Jordan Hall: A Modern Day Downgrade

Jordan_Hall

Jordan Hall is the pastor of Fellowship Church in Sidney Montana. He is also a co-founder and executive board member of Reformation Montana, a missions-oriented organization made up of Reformed churches throughout Montana. In May, Jordan gave a message at the 2013 Reformation Montana Conference entitled “A Modern Day Downgrade” that has quickly become the most listened to message of his career. In that message, he addressed some of the more embarrassing behavior and conduct within the Evangelical church in general and the Southern Baptist Convention specifically and pleaded with those involved to come to repentance.

In this episode of Echo Zoe Radio, Jordan and I discuss the original Downgrade Controversy that surrounded similar calls by Charles Spurgeon to repentance as well as this modern day Downgrade.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:32 — 22.6MB)

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Outline of the Discussion

Jordan begins by introducing himself. He's originally from Texas County, Missouri, and now pastors a church in Sidney, a small town in Montana, near the North Dakota border.
The original Downgrade controversy surrounded Charles Spurgeon, who was sharply criticized for publishing a series of articles in “The Sword and the Trowel” that called Baptists in England to teach and live out sound doctrine. His concerns began with a hymnal that was published with songs that had ” the doctrinal depth of ‘Twinkle-Twinkle Little Sta.'”
Just a generation ago, during the 1980's there was a conservative resurgence within the Southern Baptist convention over the inerrancy of Scripture. The battle was won, but they have forgotten to Reform and continue Reforming (Semper Reformanda). The issue is not just the inerrancy of Scripture, but the sufficiency of Scripture as well, in ecclesiology, in missions, in evangelism, and everything else..
The downward slop, or the Downgrade, most commonly tends in the direction of a centuries-old heresy known as Socinianism. The primary trait of Socinianism is a rejection of spiritual and doctrinal depth derived from Scripture. It focuses heavily on the intellect, which is used to understand scripture (rather than scripture guiding the intellect.) Doctrinal Truth is deconstructed and oversimplified until they lose their doctrinal soundness. What claims to be Christianity is no longer recognizable as Biblical Christianity.
Jordan has had people tell him they don't believe in that “new-fangled doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura'.
Often, when people have been confronted over conduct that demands repentance, the response is to call those seeking repentance “angry Calvinists” rather than address the real issues.
Far too often, the Church preaches “salvation by prayer,” and counts “decisions for Christ” as a gauge for success, not admitting that often times many such “decisions” include people that have made such decisions several times.
Too often, pastors that preach and teach sound Biblical theology are rebuked for “using big words” (such as: sanctification, glorification, justification, propitiation, etc.) This perpetuates the insistence for shallow, Socinian teaching. A sign that you're growing in faith is that you're willing to make the effort to learn theological vocabulary.
We had much discussion of the fruits of expository preaching, in the churches as well as the lives of the people attending such churches.
For the future, Jordan sees churches dividing over doctrine as believers that thirst for sound doctrine seek out churches that feed them the meat of the Word of God, and the unregenerate continue to seek out churches that appeal to their unregenerate desires and forego sound doctrine.