Final Letter to Bruce Wilkinson Re: “You Were Born for This” – part 6 of 6
(Click here to download the first chapter of Bruce Wilkinson’s book, You Were Born for This.)
(Click on the following to read my earlier posts on the text: Title & Table of Contents, Table of Contents addendum, Testimonials, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, 13, the final grade for the text, and my initial public challenge to Bruce Wilkinson.)
Dear Bruce,
Happy Monday! Like I wrote on Friday, I can’t tell you how glad I am to finish with this letter. In truth, to write to someone who has shown no interest in the concerns raised on this blog is akin to picking up the phone and talking to someone without ever dialing their number.
Does it make for lonely conversation? Somewhat. Does it make this less valuable? I don’t believe so. Besides, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and not automatically assume that you are one of the elite who believe they are above having to answer legitimate questions regarding the material you produce.
Last Friday, I discussed how (in your latest book, You Were Born for This), you used your previous book, The Prayer of Jabez, for support for your premise rather than using the truths in Scripture, and the serious problems that causes you in the area of credibility.
(Premise: You Were Born for This teaches that we can be used by God to “deliver miracles” in the lives of others.)
Today, we address the last of five questions (that, to date, have received no answer from either you, your co-author, or your publisher):
5) There’s no place in your text where you actually talk about the one place where true believers can be used by God in a miraculous way: EVANGELISM. When a Christian shares the Gospel to an unbeliever (in obedience to the Great Commission given to all believers, and out of love for said unbeliever), God does His miraculous work of conversion in the life of that person. How could you overlook the most obvious and most important miracle we could ever be involved in?
During the 11/17 LiveStream event, I asked you this very question. Your answer was altogether unsatisfactory.
To paraphrase, you said that you and your co-author (David Kopp) considered that very question, but that you decided that there were many other texts on the subject of evangelism, so you didn’t feel it was necessary to include that matter in the text. You finished by sharing that perhaps you’ll address that in a future volume.
Why is your answer unsatisfactory? Because you don’t even make mention of evangelism. In a book written about people delivering miracles for God, you make absolutely no reference to the greatest endeavor any Christian could be about, the Great Commission.
Something else is going on here, and I suspect I know what it is. (And because you won’t email or call, the best I can do is careful conjecture.)
Probable reason: Sell more copies. (We keep coming back to this one, don’t we?)
Think about it, Bruce. You didn’t dare go there. Speaking about the “miracle ministry opportunity” of evangelizing to lost family members, friends, co-workers, acquaintances and strangers would be tantamount to eating a single peanut out of a Snickers bar and being satisfied.
If you had included the reality of evangelism in your text, you would’ve lost many potential readers who are (in fact) in need of salvation themselves. You would’ve been on a more biblical footing, but your text would’ve a) offended those non-believers who do not know Christ, and b) made uncomfortable those believers who (for some strange reason) do not have a passion to be used by God in the Great Commission.
Problem: You’re carefully writing in such a way as to avoid what are the most important things in God’s economy, and are instead writing of less important matters as though they are most important, all for the sake of selling more copies.
Offending people and making them uncomfortable is so against the grain of what I think of when I think of you and your teachings, Bruce. You project such a warm, kind, grandfatherly Christianity…
…just like Jesus when He confronted and sarcastically corrected His disciples.
…just like Jesus when He corrected and cursed the Pharisees.
…just like Jesus when He picked up a cord of rope and cleansed the temple.
What’s the biggest problem with being committed to playing the nice guy? You always wind up telling people what they want to hear. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it forces you to abandon the most important truths we could ever share with others, which is in violation to what God would have us to do in our teaching ministries.
Please think on these things, Bruce, and return to the truths we find in Scripture. Cleanse yourself of these humanistic teachings before you write another word, and God will again be pleased with what you write and say. You will lose a percentage of readers for doing so, obviously, but you will reap eternal rewards for faithfully proclaiming the fullness of His Word to others.
Unwilling to ever sacrifice at the Altar of Nice, instead striving to exhibit true Christian love in all that I do,
Chris
PS I’ll be sharing some old posts (wherein I reviewed Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile) for the remainder of the week, as I have a huge deadline on Friday that must be tended to.
PPS Next week, I’ll have two or three more texts to begin reviewing. JOY!
PPPS For new readers, my earlier analyses of Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile (by Rob Bell and Don Golden) is available for free download. Simply click on my title, Clear as a Bell, and decide for yourself whether or not Bell’s teachings match those found in God’s Word.
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