I listened to PDazzles first Faith Harvest sermon that was appropriately titled Miracle Seed for a Miracle Harvest. It is probably the longest post I have written, but come on…have you ever sat through an entire CBC sermon? Let's begin:

12:14 - Pastor Frank starts out by announcing this will be a 4 part series. Quite honestly if he keeps this topic to only one month I'll be very impressed.

12:15 - Clarifies that Faith Harvest is giving ABOVE and BEYOND the tithe and mentions that Faith Harvest is the only way to accomplish many things that we can't get done with the Tithe. I could stop right there.

12:17 - Talks briefly about Forward Together, proudly mentions that they were able to accomplish 3 of the 4 things they set out to do. They didn't retire the debt completely but they were able to apply 1 million dollars towards it.

Attention CBC members and all who gave to "Forward Together": ITS TIME TO HOLD YOUR PASTOR ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS WORDS. Don't you all remember how important Step 1 was? I do. Retire the debt. Once that happened there would be so much money freed up to do all sorts of things for the kingdom of God. Also, remember how Forward Together came about? Frank felt GOD telling him what he needs to get the church to do and the elders all agreed on these four steps. Don't you think if God tells you to do something maybe you should listen? Maybe instead of spending your money on a cute little ICE RINK in Vancouver you might just want to FOLLOW THROUGH WITH YOUR PROMISES. Enough of that though, back to the sermon.

12:22 – Quotes his first scripture Gen 8:22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Follows this scripture with theses statements "The law of the harvest is built into the scriptures", "You can not have a harvest time without a seed time, not in the spiritual and not in the natural", and finally "Seedtime is important because without there can not be a harvest." Excellent work Pastor, take a scripture that is literally talking about planting literal seeds and reaping a literal harvest and make it sound spiritual.  Question? What does the "cold and heat" stand for in your spiritual interpretation?

12:24 – Quotes second scripture Eph 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…" and before anyone has a chance to say "What????" he jumps right into scripture 3: Luke 7:9 "When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

12:24 – He then moves into talking about the 3 levels of faith. Lets see, there's "Faith, Great Faith, and Miracle Faith"… wait a second, what just happened? I'm pretty sure PF just stole my wallet; I couldn't even see it coming. Wow, he should take this show to Vegas. What a magician. Lets watch again, but this time in slow motion:

Random Scripture 1 mentions Seedtime & Harvest, jump to random scripture 2 mentioning how God is ABLE to do all (according to his power), finish with Random Scripture 3, which speaks on faith, and BAM. Homerun (It should have been a walk off home run I tell ya, he could have marched right off the pulpit, rounded third and headed home, but he decided to head back out for an encore.) For those of you who still don't get it let me ‘splain. No there is too much, let me sum up… Frank randomly took 3 scriptures that referenced his sermon topic, quoted them all together and created Faith Harvest (unfortunately proper Biblical interpretation doesn't work quite like that). Moving on.

12:26 – 3 levels of faith. Faith, Great Faith, Miracle Faith. Makes the following statements: 1. Great Faith believes our God to be a good God and all things are possible. - TRUE 2. Great Faith believes God desires to bless his people with great provision financially and spiritually. – Uh, Frank…? He does go on to mention that he has "proven it by scripture, by my life…" and many other ways, but fails to actually tell us HOW he has proven it.

12:29 – "You are not going to have the kind of  "more than enough" resource if you don't learn kingdom principles and kingdom thinking." Says something about sowing and reaping. Sow in famine sow against your mountain. Whatever that means.

12:32 -"Either this law of the harvest is right or it's wrong there is no in between. It's either a doctrine of scripture or it isn't a doctrine of scripture." Which I translate to say "Either you are going to give us money and continue to attend CBC or your not, there is no in between".

12:34 – Quotes someone unnamed saying "Great Faith is the empty hand of the soul that reaches out to God and returns full'.

12:39 – Tells everyone to "Open your hands a little bit". They have Prayer asking God to fill their hands with provision. Tells them to "bring it in, right now, bring it into your life. Place your hands on your heart". I think they are supposed to have just received provision, but I'm not sure how… they haven't had a chance to give yet.

