By Coach Dave Daubenmire
August 28, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
Allow me to begin by saying, if the shoe fits…wear it.
Now please don’t email me about how wrong I am for pointing out the obvious; the glaringly obvious even. Please don’t tell me how harsh I am, or how your pastor is a great man of God, or how your church is the best thing since sliced bread. If you attend a church with a real pastor, you are truly one of the lucky ones. But the odds are, your pastor isn’t all that great. He has just convinced you that he is.
I get around. I visit a lot of churches. I know of that which I speak. When I leave a service, it is not unusual for me to look at my wife and ask her how the people can sit in that place week after week and listen to the bilge.
Oh yeah, your pastor is a good one just like your congressman is a good one. Everyone hates congress, but they love their congressman. Nearly 90% of them get re-elected. It’s that Democrat congressman that’s the bad one. Your guy is a good conservative.
Compared to what? Compared to whom?
-
If your congressman is so good, why is our nation in such a mess?
-
If your pastor is so good, why is America in such a mess?
People love to blame the politicians. I blame the pastors. Recent studies show 90% are derelict in their duty.
Politicians ride the wave that culture creates. The church used to be the tide upon which the politicians surfed. Politicians want to get elected. They ride whatever wave is breaking. The pulpits have gone soft. There is no “God wave” to trouble the waters of political correctness.
Churches have become impotent because the pulpits have turned soft. Everyone wants to model Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. Those dudes aren’t pastors, they’re book merchants. Congregations around this country have traded the Bible for the “self-help, purpose-driven, best-life-now” doctrine of demons currently flooding our churches. The people in the pew can no longer recognize the truth for themselves. They need a shepherd to lead them to truth.
Jesus told us that He is the Good Shepherd and that His Word is the guide. Warren and Osteen are blind guides, and America has fallen into the ditch.
Here is Litmus Test 101 for your church. This is merely the first qualifying factor. If you don’t answer yes to this question, then you can bet that yours is a church that I am referring to. Here’s the question:
Is carrying the Bible to church and actually opening it a requirement at the church where you attend? Some of the more progressive churches are kind enough to put the words on the big screen for you, saving you the embarrassment of having to find Malachi on your own.
Politicians get elected by saying what the people want to hear. Pastors build churches by teaching what the people want to hear. There’s no difference. Politicians and pastors both tend to be man-pleasers.
The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their own power; and the people love to have it so…Jeremiah 5:31.
The current administration was placed into power with the vote of 40 million Christians. They conveniently called it “faith based support.” 
Obama is pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-big government, pro-lying and pro-Islam. How could Christians possibly support such anti-Biblical positions? Who is teaching them this crap? Who indeed…
Our pastors are traitorous, both to their Lord and to their nation. There is simply no nice way of saying it. When a football team plays poorly, they fire the coach. When churches start to fail, they change playbooks.
Traitor—one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty.
There are a lot of reasons why pastors act the way they act, but no amount of rationalization can justify their dereliction of duty. In the end, they will answer to the Lord, not to the Government. Their corporate identity and their denominational affiliation will not be much of a defense as they stand before the Lord.
If you haven’t already done so, please take the time to read Pastor Chuck Baldwin’s recent commentary regarding George Barna’s survey that reveals the fact that 90% of America’s pastors are purposefully keeping the people in the dark. (And this one that just came out today). They are concerned with hurting the growth of “their church” by talking about “controversial” issues.
Who was it that classified marriage, abortion, un-holy wars, tyrannical government, government thievery, unrighteous taxation, dishonest courts, drug legalization, deviant sexual behavior, indoctrination of children, and public filth as ”controversial” issues? The church used to be the “wave machine” on all of these issues, but alas: The salt has lost his savor.
Although I’m sure you’re familiar with them, I believe that the words of Charles Finney are worth repeating:
“If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discernment, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible.”
Martin Luther declared:
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
Flight and disgrace are the fruits of abandonment. Abandonment is treason. Those who commit treason are traitorous. If Barna is correct, can any 
other term be more appropriately applied to America’s churches where 90% of the pulpits are filled by traitorous, cowardly men? It is not the politicians who are to blame. It is the pastors…the pulpits. Stop giving them your money. That is all they understand. Find a mission worth supporting and direct your giving there.
We are a nation adrift…meandering down the river of history…rudderless…devoid of propulsion… drifting wherever the current might take us. There is a waterfall ahead. Who’s steering the ship? Is your family willing to blindly follow the captain over the cliff?
Related Articles:
1 – Pastors And Churches Violating First Commandment
2 – The Government’s Religion
WARNING. NewsWithViews.tv may be change the way you think.
© 2014 Dave Daubenmire – All Rights Reserved
WARNING TO PASTORS: A Greater Level of Responsibility
Posted on September 5, 2014
by Dave Daubenmire
Okay, I have no one to blame but myself. I should have seen it coming.
