I work as a Consultant which means I travel quite a bit. For about three months now I have been on a project in Virginia Beach Virginia. Every day I drive past a shopping center and the store on the end of the shopping center is used as a Church. It has a sign that says Relevant Ministries.
This sort of caught my eye as I thought that it was not a very good name for a church. Churches are not supposed to be relevant. And in my experience relevant usually meant a compromising church. The sign for the church had a web address on it, so I went to their web site the first chance I had and their name perfectly described them.
The Church was actually the Student Ministry of Harvest Assembly of God here in Chesapeake Virginia. Their index page has a few paragraphs that describe what they are about:
Relevant Ministries is the Student Ministries of Harvest Assembly of God, in Chesapeake, Virginia:
But more than that, we are people searching for a higher meaning or calling. People with diverse backgrounds, some of us are hurting, busy, isolated, lost or alone. Some of us are extroverts, some introverts; some of us are from churched backgrounds and some of us from no religious background at all. Some of us are skeptics, some cynics, some mystics and a few of us optimists.
One thing we share in common is our desire for spirituality. We have heard many in our generation say that Church (and God gets lumped in with church) is boring and irrelevant. This is extremely unfortunate, because we have found God to be completely the opposite. At Relevant Ministries we desire to help create an environment that fosters spirituality without some of the trappings that so often turn us off.
We desire to be a ministry where authentic biblical community is lived out—not just talked about. Where believers experience the kind of relationship with God and others that are the biblical norm. We long to experience deep committed friendships where it’s safe to be open about a place to experience His presence, and to hear relevant life applicable messages from the current reality of our lives.
Come as you are. No getting dressed up. (We don’t care what you wear-tattoos, piercing, dreads—it’s all good) We don’t want anyone feeling unwelcome because they can’t “dress the part.”
“Its All Good”? Now dont get me wrong we are supposed to invite everyone to come, after all as Jesus told in the parable of the Marriage Feast in Matthew 22:2-14:
The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.”’ But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests
But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness;
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
’“For many are called, but few are chosen.”
If you notice in verse 13 the King comes across a guest who was brought in from the highway but did not have a wedding garment on, this means that the guest had not cleaned himself up after having been invited to and accepting the invitation to the wedding. The application for Christians is this, when we have been invited by Jesus to accept salvation and we accept and come into the body of Christ we are supposed to be changed. We are to put on righteousness, faithfulness and obedience to the will of God, and reject the things of this world, even as a young person.
But the sad thing about the Relevant Ministries description of itself is that it seems to revel in or give acceptance to things that are carnal and of this world but sadly not of God. We all come to God in pretty rough shape. But true salvation changes a person to where they no longer crave carnal things or want to have anything to do with them, their only desire is to please God, not man.
The other things that bothered me about the Relevant Ministries description of their ministry is the emphasis on a desire for Spirituality along with accepting of and being worldly. The emphasis should be on how to please God above all else. The emphasis on wanting spirituality, or mysticism is a clear recipe for satanic deception. This became ever clearer for me in regards to their “ministry when I clicked on their link for: Club Relevant there you get hit with how relevant they really want to be.
Their myspace page looks just like any secular unsaved carnal teenager’s web page complete with posters for bands with names that do not resemble anything Christian, and then worse still, posters full of blood and gore.
This is what more and more Assembly of God churches are feeding their youth and unfortunately what you see on this web site foretells the death of a denomination.
The General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, Thomas Trask abruptly announced his resignation recently, two years short of the end of his term. The upcoming General Council of the Assemblies of God this month will vote on a new General Secretary.
If this kind of thing is allowed now for the youth in the Assemblies of God, what will be allowed under a new General Superintendent, especially with the outgoing Superintendent calling for a New Superintendent to be from a younger generation who can serve many years and make his own mark?
What kind of mark will that be?
I went on this club relevant site. Some of what I saw was shocking and disturbing. Clicking onto individual bands I saw Led Zepplin and Iron Maiden shirts. It is hard to imagine believing yourself to be a follower of Christ and wearing these images. (-although I have committed terrible sins while calling myself Christian, so I can imagine it- God forgive me and continue to lead me to repentance.)
