(Digital Editor's Note: This article was published first in the April 2023 print edition of The Stand.)
Listeners to Dr. Jeff Schreve’s AFR shows (Real Truth for Today and From His Heart) will appreciate that his straightforward examination of timely cultural issues through the infallible lens of Scripture are not for the meek or mild – or the woke. But rest assured, Schreve’s passionate and unwavering message of God’s truth continually offers the redemption and grace America so desperately needs.
Confronting LGBTQ agenda
For example, on January 24, in an episode of Real Truth for Today (RTFT), Schreve spoke with Tom Ascol, pastor, author, and president of Founders Ministries, about how the church should respond to homosexuality.
Schreve shared an audio clip from North Point Community Church’s 2022 DRIVE Conference. In the clip, lead pastor Dr. Andy Stanley openly commended “gay Christians” who regularly attend church despite the lack of acceptance received from fellow church members. Stanley said these gay men and women have more faith than he does, and he wished he could get straight people as excited and engaged in serving the church.
The entire clip was disturbing to Schreve and Ascol, especially considering that Stanley has repeatedly been named by his peers as one of the top 10 most influential pastors in America, evidenced by over 35,000 church members and more than 10.5 million monthly downloads of his sermons and writings.
Even more disturbing was Stanley’s scornful dismissal of 1 Corinthians 6, parts of Leviticus, and Romans 1, calling such Scriptures homosexual “clobber passages.” Stanley simply disregarded those convicting passages by adopting a fairly recently designated category of believers called “gay Christians.”
In doing so, Stanley not only disregarded his congregants’ scripturally defined sin of sodomy but their consequential need for a Savior as well. With the single-minded objective of encouraging unrepentant homosexuals to attend and serve in church, he is openly buying into the blatant lies of this culture and leading many people astray.
Schreve ultimately questioned Stanley’s dangerous and distorted misrepresentation of the gospel: “If I am holding onto sin, how can I honestly say I am walking in love with Jesus?”
Tracing apostasy
But homosexuality is only one topic that Schreve openly confronts in his radio shows. Hard, probing questions are actually his trademark as he addresses various issues facing churches, such as abortion, transgenderism, and all sexual immorality.
In fact, in November 2022, Schreve and his RTFT guest, former AFR host Janet Mefferd, discussed these and other hot-button topics in relation to the church growth movement.
Rather than following the scriptural mandate to preach the gospel and make disciples, this untenable American church growth model basically advises pastors to look to unchurched seekers to determine church practices – including sermon content.
Based on sociological research coupled with business and marketing practices, this is now standard fare in many American churches. But multiple studies reveal the continuing failure of the church growth movement. Consequently, it has resulted in what might well be the last Christian generation of believers since less than 4% of millennials hold a truly biblical worldview.
Schreve did not hesitate to scripturally address this cataclysmic statistic head-on.
“We are commanded to preach the Word – and ‘reprove, rebuke, and exhort with great patience and instruction,’” he told The Stand. “Reprove and rebuke come before the exhortation. Reprove and rebuke are not pleasant things, but they are needed things.”
Accordingly, Schreve continues to expound on that needed truth daily via afr.net because he knows that Americans (and American churches) will only be free when they know the truth of God’s Word.
