“I’ve never found that God asks us to do something that is within our means or within our resources. And so the Vision that we have is always going to be bigger than we currently are. They always call for faith and that’s why it’s so exciting because God calls us to do things that are beyond our abilities. So we’re relying on him. and his power to make it happen.”
Source: Phil Pringle, C3 Church Culture Video, Vimeo, http://vimeo.com/61320694, 07/03/2013 at 10:56 PM.
If you are a C3 member and were told that your pastor, Phil Pringle, has been constantly lying to you about receiving direct visions and instructions from God just so he can manipulate you, what would you think? Would you shrug it off and keep attending C3? Would you feel disgusted that Phil Pringle abused your trust in him as a leader? Would you feel unclean that you are serving a man who is using your God to manipulate you for his own selfish ends?
God did not give Phil Pringle the 2020 Vision, nor did God give Phil Pringle and his leadership team a “strategy” to fulfill his 2020 Vision.
Christian Schwarz helped Pringle and his staff formulate the 2020 Vision and various strategies to see this come to pass. If C3 want to lay claim that God used the NCD to give Pringle the God-given 2020 Vision, then Pringle and C3 leadership still lied by omission. Why portray Phil Pringle in all their propaganda as a prophet receiving a timely vision from God to plant 1000 churches by the year 2020?
CHRISTAN A. SCHWARZ AND NATURAL CHURCH DEVELOPMENT?
The truth is that Christian Schwarz, the operations manager of the Natural Church Development Organization, helped Pringle and his staff formulate the 2020 Vision as well as the various strategies to see this Vision come to pass. A few years ago Schwarz interviewed Pringle’s close friend, Gordon Moore. Moore is the man who is speaking as a representative of the C3 Church movement in the video below. In this interview Gordon discloses where the 2020 Vision originally came from as well as the source of their church growth strategies. The proof that Pringle’s “God Given 2020 Vision,” as well as the strategies to carry it out, did not come from God is in the following statement from Gordon:
“We have formulated as a result of all of this [NCD workshops] our 2020 Vision which is to have a thousand churches with a average size of five hundred.”
So why hasn’t Phil Pringle and his leadership team told the truth about the fact that they were being led by the Natural Church Development strategies of Christian A Schwarz? Why lie? Might it be that Phil Pringle thought that if he convinced his congregation that it was God’s vision rather than his own that the people would support it? Who is Phil Pringle really trusting to lead his church?
These are serious questions considering the fact that people at C3 genuinely believe that Pringle is a prophet and gets direct visions, (like the 2020 Vision), from God. Trusting in, and following, false teachers and false prophets is one of the ways the devil keeps people from true faith and the true repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Moore also revealed his thoughts what would happen if C3 did not fulfill the Phil Pringle’s God-given 2020 Vision:
“However if we don’t, we’ll be pretty happy with the journey because we’re going to be healthy on the way through. But our feeling is that we’re probably going to do pretty well with our vision.”
There you have it folks. Gordon Moore does not care if Phil Pringle gets away with lying in the name of God to manipulate the tens of thousands throughout the C3 movement. If they fail the 2020 Vision, as long as people are “pretty happy with the journey”, why should Gordon Moore and Phil Pringle worry about desecrating the integrity and character of God? How can anyone in C3 feel “pretty happy” when these men boldly lie in the name of God to manipulate them?
If a prophet claims to speak and see on behalf of God and their claims do not come to pass, the bible in the Old Testament commanded that the false prophet be stoned. If these false prophets are found in the church, they are too be excommunicated and condemned for their lies and blasphemy. However, such action in C3 culture is considered to be “unloving”. As we have documented continually, C3 loves their false prophet to the point that they will demonise and slander those that question their prophets behaviours outside their church.
Our question to C3 members who wish to defend the blatant lies of Phil Pringle:
If Pringle comes to you and rips you off blind with his lies and false visions, why do you put up with it?
We will be looking more at the Natural Church Development organization as time progresses.
“Results of Natural Church Development in C3 Churches in Australia”
Christian: “We just spent a wonderful evening with Gordon Moore here in the restaurant in Brisbane. But he discussed and shared a lot about experiences that this church has made. Uh, Gordon, your representing the C3 Churches which is according to our research, the healthiest denomination that we are aware of. At the same time the denomination that applies the principles of NCD most consistently. Can you share about what roll National Church Development play in your overall strategy.”
Gordon Moore: “Uh, sure Christian. First of all I’d like to say thank you very much for coming to Australia. We’ve been really looking forward to sharing with you and hearing from you. Um. NCD has probably been the one of the greatest tools we have encountered. I guess first of all in our journey as a movement of churches we started out very organically. Uh, naturally with a move of God and just seeking to plant churches. We found that NCD helped us bring that empirical evidence of growth and health in the life of the church. So our movement has embraced NCD as our number one health analysis tool. We use it in oversight. We encourage all our churches to do this. But we go further than that. We actually take the results and the consultation that comes from your team and seek to apply that to the local church level and also the nation and to all our churches in the movement.
Christian: “Let’s us ask real quickly. Where do you expect your movement to be in the year 2020?”
Gordon Moore: “Funny you should say that Christian. We’ve formulated as a result of all of this our 2020 Vision which is to have a thousand churches with a average size of five hundred. The thousand churches is our quantitative vision that we look for growth, we look for the kingdom of God to grow in advance and also the five hundred average size is a quality measurement. Where after a “kind-of” church. A church that ranges somewhere between four hundred and eight hundred, that has a team that is viable, that has the resources to go out, plant churches and fulfill the commission of Christ.”
Christian: “And if we meet again in eight years from now, will you say, ‘We have arrived there’ or do you sense that you will be far away from that?”
Gordon Moore: “We’re on track to meet that. However if we don’t, we’ll be pretty happy with the journey because we’re going to be healthy on the way through. But our feeling is that we’re probably going to do pretty well with our vision. I mean if you aim at nothing you’re gonna hit it every time, right? So we believe that having a vision is important but the most important thing is that we are vitally connected to Christ and our lives our healthy. And that reflects in our churches as well. That our churches are healthy communities that are growing and manifesting Christ to a needy world.”
“Warren Bennis, as quoted in In Search of Excellence, calls the leader a “social architect.” When a leader is a God-person, a God-seeker, vision is planted deep inside. God often speaks in pictures to God-seekers, especially to leaders. Pictures are the visual language of the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s blueprints for what He wants to build.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 34.
Keep the above in mind as you watch this 2020 Vision campaign video.
Sorry – this is the 2020 Vision campaign video.
Here is the transcript.
TRANSCRIPT
“In the beginning, God gives us vision. This vision is to build the church worldwide. Building the church is God’s top priority in this generation. You and I are called to bring people to Christ, to make disciples and to release those people into ministry within our churches and beyond. And by doing this, we will fulfill the heavenly vision.”
VISION BUILDS FAITH
“Vision from God always boosts faith from the inside of your soul. As soon as we hear the magnitude of what God is calling us to do, we find faith rising on the inside that this is possible. Just like Joshua knew he could take the land of Canaan, so we know that we can build the church around the world.”
FAITH BUILDS INTENTION
“Every vision is just a fantasy without a plan. God has given us a strategy and as we follow that pathway, we will find ourselves expanding right around the world. We will raise up thousands of leaders, connect group leaders, worship leaders, assistant leaders, leaders of churches. People who will work to build the house of God and fulfill this dream God has put in our hearts.”
INTENTION BRINGS ACTION
“Faith without action is dead. Just believing that this vision is going to happen wont make it happen. This vision calls for action. It calls for people to step out. It calls for sacrifice. It calls for stretching. It calls for raising ourselves up to a level we’ve never been before. This action has taken us from seventy one churches in the year two thousand to over three hundred today. It’s taken us from five nations to thirty five nations. And today, we have influence in two hundred cities around the world.
ACTION BRINGS MOMENTUM
This momentum turns a small snowball into a massive avalanche. It’s the power of compounding effort. You and I are involved in a gathering momentum of the great power of God.
AND THE MOMENTUM OF GOD
IS UNSTOPPABLE
Because of this momentum, we are seeing six hundred people around the globe come to Christ every week in C3 churches. Because of this momentum, we’re seeing nearly thirty thousand come to Christ every year. Because of this momentum, each week seventy five thousand people are gathering to worship God. God in heaven is with us. It’s his mighty plan to build his church on the earth.
Together you and I are going to see this amazing thing come to pass. You are part of the history making group of people that are changing planet earth as we fulfill the 2020 Vision.”
CRITIQUE
It is of our opinion Pringle is purposely blurring the lines with the great commission and His 2020 Vision to get people to commit themselves to his movement and not to the true commission of Jesus Christ. If the 2020 Vision was the ‘vision’ that God gave Christians in Matthew 28 this is perfectly fine. Jesus can give us the faith to go out into the world and make disciples in His name. But is this what Pringle is reinforcing?
Not at all. Pringle opens up with the following claim: “In the beginning, God gives us vision”. Already we are off to a bad start. Where on earth does the bible teach this?
Pringle adds his own unbiblical theology into his New Age doctrine on vision: “Vision from God always boosts faith from the inside of your soul. As soon as we hear the magnitude of what God is calling us to do, we find faith rising on the inside that this is possible”.
