TCW Golf & Dinner Event Message on the Mission, David Wheaton

Most of you know that I was a professional tennis player back in my 20s and 30s. As I told the golfers earlier today, after our interrupted round of golf, we had a little meet and greet downstairs. What I didn't see coming after 13 years on the professional tennis tour was a career in Christian radio.

That's not the usual trajectory for pro tennis players. There's an amazing story which I told the golfers, which I'm not going to tell tonight, just for the sake of time, about how God providentially used Christian radio to bring my grandmother first to saving faith in Christ, and then my mother, this was back in the 1950s, through Christian radio, and then leading to my mom actually suggesting to me after coming off the pro tennis tour that I maybe consider getting involved in Christian radio because of the impact it had on our family. There's a bigger story there.

I won't get into it tonight. It was back in 2002 that I first got involved in Christian radio. That was 16 years ago on a Saturday morning program at 8 a.m. I recognize the day of the week and the time, for those of you who are listeners, that I started hosting a program called Beyond Sports on AM 980, The Mission. Two years later, I attended a conference, a talk host conference, hosted by Salem Communications, who is the company, they're the largest conservative in Christian radio, or communications network, I guess you would call it, they're into the internet as well, in the country. They sent me out to a talk host conference in Washington, D.C. It was at that conference that, in the early 2000s, that there were lots of worldview battles, worldview conflicts going on in this country trying to gain influence. That was the beginning of the redefinition of marriage when it was first starting to really percolate up to the surface and all the different issues.

I don't even remember them all at the time, but I remember sitting there for a few days in Washington, D.C. thinking, man, there's a lot going on in this country. There's a real battle of worldviews taking place. There's political and cultural and social movements taking place and issues that are shaping our society, shaping people's lives, and shaping the church. I came home from that trip with the desire to broaden the focus of the program and go beyond sports.

So I did that. We changed the format, and that was in 2004, that an early version of the Christian worldview first started. We began to discuss current events and things going on in the culture and matters of faith from a biblical perspective. I immediately sensed that there was a much greater listenership to that. It's not that people weren't interested in sports because we still discuss sports on the program, but it's that there were these things taking place that I think listeners knew were going to change things in this country. We immediately felt this just through, anecdotally almost, through conversations with people, through emails and so forth.

When the format of the program changed, there was a much deeper engagement we at least sensed during that particular time. So from 2004 to 2008, the program continued to develop and then expanded outside the Twin Cities in 2008, thanks to the SLJ Institute and Summit Ministries, and the Master's College came on as some national sponsors. It's actually hard to find national sponsors because they have to be non-commercial. They have to be non-profits because the program airs on so many non-commercial stations. So you can't have for-profit companies advertising. It's like PBS or something.

You can't have for-profit companies advertising on non-profit radio stations. But thanks to Kent and the SLJ Institute and a few others, we were able to garner enough funds to be able to expand outside the Twin Cities. And that's when the mission became more honed to what the mission is today, to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled or made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ. And as you can see, there's really two audiences to that mission, and there's also two purposes implied in that mission. And the first part of that mission, to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians, is kind of like a discipleship mission for believers. And then the second part is more of an evangelistic purpose for non-believers. And discipleship is really strengthening the faith, the worldview of believers, while evangelism is inviting to saving faith non-believers. And the Bible divides the whole world into these two groups, believers and non-believers. And it doesn't put one up as, oh, you're better than them.

It's just you're in a different relationship with God than non-believers. And so the whole world is divided into those two groups of people. And that's the incredible opportunity of a radio program like the Christian Real View, is really to be able to touch both of those on any given Saturday. So the program has a broad reach over the air to many stations around the country now, and over the internet to many countries around the world.

I haven't looked recently, but when we check who's podcasting the program, we know where that goes in all the different countries around the world. It's truly amazing, and we often talk of the internet as being sort of a force for bad. But I think this is the time we live now as an incredible opportunity here to propagate the gospel all around the world through the internet.

So it's a very powerful means of doing so. And we hear from folks from all over the place. And some of the most touching feedback we get is actually from prisoners, who are in prisons in different parts of the country who don't have much, obviously, but they have radio in their prisons, and they're listening to a Christian program like ours. And they send us these notes. And these notes are, you can tell this from reading it, how much these guys have had a change in their life, and how much their life has changed, and how serious they are about their walk with Christ. And you can tell they're, theologically, these guys are sound, many of them.

