LETTER: ELDER FORCED TO LEAVE FOR STANDING AGAINST SPIRITUAL FORMATION

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I received an email today from my friend and fellow CRN writer Amy Spreeman. It contained a link to a post on her site Stand up for the Truth. The link is a post that contained a letter that was sent by an church elder to his former church questioning its adoption of Spiritual Formation and Transformational techniques throughout all of its ministries. His treatment by the elder board and pastor brought back some very bad memories of my own clash at a former church over its going full bore into the Purpose Driven paradigm back in 2006. For me It was tough reading this letter and the aftermath, but as I have been teaching you for quite some time now, to stand for the truth and never compromise under the Lordship of Christ will be costly for the true disciple. God is sovereign and does allow his saints to go through these fires for his own purposes. Look at the book of Job for instance. Follow this link to the article. Be blessed in the Lord my brethren. – Mike Ratliff

Soli Deo Glora!

9 thoughts on “LETTER: ELDER FORCED TO LEAVE FOR STANDING AGAINST SPIRITUAL FORMATION”

  1. Those who are inebriated on false teaching have the toughest time seeing they’ve been drinking from the wrong well. I have a similar background as you, Mike, and his story is very familiar. May God have mercy on all of us and save us from our own deceptions.

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  3. Yep! 2006 for my wife and I too! I used to link Willow Creek find a church and Saddleback’s find a church to emails I sent friends and family in our area as well. Most left…to go to another “church” in another denomination installing the same thing in their new “church!”
    Warned against Manning and Tickle who both made their tours here, then had to warn against the likes of Bentley ad nausea with not 1 in 100 folks caring…It’s that apathy thing and many passions thing I wrote of earlier…
    Honestly, it appears to be that the vast majority of them made a decision for a jesus who might do for them, rather than following Jesus for who He IS!
    These are the broad road crowd, and this single elder is merely coming out from the Harlot.
    More and more we will see this as more and more reveal their love for riding the beast.
    We can’t fix this because it isn’t a broken system, but rather another’s system.
    The One True Ekklesia that Jesus is building is just fine. God put you in this Living Stone Fellowship, Jesus is the Corner Stone and only Head, and the Apostles are the foundation.
    We are scattered as scripture states, but in one accord thanks to the Holy Spirit.
    As time goes on, the labels we once thought important will fall away with those who remain in the Harlot and her many daughters, and all who prefer the broad road to destruction, over the Straight Gate and Narrow Path that few there be which find Him. This all too is His Sovereign Work and merely the progression He foreknew and predestined as are and for His Elect whom He will always keep and deliver through the fiery tribulations… Delivered through the fires like the 3 young Jews, and/or like the many Roman Candles after them.

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  6. Mike, thanks so much for sharing the article. As I was going through all of his experiences and his heartfelt plea to his pastors and elders, my heart was devastated and I wept. We have recently experienced something similar with the church we’ve been a part of for 10 years. We tried to be “part of the solution” by hanging in there and trying to help our elders understand. But in the end they rejected this and have doubled-down on the Rick Warren and Bill Hybels conferences, the Spiritual Transformation curricula and the emergent/leftist books that have been infiltrating the church for a very long time.
    At first I was excited to see John’s well-documented resources. But then I realized that if his own elders could not see the problem, why would I think my own elders would take this letter for consideration?

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  7. Amy, I am, as you are, astounded at the blindness of those willing to take that step onto the slippery slope of compromise, which this is. This is obviously, at least in part, caused by delusion. Of course, many of these people want what they are pursuing so they are being given it and so their blindness grows even deeper. In my own case, when I had my own encounter back in 2006 trying to keep the PDC out of our church I was utterly amazed at the hardness of heart of those who had made up their minds and would not listen no matter how well some of us proved by scriptural evidence the unbiblical nature of the PDC.

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