This is the last time I am going to write about church leadership for a while. At least that is my plan. But I feel an urgency to awaken the shepherds.
God will hold them accountable. I’m sorry if my words hurt their feelings.
Last week I wrote about how the pastors of America are derelict in their duty. If you haven’t had the time to read it, I suggest you take the time to do so. It might make this commentary seem a little more coherent.
My inbox filled up, as I suspected it would. But what was surprising was that many of the comments were “atta boys.” Lots of folks are beginning to see the big picture.
America is in a mess, and even those who listen to Limbaugh are starting to figure it out. I call them “low-information listeners.” They are the ones who actually think Rush is having an impact on America. They don’t realize that he is merely a pressure valve who makes the listeners think everything is going to be fine once we can fill all of Congress and the White House with “conservatives.” Just like the pastors, Rush confuses talking with doing.
How long has he been on the air? I believe that it’s right around 25 years now. Have things gotten better or worse since he has been giving us “advice”? Things get worse, yet his listeners feel better. Give me his time slot for three hours a day and folks would be brandishing pitchforks by now. Just saying…
But, as I forewarned myself before I started typing my former commentary, the pastors don’t take criticism very well. “You wouldn’t write such harsh stuff if you had any idea how hard it was to ‘build a church’”, they tell me. Therein lies part of the problem. God never called anyone to “build a church”. He called us to build a Kingdom. HIS Kingdom! HIS church? He said HE would build that.
“Pastoring is hard”, they tell me. “You’ve never been one”, they tell me. “People won’t listen”, they tell me. “Your criticism of the pastors is only hurting the body”, they tell me.
Good thing Jesus isn’t around, I tell them. He called the church leadership all kinds of unflattering names, I tell them. Jesus said it would be better to be thrown in a river with a rock around one’s neck than to continue to mislead the flock, I tell them. Jesus taught that no one can serve two masters, I tell them. Trying to please men is like having your foot caught in a trap, I tell them. Pastoring would be so much easier if you told the people the truth, I tell them. At least you would sleep better at night, I tell them. I sure do. And I often snore.
“What would you have us do?” one particularly whiny leader wrote me. “Man up!” I wrote back. Start preparing your people for what is coming down the road. You think folks are ticked at you now, just wait until they find out that you have been feeding them Pablum while the wolf was marching towards their door. Do your job!
“Do what job?” he asked. “[T]he perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Eph. 4:12. Most Christians have no works to show for all of their faith. No one has shown them what to do.”
Oh, they all can preach up a storm: I am sure of that. As if preaching was actually making a difference. I compare it to pre-game speeches in the locker room. Shakespeare said they were “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” No pre-game speech ever won a football game and no Sunday morning sermon will do the job either. The pre-game speech and the Sunday sermon both only last until some snot-snorting linebacker smacks you in the face.
The Muslim leadership is actively preparing their men for war. They are currently slaughtering Christians around the globe. Now they are warning us that the “religion of peace” is heading our way. Pastor “What, Me Worry?” has no strategy for how to deal with these monsters. They teach men to love their enemies more than they love their own families.
The world’s economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss. We are but one calamity away from a devastating financial collapse, yet not a word is spoken about “prepping” for the hard times that lie ahead. Instead, they offer Financial Peace University classes with Dave Ramsey. They say peace, peace, when there is no peace…and the people remain clueless. Who will warn them if the pastor won’t?
Our government is lying to us. We recently found out that the CDC has been lying for years about vaccinations and autism. What else have they been lying to us about? Chemtrails and weather manipulation? Abortion and the breast cancer link? 9/11? Common Core and how good it is for education? The public schools are a hell-hole and not one pastor in a hundred dares speak against them. Pastoring is hard alright.
-
Our liberties are being stolen right out from under us in the name of security.
-
Illegal immigrants receive for free what hard-working pew-sitters work hard to provide for them.
-
Food prices are manipulated,
-
inflation is about to go nuclear,
-
our oceans are dying from Fukushima and the Gulf oil spill,
-
California has been in drought for 6 years and is running out of water,
-
Christianity is being criminalized,
-
and 2.5% of the American populace is controlling the sexual agenda.
“Hey have you guys seen the movie Left Behind? It’s awesome!! We’re gonna show it next Sunday night at service!!”
Here is where the buck stops, my friend, and there is no denying it: Christianity has become “good for nothing” (Words of Jesus) because the “salt 
has lost His savor.” There is a total disconnect in most churches between what is being talked about from the pulpit and what is actually going on in the world. The ignoring of “politics” in the name of “religion” is exactly the mind-set the enemy has tried to impress upon church-goers….and he’s succeeding.
