![]() ![]() While it is never fun, we know good can come from this and the Lord can be glorified if corrective actions are taken. Frankly, we don’t even like doing it, but we believe we have been called to do so. Speaking the truth in love is not easy in this or any similar situation as we at have learned over our 15 years of existence. Pastor Furtick’s mistakes are just more visible than any of ours. Moreover, we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. Sadly, unbelievers also are negatively impacted when a Christian leader acts in a manner such as this as it helps them to more easily justify their skepticism. We feel badly for Elevation Church members, for Pastor Furtick and his family and for the church at large, which also suffers when a prominent leader makes a high profile mistake. Normally, we focus on parachurch Christian ministries. We take no joy in having to analyze this situation and have only done so because we have been asked and because the issues are important. ![]() Additionally we offer some preliminary thoughts on what Elevation and Furtick need to do to get this mess straightened out:ġ.) Dealing with situations like this is hard for everyone involved. These comments will also be relevant to those struggling with financial accountability issues in other churches. Pastors can take advantage of general congregational ignorance of these points in order to appear like they are operating with integrity when they are not. So here are more in-depth thoughts regarding this story which we hope will help readers to better understand the often hard to understand key issues. As is typical in any interview, time constraints mean you never quite say everything you would have liked to, you don’t always say things exactly the way you wanted to say them and you don’t always directly answer the questions asked because you go off on a related important aspect of the situation while never getting back to the main point. As a result, we were recently interviewed by the Charlotte reporter who broke the story on Pastor Furtick’s home. Pastor Steven Furtick’s construction of a new $1.7 million home as well as his and his congregation’s first response to the controversy, continues to attract scrutiny from the press and the general public. ‘And there is no other way to be saved but to confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart God raised him from the dead you shall be saved.’īut that one parenthetical insert ‘without a doubt.’.“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you never will I forsake you.'” Hebrews 13:5 (NIV) ‘I believe, without a doubt, that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of the world, today I give you my life.’Īll of it was good, all of it was appropriate. ![]() ![]() “That’s the part he should have left out. “Lord Jesus, I believe that I’m a sinner in need of a savior, and I believe, without a doubt….”įurtick zeroes in on that particular expression. And I make mistakes up here too, but to me he made a really big mistake when he was praying the prayer.īecause he was inviting the people to pray and he said “if you want to give your heart to Christ today, and know for sure that you have a relationship with him, pray this. “And now while I believe this campus pastor meant well, but what he said I had to correct him on later. This was done so that the newly minted Christian might have a moment where they could look back and say ‘that’s when I put my trust in Christ.’įurtick calls that prayer a ‘sacred moment’ positioning it as a moment between man and creator and that “It’s not a time for someone who’s preaching to start sharing their opinions.”įurtick elaborates why he was so upset with the actions of his underling. Recently showcased again on preachers vs sneakers by racking up his condemnation for love of clothing that costs more than most people’s rent, the newly minted star of the hive of scum and heresy known as TBN recounts a teaching opportunity he had with a church pastor in an unearthed 2017 Christmas sermon.įurtick reminisces on a campus pastor that was giving an altar call and was leading a potential convert through the sinner’s prayer. Steven Furtick has corrected and rebuked a campus pastors for telling new converts readying to pray the sinner’s prayer ‘ I believe without a doubt that Jesus is Lord’, arguing that it is sinful to give them that false confidence and assurance, declaring they would be lying if they professed that certainty. It is not current, but it has value in being achieved. The story was written up before we were able to place the clip. Apparently, this story came out in early 2018, but received little traction and barely a mention. ![]()
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