What's the Point of Billy Graham's Ministry? "God Has a Dream for You" Says Rick Warren

Recently, Saddleback Church had a service where Rick Warren was teaching the importance of "choosing the right team for your dream." Mention was made of Billy Graham's ministry, since he had just recently died. After the last video montage about Billy Graham played, Rick Warren told his audience the importance of "fulfilling your dream-just like Billy Graham." After just a minute of his pep talk, he tells everyone to listen to message of the next song. The worship team then performs the pop song "This Is Me," which Billboard Magazine describes as: "a beautifully uplifting tribute to self-acceptance and self-love." Here are some of the lyrics:

“I won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ‘cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me”

— Lyrics from the song "This Is Me"

This bizarre combination of a Billy Graham tribute and a self-exalting secular song is a difficult and painful thing to watch. After the song ends, Rick Warren takes the mic and tearfully pleads with the audience to not waste their lives, and warns them not to live for the approval of others.

Wait, is this a church service... or the plot of every Disney film from the past twenty years?

Watch this edited version from the Saddleback Facebook page at your own risk:

Rick Warren also does his incredibly weak version of an "alter call" and suggests that people need to "accept Jesus" if they are to accomplish their dreams.

There is NO Gospel message here. This is a truly saddening pep rally of feel-good catch-phrases that belongs in an Amway rally from 1993. 

It sounds like Warren listened to this episode of Fighting for the Faith and did the exact opposite of everything that was said: How NOT to Shipwreck Your Faith

Rick Warren is a leader of the seeker-friendly takeover of Evangelicalism: The Seeker-Friendly, Purpose-Driven Cornucopia of False Doctrine

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This article by Steven Kozar; check out his new and improved: The Messed Up Church website!

A Hyper-Charismatic Guide to Losing your Mind

If you want to abandon your Christian faith and become mentally unstable, just follow these simple steps:

• "It all starts with a Dream! A God-Sized Dream!" To get started, you must believe that God expects you to dream up some outlandish desire in order to accomplish your Destiny. Because if you attempt to "do the impossible," God will miraculously answer your prayers and thus "get all the glory." You must take risks, step out in faith, and do something impossible. You and your dream must become the focus of your faith.

• You then step out in faith and do something really stupid. (Often, this involves giving money to someone who teaches this stuff.)

• Next, this ridiculous thing you've attempted doesn't work and you've got big problems. (Wow, what a surprise.)

• Instead of admitting your big mistake, you will now focus all of your attention on the future and the great things that you'll accomplish after you get your breakthrough (your "Destiny"). Because the finished work of Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins happened a long time ago, you will forget about it. Christianity gradually becomes a magic wand you keep waving around in order to get God to do stuff, and the "holy spirit" will demand more and more attention as he continually confuses you, embarrasses you and demands that you become more hungry, desperate and broken. He also wants you to be on fire.

• At this point you'll latch onto all of the sermons about fighting battles, getting a fresh new word from God, and fending off demons, pythons, and sneaky squids. "The devil knows about your Dream/Destiny and he wants to stop you!" You take your last few bucks to buy yet another book/DVD/CD/conference ticket, hoping to learn the "secret" to getting your breakthrough; you know, the breakthrough you wouldn't even need if you hadn't done something stupid...

• Here is where you'll probably find people to "prophetically" declare something over you, in order to give you a "breakthrough." Nothing will really change, but you'll try really hard to pretend otherwise. You might go to see famous "prophets" who claim to be "anointed," because you believe they can help you, but they only help you to lose more money.

• You have a suspicion in the back of your mind that you've entered a cult-like state of mind, but you don't want to admit it to anyone. There's a part of you that would like to go back to being a "normal" person, but you've been told that thinking that way is a direct attack of the devil.

• The Bible is no longer the story of God redeeming sinful mankind (The Gospel); it is more like a book of incantations to ward off evil spirits and make your dreams (finally) come true. You've largely forgotten about the simple Gospel message in your attempt to get secret knowledge from God (this is called "Gnosticism," by the way).

• You're (secretly) willing to skip the whole dream/destiny thing and just have some stability in your life, but the experts you're listening to tell you to "press in to get your miracle!" or something like that, and you still believe them. So, the very people whose bad ideas got you into this mess are the people you continue to listen to. How's that working for you?

• The one thing you don't want to do is have a "have a religious spirit." This meaningless catch-phrase keeps you locked into all of this chaos and confusion. How's that working for you?

• There are a number of bad ideas that you've been taught, and they all work together to prevent you from seeing the very obvious fact that you've become delusional. If you don't want to lose your mind, please read this article to see these bad ideas described and refuted: Defusing Demonic Dirty Bombs

• You refuse to acknowledge that a collection of bad ideas ("doctrine") has replaced the clear teachings of the Bible. In fact, you believe the doctrine that says "doctrine is not important." You like the teachers who teach you that teaching is bad. Here are a whole bunch of Bible verses that you are deliberately ignoring: Shocking Stuff You're Not Supposed to Know!

• But you stick with those bad ideas because you like them.

• You continue to listen to false teachers because you like them.

• You continue attending a church that teaches false doctrine because you like it.

• Congratulations! You have lost your mind.

“For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”

— 2 Thessalonians 2: 11-12

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Here are a few more articles (with links to more articles) that discuss this difficult issue:

Confirmation Bias: Why You Are Protecting Your False Beliefs

The Hyper-Charismatic House of Cards: Let It Fall and Be Free

Here's a recent episode of Fighting for the Faith where the author of this article (Steve Kozar) talks with Chris Rosebrough and @Aspree about this topic: How Not to Shipwreck Your Faith; here's the YouTube version: How Not to Shipwreck Your Faith

Here's a great little video from Chris Rice on this topic:

This article by Steven Kozar; check out his new and improved: The Messed Up Church website!