Special Theme: Student-led worship service for the entire church.

Music: “Victory In Jesus”, “You Are Holy (Prince of Peace)”, “Come Thou Fount”.

Special: The student praise team put together a slide show/video to go along with them singing a great song about our need of each other called “I Need You To Survive.”

Message: “The Three Chairs.”  Joshua 24:15-Judges 2:12.  This was a message that deals with the different spiritual conditions of people (commitment, compromise, and conflict with God).  It uses the illustration from Dr. Bruce Wilkinson’s book Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs.

Overall: This night was one to remember.  I was so proud of the hard work that the students had put in to prepare to lead worship for our fellowship.  There was a great “spirit” in the building Sunday night.  I know that I spent a great deal of time in preparation on the message (more than I even usually do).  I was very proud of our students for stepping up and inviting their friends to come and see what God was doing at our fellowship.  One young lady that has been visiting our student ministry over the past month or so even brought a visitor!  I hope to have the mp3 of the message up soon.

I recently read the book “Christianity In Crisis: 21st Century” by Hank Hanegraaff.  I have read some of Hank Hanegraaff’s work before and found it to be very good.  He does a great job of using the Bible in context.  That is why he has a radio program called Bible Answer Man that can be heard throughout the United States and Canada.  “Christianity In Crisis: 21st Century” was an interesting read.  It is a follow-up work to a book that Hanegraaff had written some twenty years ago that was called “Christianity In Crisis.”  Both books deal with some “movements” that claim the title of Christian but have very untraditional theologies that prove them to be anything genuine Christian.

Some things that were really good about this work was that Hanegraaff gave some specific examples and didn’t seem to be “attacking” a person.  He really made it a point to target the teachings and not the people themselves.  Though at times, Hanegraaff is very bold in his wording, I agree that with errant teachings, Christians do not need to be tolerant and worry about the feelings of other people.  I really think that the reason that many “teachers” of the kind of theology that Hanegraaff exposes in this work have massive followings because not many people have had the courage to stand up and call them to account.  I also really liked the fact that he cited all of his references so that someone could come behind him and check his work.  Hanegraaff is definitely not trying to hide anything.  He was rather calling some false teachings to be laid plainly on the table.

There were some things that I would have liked to seen differently.  I know that Hanegraaff was trying to give some credibility to what he was going to talk about, but the almost seventy pages of the “cast of characters” was a little long.  I know that there are many in this “word-faith” teaching, but it was just hard to get through all of the characters when they seem to be the same thing over and over.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who might be wondering about all these tv preacher guys (and ladies).  While not everyone on tv is teaching false doctrines, many are.  Sadly, many who are outside of faith in Christ base their belief of Christianity by what is readily available to them.  I think that this should encourage churches to get into their communities and be the true body of Christ and not leave it to someone who might be errantly representing Christ on tv to do so.