Sunday, December 12, 2010

Ministry Watch: Philip Yancey

Philip Yancey, bestselling Christian author of over fourteen million books, is the keynote speaker of an event sponsored by the Gay Christian Network Conference.[1] The conference is being held in January 2011 in Denver, CO, and the event is called The Mountaintop Experience. This is a prime example of how the Church has intermingled with the world and has become indistinguishable from the culture around it.
On his website, he comments about his position on gay Christians. He spoke about his friendship with a gay Christian man, and how he has to remind himself that it’s not his job to present an absolutely proper, balanced viewpoint of the Church.  He says that his friend already receives much judgment and condemnation from the Church, and also much reasoned disapproval of his life and decisions.  Yancey says that he tries to be loving and nonjudgmental. [2]

This attitude of tolerance is why the Church is in the mess it is today. Underlying this failure is the fact that the church has lost her consciousness of God's holiness. Her great message has been the love of God, but she has divorced His love from His holiness. If the Church can once more understand what it means that God is holy, she will understand the need to separate herself from the world's ideas and practices, to denounce sin as sin, and to preach that the loving God, hates sin and punishes sinners on account of their sin.

I suspect that this will not be Yancey's message in January.