Where on earth did he get this from? His liver shivers? Notice also his allusion to him being a ‘Joshua’ in this video when he says, “Just like Joshua knew he could take the land of Canaan, so we know that we can build the church around the world.””.
But who gave Joshua the strategy to “take the land of Canaan”? God.
So who supposedly gave Pringle the “strategy” to “build the church around the world”? God.
Is Phil Pringle your Joshua?
This is nothing but subliminal advertising again. While the C3 Media flash snippets of Pringle’s 2020 Vision (“1000 churches”, “500 members”), Pringle claims that “God has given us a strategy”. Wasn’t the biblical Great Commission strategy enough?
This indicates that God has given a vision to Pringle that surpasses that of Jesus’ great commission. Why can’t C3 simply follow Jesus’ commission to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”?
And what is this God-given strategy? Pringle says that if Christians are to “follow [the strategy’s] pathway, we will find ourselves expanding right around the world”. What a claim!
Whatever happens do not question the churches strategies. To do so is to challenge God. Not Pringle. Not C3 leadership. Not C3 church. But God.
Pringle then goes on to purposely misappropriate and reword the scripture in James 2 to his advantage. He reworded the scripture “faith without works is dead” to “faith without action is dead”. He then used this verse to convince his listeners to get on board with his 2020 Vision. A pastor should NOT use the scriptures for his gain like this. Pringle used this scripture to justify people to submit to his divine authority through the infallible 2020 vision God supposedly gave him.
For Pringle to claim God gave him a divine vision and strategy to fulfill but has the audacity to twist his God’s Word like this is satanic. This was not an accident. This was scripted. This was a deliberate tactic to con people to side with his vision.
Using Nazi ideas – the volk
Furthermore, God can’t fulfill His vision without your help! You must help God! Pringle says, “Just believing that this vision is going to happen wont make it happen. This vision calls for action. It calls for people to step out. It calls for sacrifice. It calls for stretching. It calls for raising ourselves up to a level we’ve never been to before.”
Behind all this vision talk is a very Hitler-esque push. Pringle is elevating and attributing a human ‘power’ or a ‘force’ to God. According to Pringle this, “momentum [that] turns a small snowball into a massive avalanche” is the “great power of God”. No. This is volkism. A Nazi philosophy. In Hitler’s work “Mein Kampf” (1923), he let us understand some key points what the ‘volk’ was and how the ‘volk’ worked. Here is a good summary of the volk:
In his book ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’) published in 1923, Hitler set out quite clearly his political ideas. They can be summarised as follows:
… Mankind’s natural unit is the Volk, or people, of which the German Volk is the greatest.
The state only exists to serve the Volk, and both morality and truth are to be subservient to this principle.
The Volk must be headed by a Fuhrer, or leader, who must have absolute authority.
Hitler says about the leader of the volk,
“In that way an eternal ideal, which has everlasting significance as a guiding star to mankind, must be adapted to the exigencies of human frailty so that its practical effect may not be frustrated at the very outset through those shortcomings which are general to mankind. The exponent of truth must here go hand in hand with him who has a practical knowledge of the soul of the people, so that from the realm of eternal verities and ideals what is suited to the capacities of human nature may be selected and given practical form.”
So are we really seeing a move of God Pringle? Or are we seeing you behave like a “social architect”, to construct a volk for your own personal interests? Isn’t God communicating to you the “language of the Holy Spirit to reveal [His] blueprints for what He wants to build”? Or are you playing with peoples ideals to manipulate them to further your agendas? Jesus Christ said,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
What then does Jesus tell us to do?
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
We are seeing the reverse with the 2020 vision. God supposedly has bent the knee to Pringle and given Phil the authority in heaven and earth through the “2020 Vision” to make people and churches join his volk (“the great power of God”).
Pringle is not saying the “power of God’ is emphasised through the preaching of the gospel which proclaims that Jesus is The Power and The Authority of God personified. Instead Pringle is pushing the idea that thy volk is truth and power, insisting that you be “part of the history making group of people that are changing planet earth as we fulfill the 2020 Vision”.
Can you see what is taking the focus now? Not Christ and his great commission. The focus is now on Pringle, his 2020 vision and those who bend the knee to it in his movement. Pringle’s battle cry is for you to be part of a history making crew that are changing the world because they are fulfilling the 2020 Vision.
So it should be established that Pringle is using clever marketing gimmicks and lies to deceive his congregation into accepting his fuhrer’s vision. This is man is making his own church with out God’s Spirit. Pringle is teaching the power of God is emphasised through the volk under his “god-given” vision and “god-given” strategy.
A Demonic Faith
The scriptures make it clear that it is God alone that gives us the faith to believe through Christ. Not so with Pringle. Pringle says,
VISION BUILDS FAITH
“Vision from God always boosts faith from the inside of your soul. As soon as we hear the magnitude of what God is calling us to do, we find faith rising on the inside that this is possible.”
However, the writer of Hebrews doesn’t tell us to look to visions to build faith. Nor does the writer tell us that visions “from God always boosts faith from the inside of your soul”. Nor does the writer say that when “we hear the magnitude of what God is calling us to do, we find faith rising on the inside that this is possible”. Instead, we read this:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2
Whatever gave this vision and teaching to Phil Pringle is not of God. Phil Pringle has replaced God with himself, speaking his own CEO vision to condition people and control them for his own agenda. Let us be clear: when Phil Pringle is speaking the vision to his congregation, they are NOT hearing “the magnitude of what God is calling [them] to do”. They are not “faith rising on the inside”. Instead, scriptures CLEARLY say this:
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17
This vision is nothing but a “weight” which members at C3 should “also lay aside”. Hopefully we have made it clear that this is Pringle’s vision – not God’s. This vision is nothing but a godly facade hiding the fact that:
Pringle is calling YOU to action.
Pringle is calling YOU to step out.
Pringle is calling YOU to sacrifice whatever it takes to accomplish his desires.
This is very different to what we see Luke observing in the early church.
” … the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” – Acts 2:47
As Paul said to the church in Galatians:
“Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.”
In our first article, we established that Phil Pringle has promoted emphatically that his God-given 2020 Vision is to have “1000 churches planted by the year 2020 with an average attendance of 500 members”.
In our second article, we proved that even if Pringle is telling the truth, he is rebelling against the infallible God-given 2020 Vision and redefining it to suit his own selfish purposes.
So what on earth does Pringle mean by ‘vision’? Where does it come from? Who gives it? How does it work? What is it’s purpose? How should people react or behave around someone with ‘vision’? Is it a Christian teaching?
In this article, we will provide teachings of Phil Pringle’s irrational ‘vision’ doctrine. This article will continue to grow as we collect more information on Pringle’s ‘vision’ doctrine. We hope this post can help you begin to understand how ingrained this un-Christian ‘vision’ is with C3 church growth and the man Phil Pringle.
Similar to Pringle’s doctrine on faith, his doctrine on vision can also be associated with paganism. If anything, his ‘vision’ doctrine sounds more like spell casting or spell binding rituals to bind people to fulfill his personal desires. You will not find Phil Pringle’s bizarre ‘vision’ doctrine found anywhere in the bible.
IS PHIL PRINGLE ‘THE ONE’?
Here are quotes from Phil Pringle’s books, blogs and sermons.
BOOK: FAITH
“I know that there are some people who are perpetually negative. I sincerely believe that if you want to fly with the eagles you cannot afford to walk with the turkeys. I will walk away from those people when they start to attack the vision.” – Phil Pringle, Faith, 2001, pg 75.
“There is a screen within our mind upon which three projections are jostling for prime time… But then there is God. He has a projector with a preset, wonderful destiny as the main feature. As we enter the Spirit through praise and worship, God will form His vision within our thinking. We pray the prayer of faith. The vision of the answer comes to mind and we see it, in living colour. Jesus himself gained faith from the Father through visions. He declared that He did nothing that He did not first see His Father doing. If Jesus could see His Father do it, He had no doubt that He could. Once the vision of the fulfillment of your dream has been planted in your mind, bring it in to your prayer life.” – Phil Pringle, Faith, 2001, pg 102.
“Once the vision of the fulfillment of your dream has been planted in your mind, bring it in to your prayer life. Each time you pray the picture to mind and meditate on it. Pray over it. See it happening. Destroy all the images of failure. Replace them with the image of success.” – Phil Pringle, Faith, 2001, pg 102-103.
“Right now in my life I spend much time dreaming over my visions of faith. I know this works. I would be a fool to ignore it. Remember, one of the mightiest keys in the Kingdom of Heaven is faith. Vision is a major part of faith, for we walk by faith and not by sight. Faith is directly contrasted to natural eye sight.” – Phil Pringle, Faith, 2001, pg 103.
BOOK: YOU THE LEADER
“Warren Bennis, as quoted in In Search of Excellence, calls the leader a “social architect.” When a leader is a God-person, a God-seeker, vision is planted deep inside. God often speaks in pictures to God-seekers, especially to leaders. Pictures are the visual language of the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s blueprints for what He wants to build.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 34.
“Vision is the gift of faith in action. We see this principle lived out in the realm of church leadership quite frequently. C. Peter Wagner concludes that among all the leaders of growing churches that were studied by what is now known as the Fuller Theological Seminary, there is at least one commonality- the gift of faith. He writes,
A study of the largest churches in America has led to the conviction that the faith of the pastors was one of the main contributing reasons for the church’s growth. The spiritual gift of faith was a common denominator found in the pastors of the largest churches.
