A few days ago, we ran a piece noting—based upon an announcement on its own website—that Crosswalk Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was planning a twelve-week study of the thought of the Franciscan friar and Christian mystic, Richard Rohr. Our article asked the Georgia-Cumberland Conference to intervene, which it did, and the event was canceled and quickly removed from the church’s website.
Spectrum Magazine has come to the defense of Crosswalk Church in an article by Alana Crosby, a recent graduate of Southern Adventist University, entitled, “Shots From the Shadows: Crosswalk Chattanooga in Conservative Crosshairs.” The article, from which I will be liberally quoting below, highlights several interesting facts. But perhaps of even more interest is the difference in philosophy between Spectrum and Fulcrum7.
The Crosswalk Brand
One of the first things Crosby notes is that there are several “Crosswalk” churches, and they originated in Southern California:
“Crosswalk Chattanooga was founded in late 2018 as the first satellite congregation in a Crosswalk-branded network of Seventh-day Adventist churches with Southern California roots. . . . When I arrived, greeters with “LOVEWELL” t-shirts (the congregation’s slogan) welcomed me inside.”
Crosswalk-branded? I did not know there were subsidiary “brands” within the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but apparently there are. One would think that the name “Seventh-day Adventist”—calling attention to both the Sabbath and the soon return of our Lord Jesus Christ—would be enough “branding” for any church.
But the Crosswalk churches want to set themselves apart from other Seventh-day Adventist Churches. They have a distinctive message summarized by the Beatles song, “All You Need is Love.” They have a slogan—Lovewell—and the T-shirts to prove it.
I wonder if the Georgia-Cumberland Conference would tolerate branding of a more conservative type, perhaps a church that has “Spirit of Prophecy” or “male headship” in the name, and invites Stephen Bohr, Walter Veith, and others to speak at its locations? I doubt we will ever find out.
The Rise of Starbucks Adventism
“I bypassed a long coffee line (the Crosswalk website says its coffee is roasted locally and prepared by trained baristas), and I received a second welcome from some old college friends in the sanctuary’s semi-darkness. . . . They want to be ‘radically inclusive,’ and part of that is a contemporary worship style with no dress code, theater-quality lighting, and a band.”
Trained baristas? I guess if the baristas are trained, it is okay to serve coffee at an Adventist Church. Or not. Any Adventist church that serves coffee on its premises is signaling contempt for the counsel of Ellen White, who had this to say about coffee:
“Coffee is a hurtful indulgence. It temporarily excites the mind to unwonted action, but the aftereffect is exhaustion, prostration, paralysis of the mental, moral, and physical powers. The mind becomes enervated, and unless through determined effort the habit is overcome, the activity of the brain is permanently lessened. All these nerve irritants are wearing away the life forces, and the restlessness caused by shattered nerves, the impatience, the mental feebleness, become a warring element, antagonizing to spiritual progress. . . . In some cases it is as difficult to break the tea-and-coffee habit as it is for the inebriate to discontinue the use of liquor.”
Churches of the Crosswalk ilk never ignore Ellen White only about dietary items. They want you to think it is only about coffee—that it is a trivial thing, and you’re a Pharisee if you object—but their disdain for prophetic counsel inevitably permeates every other topic, including the central pillars of Adventism.
Why are we in the Dark Here?
And what about the Crosswalk sanctuary’s “semi-darkness”? Does anyone else find it ironic that the article’s title implies that Fulcrum7 is hiding in the dark to snipe at Crosswalk, but Crosswalk’s worship services are literally in the semi-darkness of theater lighting? Is Crosswalk a church or a nightclub?
Combine the theater lighting with the rock band blaring amplified guitar music to a drumbeat and you have a sensual atmosphere not conducive to worshiping the God of the Bible. At best, the congregant expects to be entertained by some religiously-themed spectacle; at worst, the spirit being worshiped is not the Holy Spirit.
A Christian from another denomination had this to say about a church she visited that had theater lighting:
“I wondered, as I always do when I enter a similar church, ‘will they turn up the lights so I can see my Bible when the sermon starts?’ They didn’t.
As we began to worship in song and the lyrics appeared on the screens, I had an epiphany from the Holy Spirit. The lyrics were much like this song “The Light in the Darkness,” which goes like this:
‘In Him was Life and that Life was the Light of men
And the Light shone in the darkness
But it did not understand
The Light shone in the darkness
But it did not comprehend
That which we have heard and we have seen
This we proclaim to you concerning the Word of Life
This is message we have heard and declare to you
God is Light and in Him there’s no darkness at all
And the Light shines in the darkness
But it did not understand
The Light shines in the darkness
But it’s hard to comprehend’
“As the words kept flashing on the screen, I thought, ‘Lord, why are we singing about you being the Light in the darkness while standing here in almost complete darkness? This just doesn’t seem right. You are the Light of the world. You tell us to go into the dark world and let our Christian light shine, and yet, we’re worshiping in a church enveloped in darkness!’”
