Man Centered approach to the Bible

The following is a chunk I took out of an EXCELLENT teaching by John MacArthur. It's a rather brilliant but obvious solution to what today's pastors are doing by bringing man centered approaches to the Bible into their churches - such as things like the 12 Step program (i.e. Celebrate Recovery, etc.) instead of preaching the Word of God. (Basically he's laid out a 12 step recovery plan for pastors who are addicted to church programs in this article.) This excerpt really shows the effect that church marketing has had on Christians and how their love for the Word has grown cold...

Talking recently to people at Thomas Nelson Publishing, they were telling me that Bible sales are going down. At the same time that supposedly 85 percent of Americans say they are evangelical Christians, Bible sales are diminishing. And according to exit polls, 50 percent of the people who go to a Christian bookstore to buy a Bible, leave without one. They aren't really sure just how important it is. For may of them, the only Bible they ever see is a verse, usually taken out of context, and slapped on a PowerPoint screen. Many of them sit in an auditorium where it's too dark to read a Bible if they had one. And if they had one, they would wonder why. The Bible is, to many people who call themselves Christians, a book like a lot of other books, with some good suggestions about how to live your life that can be manipulated and twisted a dozen different ways to make them meaningful to you.

And so the publishers are saying, if we're gonna sell Bibles, we're gonna have to appeal to felt need rather than the revelation of God. We can't any longer talk about this is God's revealed truth. We can't any longer talk about this is inspired by God. This is the word from heaven. We can't do that. We have to call the Bible, not the Word of God, but a message that will fix you. We have to sell Bibles and they presented a full video presentation. Are you lonely? Are you unfulfilled? Are you happy? Here's a book that can change all that. A man-centered approach to selling Bibles. And, in fact, I was warned that a study Bible is an anachronism because people today don't even connect the two words "study" and "Bible".

Read the whole thing here:

12 Marks of Excellent Pastoral Ministry
www.gty.org

Saw it first HERE after reading about it HERE.