When you consider the whole matter of the loveliness of the Church, one of the most repulsive ideas that actually appears in Scripture is that Christ would be joined with a harlot. And we have just been led in Scripture to recognize that Christ is one with His church. And so you cannot play games with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot make it your creative project. You cannot make it an expression of your own personality, of your own gifts, of your own vision, your own inclinations, anything like that. And while I say that, to make it clear that it's the unleashing of those things that most often is the entry point of paganism in the church. So, I want to speak of five things, four things here tonight. First of all, I want to make I want to state my premise, and that is that syncretism is perhaps the greatest enemy of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you'll find me using two terms simultaneously, but I want you to understand that, syncretism and paganism. Second, after speaking generally of syncretism and paganism, I want to to give a protective principle of the Reformation that protects the church from paganism. And then thirdly, I would like to give several brief illustrations of paganism in the church. And then fourthly, I'd like to focus on one major area of syncretism. that might be surprising to you in its depth and its breadth, its origin, and how it has crept into the church and precipitated a number of other downfalls among God's people. Now, at the heart of the question of paganism in the church is an epistemological issue that has been the center of enormous conflict from the beginning of history. In the opening scenes of Genesis, the devil's lies and the inclinations of man's hearts waged war against the authority of God over epistemology, the source of truth, and methodology, how one might live. and what principles one might use to live by. So in the garden, God walked with Adam, and he said, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. And upon this issue, we find the core principle, entry point of paganism. When man wants to do things his own way, out of his own brain, out of his own creativity to live a way that is different than the way that God has designed to live. So we see this battle raging from the beginning of time up until this very day. We see it in the children of Israel, and it is the conflict in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in every age. But have we ever stopped to ask ourselves, how many tactics and methods that are used in the modern church today that can be traced right back to this ancient battle. And what I want to say about this battle is that God has so kindly given us the remedy in His Word. In Proverbs chapter 3, Verse 5, we read, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight. That is the fundamental principle that The devil is waging war against. We find, though, that the wisdom of God is more precious than rubies. All the things you desire cannot compare with her. Her ways are pleasant ways. All her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her. And all who lay hold of her, lay hold of her, because you must lay hold, will be blessed. Now we often teach this passage to our children and we apply it very individualistically, but it can be applied to every area of life. It should be applied to family life, personal life, and church life. Lean not on your own understanding, because it's upon this hinge point that paganism finds its entryway into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The most dangerous threat to the church is syncretism. I'd like to define it. It is the attempted union, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, especially in philosophy and religion. And so, syncretism can be found when Christians accommodate either consciously or or it's often unconsciously, the practices that are external to Christianity. Secretism is often embraced consciously when Christians desire to make the gospel relevant and make it attractive to those who are on the outside looking in, or it's embraced unconsciously. But in this way, the church ends up being swept away by modern currents. And the blending of the ways of the world with the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ is accomplished. You might speak of paganism the way that the Apostle Paul did, which I believe he provides one of the finest definitions of syncretism, paganism in Colossians 2.8, when he says this. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition. Human tradition and the basic principles of this world. Gathering things from the basic principles of this world, and he continues, rather than on Christ. So there's this divide and there's a conflict between these two things. What is of Christ, and then the traditions of men, and the basic principles of the world. There's a dividing point that the Lord Jesus Christ desires that his church understands. Now, admittedly, we're all products of our own times, and it's always important for us to understand that. All of us have entered history in a particular time with different pressures. They all really go back to the same ones that have been pressing upon the world since the beginning of time, but they have different expressions. In the introduction to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the authors speak of a problem that besets us all. It's the errors of our fathers. It reads like this. The purest churches under heaven, are subject to mixture and error. Some have so degenerated so as to become no churches of Jesus Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, Christ always has had and ever shall have a kingdom in this world to the end thereof of such as we believe in him and make profession