and following the teachings of Christ as given to us in the Sermon on the Mount.

-Pastor William Griffith

 Evangel Pacific Ministries