And so that's just an incredible privilege to be able to communicate in the way we're able to do. So the discipleship part of this mission to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians is important because so few professing Christians actually have a biblical worldview. And this is the most shocking thing of all. Many of you have probably heard about that Barna study, they do one about every four or five years, where they go around, they survey professing Christians to see whether they actually have a biblical worldview. And the most recent one, I think it was done, showed that only about 19% of professing, born-again Christians actually have a biblical worldview. Now think about that, 19% of Christians actually have a biblical worldview.

Well, what's wrong with this picture? And they defined a biblical worldview according to these six statements. I mentioned this at Faith Bible Church this summer, that there were these six points that said, if you believe these things, you would be considered to have a biblical worldview.

I'm going to read those six things. You would believe that absolute moral truth exists. In other words, truth isn't relative. Number two, that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. That's inerrancy of Scripture, it's without error. Number three, that Satan is considered to be a real being, not merely symbolic. Number four, the thing you'd believe if you had a biblical worldview according to Barna, was that a person cannot earn their way into heaven by trying to be good or do good works.

The fifth thing is, Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth. And the last thing they said that would define someone who had a biblical worldview, is that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today. Now, if you are a Christian here tonight, and you hear those six things, you're like, well yeah, those are just like, that's like orthodox Christianity 101.

That has been traditional orthodox doctrine of Christians for like 2,000 years. And that is the troubling thing about that, so few professing Christians actually believe such basics of the faith. And that really shows that our secular society, I think a lot of false teaching within the professing church, has really had a negative impact on the worldview of so many professing Christians, that only 19% actually have a biblical worldview. And because worldview is so important, it's really who you are, and it's really what drives your every decision, because how you think is how you live, right?

Every action you take is preceded by a thought, how you think. The negative consequences of not thinking and living as God intends comes out in a myriad of ways in our society, and we see this all around us today. It's in lifestyles, in relationships, in marriage, in parenting, in morality, in depression, in political policies and so forth. We see that a non-Christian worldview is manifesting itself in so many ways in our country. Just as an aside, I think this is the reason that our country is so polarized today, is that there's so many different worldviews vying to have influence. You know, back in the day when America had a more traditional Christian worldview, I'm not saying everyone was a born-again Christian of the founders, but there was a general, I think, reverence for God and His Word, and the majority of the population sort of held that, even if they weren't kind of a true follower of Jesus Christ, they still kind of revered God and His Word, but that's no longer. You have such a strong secular humanistic push in this country, so many false religions, and this notion of our strength, our unity is our diversity, well, it's just a self-refuting statement.

You don't get unity from having that much diversity, and so this diversity of worldviews has not led to a more unified country. So, in order to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians, we, and I say we as in not just I, because if you listen to the program, I usually don't present myself, or I'm not the expert on the program, we usually bring in great guests who are experts with a biblical worldview. We try to take an instructive and corrective approach to each topic. In other words, we try to affirm what is right according to Scripture, but at the same time point out what is wrong. Now, you've probably heard the mantra today, because you hear this over and over, and every time I hear this, I kind of just want to fall over in my chair, because we'll hear this, we'll say, well, Christians need to be known for what we're for, not what we're against.

Who has heard that said, I mean, if I've heard that once, I've heard it so many times, we need to be known for what we're for, not what we're against. Now, this may sound good or make people feel good, but this is completely the opposite of what Jesus and the New Testament writers said and did. They consistently encouraged sound doctrine, the positive and right behavior, there's the positive, and at the same time, they warned against the negative, against false teaching and teachers. So the question is, why? Why did they have some negative aspect to what they were teaching?

And the reason is because they know that wrong belief, wrong worldview, leads people the wrong way. You can't just always focus on the positive, you don't want to always dwell on the negative, but there needs to be a balance, and the example of that is the way Jesus and the New Testament writers did it. So this positive-negative approach, or balance, is why every week, on almost every topic, you're likely to hear instructive and corrective to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians. So, for example, earlier this year, we devoted three straight programs to origins, young earth versus old earth.

This has been a debate that's going on forever. Because how one interprets those early chapters of Genesis, we think they're way back in the Bible, but how one interprets those chapters really is setting a precedent for how you're going to interpret the rest of Scripture. So if you allegorize those days of creation, and God worked with evolution, and all this stuff in the early chapters of Genesis, why not allegorize Christ's miracles, and his resurrection from the grave? Those are helpful life lessons, and not actually literal events that took place that have real theological meaning. We also did two weeks on, I think this was an important topic, on is the Bible really the Word of God? And I can't think of a more important topic than that, and we had several interesting guests on for that particular topic, because if the Bible isn't the Word of God, we are among, Christians are among, most men, most foolish for believing something that's false. So that's a very core issue that needs to be discussed, and needs to be confirmed and affirmed in the minds of people who are listening.