in His name." So, this just makes us aware that no matter what historical moment we live in, we enter a stream of ministry that has been tainted and it needs to be addressed. And there's only one way it can be addressed, and that's by the Word of God. The Second London Baptist Confession says something similar. The purest churches in heaven. Let's see. Let me read you the one in the Westminster Confession. I got mixed up. They were not so much their own errors. This is the Westminster Confession of Faith. As the errors of the times wherein they lived, thus do most men take up their religion. upon no better account than Turks and Papists take up theirs, because it is the religion of the times and the places where they live. So I just want to acknowledge at the beginning that this is something that we all struggle with in all of our churches to some degree. Now, the most important protective principle against paganism, against syncretism, is the principle of sola scriptura. And of course, this is one of the hallmark doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, which delivered the church from some of its paganism from the Roman Catholic Church. And I was very taken by John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrims, who spoke of the importance of scripture in order to order and regulate the church. And if any of you know anything about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, you know that this is the primary principle of our ministry, that scripture is sufficient for everything. It's not family integration. It's that scripture is sufficient. The only reason we advocate family integration is because that's really the only thing that's really advocated in the Bible. So it's an application of the sufficiency of scripture. But Robinson believed that we should not vary one hairbreadth from the apostles. And here's how he said it. It is to me a matter of great scruple and conscience to depart one hairbreadth, extraordinary accidents accepted, from the apostles' practice and institution in anything truly ecclesiastical. though never so small in itself, whatsoever, by whomsoever, and with what color soever, is invented and imposed, touching the government of the church, which is the house and tabernacle of the living God, and a partner in this faith. I do hope to live and to die and to appear before Jesus Christ with boldness in that great and fearful day of his coming." Now here, John Robinson is just speaking of the importance of this principle. He says, I will die on this principle. And by the way, many of the Reformers did die on that principle. If you look at the Scottish Reformation, you know that many of the Scottish Reformers died because they believed that we were only allowed in the church to do what God commanded and nothing more. And they died for that one principle. Many of them died because they believed that the Bible said that you ought not kneel in communion and the Roman church would force you to kneel in communion. They died on that principle. You think they died because they would not kneel in communion? Yes. Because they believed that scripture was sufficient and that it was the only thing worthy to regulate the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can see how they would think that. We are united with Christ. The church is the body of Christ. And so it would be so ludicrous to unite Christ with anything foreign to what he has stated in his word. That was their principle. Now, there are two issues that come before us when we consider This principle one is doing what he has commanded. Deuteronomy 532 says, therefore you shall be careful to do all that the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Either way, right dead center, not modifying it, qualifying it, but right in the middle, dead center. So that's one responsibility that we have in the church, is to, with all of our hearts, determine to do what he has commanded. And then second, to refrain from adding to his commandments. In Deuteronomy 4-2, we read, you shall not add the word which I commanded you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I commanded you. So this is, you know, there's the right and there's the left. There's not doing what God said, and then the other way is doing something that God did not say. That's the right and the left. The church either falls off one of those sides, typically. And I would dare say that most of our churches are, we're inflecting to one side or another on various issues that we deal with in our churches. The adding to the commandments is kind of like, it's do your own thing Christianity. The church is a creative palette for you to invent something in your generation for your generation. To reinvent the church, to give some approach to God that would somehow be better than the approach that God has revealed to us. To invent it, to make it more creative. I grew up in the era of, I'm gonna call it creative Christianity. That was, as young pastors, we were taught to be so massively creative. We prayed that God would make us creative. We'd fall on our knees and ask that God would give us creativity so that we would know how to meet the special needs. So that we could discern it and come up with it and find a program or a word or something. And so we invented all kinds of things that many people are engaging in today. But doing your own thing has very dramatic consequences to it. God killed Nadab and Abihu because of this. In Leviticus chapter 10 verse 1, we read, Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it. put incense in it, they were very excited about what was happening, and they offered profane fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. They weren't disobeying some direct command of God. They