Not more than three years ago my wife and I visited some friends at a local church on the coast of Maine. It was an island community, and as we drove through the narrow roads it felt very New England like, with a rocky shoreline, sea gulls making their eerie calls floating on the wind out over the sea. To my right were what appeared to be barren fields of blueberry bushes, and when we came into the more settled area; the houses were weather worn and not all together well kept. We drove around the island looking for the church, and then found the parsonage where the pastor and his wife lived, as we pulled into the door-yard it appeared to be the right place so we got out of the car and made our way to the front door. We were warmly greeted by the pastor and his wife; they showed us their home and very soon were enjoying their company.

We spent the night with them and the next day being the Lord’s Day attended church where the pastor was preaching. The pastor shared with us that the church was a very conservative church, and that they were looking for a youth pastor and that he would be speaking during the morning worship service. He appeared to be a nice young man and was from the south and went to Bible College somewhere in the Southern part of the United States.

As the message began that morning I could not believe my ears, for he began by saying that the doctrines of the church were now outdated, and that we needed to make them more relevant and like a trampoline we needed to stretch and push our limits out and up to redefine the doctrines so people could understand and accept them. He quoted a book written by Rob Bell called “The Velvet Elvis”, and as I sat there I was in shock that this small village in New England was being deceived by a young college student indoctrinated by an Emergent Church philosophy.

The amazing thing about this departure from true sound teaching of Bible is that the pastor did not know anything about this new philosophy of men. After the service I met the young student at the door and I said: “I see you are reading Rob Bell and the Emergent Church teaching”, he said “yes”, I then replied, “I am sorry to here that”. I proceeded to talk to the pastor and explained the new deceptive teaching of the Emergent Church. The proponents of this teaching mean to redefine the doctrines of the church. They want to reform the church to make it more acceptable to the world. They mean to give the church a face lift and move it forward into a modern inclusive, politically correct society where the church will be more acceptable to a fallen and sinful world that is compromising and blurring the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, and more importantly between sin and salvation. A deception is afoot in the church of Jesus Christ.