You get away from believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, you're going to go many, many different directions in your life, and you're going to get off course in life. Some of you probably heard the two-part series we did with Costi Hinn. Do you recognize that last name? Okay, he's the nephew of the, and I'll put it nicely, the discredited, faith healer Benny Hinn, and it's worse than that, but anyway. He joined us for a two-part special on this New Apostolic Reformation, and how this extreme charismatic, this isn't just like the Assemblies of God Church, now that's not what we're talking about here. The New Apostolic Reformation is led currently by a man named Bill Johnson, he's a pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California. It is hugely and negatively impacting churches and people all over the world. Not only do they teach, and a lot of their younger adherents lie on the graves of previous people they considered to be apostles to sort of soak up the anointing of those previous apostles, they call them, but Bill Johnson himself teaches that, and this is a quote, Jesus set aside his divinity on earth, as an example of performing miracles without being God.

And so therefore, since you don't have divinity, you can perform miracles too. Do you see the problem with this kind of theology and how that's going to lead to really, really errant doctrine and behavior. Now one of the most foremost Christian thinkers of our day, Nancy Piercy, some of you have probably read some of her books, she joined us to discuss, I think sometime earlier this summer, how a low view of God's design for the body drives the various sexual identity movements going on today. And this is important because he talks about this two-story thing, where today people who don't believe in the Bible don't think the body tells us anything. So the way you're born and your gender doesn't tell us anything for what gender you actually should be.

It's up to your mind to decide what gender you have to be. Or even the issue of homosexuality, our bodies between male and female don't tell us anything about that a male should be with a female, that should be put to the side into your mind according to how you want to live your life sexually. So she was very helpful in explaining how a low view of the body really impacts these various sexual identity movements that we see in the front page of the newspaper all the time and going on in our schools. There were other programs on geopolitics and discernment and how major of a topic and important of a thing that is for us to have. There's one recently on eternal security, the quote gay Christian movement that's coming into the evangelical church now through a conference this summer called the Revoice Conference. Just most recently on the world's message and means of social justice, how that movement which has really it's to be truthful, much of its foundations in the writings and thoughts of Karl Marx has not only impacted we see it on the street, but now it's beginning to be appropriated or taken into the evangelical church as well. You're going to see more of this and this statement that just came out by some that were meeting in Herb's house coffee and company is creating a real division now between those who think that social justice is a key part of the gospel. They'll say, well social justice is a gospel issue and if you're not engaged in social justice rectifying the inequities of society, well you're not believing, you're really believing in the gospel. And so this is going to be an issue that's going to be growing more and more.

I think you're really going to can feel this groundswell that's going to be big coming up. So instructive and corrective and if listeners maybe don't catch the instructive and corrective part, we at least hope they're getting informed about some of these issues vying for people's worldviews. Now the Christian worldview radio program is not a church and I'm not a pastor and we're not trying to be a church. Our goal is we want to strengthen believers who will then strengthen their own families and go to their churches and make better churches. We really want to strengthen the local church and we appreciate and want to support the pastors who are trying to do that. We really just basically address topics that the church won't address or really maybe doesn't have time to address. I mean, usually you go to church on Sunday and you sing and you fellowship and you take communion and you hear a part of scripture exposited and that's a beautiful, wonderful thing. That's the institution that God promises to bless. But oftentimes in churches you don't have time to have forums to discuss these kinds of issues. So that's where we try to come in and really just extend the reach of the church and extend the message of the church, things that probably would be discussed if the church had more time, to the radio listening audience.

Let me give you another example. Did your church discuss, and I think the only way to describe this is, the implosion that took place this summer at Willow Creek Church in Chicago? Have most of you heard about what happened? Raise your hand if you heard about what happened at Willow Creek Church. Did you hear it in the Christian worldview though? Okay, you heard it somewhere else.

That's good to hear. Bill Hybels, and I'll tell you who he is in a second, he was the pastor, and the entire elder board and two co-lead pastors resigned from Willow Creek this summer. Willow Creek, over the last 30 years, this church has been the most influential church in the world, two evangelical churches in the world, and Bill Hybels has been the most influential pastor of that church. I mean, you could say Rick Warren, okay, maybe, but certainly rivaling Rick Warren, and I'd say even greater, would be Bill Hybels and Willow Creek Church. Now, I would think after what happened this summer when Bill Hybels was found out that there was a, I'll say it softly, a Me Too movement going on many times over at Willow Creek with the entire board resigning, the two co-lead pastors resigning for how the whole thing was handled, that there would be some very worthwhile lessons for the evangelical movement to consider after what happened at Willow Creek and the amount of influence this church has exerted the last 25 years. But I'm guessing that you're probably, you didn't discuss this in your church, you maybe read a news story about it, but this is something that we need to really consider, what is the message that Willow Creek was selling, and what is the methodology, the seeker movement that they sold to so many churches around the world for that many years, and to see it end like that. What system do they have set up that their lead pastor could go on doing things like this? I mean, they were known for their organizational structure.

