OK, sorry to bring this up again, but I am really hurting inside with this issue, why? B/c not only I was sitting on this for 2 years(it was 2 years ago when we visited this church for its Chinese New Year's festivities), but apparently this whole thing with the pastor in China, and my mom communicating with him for about a year or so via email to try to set up a church for one of our Chinese friends there, etc has been going on for a year.
What am I trying to get at? It was in the Fall of last year(2010) when I took a Statistics class at the local university - no, I wasn't neglecting my bible reading daily, HOWEVER, I was so obsessed with making an A in this course, that it just steered my attention AWAY from discerning over what was really going on. Darnit! Darnit!
I already have a degree in Math/CIS, and a CPA license to boot, but en yet I was geared toward my OWN LUST AND COVETOUSNESS of getting a stupid A?! I mean it wasn't like this grade mattered - a mere C would have prepared me just fine for the Statistics exam I took recently. And what difference would it have made whether or not I understood these concepts, which aren't even biblical to begin with? Ultimately, I was serving ANOTHER master.(Darnit again! Scripture says if you serve 2 masters, you will ultimately hate our Lord, and our Lord is not a respecter of persons, and scripture NEVER lies!
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Either way, I really don't know if I would have had an opportunity to explain all this to her last year, but again, it was a GOLDEN opportunity.
Anyhow, I digged more research into this pastor - he resigned from that church in Summer 2010 to go off to China. From what I understand, he got involved in the church planting/pastor mentoring/pastoral leadership program - this is one of the big agendas that the Purpose Driven/Emergent movement is in(ie-they would invite Christ-haters like former Clinton prosecutor Kenneth Starr and your typical CEO of corporations to speak at their leadership conferences). So yeah, my big concern is that if he gets a church started for our Chinese friend there, it would be under the authority of Warren's Purpose Driven network, meaning Warren has COMPLETE authority over what they do(ie-what staff members they should hire, what worship music they should do, what bible versions they should put in their pews, etc).
But I guess if there's any good news out of all this, he's been there for a little over a year, and they're not quite at square 1 yet. As for Rick Warren himself, my mom doesn't follow his works or anything(so I guess that's good), however, she gets offended when I point out his heresies b/c supposedly he gives 90% tithe, and her reaction is like, "How dare you criticize someone who shows alot of faith giving most of his money away!".
I mean this is why I'm really hurting, b/c of the regret that I was putting my focus on something carnal at this time last year. Has anyone else had this experience? At least I was able to say something a month ago, but nonetheless she wouldn't listen(like said above, she thought I was wrongly criticizing this pastor, although I had to stress to her that red flags immediately came up when I walked in that church).
BTW - the new pastor of that church is a young guy, who's only experience in the church is a small groups leader at New Life Church(which was TED HAGGARD'S former church...Surprise, surprise!). Not that I endorse seminaries, but at the bare minimum, you would think a pastor of one of these churches would at least have a seminary degree, and not some gopher-boy job at some apostate church? He also uses the NEW King James version.
Edit: Sorry about that, this new pastor DOES have a seminary degree(Denver seminary) - nonetheless, his previous resume is NOT GOOD at all!