The gospel is not a ‘sales pitch’.

By churchwatcher on January 3, 2020

In our recent article “Phil Pringle – former garbage collector, former postman, now ‘salesman’?”, the question was asked by Elizabeth Prata:

“If a Christian is listening to someone, the question to ask is, are they teaching or are they selling? If they are teaching, their points will be clear (because God’s word is). If they are selling, they will be vague, emotional, and evasive.” (Source)

In an earlier CWC article, “The Brand is Belief” we pointed out the ‘tale of two churches’, one presenting the case for a biblical model of church, a model rapidly disappearing from the church landscape today and the other, a new market-driven paradigm taking its place. So it’s not too hard to assess the “gospel” represented by both Phil Pringle (C3 Church Global) and Brian Houston (Hillsong) and identify it for what it truly is – an unbiblical sales pitch.

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” 2 Peter 2:1-3

A YouTube reminder and review of Phil Pringle ‘caught selling miracles’:

The world has always been effective at offering ‘worldly goods’. The church is not called to ‘market’ the gospel but rather call people to repent and believe in the finished work of Christ on the cross for their sins.

“Who can deny that we’re in dark times? If the content of our preaching is to be truly the Gospel, we must have preachers who are already submitting themselves to the disciplines necessary to find and enter through Christ’s “narrow gate”. Our preaching must be more than a human work. Renowned preacher Charles Spurgeon taught:

“The gospel is preached in the ears of all men; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher; otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning; otherwise it could consists of the wisdom of men.

We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it – the Holy Ghost changing the will of man.

O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as preach to humanity unless the Holy Ghost be with the word, to give it power to convert the soul.” (Source)

The following presentation from ‘The Messed Up Church’ Steve Kozar’s YouTube Channel clearly points out:

“Brian Houston is not a real pastor, he’s the lead salesman for a global media conglomerate.”