How could this happen? And what's the lesson that we should be learning? Not to condemn Bill Hybels, we know he's a man like the rest of us. Not just to condemn him, but what lessons should we be learning from the message and methodology of this highly influential church that's influenced so many churches, and I mean literally around the world through their global leadership summit, and just what they export all over the place. And this is one of the reasons we really value producing the Christian worldview, because we can reach those who are in really good churches, and we have a couple of pastors here tonight who are really being faithful in their churches, but we can also reach those who are in bad churches and don't get that kind of content or that kind of teaching where they're going to church. Or we can reach those who aren't going to church at all.

Maybe they don't even have a church in their area, and that's a great advantage of Christian radio. So that brings us to the second aspect of our mission, to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Now this isn't just good news, that's what the gospel means, that's what it literally means, good news, but it's actually the best news.

It's the absolute best news in the world, and here's why. The Bible says that God created a perfect world and made man and woman in His likeness to know Him and to worship Him. Each one of us is created for that purpose. In other words, we are created to be worshippers. If we don't worship God, we will worship something else.

I remember very much this was the case earlier in my own life. We'll worship making money, we'll worship attaining a particular position in life, we're going to worship buying and gaining material things, we're going to worship education, expanding our intellectual capacity, we're going to worship sex, we're going to worship the approval of other people, or we're just going to worship ourselves, just pleasing ourselves all the time, that's going to be our chief end. But worshipping someone or something other than God, that really is our most fundamental problem. Because when Adam and Eve in that garden set the example that they believed they knew better than God, and that's what we ultimately do when we sin, we think we know better in that moment, when they disobeyed, sin entered the world and corrupted everything. And we see that everywhere. We see that in the conflict around the world, we see that in the conflict in maybe some of our own interpersonal relationships, in their families. We see that in the disease and death that's just rife all over the world all the time.

And if we're honest, we see that corruption inside of ourselves through our own sin, and that we've contributed to this corruption as well. I mean, the Bible says this, all have sinned, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and there's a consequence for that sin. Romans 6 23, and the wages of sin is death. That death is a physical death.

It led to Adam and Eve, and everyone's going to die, 10 out of 10 die. We know that, it's a physical consequence to sin, but there's also a spiritual consequence to sin as well, and it leads to an eternal, the spiritual consequences leads to an eternal separation from God, that a perfectly holy and just God, he really has to hold people accountable, those who sin against him. I mean, think about it, what just earthly judge would just let lawbreakers go free? That wouldn't be just, if people could just break the law and never be accountable for it. But this creator, the creator of the universe, this king, this just judge of the universe, he's not just capricious in his judgment, he's also willing to forgive, and make things right with us, for us who have rebelled against his kingship.

And this is where that good news comes in. Romans 5-8 says it so beautifully, that God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I mean, who does this? When someone sins or offends you, do you want to send your only son to die for that person? Absolutely not.

You want to punch the person in the face and walk away. That's exactly the opposite of what God did. He demonstrates his own love for us, in that while you're sinning against him, he sends his son to die for us. So God sent his own son, his own perfect son, to live a sinless life among us, and then to offer himself to die in our place on the cross, so that God's wrath and his justice over our sin could be fully satisfied and atoned for.

It's just an incredible, incredible, simple, yet incredibly profound message of the gospel. And if there's better news than that, that Jesus paid the penalty we deserve to pay for our sin, so that we could be forgiven and made right with God and receive eternal life in heaven with him, instead of having to be justly sentenced to hell, as Kent talked about earlier, I'd like to know what that better news is, because I don't think there is better news than that. But to receive that gift, it's like an offer, as with any gift we're offered, Jesus says, he actually commands it, he didn't suggest it, he said, repent and believe in the gospel, in Mark 1.15, and that means we agree with God, we confess our sin, that we've sinned and we turn from it, and we put our faith in who Christ is, the son of God, and what he did on our behalf on the cross.

And putting our faith in him means not putting an ounce of faith in our own goodness, our own religious works, like going to church, or giving to charity, or praying a prayer, or getting baptized, or taking communion, or trying to be a good person. It's always an interesting question to ask someone, not just, are you a Christian? Most people will say, well, yeah, I was baptized as an infant, or I was married in a church, or I go to church on Christmas Day. Ask them when and why they became a Christian, because if you hear, well, I've always been a Christian, no one's always been a Christian, we're born sinful and separated from God, we don't become a Christian by going to church, just like I don't become a mechanic by walking into a garage.

