2003 Ligonier Conference: The Myth of Influence, Part 1

• it is always a joy to be here to fellowship with RC whom I love and appreciate and with the others who are part of lioner Ministries and see friends and uh and particularly to be with you I do feel like the poor you always have me with you and that’s okay if it’s okay with you it’s certainly fine with me and I I think I understand my subject oh thank you I think I understand my subject on the myth of influence uh you’ll be a better judge of that or somebody will when I’m finished than than you will be able to be now I think I understand what
• was in the mind of the people who crafted that subject having read through the addition of table talks in which that was addressed uh but at the same time I I I’m going to come at it from from my own heart and my own perspective and hope that it will prove to be helpful to you you know when I came out of Seminary I knew there would be battles to be fought and uh and my dad was U and still is a a warrior for the truth and I think I uh inherited that from his example and in the pattern of his life and Ministry and and I really thought there would be there would be battles to fight there
• would be um battles over inherency there would be battles over the authority of the word of God there would be battles over the deity of Jesus Christ which was under liberal assault I could already anticipate battles over spiritual areas such as the doctrine of the holy spirit paradigms for sanctification those kinds of things I expected that what I didn’t expect was to spend most of my Ministry life battling to rescue the gospel from evangelicals that really has been a shock to me and it’s seemingly getting worse all
• the time as the gospel sinks below the radar and if you’ll U pardon me I think it it is going to be in my heart and through this message to call us back to a true understanding of the Gospel let me just see if I can’t start out with a point and then we’ll we’ll go from there to see how that fleshes out in a particular text the myth of influence is that the gospel advances on the back of public favor the myth of influence is that we can somehow influence people into the kingdom of God if we can create
• a pop gospel a designer gospel if we can create alliances if we can posture ourselves and position ourselves in places of influence and authority and impact in the world around us if we can stylize our churches to eliminate consumer resistance we can sort of influence people into the kingdom that’s the scheme and a myriad of compromises are made in that process and you know them I don’t need to Chronicle all of the compromises in developing a non-threatening message an inclusive kind of Salvation in trying to
• eliminate everybody’s offenses making the church uh look sound feel like a big Starbucks trying to craft all kinds of things to to make people feel comfortable and all offensive elements being set aside we can sort of subtly lure people into the kingdom there’s only one way into the kingdom and it is through the gate of the gospel and the gospel alone and the cruel irony is that after everybody has done all of that and created all those imaginations and all those marketing things at the end of the day people will