Concerned

I was talking with a friend a few days ago, and she told me that she was thinking of going for the Asia Conference by City Harvest Church that's currently being held. She was quite interested, but for one of the speakers, she wasn't keen to attend.

"Benny Hinn? Wow! That's nice... you know, I received Christ at one of his rallies back in secondary school."

"Actually, I don't think I may go for his session... because I've heard that he's currently under investigation..."

"Huh? Oh man... Is that true?"

We went on to other topics, and had a great time of sharing.

But as I was checking the schedule to see who was speaking for tomorrow's night conference (it's Pastor Kong Hee by the way), I saw Benny Hinn's profile.

Curious, I decided to Google for his name: "Benny Hinn"

Was quite surprised by the proportion of negative web-pages that I saw.

For a comparison (ok, it's not very scientific... just a rough measure), I googled "Billy Graham" and "Joyce Meyers". Whoa. Billy Graham - it's really hard to find anything bad about this dear brother, and for Joyce Meyers, a few negatively worded webpages here and there, but generally, ok.

Now I'm not saying that googling is a reliable measure of a person's character - there's something called libel and web-vigilantes... but when the vast majority of both Christian and secular media portray a person in a very negative light, perhaps it's time to pause and consider the feedback from all these witnesses.

To minimize any bias, I mostly ignored the negatively-worded webpages and looked for the official websites, and the positively-worded ones.

However, they are few in numbers, and rather sketchy in details, unfortunately.

Anyway, you can easily repeat my research methodology: "Benny Hinn"

Positive article: http://www.cbn.com/700club/Guests/Bios/Benny_Hinn_110404.aspx
Negative article: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_miracles.html
Cautious article: http://www.ministrywatch.com/mw2.1/F_SumRpt.asp?EIN=591245704

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Now, the reason I'm writing this is NOT to attack a fellow Christian. I mean, I came to Christ through a rally of his, and for that I'm eternally grateful that he said those words, "You never know what may happen tomorrow!" Those words were the ones that made me decide to stop procrastinating and ask Jesus into my heart that night.

However, it's the creeping in of the prosperity gospel teachings that I feel very concerned about. And I think it won't be very helpful for the organizers of the Asia Conference to have a speaker of highly questionable credibility who is being put under investigation.

At the least, the Bible instructs us to avoid every appearance of evil. And given the questionable doctrinal basis of prosperity gospel teachings, is it wise to associate with proponents of the prosperity gospel teachings?

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On a deeper level, I've been talking with some brothers and sisters from the tertiary ministry this year. And I was stunned to hear one of the careleaders ask me whether the canon of the Bible is reliable and trustworthy. Wanted to tell him, "Alamak! This is basic foundational doctrines... go for a Bible class ASAP!" Haha... but thank God he was sincere and very hungry to learn, asking me question after question, 'cos I'd just attended a Bible class. Thank God for his eager and teachable spirit!

Also, a dear friend shared with me some months ago about her dilemma whether to be more involved in ministry or spend more time in extra-curricular activities in school. She told me that the younger students have been saying that it would be better to focus on doing well in school and in ECAs than fellowship so much. Thus, she was trying to reconcile the dilemma here - how do you reach out to all the people in school, yet also minister to those in the church? There is a need to be balanced - we can't just do "holy-huddling", right?

A very good question, and I didn't know how to answer her. (I'm still thinking about it up to now...)

One question, therefore, is: How do we balance between being culturally relevant but being doctrinally pure? Blending in with our culture, but not bending our values?

Or to put it another way: How do we make an impact in this society and our generation for Christ?

I believe a lot of sincere Christians will really want to know how.

And for that, it's the next post.