When we get to the why aspect, it's because we're sinners and separated from God, that's why I needed to become a Christian. The Bible says, in this well-known passage that many of you know, in Ephesians chapter 2, for by grace, God's unmerited favor, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Do you know what really changes someone's life?

Do you know what changed my life in my mid to early, or early to mid 20s? When I started to read the Bible for the first time, I was a professing Christian growing up, grew up in a wonderful Christian home, but I think I really took that faith for myself, I heard a lot about it, and I was so focused on tennis and winning, and I thought my purpose in life was to win tennis tournaments and do Nike commercials and that sort of thing. But it was in my mid 20s when I began to read the Bible for the first time, lo and behold, here I am a professing Christian, never really read the Bible on my own.

What's wrong with that picture? I would have been probably one of those that, you know, 19% of professing Christians didn't have a biblical worldview. So as I began to read it for the first time, I began to understand that I was a sinner and separated from God.

That's what helped me. Not reading self-help books, or being positive about life, or having an optimistic outlook, or not more education, or not trying harder to be a good person. What really changes a person is when their soul is converted from non-believer to believer. Remember, those two categories again, non-believer to believer in Christ, and when that new creation, that new creation in Christ, begins to develop a biblical worldview. Then everything changes in that person's life. Not only their life here, but their eternal destiny changes from hell to heaven.

And it's really not ultimately just for the sake of change and a better life, it's ultimately for their good, but also mostly for God's glory. So, I don't know all of you tonight, I know many of you, and I really appreciate your coming tonight, but there's some of you I don't know, and I want to close by saying, if you are here tonight and you have never put your faith in Christ, it's no accident that you have come to the Christian worldview golf and dinner event. We're thankful you are here.

This is a good news night for you. There's no chance with God, there's no luck with God. You know, we had a pretty rough day on the golf course, but this is a beautiful place, and typically have beautiful days on this course, and as great it is to play this particular golf course and to be in this beautiful setting and have great fellowship as we have had tonight, you know, being in a right relationship with God is infinitely better and more important than all those things. Again, it's why each of us were created to be in a right relationship with God. And so we at the Christian worldview don't believe in arm twisting.

We don't believe in emotional manipulation of people. You know, walk the aisle, raise your hand, sign this card, make a quick commitment, you know, to believe in Jesus. No, I think the commitment to follow Christ is a much bigger and more important decision than a quick emotional snap decision. It's really about stepping down from the throne of your own life and asking Jesus to take over the throne of your own life, and that's a major decision, but that's where He belongs.

But the present and eternal reward of doing so is, as the Visa commercial says, it's priceless. So if you have questions about what it means to repent and believe in the gospel, I or one of our board members here at the Christian worldview would be more than grateful to meet with you sometime and talk about it, because that is part of our mission here at the Christian worldview, to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people, all people, it's incredibly exclusive. There's only one way to God, and it's through Christ, but it's open to every single person. No matter what your past has been, no matter where you've come from, it's open to everyone. I'm going to ask Kent to come up and close our evening in prayer, and again, you can stay for a while afterwards. I think we have some time to fellowship afterwards. I just want to ask you to take a couple minutes to consider supporting the Christian worldview. We have a card on your table. You can think about it. You can put it in the envelope if you'd like to donate to us.

It's tax-deductible. We're a non-profit. We like to keep going with the program. People ask, what's our five-year plan?

We don't have a five-year plan. We just are continuing to try to be faithful week by week with the program. That's really what we're trying to do. We could be off the air in a month.

We just never know on radio. Your next show could be your last program. So we'd like to expand the reach of it, though, to new on-air and online platforms. We've even discussed hosting maybe a youth, a teenage worldview camp, and we think that particular demographic is at a very influenceable time of life, those 15 to 23 years. We don't know we're going to do that for sure, but that's one of the things we've considered. I know it's a lot of work to do that, and we're pretty kind of short-staffed, but we're thinking about some of those things.

Because so much of Christian radio doesn't allow commercial advertising, this is why we are completely dependent on listener donations. So we would just appreciate you considering, again, no arm-twisting. We'd love to have you support us, but if it doesn't work out, we'd just love to have you pray for us and even listen to the program. We'd appreciate that and tell someone else about it. That's supporting us as well. So I just want to thank you for coming tonight. We just appreciate the golfers who waited here a long day to come to the dinner event tonight, and just thank all of you who just came to the dinner event as well. Thank you for your support of the Christian Real View, and we just wish all of God's best and grace to you. Thank you.