were doing something that God didn't command them to do. They were doing creative Christianity. They were inventing something so profound, something so cruel, and God killed them for it. Moses warned of syncretism's heart in Deuteronomy chapter 17, where he talks about those who go and serve and worship other gods, either the sun or the moon or any host of heaven, which I have not commanded them. In other words, why shouldn't you worship the moon? Because God didn't command you to worship the moon. That's why it's bad. He only commanded you to worship him. So if you want to fall in love with something else, you have to understand what that means. Moses defined false prophets as those who say what God has not commanded. Even speech is governed by this principle. In Deuteronomy 18 verse 20, Moses says, but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of the other gods, that prophet shall die. So much for creative Christianity. Jeremiah called this lying in the name of God, Jeremiah 14, 14. And the Lord said to me, the prophets prophesy lies in my name. I have not sent them. I have not commanded them or spoken to them. They prophesy you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart. The heart of it was they were saying things that God had not commanded them to say. God calls it a lie. He calls it worthless. He calls it divination. So what makes it false is that God did not speak to them about doing that and saying that. The sin of the children of Israel with the golden calf was that they added to the worship of God. They claimed they were worshiping God, but they added something. They added a calf. Hebrews 12, 20 gives us some very helpful insight into what was happening there. For they could not endure what was commanded. They couldn't endure it. They wanted something else. They were actually afraid of what God had commanded, and then they replaced it with their own invention. And so paganism in the church can very often be traced to a dissatisfaction with God, with what he has commanded, inventing something hipper, newer, better, cooler, faster, more interesting, more gripping, more emotionally helpful. And that really brings us to this whole matter of the sufficiency of Scripture for the gatherings of God's people and everything regarding the church. This is why Paul wrote to Timothy, In 1 Timothy 3.15, I write to you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the church, in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. So there's a way that you conduct yourself in the household of God. Why? Because the church is the pillar of the truth. It is the church of the living God. So everything must be grounded in scripture. This is the fundamental principle that we're dealing with here. And it is the fundamental principle upon which paganism either enters or is kept out of the church. Everything must be grounded in scripture. That's why Paul said in 2 Timothy 1, verse 13, hold fast to the pattern of sound words that you heard from me. in faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. The pattern, he uses the word for pattern, tupos, to make an impression, like, you know, you have a die, and the medium, and the die is hard, and it comes down, and it presses upon, it makes a coin. The pattern, the tupos, the medium must be malleable, it must be formable, and not resisting the formational strength of the die itself. In Philippians 3.17, Paul said, brethren, join in following my example and note those who so walk as you have us for a pattern. So he's saying, you know the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets? Well, that's part of the meaning of this. Follow my example. You have no other foundation to walk on except that which is established by God in scripture. But so the current struggle in the church today is very much the same as it was in the Protestant Reformation. Reformations deal with various issues in various eras. With Luther, it was justification by faith. With Calvin, it was the sovereignty of God. With John Knox in the Scottish Reformation, it was the sufficiency of scripture for the ordering of the worship of God. And so that's why Calvin, Said this, therefore, let us willingly remain enclosed within these bounds. He's talking about the bounds of scripture. To which God has willed to confine us. And as it were, to pin up our minds. Yes, God wants to pin you up. He wants to limit you from yourself. He doesn't want the church to be so much exposed to you. He wants you to be penned up by the word that they may not, though by their very freedom, wander and go astray. That's the issue. Going astray because of your own inventions. John Knox said it as powerfully as I think it could have been said, all worshiping and honoring or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God without his own express commandment is idolatry." That's one to memorize. Knox said, the church is founded on the apostles and prophets, which is the law and the New Testament. And the church may command nothing that is not contained in one of the two for if it does so, it is removed from the only foundation and ceases to be the true Kirk or church of Christ. Now, I believe that the reformation that needs to occur today is focused on this particular doctrine. What Knox faced in Scotland is what we face in America today. And people all over the church today believe in the doctrine of inerrancy, that scripture is pure and authoritative, but they don't believe that it's sufficient, which nullifies the former. It's nice to believe that the Bible is inerrant, and you should, but what does it matter? If you don't apply, or what does it matter if you can just heap on it anything else you want? And what we have always before us are two choices. Either God regulates