Reblogged by Jean-Louis
Posted by Simplicity In Christ on July 3, 2010
Todd Friel, of Way of the
Master Radio, was in London and talked to a couple of guys about their church
Hillsong London. He had several questions about their beliefs which they
answered to the best of their abilities. Listen to the MP3 here.
They spoke of the Hillsong
Europe conference, for which they were filming a promotional video. Read
part of the transcript below:
[...]
TODD: What’s the theme?
MAN #2: The purpose of the conference
is to empower the local church. That’s the whole
goal behind it all.
[...]
TODD: Empower them to do what?
MAN #2: Empower them to
reach/influence the world…
TODD: Influence the world. In
what way?
MAN #2: Day to day, life as
Christians, just being around, living how Jesus would, I guess. And the purpose
of the conference is to, I guess, for Christians who are involved in churches
throughout Europe … to share the message of Christ.
TODD: What is the message of
Christ?
MAN #2: It says to go in all the
world, you know.
TODD: That’s the command.
What’s the message?
MAN #2: the message… ?
MAN #1: The message is Eternal
Life, Prosperity, Hope, Self-Love, Salvation, Healing… It’s really to equip
people and give them the resources to affect the lives of the people around
them in the community in which they live in.
TODD: What’s the best way I can
affect the lives of people in my community?
MAN #1: Well, it all comes from
love, doesn’t it, really at the end of the day. And the conviction you get from
love.
TODD: Helping people?
MAN #1: Yeah! I mean, sort of
doing all you can…
TODD: Hold on. You said two
words that kind of jumped out at me. Prosperity. What kind of prosperity?
MAN #1: Well, prosperity in life,
prosperity in the workplace, and prosperity in your family life…
[...]
TODD: The other word that you
said was something about self-love? What was that about?
MAN #1: Well, there’s a lot of
people who harm themselves on a psychological , emotional, and on a deeper
level, a spiritual level. Uh, which perhaps you’re not aware of, uh, on your
own efforts. I think having a relationship with Christ reveals these things to
you and through his strength, again coming back to Christ, you’re able to
tackle them hand in hand. I don’t think being, uh, sitting around presuming
that becoming a Christian all of a sudden means you’re in the land of milk and
honey because our Savior was One Who wasn’t alien to sufferening, to
temptation, to being rejected by His friends, and ultimately torture. … As
Christians we go through the school of hard knocks, we just remember that if
it’s good enough for Him, it’s good enough for us.
TODD: So Self-Love. I should
love myself, why?
MAN #1: Um, if you love and
respect yourself and you are equipped to love others. … If you can’t love
yourself, then how are you supposed to love others?
[...]
TODD: I walk up to you guys and
instead of putting a microphone in your face, I’ve got a knife in my back. And
I’m going down, it’s a bloody mess, I’m gasping for air, I’ve got 30 seconds,
I’m scared to die. You’re a Christian; what do I need to do to go to heaven?
MAN #1: Well, I suppose, uh,
salvation [unintelligible] is a good one. Just accept somebody loved you enough
to step into all this mess and ultimately, you know, we all know that the
deepest act of love is to die for somebody. That’s obvious. It’s a huge
unconditional love and to accept that, the rest of the work is done. I mean,
again, it’s a transcending question, it’s a difficult one, but I suppose if you
got a knife in your back, Christ had nails in His hands, nails in His feet, and
a spear in His side, and thorns on His head, and dogs around Him, mocking and
spitting in His face. So I supposed if you can accept His pain and your pain,
then you’re on your way somewhere special.
–End of Interview–
TODD: I think what you just
heard was a very, very eloquent presentation of what is very, very typical of
the, well whatever prosperity you want to assign to it, but just the feel-good
evangelicalism. That Jesus will help you through your life, He’ll help you
through your days, He can relate to us because He went through really tough
times and our job on this earth is to love our neighbors.
Theologically, frankly,
that was a dog’s breakfast.
[...]
Where was
witnessing? Where was the sharing of the Gospel? Where was helping people
understand that there’s a Savior? And their NEED for a Savior?…