We could be even more pointed: “And this is the condemnation: that Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19.
Yes, Pastor Ferguson is to Blame
But let us continue with the Spectrum article:
“Ferguson took the stage and grabbed my attention by launching into an apology. He said he first learned the church was “embroiled in a controversy” when his phone started blowing up the previous afternoon. Fulcrum7, a website that seeks to “inform and encourage Seventh-day Adventists,” published an anonymous attack on the church over the mention of Franciscan priest and renowned writer Richard Rohr, whose name appeared in an invitation to attend the relaunch of a men’s small group Bible study:
“Men’s retreat with Richard Rohr. This workshop will focus on the role of men in society, in the home and in church. In order to help us rediscover passion in masculine identity, Richard Rohr challenges us to encounter our archetype (king, warrior, magician, and lover), and he invites us to grasp the strength of each of these images, along with its dark side. This workshop will last 12 weeks.”
The “attack” merely highlighted an announcement on Crosswalk’s own website. And Rohr’s name didn’t just “appear in an invitation” to relaunch the men’s group. Rather, Rohr’s ideas were to be the focus of a quarter’s worth of weekly studies. For three months, the Crosswalk men’s group was going to be imbibing the ideas of a Franciscan mystic!
“Rohr’s writing on models of biblical manhood had impacted a church member helping with the Bible study, Ferguson said. The lay leader wanted to incorporate the material into the retreat. Rohr was never scheduled to attend the church or the retreat, and the event had not been formally approved by the church’s leadership team.
The church’s website did not state whether Rohr was to be physically present. Typically, when a group plans to study a specific book, the book is named so that it can purchased in advance, and no book was named on the website, creating the impression that Rohr himself might be present. In any case the “confusion” over whether Rohr would attend in person was not the relevant point. The point was that Rohr’s mystical and panentheistic teachings were to be studied in a church-sponsored small group.
Crosby, in writing that “the event had not been formally approved by the church’s leadership team,” would have us believe that neither Ferguson nor anyone in his leadership team approved of the planned study before it was posted. But surely someone in authority approved it. The weasel word in this non-denial is “formally.” I can believe that there was no pastoral staff meeting at which the plan to study Richard Rohr was discussed and formally voted on. But the idea that a rogue layperson seized control of the back end of the church’s website and posted a description of a 12-week study without notifying Ferguson or anyone else on his pastoral staff does not seem credible.
Should an Adventist Church Teach Roman Catholic Mysticism?
“The Fulcrum7 article condemned Crosswalk for “importing ‘dark’ mysticism from a Roman Catholic priest” and called out Georgia-Cumberland Conference leaders by name. The article . . . noted Rohr’s meeting with the pope and opined that this was “entry level occult mysticism.”
There is no question that Richard Rohr is a mystic. His Wikipedia entry states that Rohr's spirituality “is rooted in Christian mysticism and the perennial tradition.” (The perennial tradition teaches that all religious traditions stem from a common source.) One of the books the Crosswalk men’s group presumably was going to study, “Soul Brothers,” states:
“For some reason, we believe that God can be persuaded or bought off by various forms of gratuitous killing. It makes one wonder what we think of God. The only reason the story of Abraham and Isaac can be told at all is that fathers did kill sons to placate an angry, distant, and scary God. Except in the view of the mystics of every age, God has not been a very likable person.”
So, according to Richard Rohr, the mystics are the only ones who got it right; everyone else was into gratuitous killing. (That is from the book’s free preview at Amazon.)
In the January 27th sermon in which Ferguson responded to our article and the resulting kerfuffle, he states that he will continue to quote Martin Luther King and Martin Luther, as though we might object to him quoting someone who was not an Adventist. But, of course, the issue is not a quote here or there in support of a valid point; the issue is teaching the substance of Richard Rohr’s “Christian” mysticism, panentheism, and perennialism for three months.
Why Spectrum Defends Crosswalk
Spectrum has leapt to the defense of Crosswalk, Chattanooga, because the Crosswalk movement represents exactly what Spectrum wants the Adventist Church to become: A generic Christianity that emphasizes grace, love, and kindness, and de-emphasizes doctrine. In fact, in that January 27th sermon, Ferguson perfectly articulated the Spectrum philosophy:
“There are some who believe our primary task as Christians is to make other people understand what we think. But Jesus says, repeatedly, ‘could you please love one another.’ Our primary asset is not a truth my intellect has mastered, it is the Jesus who promises to walk with me. Our whole approach is to reconcile others to Jesus. Outside of that, maybe we should drop some stuff.”
