Pulpit & Pen brings to our attention Ed Stetzer’s continuing lack of discernment. This is important because Stetzer runs the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention which means he has a lot of clout. Following is the full report:
Remember the large kerfuffle that started last year involving Lifeway, the media retail branch of the Southern Baptist Convention, and their peddling of heretical materials for profit? It all began when Pulpit & Pen confronted Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of Lifeway Research about Lifeway’s promotion of Heaven Tourism books and other heretical materials in their retail outlets. Stetzer’s response was to brush off the complaints and counter attack with ad-hominems while ignoring the issue. This sparked a widespread movement, known as #the15 on Twitter, which after much investigation and uncovering of evidence of wrongdoing by Lifeway’s leadership, eventually led to Lifeway removing Heaven tourism books for good.
However, Stetzer and Lifeway refused to acknowledge those who confronted him, even after major news media outlets covered the issue. They brushed it off as though they had already planned to do so anyways. In fact, after pulling the Heaven tourism books, Lifeway came out with the following statement,
Too often in the past we have focused on what we should not have carried in the store. We will focus on what we should carry.
And you can bet they’ve stuck to their promise.
Brian Houston is the senior pastor of Hillsong Church, a worldwide multisite Pentecostal megachurch based out of Sydney Australia that has locations in several countries around the world, including New York City, Los Angeles California, and London, England. Brian Houston has recently been shown to be a gay-affirming pastor who is more than willing to compromise the Gospel to make homosexuals feel comfortable in his churches. In fact, he even came up with a list of rules for his preaching pastors that included “leaving people feeling better about themselves than when they came in,” and “transitioning easily into altar calls.”
Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said about Hillsong,
[Hillsong is] a prosperity movement for the millennials, in which the polyester and middle-class associations of Oral Roberts have given way to ripped jeans and sophisticated rock music…What has made Hillsong distinctive is a minimization of the actual content of the Gospel, and a far more diffuse presentation of spirituality. Continue reading
Related
Rick Warren, Ed Stetzer and Watchbloggers–By Ken Silva
See our research paper on the heretical Word of Faith/Prosperity movement
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