George Barna also conducted extensive research on church life in the last decade. He states, “My work with churches has led me to the conclusion that the single most important element in having an effective and life-changing ministry is to capture God’s vision for your ministry.”” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 35.
“No matter what the realm of leadership – the home, the workplace, the church, or the community – the vision is crucial. Leaders must funnel their faith into action so that life-changing results.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 35.
“Leadership is clear vision. Without eyes, or without light to aid those eyes, we grope in the dark, unsure of our steps, cautious, afraid, and moving slowly. This is not a leader. A leader is bold and can see the future. “Seeing clearly” is imperative for the leader.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 35-36.
“Faith is what God works through to effect the visions He has given us. He speaks to us, and then, with the faith we have, we believe what He says. Faith is the conception of what is possible before it is seen: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, for the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). By faith we believe in the impossible becoming possible.
This is what leadership is all about. Leaders see what no one else does. In Ephesians 3:20 NASB – “Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think…” – the Greek word for “think” is noieo, which means “to exercise the mind or intellect in comprehending, heeding, considering, pondering, perceiving, thinking, understanding, observing, seeing, conceiving.” Leaders actually conceive a reality within themselves before the event happens. This is what a vision really is. It is not just a hope, a wish, or a desire. It is a knowledge that a certain thing is going to take place because of a number of factors:
• God has spoken a strategy that works.
• The strategy has been adopted.
• Realistic plans have been made.
• The team can see it happening.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 35-36.
“When we meditate in the manner described in Scripture, we take our minds into the realm of conception and the place of perception of the purposes of God. Great leaders of the bible, such as Joshua and David, thought deeply and continuously about subjects that were invisible to them until they became realities perceived by their spirits. We read in Joshua 1:8 and throughout the Psalms that they meditated on the Word of God until it became a reality within them, not just a theology. They meditated upon visions of the future until they knew that what they were seeing was more than just imagination.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 36-37.
“This same conceiving process is what God employs in church growth. We supernaturally see our churches growing; we sense the growth within our spirits. Growth is a reality we experience before we actually have it.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 37.
“Good leaders hold positive, views of the future. We believe God fulfills our dreams, and our dreams are enlarged. Our desires exceed what we currently have and where we currently are.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 37.
“We ask God to hear our prayers. As we read, meditate, study, and speak the incredible promises of God (2 Peter 1:4), our faith grows. God speaks to us at our level of faith (Acts 14:9-10), and we find ourselves believing what He has said (Romans 10:17). His truth becomes a reality within us until we can see it (Hebrews 11:1). Our organization is larger. It has grown. We speak it because it is real. We are not pretending. We know something that did not come to our consciousness by way of the natural senses.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 37.
“Another faculty has released this knowledge: our spirit. It is God’s Word in our spirit. It creates a reality that registers in our spirit. We live by this spiritual knowledge and walk in its light.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 38.
“Goal setting is another integral part of achieving any dream. It is what takes a supernatural vision into the material realm where we can see it being accomplished.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005pg 40.
“Goal setting is another integral part of achieving any dream. It is what takes a supernatural vision into the material realm where we can see it being accomplished.
C. Peter Wagner has stated,
For reasons I do not fully understand, some power is released through setting positive goals that otherwise remain dormant. But although I cannot explain it as well as I wish it could, it is a biblical principle that God seems to honor. Goal setting is the modern biblical equivalent to faith, without which it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6). Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Things hoped for are, of course, future. Putting substance on the future is what happens in a faith projection (goal-setting) exercise. ” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 40.
“Dr. David Yonngi Cho, who pastors the world’s largest church, says of his church’s remarkable growth. “The number one requirement for having a real church growth- unlimited church growth- is to set goals.”” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 40.
“Remember, Those who have the gift of faith are growth-oriented, goal-oriented, optimistic, and confident. – C. Peter Wagner.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 42.
“Vision could be just as well described as “vibration.” The leader feels the vision as a vibration. He or she then imparts the feeling to others, who accept the vision and run with their leader to make it happen. The leader has seen something that ignites fire in their souls.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 43.
“A vision is something worth living for, and it is something worth dying for. In fact, if it is not worth dying for, it is not worth living for. Brave, godly martyrs throughout history have proven time and again that what we as Christians live for is worth dying for.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 43.
“The leader feels the pulse of a burning passion and communicates that heat at every opportunity. He or she lives the dream, breathes the vision, sleeps the mission, and eats the goals every day. The leader shares those goals all the time with everyone. It is a vibration the entire organization can feel.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 44.
“When you have to set down the rules all the time, you know people have not caught the dream. People who have caught the vision instinctively know what is appropriate and what is required. They don’t care what it takes; they live to make the dream reality. At the risk of sounding unrealistically romantic, I have to say that unless the hearts of the team members beat with the pulse of the leader’s dream, it’s never going to fly.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 44.
“The leader is the bell ringer, the trumpet blower, the drum beater, the vibration maker, and the vision caster… A great leader imparts the burden, inspires commitment, and sets the pace for achievement of God’s purpose.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 45.
“A leader always has one major message, and this weaves into everything he or she does. It remains the primary focus. A leader is to some degree a prophet, a person with a message. Great leader [sic] see things that others don’t. They preach it until others can see it as well. Their message supports the mission. A leader is a preacher, a person who communicates the fire of the mission. Not all preachers are leaders, but all great leaders will be preachers of one sort or another.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 204.
“The team members we choose need to be able to fight for us and for our vision. The people we choose must have the ability to fight and win. They need to have proven themselves in spiritual battles, and they need to have triumphed. They need to be overcomers. They need to display consistently positive attitudes. These people do not just attend, support, or watch, but they must fight-for us! They shouldn’t fight only for their own victories. They need to fight for the church. They need to defend the pastor when he’s criticized and fight for the church’s reputation, spiritual health, and finances. They need to be genuine soldiers for God.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 265.
“Abraham’s method is far preferable to getting someone from elsewhere. If people do come from outside, give them time to be “baptised” into the church, so they “own” the vision like everybody else. To become true sons and daughters of the church they need to drink the milk (accept the teaching), imbibe the spirit (accept the attitude of the church), and accept the name (be proud of belonging to your congregation).” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 269.
“The people we choose must display real unity with and affinity for the vision of the senior minister and the church. In the process of selecting people for roles in the church, we ask their opinion of the leadership, the rest of the team, and the church in general. We are not looking for yes-man, but if a person has problems with the senior minister and the church, then obviously he or she will cause problems on the team and in the church.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 289.
“Whoever buys into the vision God has for the congregation develops an affinity for all that is going on.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 289.
“The leader must constantly reinforce and restate the vision.
Though the team may have heard it many times before, restating the vision keeps everyone focused on the right things. Whatever the leader speaks on, the vision is woven into the topic so that every subject is viewed with the philosophy and priorities of the ministry in mind.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 292.
“I will build my church. –Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus has a vision. He has a job to be done. He has determined to build His church. He calls men and women to work with Him to accomplish this dream. In the army of people He has enlisted are a creed called leaders.
Jesus raises up people as servants to Himself and as leaders of His people in order to fulfill His dream. He raises this army to lead His flock. He raises leaders to carry the plan of salvation to the world.
God has lofty reasons for raising leaders. Jesus has declared that He will build His church. The rock of manifest revelation is what Jesus builds His church upon.
Manifest revelation is the flash of light from heaven that pierces the souls of men and women. This is light, the life of God Himself. It is like a piece of God to us. It is food for our spirits. It is what faith is because it is clear knowing-not just thinking or hoping. It is a deep inner knowledge from heaven above.
God’s great leaders lead by revelation. Leaders must receive revelation from the Lord and take their people in that direction. It is vital that we understand what we are to preach, what we are to do, and what kind of organization we are to build through revelation from the Lord.
We must be motivated by the spiritual passion Jesus places within us. We need to build on the revelation God has given us, on our strengths, on who we are in Christ.
Good ideas are not good enough. They need to be God ideas. Just because someone else’s methods work does not mean they will work for us. God plants a unique set of gifts within each of us as leaders, enabling us to do a particular work for Him in a particular way. If we deny those, opting for something else that appeals to us, we forsake the means by which God wants to give us success (1Timothy 4:14).” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 305.
BOOK: MOVING IN THE SPIRIT
“Visions from the prophets are given to motivate their hearers to action.
One of the most sensational things on earth is a vision from God. Vision ignites fire in our spirit. It births the ‘prayer of faith’. It is imperative we see in the Spirit so we understand the will of God.” – Phil Pringle, Moving In The Spirit, pg 59.
“Visions possess greater significance than just entertainment! Visions have power.” – Phil Pringle, Moving In The Spirit, pg 66.
“The gift of faith is identified by unnatural boldness in prayer and preaching. It deals with others.
It is visionary. It views the future with absolute assurance and hope.
It thinks positively. It hates negativity.
It feeds on who we are in Christ and also our potential in Him.
It speaks to other people, to situations and often to itself.
Faith dreams and meditates on the finished results of prayer. It does not ponder anxieties.
