Oliver Goldsmith, the Irish-born British writer, once said, “As I take my shoes form the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.”

That statement is the attitude of many religious people today. What they know of religion is what they’ve been told, not what they’ve learned from a perusal of the Scriptures. The Catholic takes his faith from what he has been told by his religious mentor, the Parish Priest; the Protestant takes his religion from the creeds devised by his religious leaders. The latest of these religionists, the member of the community church, takes his faith from his own subjective reasoning. Whatever he feels in his heart is true and he is accepted in the religious community based on that which he has decided.

The community churches—such as Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, or the Grace Community Church, and literally dozens of others like them are proliferating at an amazing rate. They have become so popular, in fact, that many mainline denominations, once known as Baptists or Methodists (i.e., the Sagemont Church,) Pentecostals, have joined the crowd and are re-denominating themselves so as to conceal any sort or kind of peculiar doctrine. They no longer push their creeds or disciplines in preference for a more individualized sort of religion—one where you just accept anybody who is willing to “accept Christ as your personal Savior” and “feels right in his heart.”

Actually, the concept of community religion has been around for some years. The mantra has been “it doesn’t make any difference what you believe, just as long as you’re honest and sincere.” That seed has now grown into a full-blown radical subjectivism; it has but one requirement—that you “accept Christ as your personal Savior.”

Under the guise (and a clever one at that) of promoting religious unity, the movement actually does just the opposite. It accepts religious disunity. The people who comprise the community churches don’t agree on hardly anything doctrinally, although they do have a same-mindedness about their feel good philosophy and their health-wealth gospel antics, none of which bear any resemblance to doctrinal purity as defined in Scripture. You never hear them quote Galatians 1:6-10, 1 Peter 4:11, 2 Timothy 3:16, or 2 John 9, nor do you hear them speak of the broad way as opposed to the strait and narrow way of Matthew 7:13-14, much less verse 15, for to them there is no such thing as a false teacher—saving, of course, for those of us who would dare call them back to the principle of giving Bible authority for all you do in religion.

Further, the community church concept is what I choose to call accommodative religion. It is a religion dedicated to providing whatever is wanted by the people. If you want a religion which features first-class musicians and entertainers, and stage productions par excellence, they’ve got it. If you want a pop-psychology religion, they’ve got it. If you want a religion where there are puppet shows, marches and parades, pageants at Easter and Christmas, fireworks on the Fourth, movies, coffee houses, seminars on subjects ranging from financial advice to mental health, they’ve go it. They can accommodate whatever you want. And if you want it on Saturday night instead of Sunday, you’ve that, too. They even have traditional or contemporary worship services, which ever you want. And, bear in mind, through it all you will feel good. I mean you will feel goooood.

Whatever happened to preaching about sin? How often to you see on these people’s television broadcasts sermons on judgment and hell? Does the Bible have nothing at all to say about homosexuality, about lust, or covetousness? And if Jesus meant for you to feel good all the time, what did He mean when He said (Lk. 6:26), “Woe is unto you when all men shall speak well of you; for so did your fathers of the false prophets”? And what Paul mean when he said, “…all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12)?

This movement is filled with appeal. It offers numerous benefits. It assures, with its “seed planting” financial suggestions, prosperity and respect. It even looks good on the outside. But it cannot deliver what it promises. The reason is simple: it’s founded on something other than the Rock.