Ok, I’m completely perplexed! I’ve seen and read it all now. I do not seek to be ugly in this post, perhaps someone can explain this to me. I just looked over this month’s copy of my Alma Matter’s publication, The Baptist Vision, and had a couple of things jump out at me. One, is that Peter Masters, the Calvinist Pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle is listed as an Editor of the Baptist Vision. That’s cool, I can handle that, in fact I can applaud the fact that brethren can choose to agree to disagree and still seek to honor Christ. I happen to know that Calvinist leaning students at Crown aren’t treated with the same deference reserved for Dr. Masters. Recently, it has been affirmed again at Crown that Calvinism is not a welcome teaching, which is obviously their prerogative. Again, this begs the question of what Dr. Masters is doing as an editor of the Baptist Vision, but that is really not the point of this post.
On page 9 of the Baptist Vision Dr. Masters has some comments on Spurgeon’s sermon on “The present financial crisis.” Allow me to reproduce his final paragraph.
“A parallel spiritual situation is the policy of many evangelical (and reformed) leaders who are building churches on a foundation of entertainment, contemporary worship and worldly lifestyles. The reputations of such churches (including reformed mega-churches in the USA) will collapse horribly in the coming years, just as the churches of the big names of nineteenth-century evangelical compromise collapsed to liberalism.”
If you go to his website you will find that he specifically calls out John MaCarthur as one of these poor misguided souls who dabble with compromise in music.
I’m not interested in debating the merits of Dr. Master’s opinions, at least not in this post, and He is more than welcome to them. What blows my mind is that MUSIC STYLES are worth calling out a Pastor by name and predicting his and Piper’s and Mahaney’s churches will collapse horribly because of said musical compromise, even as he as a Calvinist is a co-editor of a quasi-Arminian’s pamphlet. What’s wrong with this picture? Of course, music style is so much more important than what you believe about the Gospel, right?
My only point in this post is that certain side battles are elevated to a level of importance that is almost laughable! When you will call out someone who agrees with you 100% on the Gospel because of his music, while you hold hands with someone you disagree greatly on the Gospel because his music is as boring as yours you have redefined hypocrisy, or at least have some serious issues with your priorities. All of this, of course, is my humble opinion, especially the "boring" part. May God help us make much of what really matters and quit the trivial nonsense!
On page 9 of the Baptist Vision Dr. Masters has some comments on Spurgeon’s sermon on “The present financial crisis.” Allow me to reproduce his final paragraph.
“A parallel spiritual situation is the policy of many evangelical (and reformed) leaders who are building churches on a foundation of entertainment, contemporary worship and worldly lifestyles. The reputations of such churches (including reformed mega-churches in the USA) will collapse horribly in the coming years, just as the churches of the big names of nineteenth-century evangelical compromise collapsed to liberalism.”
If you go to his website you will find that he specifically calls out John MaCarthur as one of these poor misguided souls who dabble with compromise in music.
I’m not interested in debating the merits of Dr. Master’s opinions, at least not in this post, and He is more than welcome to them. What blows my mind is that MUSIC STYLES are worth calling out a Pastor by name and predicting his and Piper’s and Mahaney’s churches will collapse horribly because of said musical compromise, even as he as a Calvinist is a co-editor of a quasi-Arminian’s pamphlet. What’s wrong with this picture? Of course, music style is so much more important than what you believe about the Gospel, right?
My only point in this post is that certain side battles are elevated to a level of importance that is almost laughable! When you will call out someone who agrees with you 100% on the Gospel because of his music, while you hold hands with someone you disagree greatly on the Gospel because his music is as boring as yours you have redefined hypocrisy, or at least have some serious issues with your priorities. All of this, of course, is my humble opinion, especially the "boring" part. May God help us make much of what really matters and quit the trivial nonsense!
Hidden in Him!
Tony
