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COPY
To: Bethel Assembly Mpls, MN -
Pastors, Staff, and Members
November 18, 2006
After having attended Bethel Assembly exclusively for nine years and being a
member for seven I am withdrawing my membership because leadership has
determined to take Bethel into the Purpose Driven, Seeker Sensitive camp. This
is such a serious mistake in my opinion I felt a responsibility to write. I
stopped supporting Bethel financially after I learned of the plan October 5th,
except for an unresolved Speed The Light pledge.
When I found out on October 5th about the Purpose Driven aspect of the new
groups I immediately bought copies of a book called
Redefining
Christianity, a Biblical perspective on Purpose Driven.
I had them delivered to Pastor Freitag and Ian with a written plea to "please
please" consider the book. I asked Ian to refute the book for my benefit if it
seemed appropriate to him. Pastor Freitag had Ian tell me that he was too busy to
read it. Ian said he was going to read it but I do not know if he did. One way
dissenters are dealt with in Purpose Driven transitions is for leadership to
isolate and ignore them.
Leadership's reaction to my concerns and the book was manifest Sunday Nov 5th
when the LIFE GROUPS were promoted and future Purpose Driven courses were
promised. I will be attending another church because of this.
There are differing opinions regarding Purpose Driven and Seeker Sensitive
schemes within the AOG. There have been strong public condemnations of Purpose
Driven from prominent AOG figures. You can read some of these documents on the
web at
http://contending.org/aognews.htm
. There are a number of books denouncing Purpose Driven written from a
fundamentalist Christian view. There are also thousands of articles on the
internet that are anti Purpose Driven, Seeker Sensitive, written from a
fundamentalist Christian viewpoint.
The group leaders and group hosts do not understand what is involved in the
Purpose Driven paradigm yet. They should be held in high esteem for the efforts
they are making to help the church and the lost. But they need to get some
perspective on the theological error permeating the Purpose Driven teachings.
This letter would not be complete without a presentation of the gospel that I
think we all affirm:
That mankind is abiding under the wrath of God because of sin. That they are
assured of being sentence to a burning hell and eventually the lake of fire.
That men must acknowledge their guilt under God's just law. That they must
repent of their sins and believe the gospel, that Jesus Christ is Deity and has
existed from all eternity with and as God, that He was incarnated being born of
a virgin, that He live a sinless life, that He died on the cross shedding His
blood for the atonement of our sins, that He was raised from the dead and has
ascended to the right hand of God The Father. Having believed, men must
acknowledge Christ's Lordship over their lives and trust in His finished work.
Whatever fine theological differences Christians might have I think we can all
agree to the above.
The charge made by God in his holy word to Pastor Freitag and to all of us is to
preach the gospel described above to the lost and each other reminding each
other of it even though it is not popular. If we do this some will believe. The
Holy Son of God did not die on the cross for you and I to be seeker sensitive.
He actually demands that we be willing to put up with so much rejection that
they may actually kill some of us. This is the gospel that they killed the
apostles and many that followed them for. The apostle Paul was not a popular
figure in the pagan world.
I hope and pray for some of you to gain benefit from this letter. God bless all
of you. I hope to visit Bethel from time to time.
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