his church or man regulates that church. If you say that we're free to make the church from whatever is not condemned, then you can make the church anything you want. If you say, as long as it's not condemned in scripture, it's allowed. If you say that, you have to understand what that really means. Because there are many things that are not expressly condemned in scripture. The inventions of the Roman Catholic Church, many of them were not specifically condemned. Incense and candles and things like that were not specifically condemned. Kneeling was not specifically condemned in communion. But if you say that, you have to understand the true implications of that. The church today does not think logically about many things. And this is one of the things that it does not think logically about. Because if you believe that something has to be condemned in scripture for it not to be done, then what you really believe is that the church is subject to the next hot idea that comes into it. The church becomes subject to the next creative guy who rolls into town, the next leader who understands how to move people's hearts or has the gift of drawing followers. And there are many people like that who are not governed or hemmed in by scripture and scripture alone. If you believe that, then you also believe that the church can be made in the image of man. And that is where paganism and syncretism finds its entry point in the church. So there are two issues, doing what God has commanded and refraining from what he has not commanded. And really the issue is, do you take the word of God lightly or do you take it heavily? Do you take it casually or seriously? Is it a sword? Is it a wet noodle? What is it? I'd like to speak briefly of some examples of paganism in the church. Now, in many of the examples of paganism encroaching into the church, in scripture, you find often there's not a wholesale rejection of God. Godly practices are engaged, but they are engaged alongside of ungodly practices. Read the prophets, you'll see this. It's very clear. Ahab and Jezebel, that sweet couple, they believed that Elijah was a prophet. But Jezebel had her little prophets of Baal as well. Often we think there are two options. There's option number one, atheism, total rejection of God. And then total acceptance of everything that says, that isn't exactly the way it always works out. Especially when you look at the examples in scripture. The problem is both end. We see that in the New Testament. The problem in Galatia was a both end kind of problem. They wanted Christ, but they also wanted to maintain the ceremonial law. They wanted two things to exist together that could not exist together. In our own day, we find the church adopting practices and terminology of modern psychology, replacing the biblical language and the categories with new categories, eliminating words from the therapeutic conversation like sin and idolatry and lust and self-seeking and fear of man. Now, we take those and we talk about insecurity and low self-esteem and coping mechanisms and codependency. This is paganism in the church. When a shepherd of the church brings this kind of language, he's bringing something external to Christianity, which is why the prophet says, you heal my people lightly. You can see feminism and its principle that a husband can't be a head in a family. You find Marxism where children belong to the state. Prosperity is wrong. Prosperity is a sign of being a criminal. Men who are ashamed of taking dominion and succeeding in life. There are so many incursions of paganism. One of the rising, actually very quickly rising expressions of paganism in the church today, and this may sound strange and shocking to you. It's a very long discussion. But the practice of tattooing is a pagan practice. There are many, many expressions of paganism that find themselves beating down the doors of the church. Now, the most unloving thing that you can do in the Church of Jesus Christ is to, when You identify paganism when God shows it to you as a church leader, or in your own family, or in any area of life, is to perpetuate that paganism. That is a most unloving thing to do. To not make the reforms for the sake of your tradition, or for your own comforts, or your reputation, or your financial security. This is why we keep our idols next to us often, longer than we ought to, when they reveal to us because we We fear these things. But syncretism always wages its war along the same skirmish line. What hath God said? It's that same battle that was waged in the garden. Did God really say that? Are we really going to be limited by God? There's so much more we want to learn. We want our eyes to be opened. We want to see more. What God has let us see is not enough. We're not satisfied with him. So I'd like to speak of a contemporary example that dominates discipleship methodology in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is what I'm going to call modern age-segregated programmatic youth ministry. So where did our modern understanding of age-segregated ministry come from? How did it become an accepted practice? What historical figures promoted the idea? Why is the practice so tenaciously defended? And I'd like to pursue these things here. The battle lines go back to the same principle that we began this message with. The basic philosophical roots of age, comprehensive age-segregated discipleship in the church are traceable through history along these battle lines in one battle after another. The rise of modern youth ministry during the 20th century came as a result of church leaders rejecting the sufficiency of scripture to define and direct the discipleship of youth. And so instead of using scripture, they embraced ideas of others. And where do these ideas come from? We can begin with Plato. Plato, who believed that the state owns the children. The philosophical roots for the segregation of children can at least be traced as far back to the Greek homosexual Plato, who argued that children should be separated from their parents to be servants of the state. He said this, all those in the city who happen to be older than 10, they will send out to the country and taking over their children, they will rear them far away from those dispositions they now have from their parents. So there's this principle of separating children from their parents. This is a direct opposition to the Hebraic model that taught direct discipleship of children by parents. