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Evangelicals redefined 'religion' as a bad word in recent decades. I started hearing this 30 years ago. I did not join in the redefinition.IMO, it leads to bad ideas-- e.g. the idea having devotional practices like scheduled, regular prayer is wrong.It also creates difficulty communicating with unbelievers who do not define religion as 'man trying to please God in his own strength' or something along those lines. If we say Christian is not a religion, and they look at us confused. Then time is wasted with redefinition of religion, time that could be used actually preaching the gospel.There are preachers who do not mention the cross or the resurrection, but talk against religion and for relationship, then give an altar call. Religion and relationship talk has replaced the gospel in some circles. I don't see talk against religion and in favor of relationship in any of the apostles sermons. I do see the Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus, Christ's death on the cross, and the resurrection of the dead. Romans 10:9-10talks about Lordship and the resurrection, not relationship versus religion. Paul summarizes the Gospel in the opening verses of I Corinthians 15. I see Christ dying for our sins and rising from the dead the third day. I don't see anything about it being a relationship and not a religion. I don't see Paul, Peter, Philip, etc. telling crowds to repeat a prayer after them, either. I do see accounts of them telling people to be baptized or baptizing them. Do our evangelistic practices line up with scripture? Could it be that some people show up for one service, repeat a prayer, and go back out in the world because they never got saved and never even heard the Gospel

You hit the nail right on the head

It is actually good that other people see this and that I am not treated like a pariah for pointing it out. Not that that should dissuade me.How can we un-hijack evangelicalism and our own churches and movements to reverse this and encourage preachers to get back to the Gospel

I visited a small mega-church in walking distance from my dad's house last year. You wouldn't know it, but it's actually a Southern Baptist Church. As I'd seen in the A/G and FourSquare, the preacher gave an altar call and without doing much explanation of the cross and without even mentioning the resurrection, had people repeat a prayer that did not explain the gospel, and said something along the lines if they believed it they were saved.I sent him an email explaining what I had witnessed-- and had not witnessed. He sent me a short response that he would consider what I had written him.This issue is too important to ignore. I don't think preachers are intentionally leaving out the Gospel. I think they go on 'autopilot.' It's the power of tradition-- doing things they way you have seen others do it. It's tradition versus actually going back to the Bible to compare contemporary preaching with preaching in the Bible, and maybe the preacher lacking awareness of what he has actually said. There are a lot of preachers who would say they don' t believe you can be saved unless you confess Jesus as Lord and believe that He rose from the dead, but they preach personal relationship and give an altar call because that is what they have seen done--like a robot on autopilot. Tradition is powerful that way, and we can be blind to the fact that we are following a traditional script without following scripture-- thinking that the way our group does things must be right

Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/

I am seeing a trend toward leaving the cross out. It seems like a lot of preachers have been leaving the resurrection out.I really believe a lot of preachers do not realize what they are not saying.This also demonstrates the power of tradition and imitation. The new preacher repeats what his pastor did without thinking without considering if is Biblical. If you ask either of them if you have to believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again to be saved they say yes. But they ask people to repeat a prayer and declare them saved without realuzingbwhat they did not save.I do not see this religion versus relationship message in any of the evangelustic preaching in the Bible

[quote=Link]Evangelicals redefined 'religion' as a bad word in recent decades. I started hearing this 30 years ago. I did not join in the redefinition.IMO, it leads to bad ideas-- e.g. the idea having devotional practices like scheduled, regular prayer is wrong.It also creates difficulty communicating with unbelievers who do not define religion as 'man trying to please God in his own strength' or something along those lines. If we say Christian is not a religion, and they look at us confused. Then time is wasted with redefinition of religion, time that could be used actually preaching the gospel.There are preachers who do not mention the cross or the resurrection, but talk against religion and for relationship, then give an altar call. Religion and relationship talk has replaced the gospel in some circles. I don't see talk against religion and in favor of relationship in any of the apostles sermons. I do see the Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus, Christ's death on the cross, and the resurrection of the dead. Romans 10:9-10talks about Lordship and the resurrection, not relationship versus religion. Paul summarizes the Gospel in the opening verses of I Corinthians 15. I see Christ dying for our sins and rising from the dead the third day. I don't see anything about it being a relationship and not a religion. I don't see Paul, Peter, Philip, etc. telling crowds to repeat a prayer after them, either. I do see accounts of them telling people to be baptized or baptizing them. Do our evangelistic practices line up with scripture?

One need look no further than the many Acts posters extolling the virtues of Paula White in another thread to begin to understand one significant source of this problem.We have abandoned the preaching of the gospel in many cases because we ourselves do not understand the gospel. We have grown dull to distinguishing truth from error. We will accept heterodoxy and even outright heresy in the name of syncretism and ecumenicism, while calling it not judging and saying people may be different than us / not our personal preference but they are still doing good and should be praised.

I'm currently studying the books of Acts and Romans again. Observing how Paul dealt with those who distorted the truth makes one realize that we lack the fortitude to confront much of anything from our pulpits today. While we have no problem ranting and raging against the world,we turn a blind eye to those teaching heresy in our churches “Hell will be filled with people that didn’t cuss, didn’t drink, and may even have been baptized. Why? Because none of those things makes someone a Christian.”

I'm currently studying the books of Acts and Romans again. Observing how Paul dealt with those who distorted the truth makes one realize that we lack the fortitude to confront much of anything from our pulpits today. While we have no problem ranting and raging against the world,we turn a blind eye to those teaching heresy in our churches. I can understand concern over her personal life. I don't follow Paula White and I do not know what all she teaches. I have probably seen several minutes of her. She was a very good public speaker in terms of skill and being interesting, and pretty...though I saw a picture after some age and and what appears to be skin pulled tight. What she was talking was fairly acceptable Pentecostal and Charismatic teaching as I recall. I also remember reading that she was trying to use the firstfruits teaching allegorically to get people to give a donation to her ministry. I understand and share the objections to using the Old Testament that way. But I object to Pentecostal preachers doing the very same thing with tithing laws in the Old Testament, using them allegorically to condemn people who don't give to a fund that they have some control over.What are her teachings that you object to