By Jim on
Church & Ministry
Megachurches

Deep divide dooms onetime megachurch North Heights Lutheran

North Heights Lutheran has been in a “downward death spiral” for more than a decade due to a bloated staff, overbuilding, exaggerated membership numbers and expenses far outweighing income

Discussion

Mon, 03/14/16

A major problem over the years has been female leadership and preachers. The last acting senior pastor was a woman for example.

Mon, 03/14/16

Church is formerly ELCA, but went to a Lutheran charismatic affiliation that allowed female pastors. So they get liberalism from the ELCA and volatility from the charismatics….ouch!

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Mon, 03/14/16

Charismatics are volatile…but us Baptists are rock sold… right?

Mon, 03/14/16

Only in comparison, Mark. :^)

Really though, two sides of the same coin. We Baptists run into trouble when we follow a leader with magnetic personality and start to assume that his personal preferences are mandates. Then someone comes in who has a different position—Biblical or not—and it’s off to the fight club. They run into trouble because they have abandoned Scripture as a source of authority (now an ELCA and all liberal church distinctive, really), and then proceed to claim (charismatic distinctive) that there are current extra-Biblical revelations that ought to be interpreted as authoritative—and that lots of people can have them. So the ancient source of authority is not honored, but every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a new prophecy is. We got trouble, and it’s not pool.

So the improvement of ELCA-matics to IFB is really the simple fact that “our tribe” at least pretends, most of the time, to take Scripture seriously. Hence we are marginally better moored.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.