McLaren, who was a featured speaker at Lambeth 2008 by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, also said, "If only fundamentalists evangelize in America, what predictions can you make about the future of the American religious landscape? If Christian moderates and progressives seldom if ever share their faith with love and enthusiasm, what will their future be? To rediscover the good and true essence of evangelism, we need to rediscover evangelism in a more biblical light."

McLaren is right to observe that much of what passes for evangelism today is indeed shabby and "cheap grace" -- of that there can be no denying. Televangelists rank among the worst of "gospel" hucksters and bring shame on Christ and his gospel. Colonialism is another matter altogether. If there had been no "colonial" missionaries, the gospel would never have made its way to Africa, Latin America, and Asia, especially China, even though all those continents no longer need white western missionaries. Their day is done, but don't blame them for taking the message to places where many of them died of diseases within a matter of months, laying down their lives for a handful of new believers. Many Nigerian Anglican archbishops have pictures hanging on their walls of "colonial" missionaries who came to their land and laid down their lives for the gospel. They were hardly "religious supremists," as McLaren claims.

McLaren might have noted that TEC has 16 dioceses of its own not on North American soil, a form of colonialism that Mrs. Jefferts Schori should consider abandoning. McLaren asks, "If only fundamentalists evangelize in America, what predictions can you make about the future of the American religious landscape?" This is historical nonsense. He is confusing evangelicals with fundamentalists, a common enough brush to tarnish anyone who preaches the gospel. It was cheap shot by McLaren.

You won't find a single fundamentalist among evangelical Episcopalians or orthodox Anglicans in North America. While they hold to the fundamentals of the faith, they are decidedly not cultural or religious fundamentalists. They take the Bible seriously believing in its full authority, and for many, it is fully inerrant. They don't blindly believe that God will heal people because the Bible promises to heal and ignore sound medical advice. Anglicans don't go around saying, "If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God." Evangelicals, in that sense, are not literalists, though they believe that the Bible is literally true on such things as the atonement, the resurrection, the return of Christ and so much more. But they are not the blind fundamentalists McLaren would have you believe they are.

Writes McLaren, "If Christian moderates and progressives seldom if ever share their faith with love and enthusiasm, what will their future be?"

The truth is that moderates and progressives don't have a Biblical gospel to share. They do not have a vigorous understanding of the atonement or bodily resurrection. They have abandoned sound Christology and basic doctrines of the faith for new rhapsodic notions of inclusion and diversity, the new buzz words of Episcopal dogma that do not lead to the foot of the cross.

McLaren says that to rediscover the good and true essence of evangelism, we need to rediscover evangelism in a more biblical light. He cites 2 Corinthians. "There we see evangelism as our call to demonstrate and proclaim a new creation in Christ. We see our call to live and invite others into a new way of life. We see evangelism as recruiting early adopters to be part of a radical new beginning for the human race - which Paul calls the new creation in Christ."

Nowhere in either Corinthian epistle are we seen as "recruiters", but as forth-tellers of a gospel of redemption that begins at the cross. Consider these words of Paul from II Corinthians..."For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life....For we are not peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity..."

Furthermore Paul links the gospel message with suffering over and over again in the epistle, indicating that those who minister a new covenant to spread the light of the gospel will suffer for the gospel.

When do liberals suffer for their faith? What faith is worth suffering for if it is a "gospel" of inclusion that demands nothing of us? Redemption demands rejection of sin in all its forms. Why did McLaren (he had a golden opportunity) not stand up and say that LGBT behaviors are sinful, contrary to God's will, are not part of the "new creation" Paul talks about and are not part of the E-vangelistic message.

He shortchanged his hearers. He sold the gospel out precisely at that point.

Said McLaren,: "The E-word for Paul, then, is the R-word: reconciliation. We are God's reconciling co-workers; we are God's reconciling co-conspirators; we seek to demonstrate what it looks like to be spiritually and socially reconciled individuals and communities in the Spirit of the risen Christ."

The question is who and what are Episcopal pansexualists and pro-pansexualists reconciling? THEIR so called gospel is driving out the very orthodox who have a gospel to proclaim, something McLaren should have known and spoken up about.

Why didn't he stand up and say, "You Episcopalians, you who claim to know Christ, why are you persecuting your brothers and sisters who know the Lord and want to lead others to Christ. Why do you label them and brand them and scream at them and accuse them of being homophobic because THEY want to bring the life-changing message of Christ...and what is YOUR message. St. Paul never talked about inclusion; he talked about reconciliation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. What is your REAL message, what is your REAL agenda? Why did McLaren not shame Episcopalians into the self-realization that what they are proclaiming is emptying churches not filling them, and Mrs. Jefferts Schori's own declaration that personal faith in Jesus is in fact a 'western heresy' is the exact antitheses of what Paul is teaching in Corinthians..."