It lifts others by injecting faith into their lives. It imparts the ability to believe and trust God.” – Phil Pringle, Moving In The Spirit, 1994, pg 90.
BOOK: TOP 10 QUALITIES OF A GREAT LEADER
“Whatever I want to achieve, I simply focus everyone on that point by using every means I have. The effective leader points people in the direction they are meant to be going. Without direction people wonder aimlessly. This is the point of leadership. We are meant to take people somewhere.
Often, it will be somewhere they don’t want to go, so the skill that convinces followers of the journey comes through communicating the vision, the goals, and the strategy to get there. If I am raising money for a building project, I preach on it. I also ask people to tell their stories of the benefits they have received through giving. We create up-market brochures and magazines that send the signal that we are serious about raising serious amounts of money. We regularly reinforce the message to our leaders. Our people must be refocused regularly. Everyone gets distracted. When we are distracted, our resources, energy, time, relationships, and money go to the distraction.
Leaders’ constant tasks are continually to bring our primary purpose to the forefront. Leaders’ pride can prevent us from repeating ourselves, casting the vision again and again. Yet this is the fuel of the organization. People are fired up by the vision. It reminds them why they are doing what they do, why they are going the extra mile, why they are making the sacrifices.” – Phil Pringle, Top 10 Qualities of a Great Leader, 2007, pg 76.
“Many times God urges us to lift up our eyes – Upgrade our vision, see further, broader, bigger. Not negative & downcast but positive & uplifting. Not self-oriented but others oriented.
I thought I had already ‘seen’ in verse 4. The point is we ‘see’ before we ‘see’. What do you see in your future. Dream your dream everyday. Your imagination is part of the creative process in your life.
Can you see sons & daughters coming from distant places? Can you see clients, customers, friends, great people coming into your life?
“Ken(?) and John called me the arch bishop the other night. But it’s sort of like that to present to you the over-arching culture and vision of where we’re going. And I really enjoy doing that.” – Phil Pringle, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8802074: (05:51-6:02), C3 Atlanta, 8:45am Sermon: ‘?’, 08/08/10.
For a very long period of time we have seen Pringle play word games and use deceptive means to convince people that his prophetic 2020 Vision from God is being fulfilled. The reason why we are tackling this issue now is because of recent footage we managed to find online.
In our first article we established that Pringle had received a ‘God-give’ vision to PLANT 1000 churches by the year 2020.
In this article we will examine how Phil Pringle is purposely going out of his way to convince his members that his church is PLANTING churches daily to ‘fulfill’ the 2020 vision.
IS PHIL PRINGLE YOUR HABAKKUK?
In the past, we critiqued a giving sermon that had Pringle twist the definition of ‘church plant’. We were being overtly cautious at the time because we believed our critics would accuse us falsely of making up the transcript or find some minor fault with us if we accused Phil Pringle of being highly deceptive.
In our “Let Me Just Talk To You Out Of A Scripture…” article, we think it is important to reiterate the following information:
In his message Phil Pringle does not seem to know basic arithmetic:
56 people + 36 wanting to plant a church + 16 churches rebranded + 2 church plants ≠ 120 Church Plants
We are almost forced to believe that Dr. Phil Pringle doesn’t have a basic knowledge of church missions and biblical terminology. Pringle is calling ‘church planting’ a “group of pastors” to be “thirty six churches” and “a guy in Bulgaria who has sixteen churches” who possibly “wants to hook” into the C3 movement…
Pringle continues to make dishonest and unsupported claims suggesting that his organisation is responsible for one church being planted every day in Jesus’ name. Pringle says, “I know you were doubting out there but it’s okay. I have my moments too. And so you and I believing together- we’ll start to see ten churches a day being planted and growing”…
Pringle begins to mix his phrases through his address so that it becomes difficult to know what Pringle actually means…
… previously in his message to garner funding he only talked about the number of churches that were being added to his movement, not how many people “will come to Christ all around the world today”. We can rightly conclude he is still talking about the 120 churches he was talking about previously because he confirmed that these churches were coming into the C3 Movement, “right now in Jesus’ name. That’s just in four weeks time”.
Pringle continues, “That’s just in the existing churches. Now once thesenew ones are coming in. And they come into Christ, they become disciples, they become empowered and they become ministries themselves”
It is important to ask whether more accurately these alleged thousands being saved from his aforementioned C3 church ‘plants’ are not rather those people in existing churches being rebranded into the C3 fold. This is flawed thinking to confuse such people who join the C3 banner with salvation into Christ. The conclusions we come too after such dialogue is not good.
If Pringle is saying churches who join C3 “come into Christ, …become disciples,” “become empowered” and “become ministries themselves”, that would make C3 a cult. That is, if Pringle believes their movement is the only true church with the right teachings and formulas for salvation then he himself has set his movement to be a cult…
The sermon that we critiqued was given on the 24th of October, 2010. We managed to get video footage of Phil Pringle later that week repeating the same false material to his staff and C3 college students.
First we want to show a video snippet that features Pringle at the start of his sermon portraying himself as a type of Habakkuk. In this snippet, Pringle stresses that leaders shouldn’t have a vision but a ‘God Vision’. As he is the leader, Pringle attempts to establish at the beginning of this sermon that he is a ‘leader’ leading by ‘example’ with his ‘God Vision’. Pringle is the Habbakuk of C3. He is the watchman and knows the future where the movement is heading. He has the vision to go forward. (Heaven forbid you question his infallible God-given direction.)
Here is the video. Below is the transcript.
“I just want to touch on a few things here today for all of us. As students and staff. Number one, is uh- vision: the importance of it. And how much we need that if we’re gonna change this world. We won’t achieve anything without a vision. But it needs to be a God vision. Okay?
Just having a vision is really not the answer. And so in all the business manuals and coaching, training, you’ll hear about how important vision is. But that’s just a vision people are dreaming up in their own mind. We need to have a God vision inside of us.” – Phil Pringle, 00:16, C3 Church Sydney and C3 College combined staff and students meeting 27 October 2010, http://vimeo.com/16260821, October 27, 2010 6:30 PM.
“Empowering saints is giving. Is delegation. It’s getting people to do things for God. And- and uh, (hm-hm!), so we- we want to release people all the time to get stuff done. And I think it’s awesome! Every- I mean, every week, just about, we see a brand new musician up on the stage. And uh- to get people preaching in chapel. All these things. But the ultimate goal is that we will get people to plant churches and grow churches all around the world.
In the last- uh- (I haven’t- I haven’t done a really detailed study on this though). Well let me- let me explain this. And I mentioned it on Sunday but for those who didn’t hear, I’ll say it again.
In Bali, (which was what? Four weeks ago? Four weeks ago? I think it was. One month? Yeah. [Crowd laughs] Thanks! Thanks Jake! It wasn’t four weeks. It was a month ago), and ah- In Bali, we had our South- East Asia conference, okay.
So a guy comes out. He says, “I’m joining the movement with my churches”. I said, “How many churches have you got?” He said, “Forty eight 48”. In a place called Myanmar [Burma]. So I said, “Okay”. And I really wanted to clear this up. I said, “It’s not just you joining? You’re actually- all these guys are coming?”
“Yep.”
Then another guy from Indonesia, (Philippines, sorry!), he was joining with eight churches. And then we were celebrating planting two churches at that time. All up that’s fifty eight churches. Right there, okay, four weeks ago. Then, another one of our overseers, has just come back from Indonesia. And he says, uh, he’s just having, he’s got thirty six churches just on their way in as well. That’s- ah- how many’s that? Ninety- ninety- four! Ninety four churches, okay?
Then, ah, in- in Africa, East Africa, the uh, the guys over there said they got about a hundred pastors and leaders. And there were thirty churches in Tanzania, Congo, bla-bla-bla, somewhere else. I thought, “I don’t know if they’re brand new or half new or whatever”. So I thought, “Oh! Just count half of them”. So that’s like a hundred and- that’s a hundred and ten. Hundred and nine actually.
Then Simon told me that he’s talking to a guy in Bulgaria. Ah- who is a really good guy. He’s got sixteen churches. And he is also hooking up. He’s got a big church, one of the biggest in Bulgaria. It’s about six hundred. That’s a big church in that part of the world. So that’s one hundred and twenty. One hundred and twenty churches in one month. That adds up to a growth rate of around about four churches a day. Okay? You know, like- I s- I- I know! I know! So, what are you doing here?
You’re getting ready to look after these churches. You’re getting ready to grow these churches.” – Phil Pringle, 24:16, C3 Church Sydney and C3 College combined staff and students meeting 27 October 2010, http://vimeo.com/16260821, Uploaded October 27, 2010 6:30 PM.
SO WHAT? WHAT ARE WE SEEING?
Let us believe Phil Pringle for a moment. Let us establish for a second that the 2020 Vision IS from God. Pringle has emphatically stated that this 2020 ‘God Vision’ or ‘God-given vision’ is to PLANT 1000 churches. But what are we seeing? We are seeing a man trying to convince his various audiences that the 2020 Vision is being fulfilled for the glory of God.
But were 120 churches PLANTED in his movement over one month? No.
If Pringle was following the ‘God Given’ 2020 vision, he would be planting churches and not rebranding, converting or assimilating churches into his movement. If he is not planting church, isn’t Pringle opposing the ‘God Given’ 2020 Vision?