As I heard a friend say the other day, the world has become so churchy and the church has become so worldly it is hard to tell the two apart. Or, as I like to put it, the world has become the salt of the church.
But I don’t want to fix the blame on anyone; I want to help turn this ship around. But if the church who is supposed to be the salt of the earth has lost its impact in the world, who’s to blame for that?
When football teams fail, they fire the coach. When churches stop being effective, they try a new program. If a coach trains players, who do pastors train? Do coaches talk to their players about playing the game or do they take them out on the field and train them HOW to play the game?
-
By the hundreds, Christians are being slaughtered around the world.
-
Whole congregations are being lined up and beheaded.
-
When ISIS comes to beat in the door at your church,
-
or the militant homosexual lobby shows up demanding marriage, they know they will have nothing to fear. The congregation will be busy watching the Super Bowl, listening to Dave Ramsey, or studying The Purpose Driven Life.
God will hold leadership to a higher standard. I see it coming. I just felt it was my duty to warn them.
NEW RESEARCH: PASTORS DELIBERATELY KEEPING FLOCK IN THE DARK
George Barna is the foremost researcher of modern Christianity in the country. He recently spoke about a two-year research project studying why 
modern-day pastors and churches are so silent regarding political issues. The result of his research only confirms what I have been trying to tell people for years. But there was one thing his research uncovered that did somewhat surprise me. OneNewsNow.com covered the story:
“On Thursday, George Barna–research expert and founder of The Barna Group–shared with American Family Radio’s ‘Today’s Issues’ about new information he’s compiling at American Culture and Faith Institute over the last two years, gauging where theologically conservative pastors are at politically.
“‘What we’re finding is that when we ask them about all the key issues of the day, [90 percent of them are] telling us, Yes, the Bible speaks to every one of these issues. Then we ask them: Well, are you teaching your people what the Bible says about those issues?–and the numbers drop…to less than 10 percent of pastors who say they will speak to it.’
“When researchers ask those pastors what else they are willing to do to get their people active in the political process, Barna said ‘it’s almost nothing.’
“‘So the thing that struck me has been that when we talk about the separation of church and state, it’s that churches have separated themselves from the activities of the state–and that’s to the detriment of the state and its people,’ stated the researcher.”
That 90% of America’s pastors are not addressing any of the salient issues affecting Christian people’s political or societal lives should surprise no one–especially the readers of this column. It has been decades since even a sizeable minority of pastors have bothered to educate and inform their congregations as to the Biblical principles relating to America’s political, cultural, and societal lives. But the part of the research that did somewhat surprise me was this statement by Barna:
“What we’re finding is that when we ask them about all the key issues of the day, [90 percent of them are] telling us, Yes, the Bible speaks to every one of these issues. Then we ask them: Well, are you teaching your people what the Bible says about those issues?–and the numbers drop…to less than 10 percent of pastors who say they will speak to it.”
Did you get that? Ninety-percent of America’s pastors say they KNOW that the Bible speaks to all of these issues, but they are deliberately determined to NOT teach these Biblical principles. That is an amazing admission!
It would have been one thing if the pastors had said that these political issues were not relevant to scripture, and, therefore, they didn’t feel called to address them. But the pastors are admitting that, yes, they KNOW that the scriptures DO relate to our current political issues, but they are deliberately choosing to NOT teach those scriptural principles. Holy heads-in-the-sand, Batman!
I confess: this statistic caught me off-guard. So, we can forever dismiss ignorance as justification for pastors remaining silent.
Now, all of the church members out there who have been forgiving of their ministers for not speaking out on the issues by saying things like, “He 
really doesn’t understand what’s going on,” need to reevaluate their leniency–if they are intellectually honest, that is–and if they truly care about the future of their country.
Church member, admit it: that pastor of yours who refuses to speak out on the issues KNOWS the Bible speaks to these issues, and he is DELIBERATELY refusing to teach those Biblical principles to you and your family.
So, we are not dealing with IGNORANT pastors; we are dealing with DELIBERATELY DISOBEDIENT pastors. They are PURPOSELY CHOOSING to remain silent. Will that make any difference to the Christians in the pews who say they want their pastor to take a stand but are willing to overlook his “ignorance?” Probably not. But, at least, we now know what the real issue is, don’t we?
The report goes on: “Why the disconnect? According to Barna, the answer is simple. He suggests asking pastors how someone would know if their church is ‘successful’–which he did.”
“‘There are five factors that the vast majority of pastors turn to [when asked that question],’ he explained. ‘Attendance, giving, number of programs, number of staff, and square footage.’”
There you have it: pastors are more concerned about being “successful” than they are being truthful. They believe if they tell their congregations the truth, their churches will not be “successful.” And it is so refreshing to see Barna directly ask pastors what “success” means to them. So, now we know (as if we didn’t know before; but, at least now there is definitive research to back it up). The vast majority of pastors believe church success lies in:
• Attendance
• Giving (money)
• Number of programs
• Number of staff
• Square footage (of facilities)
Shazam! Where did pastors come up with this definition of “success?” You know where: from men such as Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, 
et al.