Doctrine means teaching—a church teaches the elements of its faith, and its adherents learn those teachings, so that the teachings become “truth my intellect has mastered.” That we should be loving others and introducing them to Jesus is also a doctrine, of course, but anything beyond that is apparently “stuff” that we should “drop.”
The “stuff” Spectrum would have the Adventist Church “drop” is, first, the prophetic ministry of Ellen White, then all the rest of our doctrines, including the Sanctuary doctrine, any opposition to the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism, any residual opposition to female spiritual headship, and, ultimately, the Sabbath, at least insofar as our observance of the Sabbath rests upon creationism, or any opposition whatsoever to evolution and “science.” (Spectrum wants Adventist Sabbath observance to be based upon shared culture, as in Judaism, not upon the statements in Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:11 that God created our world in six days and rested on the seventh). That is why Spectrum loves Crosswalk and sees Fulcrum7 as its adversary.
Spectrum wants an Adventism that is based upon relationships, shared experiences in our subculture, institutional employment, and a subculture that revolves around SDA institutions; Spectrum does not want an Adventism that is based upon shared belief in the doctrines of the church, and it has been actively and unrelentingly undermining our doctrines for decades.
Spectrum is Waging War on the Sanctuary Doctrine
The latest example, from January 27, of Spectrum’s desire to jettison our doctrines is an article by Edward Reifsnyder entitled, “Wait, Let’s Look at that Again: Investigative Judgment.” Reifsnyder points to John 5:24, which says,
“Truly, Truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
“See!” says Reifsnyder, “there’s no judgment of those who are in Christ.” Reifsnyder makes no attempt to reconcile John 5:24 with Bible passages that point to a judgment even of the righteous:
“For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” 1 Peter 4:17.
“I said in my heart, “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.” Ecclesiastes 3:17.
“But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” Romans 14:10.
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:10.
Reifsnyder has his proof text, and, in his mind, it trumps those four passages.
But Adventists believe that all Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and if correctly interpreted, the Scriptures will speak in harmony. We do not interpret one text as contradicting other texts if there is any way to read them in harmony. In this case, our method of Bible study can lead to only one conclusion: that whoever has truly accepted Christ by faith “does not come into condemnation”—which is how the translators of the King James Version translated John 5:24, not because the Greek cannot be translated “judgment,” but because translating it as “condemnation” is the only way to make biblical sense of it.
The doctrine of the investigative judgment does not do away with the doctrine of justification by faith, but neither does justification by faith do away with the investigative judgment. Both teachings are true, but they emphasize different aspects of God’s character—mercy and justice. There must be an investigative judgment to determine who had effectual, saving faith, but those who do are not condemned in that judgment.
Spectrum does not, of course, limit its attack on doctrine to just the doctrine of the Sanctuary. Last summer, Spectrum ran a favorable review of Janet Kellogg Ray’s book, “Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?” a book that has no purpose—I know because I just finished reading it—other than to convince conservative Christians to abandon creationism and embrace Darwinism.
Conclusion
It is not surprising that Spectrum defends the Crosswalk churches; they are two peas in a pod. They share a common goal: to strip Adventism of its teachings, other than vague and sentimental notions of “Jesus” and “love.”
There is, of course, nothing wrong and everything right with emphasizing Jesus and His commandment to love one another. But we are failing our Master if we do not also teach the other doctrines He has raised up this movement to teach, including:
(1) the Ten Commandments, including the Sabbath day of rest based upon God creating our world in six days, and resting on the Seventh Day,
(2) that death is a dreamless sleep in the grave until the Second Coming,
(3) that the Second Coming will be a universally visible event in which every eye will see our Lord Jesus Christ coming with the angels of glory,
(4) the doctrine of the two-phase judgment, including the investigative judgment even now taking place in heaven, and then the review of the cases of the unsaved, which is to occur during the millennium in heaven after the Second Coming,
(5) that there is no perpetually burning place called hell, but rather the future lake of fire will be God’s briefly existent (it exists only once, after the millennium when the New Jerusalem descends to the earth) one-time solution to the problem of stubbornly unrepentant evil,
(6) that Ellen White was God’s latter-day prophet to communicate with His end-time church, and
(7) that we should avoid Satan’s traps, including surrendering our higher consciousness in pursuit of mystical, ecstatic experiences, during which Satan can insinuate false doctrines into our minds.
If we are not teaching these precious truths, our denomination has no reason to exist.