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the great educational revolutionaries of the 18th century. His principle is to break the parent-child connection. By the 18th century, men like Rousseau would champion and they would expand on these platonic ideas. Rousseau, a very wicked man, who fathered five children out of wedlock and abandoned each one of them on the doorstep of an orphanage, became one of the the fathers of our modern education system. And the heart of his message was rationalism, relativism, statism, and splitting families and the rejection of authority. That was his whole shtick. And in view of his treatment of children, it's absolutely astonishing that he would write the premier book on child raising, Emil. One of the most influential, still very influential among educators today. He said this, the education of children should not be left to their father's capacities and prejudices, especially since it is even more important to the state than to their fathers if the state remains while the family is dissolved. Rousseau represents another piece of the philosophical engine in the battle against community and authority and education for the glory of God. We press forward in history to Robert Rakes. who's a hero to many, Robert Rakes, who's said to be the father of the Sunday School Movement. The problem that Rakes faced in England were that children were in the streets, wretchedly ragged at play with no parental supervision, and he worked to reform society. And rather than seeking to reform parents, he went to the children. In the Industrial Revolution, fathers more and more were leaving their houses and for the city, for higher wages, and families began to be evacuated of the presence of the instructional force of a father in the home. And thus really began a two century long revolution of the decreasing involvement of parents in the instruction of their children. And the shepherding of children by third parties and also by various ecclesiastical innovations. Now, there was significant controversy around Rake's Sunday school movement. Some pastors were very concerned because it meant hiring, actually, a majority of women to work on the Sabbath. There was a great uproar because of that. Others were concerned because it was mostly women who were doing the teaching when when men were the only ones explicitly given in scripture the task of teaching along with mothers. The Reverend Thomas Burns said this about the movement in 1798, my great objections to Sunday schools is that I am afraid they will in the end destroy family religion. Their families are divided when they ought to be together, so his program would be a stepping stone in the march of unchristian ideas. And the institution of the Sunday School, which has, by the time you get to the end of the 20th century, almost a complete replacement of the parental education of youth, a replacement of family discipleship, really fulfilling the nightmares that Thomas Burns had. They came to pass. As time charges on, you come to other educational revolutionaries, like Horace Mann, the father of public education. Something happened from a whole other quarter, way outside the church, that changed everything. And it's the theology that man is able to perfect men if they're given the right instruction. And this gave rise to the modern public school movement. Horace Mann was elected as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. And he successfully imported to America an innovative educational philosophy that was operating in Prussia. He brought over this Prussian compulsory education model and he established it in America in the form of the common schools. He's best known as the father of American public education. And what's so significant about this is that the church would adopt this that was taken over from Prussia. And then the institutionalization of age segregation in the United States continued on. In 1848, the first age segregated school, Quincy Grammar School, was established in Boston, Massachusetts. Before this time, the whole concept of grades didn't even exist, but they were established here. And what happened was that a whole new architectural plan was devised to accommodate this philosophy. They called it the egg crate plan. And the egg crate plan was an architectural feature in which schools were built with 12 rooms, each allowing 55 students. So the one room schoolhouse was replaced with the 12 room, age segregated, age graded school class. And so as time passed, the architectural features matured. And if any of you have ever been in a public school today, you know that if you walk down the hall of a public school, you'll see rooms on each side, smallish rooms to fit small classroom sizes. And if you go into most churches in America today, you'll see the exact same pattern. You'll see classrooms on the side. Where did they get it? They got it from the egg crate plant. They did not get that from the Bible. It came from somewhere else. And so as the one-room schoolhouse gave way to the 12-room schoolhouse, so