There are lots of people today who claim to be Christians, but when you sit down and evaluate what they believe about Jesus and the Bible, one has to wonder. These new-millennium Christians shaped and formed by tolerance and political correctness want a meek and mild Jesus, a Jesus who expounds platitudes on fluffy clouds of irrelevance.

The first two parts of this study looked at recent books on the church growth movement. Part 2 left off with a critique of the critiques, so to speak. This final installment will offer some suggestions based on the positive side of some church growth techniques, but first must reveal the darker, hidden side of church growth criticism.

In Part 1 of this study, we introduced the church growth movement briefly and reviewed one author’s critique of it. Having highlighted certain New Age spiritual deceptions lying just beneath the surface of the movement, we ended by noting Rick Warren’s uncritical employment of radically immoral pop-icons as authorities for his purposes. The question is left: Why try so hard to be seen shaking hands with heathen heroes?

You have seen them, and perhaps have been sickened by them: churches that look like malls, “worship centers” that look like shopping centers, complete with neon signs and sprawling parking lots. A few years ago I used to travel through Grapevine, Texas on a regular basis, where I would behold a behemoth megachurch of which I have still not seen the like.

They abound in our American culture. Our roads and highways are covered with signs of all shapes and sizes clamoring for our attention and proclaiming various points of view. We are told when to go, when to stop, where to shop, what to buy, whom to vote for, even which soap works best.

Zimbabwe is now in a desperate and chaotic condition. Apart from the tyranny and the torture which grow daily, hunger stalks millions in the country. Commonplace items are often unobtainable. Maize, the staple diet, is indeed sometimes to be had on the black market, and is only belatedly and reluctantly being imported – with foreign help and in inadequate quantities. Sugar, cooking oil and the like are in desperately short supply.

Jack Newbold wants to die. Jack has bone cancer and “he doesn’t want to put his wife and 17-year-old daughter through the trauma of caring for him as he loses control over his body.”[1] The good news for Jack is that he lives in Oregon, where a terminally ill patient has the option to “die with dignity.”

Christians are often called "believers," while non-Christians are termed "unbelievers." Scripture itself speaks this way: we read that "believers were the more added to the Lord" (Acts 5:14), and that they should not be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers" (2 Cor. 6:14).

Those who demand that people with religious views should keep their beliefs personal and private are inconsistent in the way they apply the principle. I’ve noted on various occasions how the anti-slavery and civil rights movements grew out of Christian political involvement.

The last three weeks have been an emotional roller coaster ride for my family and me. We have been trying to sell our house in the Cincinnati area and buy a house in the Atlanta area for several months. Now that there is “light at the end of the tunnel” I can reflect a bit on our experiences. Knowing that God is sovereign in the affairs of men, we were trusting and relying on Him through the whole process, but 1 Corinthians 12 has been given new meaning for me.