12:42 - "Your tithe… is always the tithe… is always the tithe. It's 10%. It never changes even though the cost of living goes up and percentages go up and everything goes up, God still only asks for 10%. God doesn't increase that with the economy. Kinda makes tithing sound like a good deal…except that "Your 10% is always 10% is always 10%." The percentage doesn't go up, but the dollar amount does.

12:45 – Mentions Malachi 3. Naturally

12:46 – Offering is free will out of your heart. You should be a joyful giver and every person should be a receiver. When you sow you should expect to reap. When you sow your tithe you expect protection, you expect the covenant to work, windows to open. You should always pray that over tithe / offering. Again I'll translate "Give to get, give to receive, give to collect"

12:48 – If you have no expectation it dampens the "rhythm of giving" (I would love to hear a sermon on that alone). Many people do not get this; they give and give but never expect to receive. (Damn fools) So their giving is not with much expectation from the king.

12:50 – Tells story about a King and Giving/Receiving.

12:54 – God wants you to prosper. Prosperity is a gospel of scripture. God wants us to prosper with purpose so we can have more than enough. If we don't have any money above the tithe we can't: help the community, open other campuses, give out food boxes. If we're poor how do we feed the poor? How can we do that if we don't have anything to give? God wants us to have more than enough. This makes me sick. He asks the congregation to "give until it hurts", but CBC can only give out of the excess offerings. What the eff are they tithing for? TRY CUTTING DOWN ON SOME OF YOUR EXPENSES AND YOU MIGHT JUST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO HELP THE POOR.

12:56 – He gets a little weird at this point: It's a faith offering. A specific offering with sacrifice. You dictate where the Lord will bring the harvest back. Target your giving: i.e. Give your house money, get a blessing in your house. It could be your business, your family, anything. Whenever you sow your mind needs to be directed somewhere.

12:57 – Quote of the night: It's a spiritual principal "You can't buy the blessings of God but this gives him something to work with". Right, and when I go to SUBWAY for lunch I'm not buying a sandwich, I just am giving Subman something to work with….

12:59 -Faith Harvest is:Given out of a willing heart, Given out of the stirring of the Holy Spirit, Given out of your own special treasure. It Starts with what you have and is a Sacrificial offering. "All good giving hurts." (I knew that was coming).

1:02 – Faith Harvest is motivated by grace not guilt. Not Competition orpressure. (Get ready for a runner up quote of the night…) "I [Frank] am always on the edge when it comes to preaching on money because I want you and need you to be stirred up. The church has opportunity and needs money but doesn't want you to feel pressure from what I am saying but wants you to have grace."No…… No pressure felt here. It's not like you would spend an inordinate amount of time speaking on giving or anything.

1:04 – "The best definition of grace is divine enablement. God gives you the generosity into your spirit that you need. God implants in your heart the spirit of giving" Yes, a truer picture of Grace could not be painted. Forget Jesus hanging on the cross and bearing our sins, Grace is all about Giving.

At this point I think he's gone on a little too long because he starts to reveal the REAL reason he is a pastor. Keep in mind these are his words and not mine… I couldn't make this stuff up really. The whole time he was preaching I kept thinking "Stop writing my blogs for me". Here we go:

1:07 – Remember, his words: "Most everything I do in the ministry right now I will never enjoy it fully. Whoever comes after me will have great inheritance in the Property, in the building, the size of church and staff in the college, everything that I'm doing is really setting up for the next generation." 

There you have it folks. It's all about the size of his church. Well… as the apostle Peter once said… "It's NOT the size of the ship, but the motion of the ocean" (well maybe not the apostle Peter, but a peter said that).

The quickest way I can find to dismiss this principle is to simply ask: WHERE IS JESUS IN FAITH HARVEST?