the one-room church gave way to the 12-room church. And then we find G. Stanley Hall, who said each stage of child development, as Giselle's experiments and conclusions have proved, has its own dominant needs, problems, modes of behavior, and reasoning. These special traits required in their own methods of teaching and learning, which had to provide the basis for the educational curriculum. This was the great principle of the time. G. Stanley Hall used this principle to advance Humanism. Paul, the president of the American Psychological Association, drew heavily from the radical, racist evolutionist, Ernst Haeckel, and they sparked further reformation in education. And he posited that education should continue in the same way that evolution operates, from one stage to another, from one age group to another. And you can't mix You can't mix ages because they're in a different evolutionary phase. They use this to promote humanism. Education is thus the most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of five-day program of humanistic teaching? That was their great principle. He said, the battle for humankind and its future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. Charles Finney also figures in to the story. I'm going to call him pragmatism's poster child. Charles Finney represents a departure from the old methods of evangelism and discipleship. He epitomizes the abandonment of simple preaching and scripture reading and personal evangelism and prayer as a means of conversion. And what pastors of his day knew is he was proposing something completely different and new. Reverend Samuel Porter addressed the issue by saying this, it is a spirit of innovation hostile to all existing systems. Has gone forth into the world and is to be found in operation within the precincts of the Christian church. The present tendency is to lawless Catholicism. This man believed that the inventions that Charles Finney brought into evangelism were like the lawless inventions of Catholicism. Then he had three arguments. First, that the old evangelistic methods don't work. You know, prayer and preaching, they don't work. Number two, that the ends justify the means. And number three, that the Bible is silent on methods. Therefore, we're able to do whatever we want to do to reach people. He was one of the great grandfathers of the modern wave of pragmatism that has completely overwhelmed the church. in our day. He popularized many things that were new to the church in his day. The altar call, the old sawdust trail, the mourner's bench, the pressured appeals to receive Christ and emotional manipulation, counting converts right after the service before it was ever known if anyone was really converted by the fruit that was coming from their lives. So the pragmatism of our current era has come from the attempts of theological compromise as a synthesizing of things biblical with things unbiblical, with the very philosophies that are in opposition of it. Ian Murray said this, before the end of the 19th century, this form of evangelism and its attendant revivals was so established across the United States that few could remember anything different. I would just add, probably most of us can't really either, because it just continued to intensify. You had parachurch youth organizations rising up, which became additional stepping stones to the systematic age segregation that we ended up finding in the church in the second half of the 20th century, the invention of adolescence At the beginning of the 20th century, at least the term by G. Stanley Hall popularized the idea that you had to categorize young people as having special needs and that there are certain stages that youth go through while the Bible really just only knows of the older and the younger. A new kind of church leader was born. In all the hubbub and the clamor of the rise of the modern youth ministry movement, a new office was created. It was called the Office of Youth Pastor. And youth ministers became program administrators whose job requirement was to deliver whatever would get kids interested. Modern youth ministry burgeoned, became a big consumer item with high budget facilities, technology, advertising, billions of dollars that are supporting this youth ministry movement that has so gripped the church. I was born into the waters of the modern youth ministry movement. I read all the books. I hired and fired youth pastors. I established groups like this in communities wherever I lived. I'm a child. of the modern youth ministry movement. We even realized how experimental it was. We were trying to be so experimental. We wanted it to be that way. We thought that's what we were supposed to do. That's what they taught us to do in seminary. It was creative Christianity. It was the age of pragmatic Christianity. And then what was a novelty became fixed practice in the church. It grew out of this new soil. Modern age segregated programmatic youth ministry grew out of a soil that was composed of different elements that had been folded into that soil for over 200 years. And the soil in which this weed of age segregation grew was incrementally prepared with the lofty deposits of platonic philosophy, the loamy organics of rationalism, the ethereal waters of evolutionism, the breathable but allergenic air of pragmatism. It was that soil, these diverse elements that created the context of the comprehensive foundation of ministry to youth. in our churches today. And the fact is, though, systematic, age-segregated discipleship of youth is undeniably unchristian in its origin. It was developed by men at war with God who developed the philosophies that gave birth to it. And churchmen adapted to those philosophies. And we're not suggesting at all that churches