What else are we seeing? Let’s say that those 120 church joined the C3 movement. What does this mean?
It means that a third of his churches were established in ONE MONTH. If any person examined his claim in ratio to the current number of churches in his movement a few months later, they’d know that Pringle was lying to them. Where are these church ‘plants’ today?
This actually raises more questions. Is the C3 Church Movement mainly made up of church plants or rebranded churches? If the C3 Church movement fills up with redbranded churches, does this mean that the movement itself is failing God and His 2020 Vision?
We are about to discover that the C3 movement is mainly filled with rebranded churches.
ARE CHURCHES REALLY BEING PLANTED OR REBRANDED?
Whenever a C3 Church plant is about to be undertaken in the C3 Church movement, the news is often huge. For example, leading up to it’s establishment, Phil Pringle and other leaders were monotonously advertising, Facebooking and twittering the C3 Hong Kong church plant. If churches were being planted everyday, Pringle and his leadership would be plastering the news everywhere. However, they don’t.
We would like to conclude that the majority of C3 churches are not church plants but takeovers. To say that churches are being rebranded is not accurate. A takeover is more appropriate since C3 specifically targets churches and assimilates them into it’s collective.
What should be evident in the above transcripts is how C3 uses their conferences to target and market to churches to join their movement. In the name of ‘relevancy’, a C3 conference can easily make local churches feel inadequate, boring and irrelevant. Who cares about the local church and cultural sensitivity when C3 is the answer to your church’s problem! (Who could resist the enticing relevant music, the flashy lights, and the manufactured presence of God?)
Consider again what Pringle said in the above transcripts.
“In Bali, we had our South- East Asia conference, okay.
So a guy comes out. He says, “I’m joining the movement with my churches”. I said, “How many churches have you got?” He said, “Forty eight 48”. In a place called Myanmar [Burma]…
Then another guy from Indonesia, (Philippines, sorry!), he was joining with eight churches. And then we were celebrating planting two churches at that time. All up that’s fifty eight churches…”
“And then Simon came back from the European conferenceand he met a guy in Bulgaria who has sixteen churches. And he wants to hook in as well.”
May we remind you again what Pringle said how he wanted people to see his Presence Conference:
“We really want to become more cross-denominational, not parochial about just being C3… And it’s so important that we just, you know, spill the banks, go over, lower the wall, let the water run through the city and be a blessing. And not out there just to drag people into- you know- and to get people into and- many people will get involved in what we’re doing and that’s good. But I don’t want that to be the only motivation that we have. I think that if we have the motivation to be a blessing beyond us, that would be a really good- a really good idea.” – Phil Pringle, C3 Leaders Meeting With Phil Pringle – May 2011, Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgTdtB-ha0s, Uploaded by CCCOF on May 5, 2011.
So we can rule out the fact that this ‘vision’ is about ‘planting churches’. We’ve now established this to be false. While we can argue that C3 does rebrand churches, it doesn’t accurately describe the malicious scheming and marketing attempts they use to target vulnerable churches through their conferences around the world. If what is said in the transcripts is true, then one third of all C3 Churches are takeovers. However, C3 appears to inform us that they have taken over more churches than they have planted.
If people are still not convinced that the 2020 Vision is a lie, this next bit of information should convince you.
THW 20/20 VISION FAILING IN VISION
We wrote an article back in December of 2011. In it we had screen grabs and older information on the location of C3 Churches around the world .
Now the date is the 27th of October 2013. All the screengrabs you see and read below are recorded on this date.
If people visit the c3churchglobal.com website, click ‘CHURCHES’ and you will come across to this page (http://c3churchglobal.com/church):
You will be taken to this map. You will notice links at the bottom of the right hand corner: “VIEW: ALL | PLANTS”. This wasn’t available two years ago. This is recently added. If you click ‘ALL’ you will see this map:
So why does the C3 Church Global have a link to PLANTS? When you click the ‘PLANTS’ link, you will see the following map:
Going by the newer information what are we looking at? There are only seven church plants in America? Five church plants in Europe? Three church plants in Europe? Four church plants in Asia? Four in the South East Asia Pacific rim? Four in Australia? About nine in New Zealand and a few around Fiji?
With the information given, that is about fourty churches in total that C3 Church considers ‘Church Plants’. Yet the C3 movement brags of planting anywhere between 240 to 400 churches worldwide? And what are the churches in blue? Church takeovers?
If this information is true, than Phil Pringle has failed spectacularly to fulfill his 2020 Vision. If God did give Pringle the 2020 Vision, then we have the C3churchglobal website exposing Pringle for the false prophet that he is.
NOTE: We would like to ask for your help next article. If you can help us find churches that C3 has taken over, please email us links, screen grabs, testimonies or other forms of evidence. Our email is c3churchwatch@hotmail.com.
Around the world for almost ten years, Phil Pringle has been promoting his 20/20 Vision. While we do not believe this vision is from God, we think it is necessary to see if Phil Pringle is indeed fulfilling the vision that ‘God’ gave him.
In this article we wish to document Pringle’s emphasis of PLANTING churches by the year 2020. We apologise to readers in advance if what is stressed in this article becomes monotonous. Hopefully, you’ll understand what we’re trying to establish in articles to come.
PLANTING 1000 CHURCHES BY THE YEAR 2020?
CHC’s propaganda paper, City News reports (emphasis ours):
C3 Church International, a global movement of over 240 churches was founded by Phil Pringle.
Pringle and his wife, Christine, started C3 Church in 1980 in Sydney, Australia, today, one of the most exciting and influential churches in the Asia Pacific region. Pringle’s 2020 vision is to plant 1,000 churches in 15 regions by the year 2020. This has resulted in a global movement of vibrant churches, which have been birthed as a result of his leadership and vision. Today, Pringle maintains an uncompromised passion to see cities changed by a contemporary, relevant and anointed church.
In another article, the CHC propaganda agent reports that the 2020 Vision is “to see 1,000 churches planted by the year 2020”.
“From Aug. 23 to 26, 1,800 pastors, itinerant ministers and full-time church employees from 22 nations gathered at the Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the tri-annual C3 Church Global Conference.
Last held in Hawaii in 2005 with an attendance of 1,100 people, the conference is part of the C3 Church movement started by Phil and Christine Pringle, senior ministers at C3 Church Oxford Falls, in Sydney, Australia. Its vision, termed “Vision 2020” is to see 1,000 churches planted by the year 2020 with an average attendance of 500 members.
Through Vision 2020, the C3 movement has grown from 71 churches in 2000 to over 300 today; from five nations in 2000 to 35 nations today, riding on an escalating momentum of revival around the world.”
In 1980, a young couple from New Zealand arrived in Sydney with their family and the vision to start a church.
Ps. Phil and Chris Pringle held their first service with just 12 people attending, but by the mid 1980’s it had grown to over 500 people. They began to start other churches and soon independent churches also joined. As the number grew, the collection of churches became known as the Christian City Church movement (now called C3 Church).
Initially C3 began planting churches around Sydney but then expanded across Australia and then the world. Currently, C3 Church has over 230 churches worldwide – in Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Region, Asia, Africa, Europe and North & South America.
The 2020 Vision is to plant and grow 1000 churches and C3 understands that to achieve this it must connect people to God, connect people to people and empower people for effective, joyful service.
Our History
C3 ChurchinRaleigh is a part of C3 Church International, a global movement of churches started by Ps. Phil and Christine Pringle, with a vision to build 1,000 vibrant local churches with an average membership of 500 by the year 2020.
We believe in faith, hope and love, a bright, colorful, positive and encouraging church atmosphere
a church that the unchurched are attracted to, filled with music, light, supernatural happenings,
vision, purpose, loving people, and great preaching.
We are irreverent, risky, fun, conservative, serious and holy.
We love people. We love each other. We really love God, and He loves us.
The above blurb helps us identify what C3 means by ‘plant’ when they say that Phil and Chris Pringle had “a vision to build 1,000 vibrant local churches”. The concept that is being articulated is similar to a seed. You plant a seed in the ground and it grows or builds up over time. Likewise, Pringle’s ‘vision’ gives people the idea that C3 plants a few people in a particular location and over time it grows or builds up to be a church. This concept is important for our readers to grasp.
Similar information is recorded on the C3 Winchcombe website:
“C3 Church Winchcombe is a part of C3 Church Global, an international movement of churches started by Ps. Phil and Christine Pringle, with a vision to build 1,000 vibrant local churches with an average membership of 500 by the year 2020.” – Let’s Introduce Ourselves, http://www.c3winchcombe.org.uk/about.html, Accessed 10/01/2012.
We can conclude that there is a template for other C3 churches to use on their websites, communicating that the Pringle’s want to plant and build 1,000 churches by the year 2020.
If we now go to the c3iglobal website we read the following,
“Our vision for C3 Church is to see 1000 Churches planted by the year 2020 with an average attendance of 500 members.” – 2020 Vision, C3 Church Global, http://c3churchglobal.com/cms/2020-vision. (Accessed 14/06/2013.)
