By Toni Brown
Michael Horton headlines the Valued Conference 2019 on sexual abuse. Given the recent and no doubt opportunistically timed controversies regarding so-called rampant sexual abuse in protestant churches, some may consider this more than appropriate – I say not so fast.
Firstly, this is nothing new, especially considering the vast number of false converts in the church, and it’s only being raised now for the purpose of exploitation.
Secondly, exactly who are the churches and speakers Horton is partnering with?
Where & When?
WHEN: Friday evening, March 22 through Saturday, March 23, 2019
LOCATION: First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, CA
CO-HOSTED BY: Redemption PCA Church & Resurrection Presbyterian Church
Host church: First Presbyterian Church, San Diego https://www.fpcsd.org/ is currently studying Tim Keller’s NY Times best-selling book “Every Good Endeavor; Connecting Your Work to God’s Work.” FPC places a heavy emphasis on the arts seeking to “glorify the Lord through excellence in the arts.” The church regularly sponsors Jazz in the Park and many other artsy functions, as they are convinced of their “calling to encourage the flourishing of the arts among our members and within our city.”
Co-sponsor: Redemption PCA Church, Palos Heights, IL.https://www.redemptionpres.com/ boasts from their website to be “a church in Palos Heights for everyone!” In his sermon titled “Worship That Shapes Us for Justice,” Pastor Nick Policow instructs his congregation on “how to come alongside people who have experienced injustice at the hands of religious people, namely Christians.” (link below 32 minutes).
Co-sponsor: Resurrection Presbyterian Church, San Diegohttps://resurrectionsd.com/ Vision: Unity and diversity through the Lordship of Christ and the arts! Summer Solace is a music event at the very beginning of Summer. Beautiful Disaster is an Art show featuring visual, musical and spoken word artists with an undercurrent of racial reconciliation each Fall. And Winter brings the Christmas Jazz Celebration featuring an 18 piece Jazz orchestra blending sacred and secular songs. RPC San Diego is convinced that “each of these events celebrates our creator through the arts and preaches the gospel to our city.”
An obvious question arises: How do you preach the gospel to anybody by way of a soothing, summer musical, an art show underscoring racial reconciliation or a jazz concert in the park that mixes the Holy and the profane? What’s more, where is any of this in the scriptures?
Other speakers:
Basyle ‘Boz’ Tchividjian is a Law professor at Liberty University and Founder and Executive Director of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).
A co-author of Thank You Billy Graham, Boz has also written numerous law journal articles related to the issue of child sexual abuse. https://www.netgrace.org/our-mission
From the GRACE webpage “Services” section we read that their expert team includes “theologians, psychologists, legal professionals, and clergy.” GRACE outlines their services as follows:
ASSESSMENTS
An assessment is by nature proactive or may be in response to a cultural issue an organization may discover. For example, if your organization has been notified that women do not feel comfortable in the culture and environment of your organization, an assessment would be helpful for your organization. Our process, once invited by your institution’s leadership, will typically include conducting a survey to gain a pulse of your organizational culture, interview pertinent individuals with personal experiences or information, gather data to assess the culture, pinpoint any specific areas of organizational growth, and present the organization with findings and recommendations to enhance organizational culture to better meet the needs of those under your care.
Gather data? Gain a pulse? Assess your church “culture?” If you have women in your church who “do not feel comfortable in the culture” take it to the elders. That is the biblical model. And please consider this: In a visible church full of worldly, false professors the number of women who feel “uncomfortable in the culture or environment” will likely begin to soar, especially as the feminists’ movement continues their march through the church. The male dominance of a true, biblical church is hated of the world, and for that reason alone the church must be wary of an “assessment” organization like GRACE. The quote below plastered in an oversized font from Boz’s personal-bio page provides some insight into his take on the church’s mission:
But you must defend those who are helpless and have no hope. Be fair and give justice to the poor and homeless.
—PROVERBS 31:8-9 (CEV)
Rachael Joy Denhollander is an American lawyer and former gymnast. She was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, of sexual assault. Denhollander is a TIME 100 honoree and a 2018 Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year.
Jacob Denhollander is President of the @R_Denhollander fan club. “I tweet a lot about issues surrounding abuse, and tell jokes because that’s how I cope.” Christian and PhD student @SBTS
Justin and Lindsay Holcomb are a married team of counselors from the Biblical Counseling Coalitionhttps://biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/author/justinandlindseyholcomb/
Justin is an Episcopal priest who also teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon Conwell. He is on the board of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), and also serves on the board for REST (Real Escape from the Sex Trade).
From Justin’s Facebook page:
The doctrines in the Book on Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as set forth in 1559 would set the tone of Anglicanism to steer a Middle Way between Roman Catholicism and radical forms of Protestantism, and avoid being identified as a Confessional Church like Calvinists and Lutherans. John Knox and his followers were expelled to Geneva in 1555 for refusing to use the Book on Common Prayer and John Bunyan refused to use the ecumenical book in his church as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Common Prayer
The Value 2019 churches are “woke” and drenched in the false theology and missiology of Tim Keller, the darling of the PCA who has worked tirelessly to redefine the church for more than two decades. The speakers are social activists and this conference is social, not spiritual.
Speaking to the 83rd Congress of the United States, first session July 1953 regarding the tactics employed for communist- Marxist infiltration into the American church, Communist Party USA defector, Mr. Manning Johnson, said this:
In general, the idea was to divert the emphasis of clerical thinking from the spiritual to the material and political-Instead of emphasis towards the spiritual and matters of the soul, the new and heavy emphasis was to deal with those matters which, in the main, led toward the communist program of “immediate demands” [or “felt needs”]. The plan was to make the seminaries the neck of a funnel through which thousands of potential clergymen would issue forth, carrying with them, in varying degrees, an ideology: this policy was successful beyond even Communist expectations and was executed with great success among large elements of American church life.
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/comunism.htm
Sexual abuse on all levels is a heinous sin and should be confronted head-on by any church, but to single out any one sin, establish parachurch organizations and organize major conferences around it is unbiblical and cannot be found in scripture. The apostles confronted all sin in every church on equal ground, they addressed and condemned it – but they never allowed their focus to be shifted from the spiritual to carnal, earthly matters.
The highly revered Michael Horton is on the “woke” path – Beware and warn the brethren.
Conference link: https://www.valuedconference.com/?fbclid=IwAR10NFoUWkAUyomSCihTuS9wrg60oeH3CssdwK2FBm71qygDzLEtYJXZkLI
“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Mark 16:15
