They were advocating that there is another way to salvation except by Jesus Christ?

It might help to define the essentials. I have found that we must do this as some think women’s roles are essential to salvation.

Junk, thanks for reminding me about totalitarian niceness. I have seen lots of evil covered over in the church with totalitarian niceness.

I forgot this important point. Mahaney has no education beyond high school. His writings and his “sermons” exhibit a weak grasp of Biblical hermeneutics as my cohort will discuss this week. Ye, he has the audacity to put himself as the founder and leader of the Pastors College which “trains” similarly uneducated men to become pastors in 9 months. Then these “leaders” go into churches which have had the misfortune to affiliate with SGM and will remove the lead pastors stating that they are not “gifted” to be leaders. Think I’m exaggerating. Go to the survivors sites and read for a week or two.

Get your giggle on. Sovereign Grace Ministries considers itself an apostolic based leadership. Mahaney has called himself Head Apostle since long before they morphed from People of Destiny (PDI) to Sovereign Grace Ministries.We have written extensively about this abusive ministry and hope to bring our archives over to the new site within the month.

In the meantime, please go to their site:

http://www.sovgracechurch.com/about_sovGrace.html

to read about their viewpoints on this.

The main problem with this ministry is the many reported abuses which have dogged them over the years. There are several survivor’s sites which discuss in detail these abuses. Here are two: sgmsurvivors.com and sgmrefuge.com. The abuse is rooted in poorly trained, hyperauthoritarian leadership. Abuse allegations have dogged Mahaney since his involvement with the screwball shepherding movement of the 1970s where he first made his appearance.

What is disconcerting to us at TWW is that the SBC is jumping on the Mahaney bandwagon. This is something that we believe portends badly for the direction of the SBC leadership that seems to be tacking onto this crowd.

Have fun at the T4G conference. Keep your eyes open. Legalism is on the rise and this crowd quietly endorses some pretty rigid views. I just left a church in which the pastor is affiliated with this self assured gang and let me tell you, if you don’t follow their view on “b” issues which they have elevated to “A” issue, you are the new anathema. I am not talking about the issues found in most of the creeds.

Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Sovereign Grace Ministries:

“Sovereign Grace’s apostolic team is currently led by C. J. Mahaney”.

That makes Mahaney the “Head Apostle”.

We will be focusing on C.J. in our current series, so stay tuned!

Many theological issues are not essentials. Many practical, ministry oriented practices and decisions are not essentials either.

I have never heard or read Mahney. I believe that I will attend Together for the Gospel this year for the first time. Many of my friends have gone several times, and have really enjoyed it. They know that Mahaney’s background is different from the other speakers -Mohler, Dever, Sproul etc. None of them have ever said that Mahaney claimed to be an apostle at that meeting. If he did, I suspect that Mohler and the others would laugh him out of the room. I know that I would.

The idea is to stand firm on the essentials. The Calvinistas stand firm on the nonessentials. Mahaney stands firm that he is an Apostle and knows what is best for “his” flock including which small group, what to study, permission needed to leave, etc. Some of us stood firm on a church’s poor response to a children hurt by a molester, etc. One church that I used to attend had a rabid group of young earthers and the church refused to let any other point of view be taught to the children. Egads. Such certainty on nonessentials is nonsense. Thanks for your insight.

I just read on another blog a day or two ago where someone was pining away for the good ol’ days in Baptist Church life were we just pushed all the theological differences under the rug and just got along with one another and did “missions” (whatever that meant to each person or church).

We can get obsessive about anything, so too much of anything can be bad.

But I appreciate the fact that this site takes on theological issues.

http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/november13/35.104.html

I can just hear the whining before the Father, “But, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

Tell me what you think about the article. It might be worthy of a post!
Blessings