who practice this are intentionally pursuing paganism. That's not been my experience with youth pastors and the pastoral staffs that utilize them. But what I am suggesting is that they inadvertently adopted a non-Christian philosophy of the education of youth. that God did not command, that does not exist. And actually, what God does command is opposite to what this is. Now, let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story about proverbial Bob. You've probably known Bob. Bob is 42 years old, and every day, He comes home from work and he's exhausted. And his house is empty and his three children that he and his wife have been raising are between the ages of 11 and 17 years old. They go to public school during the day and in the evening they go to one of the many youth activities that are sponsored by the large church that they attend. And he rarely sees his children. And when Bob does see his children, they speak to him using pretty much the same dialogue that they use with their friends. It's dialogue borrowed from rap music, Hollywood movies, and television sitcoms. Bob knows that his children seem to be puppets to whatever popular momentary fad is running through the youth group and their school. And they seem to be puppets of it in many ways. But Bob, he comforts himself. with the knowledge that even though he doesn't really know his children, and even though he doesn't know where they're going, and he doesn't really like the way that they are going, that somehow in the great potpourri of the programs of his church, that somehow they'll hear the gospel. But last week, his son was passing by and told him that he would be getting an earring. And his youth pastor told him that it would be a helpful evangelistic tool for relating to people. But he told his father that he just thought it was cool. And then just this week, his 14-year-old daughter came home with a scripture tattoo on her leg. And she told her father that her friends all got them at the same time. And he thought He really thought about objecting. But he realized that he had given up that right a long time ago. He had given up his authority to really pretty much anyone who was in the stream of his life. And recently, Bob was so disturbed that he suggested that the family stay home. one night and read scripture. But his family just didn't take to the idea. They just seemed to blow it off and it never happened, though it was gnawing at him. And so, like tens of thousands of fathers, like Bob, parents in churches all over, our land, are disconnected from their family, and they're unable to implement the vision that God has established for them. But essentially, Bob has given up. But he still comforts himself with the idea that he still has that youth group that somehow, someday, might turn everything around and change all the things that have gone so wrong for so many years. So have you met people like Bob? I've met Bob maybe hundreds of times. Bob is the modern Christian man. And the stories change here and there. But it comes back to the same old saw that a supplanted father who's lost his children's hearts, who doesn't have any influence anymore, and his hope is almost gone, and he hangs it on a thread. He's living with mediocrity, but he comforts himself with the notion that a 24-year-old college grad with spiky hair will somehow rescue his child from this abyss that he knows his children are falling down. He sees the engulfing, but he has nothing that he knows that he can do. This is a picture of a family from a church that is in decline. This is an illustration of manhood lost. This is a movie. of inventions that destroy what is good and holy. It's the nightmare of youth culture. It's the fruit basket of the modern youth ministry movement. And so as the church has supplanted God's vision for youth discipleship, which is a very, very long to deal with subject. As the church has supplanted God's vision With an alluring counterfeit, the result is bad fruit. And this should not surprise us because of the law of sowing and reaping. It's an integral and unavoidable part of God's created order. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption. but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. I hope that we can see that there are many ways that syncretism affects the church, and it affects our families, and it affects the rising generation. I would just urge us today to embrace the principle that John Knox communicated and that many of his brothers died for. That all worship of God from the brain of man is idolatry. And it should underscore how important it is for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to be hemmed in, to be willing to be limited, to not go to the right or to the left, to not do what is not commanded, and to do what is commanded. If you want to love the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, then let the mind of Christ be in you. Christ loves His church, and one way He loves His church is by speaking to it in His Word, so that she would be a faithful, submissive bride. So that the glory of God is demonstrated for one generation to the next for all eternity. I pray that that would be our legacy from this conference. that we would so love the Church that we would let the Word of Christ dwell richly in us. Would you pray with me? O Lord, we pray that you would help us to identify areas of syncretism. We know that we have various things that need to be uprooted. And we pray that you would, O Lord, identify them for us and help us to be faithful to deal with them. I pray for glorious, submissive, humble churches who care nothing except for what you have said. In Jesus' name. Hey, Reg Barrow, this is Scott Brown. 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