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:11 "knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men..." The liberals and revisionists fear nothing; they fear neither spreading false doctrine, the reality of the Last Judgment nor divine retribution.

McLaren cites St. Paul, "This ministry of reconciliation gives us a vibrant new identity. We are not merely religious insiders huddled in our stained glass ghettoes, nor are we religious outsiders living without reference to the living God, but instead we are God's peace ambassadors, insiders who intentionally move outside to invite - actually, please is Paul's word - to plead with others to be reconciled to God.

"So we plead with them to rethink everything and follow the way of Jesus. We plead with them based on the good news that in Christ, God is offering amnesty for all offenders, whatever they've done, whoever they've been. We plead with people to stop being part of the problem, and to join God in Christ as agents of the solution, so God's will can indeed be done on earth as it is in heaven."

McLaren is not preaching to the choir. He is preaching to those who need to heed this message for themselves. Had he been preaching this to Evangelical Anglicans who use such methods as ALPHA, Christianity Explored, Christianity Re-examined or books by C.S. Lewis or John Stott, they would know exactly what he is talking about.

Episcopal pansexualists are not remotely interested in biblical faith. Theirs is a doctrine of inclusion that not only nullifies the faith once for all delivered to the saints, but actually invalidates the need for evangelism and reconciliation unless reconciliation is viewed as reconciling non-biblical sexualities with their understanding of diversity.

"In this way, evangelism first means inciting redemptive conversations, asking good questions, helping people think about what they're really seeking in life . . . and then it means inviting people to come and see . . . to come and experience . . . to join us on a journey of faith and mission and see what unfolds," says McLaren. For people like Susan Russell (Integrity), it is to taste the waters of lesbianism, redemption through sex, not redemption through the finished work of Christ at the cross where she finds her salvation. Integrity types like Bishop Gene Robinson and Louie Crew are playing the orifice revolution.

"The Episcopal structure itself, I believe, has remarkable inherent powers of self-renewal," said McLaren. One wonders what McLaren was smoking before he got up in the pulpit. TEC has lost more than one million members in recent years and is still losing 1000 a week and has fewer than 700,000 practicing Episcopalians, smaller now than Quakers in America.

McLaren got close to identifying the problem when he said, "The first and most obvious is institutional conflict. I believe your community has been doing a difficult but needed service for the whole church and the whole world by wading into turbulent waters in recent years...what good would it be for your side - whatever that is - to win the debate if in the process you lost your balance and lost your identity as God's evangelistic agents of reconciliation? Your challenge, it seems to me, is to faithfully work through this season of conflict without letting it form or deform your identity. Your challenge, it seems to me, is to reaffirm at this very moment of institutional conflict your deeper incarnational identity as ministers of reconciliation."

Pure theobabble. "Institutional conflict" has resulted in a new North American Anglican Church where more than 100,000 orthodox Anglicans have gathered out of the Episcopal Katrina because they have nothing in common with the religion of TEC. Did no one tell McLaren that?

"Agents of reconciliation." Has he not heard about the 60 plus lawsuits and four diocesan lawsuits wherein millions of dollars are being spent to fight over properties that, if the liberals win, will be empty at the end of the day? According to Jefferts Schori the properties will be sold to saloon keepers rather than to orthodox Anglicans who have the gospel that McLaren says he wants proclaimed. Bag the Bible, have a round of beer on TEC.

Reconciliation is long gone. With each new lawsuit, reconciliation becomes a faint memory. Orthodox Episcopalians and Anglicans are slowly leaving the church. By next General Convention, there probably won't be any left...perhaps an odd diocese of two vainly holding up a flag of "reconciliation." They will be politely ignored.

McLaren concluded saying this, "But if you align and retool the institution for the grand biblical mission of making authentic, fully-formed disciples of Jesus Christ for the good of the world, I think you will find God's empowerment and blessing at every turn."

It will never happen. TEC's mission is Millennium Development Goals, not the Great Commission. Institutionally, TEC is slowly withering and dying, theologically, financially, and in people fleeing from its apostate grip. McLaren wasted his time coming to GC2009. For whatever value his message might have had, it had nothing that will challenge or change the Episcopal pansexual steamroller from rolling over all who get in its way and that, sadly, includes Brian McLaren.

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