If you’re at all familiar with Elevation Church and Pastor Steven Furtick then you know that Furtick’s preaching and his church generally downplay the role of doctrine, discipleship and Bible teaching while emphasizes numbers, evangelism, and over the top attention getting methods to draw in big crowds. That’s exactly why I was surprised to see that a few years ago Furtick invited Pastor Matt Chandler to speak at Elevation Church’s “Code Orange Revival.”
If you know anything about Matt Chandler and The Village Church, then you know that these two pastors and churches represent nearly opposite ends of a man-ward versus god-ward spectrum in their approach to ministry. Pastor Chandler is obviously heavily influenced by the Reformers and their focus on God’s glory rather than simply on man’s happiness. Of course this is a Biblical focus that is found throughout Scripture. It is also an emphasis that flies in the face of much of the “church growth” movement and “seeker sensitive” approaches to ministry.
I’ve listen to a few sermons from Elevation Church and Chandlers is by far the best I’ve heard. However, I also entitled this post the “worst” sermon. That is because Elevation Church doesn’t seem to agree with my opinion of Chandler’s sermon. You will not find the sermon on Elevation Church’s website, nor on their YouTube channel. Furthermore their approach to ministry indicates that they are not in agreement with what Pastor Chandler preached. Thankfully someone downloaded the sermon before Elevation Church had the time to delete it and then they uploaded it to their YouTube channel.
Chandler’s sermon points out the problems in making man the center of our theology and exhorted the people to make their lives about God’s glory.
Below are a few quotes from the sermon but I highly recommend that you take some time and listen to the sermon for yourself.
If we’re going anywhere tonight, we’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s going on here and so, we’ve got to get past code orange revival, we’ve got to get past Elevation Church, we’ve got to get past Pastor Furtick. I’m not saying those things are bad or wrong, I love all of those things. What I’m telling you is we’ve got to get underneath all of that so we can gaze upon what’s actually going on.
Commenting on Psalm 23 Chandler explains:
So God’s motivation behind his shepherding you, his provision for you, his love for you, his passion about you, really the motive in all of that isn’t that you’re great it’s that he’s great! So the motivation is his glory, his name, his renown and this is what you’re going to see over and over and over again in the Bible in a way that God does not feel a need to apologize for.
Chandler realized that much of what he was saying went against popular culture and even church culture.
Everything in our cultures says, “you’re the man” everything in our culture says, “you’re intrinsically valuable, you are varsity, that’s what you are. You’re not JV, in fact if someone tells you you’re JV, that’s a slap in your spectacularly unique and beautiful face
One of the biggest indicators of a man-ward focus is the tendency to read ourselves into every Biblical hero.
You keep infusing yourself into the stories of the Bible like you’re the hero. Now this happens all the time. Right, so I want to be straight, I love you enough to be straight. You’re not David. Alright, your trouble in life is not Goliath. And if that’s true, you’re in a lot of trouble bro, because you miss. You fling your stones and you miss and Goliath’s still there, and now what? Well, I had five. You’ll miss all five.
Understanding the god-ward focus of the Bible actually frees of from the frustration of trying to make everything including God about me.
If God is about God, then you are not the center of the universe. Almost all of your problems in life is predicated and built upon your belief that the world is about you! …. And the more the world is about you the more angry and tired you’ll be and the more it’s not about you the more free you are!
When it comes down to it it’s all about God because everything good, even our faith is from God!
Even the faith that I had to believe in the grace was given to me by God so honestly I have nothing to boast in. I couldn’t even say “well I believed” because the belief given to me was actually a gift! So that God so owns the glory that everything is his! That’s why no one should walk with a swagger in the Kingdom and no one should walk with a limp.