Phil Pringle says in his personal bio on his very own C3 Church Oxford Falls website,
“My wife, Chris and I, with the kids and some good friends came to Sydney in 1980 to start a church. We had 13 people at our first service but the congregation grew rapidly and we moved buildings, bought land and built a school. We began planting churches around Sydney, then Australia, then the world; we now have close to 300 congregations in our movement. Our 2020 Vision is to plant and grow 1000 churches and we’re on target to meet this.” – About Phil & Chris Pringle, http://www2.myc3church.net/category/about-phil-chris-pringle, Accessed 30/07/2013. (Emphasis added.)
The C3ChurchGlobal website states:
“C3 Church is a place for life development. Our aim is to maximize people’s potential and help them live their best life.
Our vision is that the Church glows with the Glory of God, that men and women become disciples of Christ, and that they encounter the Presence of the Holy Spirit—they find LIFE!
This is an exciting time for C3 Church. We have a global view and perspective. We know who we are and where we’re going. Jesus said, “I will build my church.” The one Kingdom that will endure and has endured is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Our true north is the salvation of lost people.
We will continue to plant churches all over the world so God can be found and lives transformed for eternity. By the year 2020, we will see 1000 C3 Churches in cities all over the world.
This is our movement of awesome churches—C3 Church” – Our Story, About C3 Church, http://c3churchglobal.com/about-c3church, Accessed 30/07/2013. (Emphasis added.)
There is a lot of stuff that is wrong in the above statement which we will hopefully address in another article. However, it is emphasised again that Pringle wants to 1000 C3 Churches all over the world. His 2020 Vision is about PLANTING churches. Not rebranding churches, not converting a person who feels they have a church inside them.
Pringle has centered his C3 movement identity around the vision God gave him of ‘planting’ 1000 C3 Churches. If this is the vision God gave Pringle, you would expect Pringle to remain faithful to it right? Our next article will demonstrate that Pringle has been purposely deceptive about his 2020 Vision campaign.
We will end with what Phil Pringle says on his official Facebook page:
About
The official page for Phil Pringle.This page will not ask for any form of donation.If you receive a solicitation, pls contact rebekah.faith@myc3church.net
Biography
Phil Pringle is the Founder and President of C3 Church International, a global movement of over 240 churches, and the Senior Minister of C3 Church in Sydney Australia. Phil and his wife, Christine, started C3 Church in 1980 and it is now one of the fastest growing, exciting and powerful churches in Australia. An entire global movement of vibrant churches has been birthed as a result of Phil’s lead…ership and vision as he maintains an uncompromised passion to see cities changed by a contemporary, relevant and anointed church. Phil’s dynamic and relevant preaching has made him a much sought after speaker in both Christian and secular contexts, particularly in the areas of faith, leadership, ministry of the Holy Spirit, church building and kingdom principles of finance and giving.
My wife, Chris and I, with the kids and some good friends came to Sydney from New Zealand in 1980 to start a church. We had 13 people at our first service but the congregation grew rapidly and we moved buildings, bought land and built a school. We began planting churches around Sydney, then Australia, then the world; we now have close to 300 congregations in our movement. Our 2020 Vision is to plant and grow 1000 churches and we’re on target to meet this!
We’ve started C3 College for Ministry, Creative Arts and Counselling, as well as a television program and Oxford Falls Grammar School, all on around 25 acres at Oxford Falls.
I’ve always been passionate about the arts playing a major role in church to make her contemporary and relevant to the current world. Our Creative Arts stream has developed and graduated thousands of musicians, worship leaders, song writers, graphic artists, dancers, actors and film makers. I myself paint and exhibit around the world. I also love to write, so I’ve mixed these two elements together in books like Inspired to Pray, But God and 24 Hours That Saved The World – The Gospel of John in Art. My other books include Faith, Moving in the Spirit, Leadership Excellence, Financial Excellence, Leadership Files and You the Leader.
My great love is the local church. I believe she is the hope of our world today. When she functions in the power of the Holy Spirit and lives on the Word she will thrive. See you in Church!
More Christians in his church should tell Phil Pringle to “stick to the bible”. The topic of money is a common message preached at C3 Church. While we do not hear the faithful gospel preached of Christ and Him crucified, it is impossible to escape C3’s ten minute money-grubbing message. People need to face the facts. Phil Pringle has an unhealthy obsession with money and making up fables.
He clearly does not put his faith in God. Rather, Pringle puts faith in his works and finances. Question Pringle’s prosperity gospel and there is a good chance you will be labeled, criticised, ostracised, demonised or even isolated by the leadership. The tithe doctrine specifically is Pringle’s golden calf. In the past, the tithe has been called by C3 leadership the “foundation” or “cornerstone” to every believers life.
This false doctrine is both binding and destructive. This keeps poor Christians in C3 stuck in their poverty. This false doctrine has divided families and churches. Still, Phil Pringle conveniently refuses to examine the historicity and the biblical truth of the tithe. This doctrine helps no one except the false and deceptive ministry of Phil Pringle. Yet he insists Christians must tithe.
In a Sunday night sermon titled ‘Financial Excellence Part 2’ (22/05/2011), Phil Pringle slandered (blasphemed) God. He did so by putting words in God’s mouth. Pringle unashamedly went out of his way to mislead his congregation on his false tithe doctrine. Phil Pringle invented his own theology to convince and intimidate his congregation to continually financially support his ministry.
Before you read and listen to this segment of Phil Pringle, we wish to warn you of following deceptive methods false teachers like himself use on Christians.
WARNING 1: Always hold the pastor accountable to the words he uses. If he his playing with words, DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM.
WARNING 2: If a pastor is wrongfully confusing what God is saying to what he is saying, DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM.
WARNING 3: If a pastor does not read the biblical text to justify his claims, DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM. (i.e., if he tells you a biblical story and hi-jacks the biblical narrative for his own means.).
WARNING 4: Always check what the pastor is saying in the NAME of God to what God actually says in His Word.
WARNING 5: Always make sure that the Pastor is using biblical reasoning to teach you and NOT emotional manipulation (e.g., guilt, group intimidation).
Below, Pringle breaks all the rules of how a pastor should teach, behave and rightly approach biblical texts.
PRINGLE PLAYING WITH WORDS
In the below transcript you will see Pringle mislead the congregation by calling his financial insights to the bible a “bible study”. How can Pringle call what he taught a “bible study” when he never read the texts in Joshua and Genesis? He never even gave biblical references. This was not a bible study. (A bible study actually involves the pastor explaining what the bible means by reading it and handling the contexts of what is said correctly.)
Throughout the below segment, Pringle kept redefining what the tithe was in very obscure ways. He does this to convince Christians that the tithe is biblical. Ask yourself: is the tithe continually defined by Pringle as ‘a tenth’ or something else? Does it keep changing itself meaning to suit Pringle’s theology or agenda?
PRINGLE PLAYING ‘GOD-AND-SWITCH’ AS IN ‘BAIT-AND-SWITCH’
To actually grasp what Pringle is doing in this segment of teaching, please watch the video at the bottom of this article (one minute in).
Good preachers clearly distinguish when God is speaking through the scriptures. They make sure that their voice is separate from God’s so no man is confused between a man’s words and God’s Word. Not so with Pringle. Pringle at one point speaks as though God is saying something through the scriptures. However, the listener can get easily confused over either God or Pringle speaking to you.
It was incredibly difficult to transcribe this video. In particularly when Pringle said,
“If you give me that [Jericho] then the rest of the land is yours. That’s the first fruits, that’s the tithe. That’s the tree in the garden for Adam.”
Was Pringle telling us this or was he telling us this is what God was saying in the book of Joshua?
PRINGLE AVOIDING THE BIBLE AT ALL COST
Using the books of Genesis and Joshua, Pringle starts arguing his case for the tithe. He AVOIDS reading these texts to support his argument. Instead, Pringle hi-jacks the narrative, lies about God saying things He never said and makes stuff up according to his personal pet theories.
If Pringle read out Genesis 2-3 or Joshua 6-8, then any hearer would realise that the tithe is not even mentioned in these ancient documents. You don’t think Pringle knows this? And what he says isn’t new. The sermon ‘Financial Excellence’ is based off his book ‘Keys To Financial Excellence’. His teaching has been expanded and extracted from his book ‘Keys To Financial Excellence’:
Phil Pringle not only makes up his own theology in regards to the city of Jericho being a tithe, he also teaches that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and evil is the tithe. Once again, if anyone was reading Genesis 2-3, they would see that Pringle is not honest in handling the God’s Word.
PRINGLE’S MESSAGE
Below is part of the transcript we just critiqued and the video.
“So here’s the Lord saying, “You’re robbing”. You’re taking something that belongs to God. It’s the tithe. You’re sticking it in your pocket. [Inaudible] Bless me. It aint gonna happen.
There’s a guy called Achan in the scripture. And look- If I’m stirred up about anything to do with this message, it is this point I’m making right now. Because, here’s the thing, Achan- does anybody know who Achan is? Achan?
Ok. Here’s the picture. Real quick little bible study.
Joshua comes to Jericho. God says, “March around the thing- seven days. Seven days, seven times. Shout. PHEOW! The whole thing will collapse. But,” he says, “that city is the tithe.”
“Don’t touch anything in the city.” It belongs to God. The whole lot. It was ‘under the ban’ was the literal words. Devoted to destruction. “If you give me that then the rest of the land is yours. That’s the firstfruits, that’s the tithe. That’s the tree in the garden for Adam.”
