Lancaster Baptist Church of Lancaster, California, and its college, West Coast, are producing a steady stream of very cool, slick, contemporary churches. The latest is CityPoint Baptist Church of Tempe, Arizona, founded in 2018 by John Guy. It is a full-blown CCM church with the darkened auditorium and the skinny-jeans-clad preacher delivering motivational, felt-need type messages. This is the model that I saw at an Emerging Church conference in San Diego in 2009, which I attended with press credentials. The conference was sponsored by Zondervan and InterVarsity Press, two of the largest and most influential Christian publishers. Their authors represent the mainstream of evangelicalism today as well evangelicalism’s more cutting edge. Christianity Today magazine was prominently represented at the conference. Andy Crouch, a senior editor, was one of the main speakers and led a praise and worship session. Other speakers included Bill Hybels, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Leighton Ford, Gordon Fee, Shane Claiborne, J.P. Moreland, John Ortberg, David Kinnaman, Scot McKnight, Alex McManus, Christopher Wright, and William Paul Young (author of The Shack). There were roughly 1,500 pastors and Christian workers in attendance. This is the emerging crowd that many young Independent Baptists are emulating to various degrees. CityPoint’s John Guy was an assistant pastor at Lancaster, working alongside Paul Chappell, and helped lead the worship. Guy spoke at Lancaster’s Majesty Music Conference in March 2018. One of the staff members (worship leader) at CityPoint is Mark Rasmussen, Jr., son of Mark Rasmussen, Vice President of West Coast Baptist College. Mark Jr. had a prominent role in the music ministry at Lancaster, and he has been at the forefront of pushing the envelope of music and philosophy. In 2017, Paul Chappell's youngest son, Matt, started a contemporary work called Rock Hill Church in Fontana, California. Paul ordained him for this work on April 25, 2016, and tweeted praise for the new work. Rockhill Church uses full blown contemporary music, including Hillsong, and in typical emerging fashion, everything is dark. The room is dark for the worship service and it is dark for the preaching. It would be very difficult to actually look at your Bible and “search the Scriptures.” Matt’s messages are littered with motivational, positive-thinking language such as “leveraging a new beginning.” The messages are light on sin and holiness and heavy on grace, and it is not a Titus 2:11-15 grace. It is an emerging grace. It is a Chuck Swindoll grace. Matt’s preaching is filled with non-critical references to the pop culture. In his first message at Rock Hill, Matt cited and non-critically referenced a basketball star, rock goddess Taylor Swift, Steve Jobs, the Los Angeles Lakers, and a professional fisherman. What signal does that send to his listeners? When Paul Chappell ordained Matt in 2016, he reminisced online about how that Matt surrendered to preach in the 7th grade and that he is the product of Lancaster Baptist Church and West Coast Baptist College, and we agree with that. (For more on this, see “Lancaster Baptist Church’s Contemporary Fruit” at www.wayoflife.org. Also see the free eBook What About Steven Anderson? for information about another church in Tempe, Arizona, and the free eBook The Emerging Church Is Coming for a firsthand account of the aforementioned conference - https://www.wayoflife.org/free_ebooks/) (Friday Church News Notes, February 1, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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