Rowan Collins
1/5
I attended Westminster Chapel for several years when I first became a Christian. However, over the years I came to realise that my experience was worse than I initially thought.
As a social gathering, there's a lot of really friendly people. It's easy to make friends at chapel. However, the actual substance of the church is woeful.
There is no ministry for men, even though there is a corresponding ministry for women. When leadership have been challenged on this area, they've refused to accept there's a need for men to have an effective ministry to build them up.
Far has the church departed from the days of Martyn Lloyd Jones and his world famous exegetical preaching. Instead, the church now rolls out acronym after acronym with loosely interpreted scripture. It's not so much a systematic theology as it is the spousing of their own personal beliefs whether scripture is upheld or not.
As an example, the lead elder decided it would be fit-for-purpose to take a large kitchen knife on stage as a prop for his sermon. On another occassion he opened a bottle of wine and start drinking it. Clearly, shock and awe takes priority.
While MLJ may have accepted the continuation of spiritual gifts, he held a position similar to John Piper. It should be met with scepticism and careful consideration and weighting up of scripture.
That is no longer the case at Westminster Chapel.
People are routinely called forward to prophesy. There is a constant flurry of false prophets that proceed to the front and pursue a hyperspirituality that is not founded in scripture. When challenged on this position, some have claimed that the Bible is not the word of God, or that it doesn't matter if their prophecy is in the Bible.
Immediately after reading a passage about Spiritual Gifts, particularly speaking in tongues and the necessity of interpretation - their lead elder spoke in tongues without interpretation. Furthermore, when doing their "Korean Style" prayer, they view themselves as individual in private and not as a single congregation in unity. The result? Lots of the women will pray out in what they call tongues at the same time.
Such constant and clear violation of scripture should be damning of the church.
Their pilot lights ministry long included a homophobic, islamophobic and racist selection of women. While some of them have a true heart for the gospel and letting people know Jesus, others are more concerned with telling people how they're destined for eternal destruction.
They're now part of commission, a global organisation of churches. Each year they host an event called WestPoint. While much of the experience was pleasant, the big takeaway was the drive and emphasis the church made on raising people's money and how their giving was directly proportionate to their love for the gospel.
This message has made its way home, and Westminster Chapel is now undergoing a drive to raise more than £2,000,000 to replace their historic pews and construct new walls. They routinely misuse scripture to convince others that they should give their money to the church.
Overall, the quality of the congregation is clear - the leadership team are dead in their faith and the fruits of it are bad. They've abandoned a balanced and reformed theology in preference to the Charismatic movement and hyper-spirtuality.
Their worship selection is romanticised and theologically weak. Given that most people learn truth through commiting songs to memory, it's an awful shame that Westminster Chapel has pursued a repeat selection of the same few songs from Hillsong and Bethel Music.
Like their new founded charismatic cult, the integrity of their worship has fallen. Long gone are historic hymns that have been time tested as biblically sound. Instead, upbeat music for teens is the preference to help them uphold their desire to improve numbers and increase profits. Clearly, very little consideration is put into whether songs are theologically sound.
Nothing could be clearer, the light is dim at Westminster Chapel and people should think twice before attending.