It’s the firstborn of every animal born on the earth. It’s the first. It’s the tithe.
‘kay. So everybody does it.
“Phew! Don’t touch it! Don’t touch!” Achan sees a big lump of gold. He says, “I’ll take that”. Puts in his back pocket. Goes into his tent. Digs a hole. Puts it in. Hides it in a couple of garments. [Inaudible.] Digs a hole. Hides it.
The next- they’re ready to go to the next town, Ai. Little town. A-i. That’s a little name, three thousand people, bam! Just go up there. Josh is- says ‘Oh, we wont even send the whole army up. We’ll kill these guys in no time at all’. Bam! So he goes up. They get defeated.
Israel gets defeated. About thirty seven of their own soldiers die. Achan doesn’t. One of the soldiers. He doesn’t. They come back. Josh is on his face. He says, “God! How did that happen? We took Jericho with big thick walls! Then we got beaten at Ai, by a nobody group!”
God says, “Somebody took the tithe.”
He says, “What do you mean?” He says, “You gotta find out who did this.” So they find out. Do a little investigation.
“Achan. What are you doing?”
“Woah!” … This is why I’m stirred up about it. Because it’s not about just me individually. It’s about the whole church. I’ve a corporate responsibility to the entire Kingdom of God. To the whole body of Christ.” Phil Pringle, Ps Phil Pringle: Financial Excellence Part 2, http://www2.myc3church.net/videos/ps-phil-pringle-financial-excellence-part-2, Sermon (PM), 22/05/2011.
Below you can watch him say this in the snippet about one minute in.
PRINGLE LYING TO PEOPLE ABOUT GOD
Phil Pringle has a shepherds responsibility to handle God’s Word correctly and NOT lie and slander God and His word for financial gain. If anyone did do a “bible study” reading Joshua 6-8 while Pringle preached, they would notice Pringle made up things God never said.
God didn’t say,
“that city [Jericho] is the tithe.”
God did not say,
“If you give me that then the rest of the land is yours. That’s the firstfruits, that’s the tithe. That’s the tree in the garden for Adam. It’s the firstborn of every animal born on the earth. It’s the first. It’s the tithe. ‘kay.”
When Joshua consulted God in regards to his military losing the battle at Ai, God did not say to Joshua,
“Somebody took the tithe.”
Phil Pringle is making God say and teach things God never said. In other words, Phil Pringle is blaspheming by taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Firstly, this false teaching of the tithe goes against the heart of the Father, goes against Jesus and His finished work on Calvary and the Holy Spirit. Why? It is through Christ we find blessing and freedom away from the curse and condemnation of death, God’s Law and His wrath. As Christians we do not receive the Holy Spirit, God’s promise and blessing by our works. The entire letter to the Galatians makes this case. This is blasphemy no matter which way you look at it, again taking the Lord’s name in vain.
PRINGLE USING INTIMIDATION AND CROWD CONTROL
Pringle lets his emotions run in this portion of his talk. His tone is accusative against Christians for not tithing. If you watch further beyond the transcript, he starts personally confessing his works and his faithfulness to the tithe.
This does not stop Pringle teaching to his congregation that if individuals aren’t tithing, they are accused by God of “robbing,” cursed by God Himself and blocking the progress of his C3 church movement. This is This is why he says,
“I’m stirred up about it. Because it’s not about just me individually.”
The onus is on non-tithers to do what Pringle says or else. His lies mixed with his intimidation is in our opinion bullying. It is of our opinion he is using misleading tactics to force non-tithers in his congregation to tithe, using his own congregation against them. Think of it this way. After this sermon, how would members react to people who say they don’t tithe? After this sermon, do you think non-tithers would dispute this teaching against other members? Do you think they will feel isolated and alone in their thoughts on this matter?
Overall, this is a good example how a false teacher would teach and behave behind a pulpit. Phil Pringle’s false message and deceitful methods are clearly evident in this sermon.
When key church conferences or events are weeks away, Phil Pringle executes his teachings in rather peculiar ways. To the average person it sounds like what they are hearing in a Sunday service or bible study is biblical teaching.
Unfortunately this is not the case. It is becoming more evident that C3 members are being seduced by innovative marketing ploys for Phil Pringle’s conferences and events. People need to understand that Phil Pringle can often have a rather different agenda when he is preaching. It is of our opinion that his marketing ploys are becoming more manipulative.
Consider some of these statements he has made in his book, ‘You The Leader’:
“People can become anything under the right conditions.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 267.
“I don’t approach Sundays with an attitude of, “What message shall I preach?” but rather, “What do we want to achieve in our church at this time?” That desired end result determines what and how I preach. Then, within the particular message, I ask myself, “What am I trying to achieve here? What one thing am I attempting to say? What do I want these people to have or do at the end of this time?’
Then I follow the plan.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, pg. 234.
“What we preach is what we get. We are farmers sowing seed. If we are unhappy with the harvest we’re reaping, we should sow different seed. If we want different results, we preach different messages.” – Phil Pringle, You The Leader, 2005, pg 215.
It is unsettling to know that a pastor might be using his position and sermon time to manipulate people. This is what we have recorded Phil Pringle doing in the past.
You may be thinking Phil Pringle went through an unusual phase in his ministry. Not so. We have seen him behave like this for a few years now. This year we have seen Pringle misuse his power and position to market his events through his teachings. Specifically this years Presence Conference 2013 and Vision Builders 2013.
In this articles we will not give you a critique of Phil Pringle’s sermons that market people to attend Presence Conference 2013 or Vision Builders 2013. First, we invite you to look at the bizarre C3 Connect Notes study, weeks leading up to Presence Conference 2013. (Emphasis ours in underline.)
35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. John 4v35 (all references NIV)
It says: “don’t you have a saying?” We all have a saying.
– We can say one thing, but God says this: we can’t go without the presence of God.
– Moses and the people set out, but they pleaded: “Please God, don’t let us go without your presence.
The presence of God defines who you are. When people meet you they don’t just experience you, they experience God.
The church is a place of the second chance – but the church is also the house of promise.
TALK ABOUT: * Are you ready for the hour we are about to step into? Are you willing give [sic] him all of your life?
Ps Greg French moved extensively in the prophetic after this message. We would like to encourage all leaders to have a special prayer and ministry time in your connect group this week. Remember you are a sufficient minister of the Holy Spirit! ‘..Our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit..’ (2 Corin 3:5-6)
Let’s see if Phil Pringle honestly used the single verse in the ‘bible study’ in context. Did he handle the words of Jesus accurately? Does God overwrite all our sayings to correct us? Let’s see what Jesus said:
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” John 4:34-38. (Emphasis ours.)
So what has this verse got to do with God’s presence™? It doesn’t. But what is Pringle trying to say? That God will override our sayings to say something else?
Pringle used ONLY John 4:35 to explain that, “We can say one thing, but God says this: we can’t go without the presence”. This could be true BUT Jesus in his next breath says in AGREEMENT that, “the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true“. So… what is going on?
Why did Pringle exclude this? If he kept the scripture in context wouldn’t people be able to see that God can be in agreement with our sayings?
We are assuming he wants people to think like this in the bible study:
As a reader, are you ready for the hour you are about to step into: Presence™ Conference 2013?
How is it possible to give God all your life if you do not go?
Don’t you realise that God is telling you that you can’t go without the Presence™ of God?
Can’t you see that if you say “I might not go to Presence™ Conference”, God might be telling you to do the opposite?
It’s wrong for Phil Pringle to make Jesus out to be a liar. When you read the verse in its context, the entire bible study is debunked and made pointless. This seems to indicate that Pringle is misleading his entire Connect Group network with this study to try and get people to go to his Presence Conference. Quite frankly this is despicable behaviour coming from a ‘pastor’.
But it get’s worse…
WHAT IS THE C3 VISION BUILDERS DINNER & THE C3 VISION?
Before looking at the Vision Builders marketing ploys Pringle weaves in his teachings, it is important that you understand the ‘Vision Builders’ dinner.
We’ll let C3 explain what it is.
If you do not know what the ‘Vision’ of God is to Phil Pringle, it is this. (Also watch the video via below source link.)
“Our vision for C3 Church is to see 1000 Churches planted by the year 2020 with an average attendance of 500 members.” – 2020 Vision, C3 Church Global, http://c3churchglobal.com/cms/2020-vision. (Accessed 14/06/2013.)
With this in mind, it is time to look at how Phil Pringle convinces people to sign up for the ‘Vision Builders’ dinner so they can make financial pledges to C3 Church’ building initiatives.
VISION BUILDERS MARKETING GIMMICKS
Here is what you will find advertised on the myc3church website. Ask yourself this question: Who “prepares a table” for you? God or C3?
To reduce the size of this article, we will only look at C3’s Vision Builders video and C3’s latest ‘bible study’ Connect Notes.
Here is the video.
The transcript reads:
“What a humbling thing it is to realise that God, the Creator of the universe, maker of heaven and earth, has prepared a table for you. Long before you acknowledged Him, your place had been set, the invitation extended. Taste and see that the Lord is good. It was not a place you could earn or deserve. You were lost. Dead. But now, you are found alive, caught up in his great story. And so before you is a banquet. A feast of provision. That you may play a part in the midst of darkness bringing the light.”
