We were practically taught to worship and bow down to C. Peter Wagner at Lee College. He was the expert from fuller theological Seminary on Church growth methods. Now many call him heretic and false self assumed prophet. It didn’t take me long to discard what I had been taught on the modern church growth movement. Time has proven that was a wise move on my part.
Lee College was a Church of God liberal arts Bible college.
I thought it still IS a CoG school…
Wagner give the church 2 pieces of worthy advise.
1.hold purity high
2.never substitute education for ordination and dont forget where you came from.
I rejected C Peter Wagner from the moment I read his first book. When I went to Lee U, many were growing weary of him. But that’s because he identified as “third wave” and not Pentecostal
CoG had to distance themselves from him. He’s holding himself out as the “chief apostle” of NAR. He’s a “horizontal apostle.”
They sure held themselves apart when Kenneth Copeland re-mantled Lowery at North Cleveland. They were NOT strong enough to control the situation.
If they had stepped up it would have spoke loud and clear to the dominionist and a lot of CoG people would have been happy!
I saw the video and GO Williams was upstaged! shameless!
It’s kinda like Dr Michael Brown and his feud with John MacArthur. He refused to denounce Benny Hinn and a lot of other charismatic darlings as being fringe and excessive representatives of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. Too much political stuff with church folk
I read parts of “Spiritual gifts can help your church grow” or whatever that old book was. Parts of it were good, I guess, but his view of gifts seemed rather dry and unsupernatural. That was from my perspective as a young Pentecostal at the time. Romans 12 gifts are spiritual gifts, too.
I never read any of his so-called ‘spiritual warfare’ books, but I know there is a lot of stuff that got way off in that movement. I don’t see where Jesus cast the principalities out of a city before He preached. And if you fly an airplane over the city, and by naming principalities after the problems in a city, you are able to cast evil spirits out of town or out of the region, then what? If the people are still unsaved and the evil spirits come back with seven times the reinforcements, what good is that? IMO, some of those approaches are a stupid approach to transform a territory. I see some warnings in Jude that cause some of these teachings to concern me.
These types of teachings were very popular in some of the COGs (Bethel Church of Indonesia congregations) in Indonesia. There was one book iin a GBI Sunday school classroom that had a comic book about a kid being bullied. Just before being punched, he rebuked the spirit of anger in the other kid, and the other kid didn’t beat him up and the comic had a happy ending. Hmm. What about the flesh? Does every evil thing have to be attributed to the Devil? (I was thinking of jokingly writing about the black eyes of the kids in that church, that that’s not true.)
Then there is this whole apostle teaching of Wagoner. I haven’t read his books, but I have heard and read some of the NAR stuff, and I don’t see the correlation between what apostles were and do in scripture and this really loosely goosey foundation layer, spiritual father concept the NAR has. Watchman Nee seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the concept of apostleship.
It seems that Bryan Cutshall’s theology/teachings line up with Wagner, anyone know about this? I hear his sermon a month or so ago at west Tennessee Camp meeting and it seemed to be wagner material.
Lee university is considered a top COG school. The Lee Singers travel worldwide.
Indeed it is
If you ever want a fight with a pastor say something about LEE lol
We have to be like the old wise goat
Spit out the waste
Eat on the good stuff
More like spit out the bones lol
I think C. Peter Wagner started out straight as an arrow. He was a wonderful missionary for many years. Remember when the Study Commission had him to give his thoughts on the CoG?
I do.
Wagner gave the three “P’s” regarding the CoG.
I remember when the COG used much of Peter Wagner’s materials in courses related to missions and church growth. Peter is a researcher and does incorporate what he sees in churches all over the world. I don’t agree with many of his proposals but have always found Peter and his wife Doris to be humble and godly people. They were farmers before going on the mission field. Anyway both Peter and Doris are quite elderly now and covet prayers for very serious health problems. Peter is presently confined to home but is working on a book as he can. His greatest legacy to the COG was pointing out the need to highlight healing ministry and spiritual gifts as necessary for Pentecostals to not lose their influence. Please keep Peter and Doris in prayer even if you disagree with some of his research ideas.
Wagner’s three “P’s” were (1) PURITY; (2) POWER; & (3) POOR.
Sad.