John 444's email reminded me of a story:

Every Sunday @ CBC, right in the middle of worship*, one elder would walk through the crowd and pick out 4 or 5 members to go and pray for Pastor Frank Who would be sitting in the front row… did I mention this was right in the middle of worship… It was always funny to watch how excited people would get when the elder would walk their direction. They really believed it was a huge honor to be able to pray for Hank in front of the entire church, while we were busy trying to worship.

One guy in particular had this slow and pious(?) walk towards Frank. He was very methodical with each prayerful step, savoring every little moment of glory, as if to say, "Look how important I am". Quite pathetic really.

The worst example I can remember is one Sunday there was a young man attending whom I had never seen before. He was bald, tattooed, and covered with piercings and appeared to really love Jesus. I watched him during worship as he danced, raised his hands, and sang his heart out to God.

As the pastors gathered the "Prideful Pray-ers" to minister to Frank (during worship), this young man got excited and marched right down the center isle and laid his hands on Frank and began praying. Instantly one of PF's cronies grabbed the young man and marched him to the back of the church for a lecture.

I don't know what happened at that point, but he did not return to the service and I never saw him there again.

Gee, I wonder where CBC's focus is???

*During the offering time, however, we were told to stay seated because they didn't want anyone to get distracted (this is prior to the "bring your tithes forward so we can use peer pressure to influence your giving" time).

You know how it goes, CBC starts passing the buckets, some young college girl gets a chance to sing a "special", the spirit starts to move, everyone stands to their feet with their hands raised and worships God… that was unacceptable to City Bible Church, but gathering a crowd front and center to "minister" to Frank Damazio was just fine.

Gee, I wonder where CBC's focus is???

Go ahead and say it "Johnpaul, you're just bitter because they never picked you to pray for Frank". Damn. And I spent so much time trying to sit close enough.

I copied this from CBC’s bulletin last week. It was written by Pastor Frank and I have done nothing to change it.

TODAY’S THOUGHT

Starbucks has become one of the world’s best retailers of the
$3 cup of coffee. Many of us make our morning pilgrimage to
this Temple of Java. Having spent our $3 to be awakened by the
aroma of the caffeinated black stuff, we’re not appalled that
we just spent that much for a cup of hot liquid – we’re actually
grateful that it’s a part of our life.
The Starbucks culture has become a significant part of the
relational infrastructure of our society. Meeting friends,
hanging out, spending time with people oftentimes involves,
“let’s grab a cup of coffee.”
The fact that coffee and relationships have joined forces in
modern day America is perhaps not so coincidental. Starbucks
has positioned itself as a Creator of Community.
When we look at Acts 2 we recognize that God intended that
His spiritual family would be the Creator of authentic and true
Community. God’s interested not just in what we get done – but
in how we build up the people around us. Perhaps that’s why
Jesus reported to the Pharisees that the second commandment
was as important as the first – love your neighbor.
Take some time this week to read Mark 2:1-12 and explore how
four friends intentionally built community.

This “Thought” pretty well sums up all of Pastor Hank’s sermons. He spends the first 2/3rds rambling about his own personal thoughts, the last 1/3rd telling you what he thinks the Bible says, and the final 1/8th (he always goes over) giving you a scripture to look up on your own.

Now, if your church was call City Damazio Church or Frank Temple, then it would be appropriate to follow such a pattern. However, when you call yourself City Bible Church, you certainly mislead your members.

City Bible Church you are a fraud and I demand that you now change your name to “City Not-so-much-of-the Bible Church”

…Am I missing something? Does the Bible say to “Honor thy Father and thy Coffee Bean”? Can “Barista” be translated to “Elder”? Was Jesus’ first miracle turning water into a caramel macchiato? Is heaven really a Low Fat, Extra Hot, Hazelnut Latte? Does Frank actually own stock in Starbucks?

Now that I’m thinking about it, in the last 6 months I’ve heard 2 sermons that revolve around Starbucks… and when you read the profiles of the Generation Unleashed leaders they list their favorite coffee drink? Is that being “relevant” or are they a little obsessed?

You know, all this time I’ve thought I was upset with CBC for their teaching (or lack there of), but now I realize what it really is:

I’m a Coffee People kind of guy.