The megachurch phenomenon of the last several decades transformed how pastors think and behave. Pastors read the “successful church” books and publications; they attend the “successful church” conferences; they watch the “successful church” videos, etc. They, then, try to mimic the tactics and strategies they have been taught. And if there is one constant theme promulgated by the likes of Osteen, Warren, and Hybels, it is pastors must avoid controversy like the plague. Again, one must realize that the goal is NOT being faithful to Biblical principles; the goal is building a “successful” church as noted above.
It is time for Christians to acknowledge that these ministers are not pastors; they are CEOs. They are not Bible teachers; they are performers. They are not shepherds; they are hirelings. It is also time for Christians to be honest with themselves: do they want a pastor who desires to be faithful to the scriptures, or do they want a pastor who is simply trying to be “successful?” BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF, CHRISTIAN FRIEND.
Barna’s research blows the “ignorance” excuse out of the water. Again, it is not ignorance; it is deliberate disobedience.
Barna goes on to say, “Now all of those things [the five points of success listed above] are good measures, except for one tiny fact: Jesus didn’t die for any of them.” Wow! You nailed it, George!
See the report: Barna: Many Pastors Wary Of Raising ‘Controversy’
Where do you find anything in the New Testament that measures a pastor’s success;
-
by the number of people attending his church?
-
Or by how large his offerings are?
-
Or by how many programs his church has?
-
Or by how many staff members he has?
-
Or by how large his facilities are?
In fact, the early New Testament church didn’t even own property or buildings.
When the Apostle Paul listed his ministerial pedigree, here is what it looked like (II Cor. 11):
• Stripes above measure
• In prisons frequently
• In deaths often
• Beaten with rods
• Stoned
• Perils
• Weariness
*Painfulness
• Hunger and thirst
• Cold and nakedness
I don’t see attendance, offerings, programs, staff, or square footage in that list at all, do you?
When Paul wrote his own epitaph, it read, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” (II Timothy 4:7). He didn’t say, “I had a large congregation, we had big offerings, we had a lot of programs, I had a large staff, and we had large facilities.”
In the world of Osteen, Warren, and Hybels (and 90% of America’s pastors), the Apostle Paul’s ministry must have been a dismal failure. And how many church pulpit committees would even consider the pastoral résumé such as the Apostle Paul wrote above?
Please understand this: America’s malaise is directly due to the deliberate disobedience of America’s pastors–and the willingness of the Christians in the pews to tolerate the disobedience of their pastor. Nothing more! Nothing less!
Oh, and get this: according to the survey conducted by Barna, guess what the number one reason is why pastors choose to be “successful” and not “controversial?” You guessed it: fear of the IRS 501c3 tax-exempt status. Who would have thought it? (Yes, that question is deliberately facetious.)
The release of this research by George Barna could not have come at a more opportune time. I announced just last week that we have officially launched the Liberty Church Project, whereby we will be helping people around the country to establish non-501c3 churches. I invite folks (pastors or laymen) who are serious about starting new non-501c3 churches–or helping to resurrect patriot pulpits within existing churches–to fill out our online application. We already have several groups that we intend to help and are looking for others. If you are someone who is serious about such an endeavor, and seeks our assistance, please fill out the online application here on: Liberty Church Project
And, in case you missed it, here is my column announcing the launch of the Liberty Church Project: We Are Launching
I want to commend George Barna for his research. I suspect that the vast majority of pastors and churches will ignore it, but, at least 
now we know the painful truth of the matter: by in large, pastors are deliberately choosing to not teach Biblical truth to their congregations for the selfish goal of being “successful.” But as we come to grips with this reality, we must also acknowledge that pastors are simply (and shamelessly) putting their fingers to the wind and finding that the people in the pews are more interested in their churches being “successful” than faithful to the teaching of Holy Scripture. As Barna noted, it is the churches, themselves, that have chosen to separate from the political affairs of their country.
In the end, it always comes down to We the People, doesn’t it? If you want a church where the pastor is willing to teach the Biblical principles that relate to our everyday lives–including our political lives–you might have to vote with your feet and go find one. That is, if that kind of thing is truly important to you.
© 2014 Chuck Baldwin – All Rights Reserved
Chuck Baldwin is a syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, author, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He was the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party. He and his wife, Connie, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren. Chuck and his family reside in the Flathead Valley of Montana. See Chuck’s complete bio here.
E-mail: chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com
Website: ChuckBaldwinLive.com
Like this:
Like Loading...
Reported 
Reported 
By: 
The Last Refuge