I just feel for these souls. They seem self-deceived. Once in Christ we are a NEW creature, like the demon posessed man of Gadera. They found him in his right mind, clothed, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He wasn’t jumping around, dirty, acting crazy. He was changed by God. Cleansed and beautiful.
Love in Christ,
Rachel
Amen to that Rachel!
[…] Rev. Eric Smith @ True Discernment: More Reasons Why the Assemblies of God are headed for Serious Trouble: Its Youth Programs! […]
Wow, this is amazing. Because it doesn’t fit your description of Christianity, you are now like the Pharisees, you fight the work of the harvest because it brakes your traditions. Jesus had to deal with people like you all the time, in fact, He offended them everyday by not adhering to there comfort zones. Remember, it was our grand parents that said movies and music would send people to hell, so the church stayed away from using main stream media, so we lost a whole generation of young people. Our biggest resistance is from Christians like you that spend more time attacking Christians then they do working in the harvest field. If what God is doing doesn’t fit into their religious box, don’t cut it down, find out what The Lord needs you to do and get to work. PS.
PS,
Apologies but the Pharisee label is a very old and abused cliche. If you knew your Bible you would know that the label of Pharisee has no application here, on the contrary it perfectly describes what is going on at Relevant Ministries.
You see the Pharisee’s were guilty of tagging on man made cultural adaptations called the Oral Tradition onto the Word of God. It was called the “tradition of the elders”.
They wanted to make the Word of God more culturally relevant, and they wanted to exhalt themselves instead of God.
What you fail to see is that adapting the Gospel to a fallen culture and using its gore to try and attract young people IS adding a tradition onto the Word of God and it makes the Word of God of none affect, in other words it buries the Truth of the word of God under a mountain of cultural baggage! Jesus called it adding weights around the necks of those who the Pharisee’s were supposed to be Spiritual Leaders for.
Also you have absolutely no Biblical Support for what you are saying, while I have provided plenty to show the truth of what I have written.
And what you call the harvest field places like Relevant Ministries is turning into a weed field! Come back when you can show some Bblical support for your indignation.
Otherwise I am not interested in your indignation at someone taking a very Biblical Stand against those who wish to make the Church and the unsaved world indistinguishable from one another.
heaven help us. oh God revive thy work
My daughter was part of that ministry and she got so confused about what was Christian and what was not that she now lives a lukewarm life in which she accepts everything including the gay and lesbian lifestyle because of “love”. She is now pierced and tattooed like the world and no longer resembles who or what she was taught in our Christian home. I truly believe that happened because this ministry accepts everything as good, when clearly everything is not good. Because the “church” approved it, she believes it is sanctioned by God. I homeschooled my children to teach them the difference between the world and the church; and this church and this ministry did the opposite, leading my teenager down the wrong path. This ministry is a deception and is based on mysticism and new age beliefs. If you are a Bible-believing Christian stay far away from Harvest and Relevant Ministries!
I am part of a congregation of this church in a predominantly liberal state, and while many of the sermons are very moving and eloquent, one thing I have learned recently is that there is a growing divide between the younger and older generation. Like, most parents here are still relatively Republican, but many of their children are staunchly pro-Democrat. Which is not necessarily wrong in itself, but one wonders how they usually try to reconcile their beliefs.
My impression from speaking carefully with many people in my age group is that they think as long as they read the Bible and believe that Jesus is God, anything they do outside of the church is essentially permissible. There are some college-aged people who strike me as very much the casual partying and drinking kind, listening to rap music frequently as well as talking almost like some gangsters do, and a youth leader who has both piercings and tattoos. Some people I’ve met at its program don’t even go to church on weekends.
Of course, many Christians in such an age group are still young and impressionable, and change in every society is inevitable; maybe as they grow older, they will shift their perspectives. But if you call yourself a Christian, you should be striving to hold yourself to higher standards than most other people that you know, not because you “feel” it’s kind of okay to do this or that because everyone apparently does it these days.
I’m almost scared to talk to them about issues like abortion, drugs and gay marriage, because deep down inside, I think I know very well what many of these other young “Christians” lean towards — so much so that I have begun considering possibly moving to another church. Yes, I know even many religious millennials are “go-with-the-flow” nowadays, and this is not exactly shocking. But surely there are some values which are beyond compromise?