Like other Vision Builders dinner, Pringle encouraged people to bring their wallets to the table and make pledges to the C3 building fund. (Quick reminder: The light is Jesus, not our money.)
There is something seriously wrong with the video presentation. Do you think this advert has gone one step further than worldly marketing? How do you feel when you watch this? Who is really preparing the table? God or Pringle? Who is really asking people to give cash? God or Pringle? Who is asking you to expand in your sacrificial giving? God or Pringle?
The lines were deliberately blurred to entice and pressure C3 members to give sacrificially. But would God really want people to give financially at this event?
C3 BIBLE STUDY CONNECT GROUP NOTES
If that’s not disturbing enough, look how Phil Pringle in the last two weeks planned out the C3 Church bible study connect group notes.
You can see bible passages are being twisted in these Connect Notes when Pringle wants people to ask these questions:
TALK ABOUT:
* Have you ever had a time of stretching with God?
* Are you ever tempted to “bail out” or “dig up the seed” in waiting for God to grow something in you?
* Does it encourage you when God says you shall expand or His people will inherit?
TALK ABOUT:
* What is your part of God’s grand design? Are you looking to the Bible to affirm the plan of God? * Discuss how our church leadership and vision is always exhorting us to expand and look out. * Are you involved in the width, the length, the depth or the height of his plan? Where is God calling you? [Note Pringle’s allusion to * How are you investing in the future of His magnificent house? How can we each step up rather than only attend meetings?
These questions should be properly revealed this way:
* Have you ever had a time of stretching with Phil Pringle pressuring you to give money?
* Are you ever tempted to “bail out” or “dig up the seed” because Phil Pringle keeps telling you, “God [wants] to grow something in you”?
* Does it encourage you when Phil Pringle says you shall expand or His people will inherit?
* What is your part of Phil Pringle’s grand design? Are you looking to the Bible to affirm the plan of Pringle (or testing what He says to what God says)?
* Discuss how our church leadership and vision is always exhorting us to expand and look out.
* Are you involved in the width, the length, the depth or the height of Pringle’s financial plan? What is Pringle calling you to do?
* Discuss how you are investing in the future of Phil Pringle’s ministry? How can we each step up rather than only attend meetings?
What’s the answer to the last question? “How are you investing in the future of His magnificent house? How can we each step up rather than only attend meetings?” Answer: Go to Vision Builders.
Is this biblical? Do people realise they are being financially duped by Phil Pringle? Do they know what they are hearing is not the biblical context but a deceptive marketing scheme? How should members feel if they are being manipulated like this? Is this the way Phil Pringle should run his church?
Please pray that members get wisdom and and understanding so they do not put themselves under financial stress.
In the below quote, Pringle narcigetes 2 Samuel 30:6 to justify, explain and warn his congregation on some peculiar things. It is clear in his use of the text he seems to somehow see himself as a ‘king’ over his church and within the offline or online communities. To clarify, the New Testament does NOT teach that a pastor is a king, nor is Phil Pringle Jesus or Moses. If you have been reading the various articles on Phil Pringle here, it should be pretty clear he is clearly a false teacher and a false prophet. It is this type of person Jesus warns us against in Matthew 7.
In this article, we reveal Pringle provides some interesting information in a sermon he gave in 2011.
Pringle teaches that people in his church may “get wounded” and experience “distress” and “grief”. If it was the world persecuting the church that is understandable. However, Pringle provides the context of his warning. He says Christians in his movement could experience with other Christians (in or outside his movement) traumatic experiences that may test their loyalty to him and his movement. If it’s gossip this is understandable. However, once again – the point of controversy within the framework of his teaching evolved around him. Which leads to our next point.
Pringle reveals he has been approached by people who have said that they will “go to the newspaper”. He emphasises that he has heard people say this “many times” to him. This tells us that people HAVE expressed their concerns to him and he has rejected them, their reports or corrections. The result being, people have seemingly stated to Pringle they will “go to the newspaper” because issues were not personally resolved with Pringle.
Pringle alerts us to the fact he is aware what people are saying on Facebook and blogging communities about him and his movement. In June 2011, MyC3ChurchReview (MC3CR) was established around the time C3ChurchWatch started up. It is possible that Pringle may have been referring to the manager of the MC3CR site who also started a twitter account with about three followers. In spite of what is being said online regarding his teaching or practices, he has shown that he would rather mock them or ‘stone them’. This only goes to show Pringle refuses to be corrected or deal with certain false doctrines, his false gospel, scandals within his movement, bad behaviour or false methodologies.
Here is the transcript:
“The leader who had transformed their lives, turned them into men (feared by the entire country side)- now they want to stone him because they are in such grief because the “soul of all the people was grieved. Every man for his sons and his daughters.”
When people are upset they want to blame somebody. And, “Isn’t he the guy who led us down to do this battle down there? Let’s just stone him!”
It happens. It’s not- not uncommon. Moses. “Isn’t he the guy? Let’s stone him!” Jesus. “Let’s stone Him!” You know. These guys had a- they we’re always addicted to getting stoned. [Audience laughs] It’s like, “Let’s just stone him! Let’s just throw stones! Let’s gossip! Let’s go to the- let’s go to the newspaper!”
Argh! Golly! How many times I heard that? “I’m gonna get all the press down there and yuhyuhgruhyuh!” You think it doesn’t happen? There may even be a day when you’re tempted to think that because something happened when you want out to battle and family members or friends or yourself- you get wounded and you’re in such distress, such grief- that’s the moment where there’s deep loyalty tests.
And you find those moments in life! Everybody does! “I’m gonna Facebook them! Obladyuhyuhyuh!!!” “You wont like any of this on my blog baby! Iya-blurdludludludludle!!! Blog away!” Everybody can have a shot of being heard! I’m gonna tell the whole world, “You’ve got three followers on Twitter!” – Phil Pringle, Ps Phil Pringle: Prayer 4 – I Like People, http://www2.myc3church.net/videos/ps-phil-pringle-prayer-4-i-people, 77:01, C3 Oxford Falls, Sunday Night Service, 25/09/2011.
There is one last thing to consider. Don’t you think it’s odd that Pringle implies that he’ll only listen to you depending on how big your following is on twitter? What other standard must a Christian uphold so that Phil Pringle might listen to their concerns and act on them?
We’ll end with Mark Dever talking addressing the faulty ‘church growth’ standard and application that ministers like Pringle adhere too.
Ezekiel 37:7 (NLT) ‘So I spoke these words, just as he told me. Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley.’ The Spirit anoints obedience. Ezekiel spoke ‘as he was commanded’. We’ve been told to ‘preach the gospel to every creature’. As the prophet spoke, the Spirit moved. When we do our gift, the power of God will empower us. When we do what is not our gift or calling, we are in our own strength = failure, burnout etc. Say what He tells you to say. Don’t add or subtract. When we ‘preach the gospel’ His Word, His Spirit will accompany us with the supernatural manifestation of what we preach! When God’s Word is spoken & the Holy Spirit starts to move people are rattled! Don’t get nervous. It’s a revival of dead bones. When the bones in the valley start rattling get ready for revival. There are moments when God moves ‘suddenly’. Get ready – Now is one of those times, We speak & it happens, suddenly. There’s always a noise when God starts moving. Shouting, music, signing, clapping, preaching. With every NEW move of God comes a NEW sound – voice, song, music. The culture of a move of God is carried in the sound. – Don’t reject the unfamiliar just because it’s ‘new’- New Wine = New wineskins.” – Phil Pringle, Spirit powered obedience, http://philpringle.com/_blog/Phil_Pringle_Blog/post/Spirit_powered_obedience, 23/03/2012. (Accessed 02/10/2012).
Pringle’s bible garble comes close to breaching the scripture here in Galatians 3 where he says “When we do our gift, the power of God will empower us”:
“I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?” Galatians 3:2-5
Pringle is right when he says “We’ve been told to ‘preach the gospel to every creature’.” But once again, Pringle is attacking the simple gospel message. How?
When he says, “The Spirit anoints obedience,” how does this work in light of 1 John 2:20 saying “you have an anointing from the Holy One?” How did we get the “anointing from the Holy One?” The truth of the New Testament points us that the Holy One (Jesus) gave us His anointing NOT that we earn the anointing in our obedience. Rather it is what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf that made us worthy to be His anointed people through His Holy Spirit.
When we come to know Christ, we are anointed, marked by the Holy Spirit Himself. The anointing is not something we earnt out of our obedience. It was out of Jesus’ obedience that we have been anointed by God to be His people, to continue the work of Christ and represent the truth and love of God here on earth by faithfully preaching the gospel and His Word.
When Pringle says “Say what He tells you to say. Don’t add or subtract,” he is clearly reading into the biblical passage without understanding he is adding works and his own ideas to Gods Word and removing (subtracting), the simple gospel truth of what Christ has done.
What makes this garble worse is that this passage is about Israel. This is not about how we are to make a 21st century revival. We encourage you to read Ezekiel 37 in it’s entirety. This passage is not about “Shouting, music, signing, clapping, preaching.” How did he get, “Don’t reject the unfamiliar just because it’s ‘new'” out of this passage? Why is Pringle plucking things out of the air and reading things into this scripture that are just not there?
How can any C3 member trust what Pringle teaches if he makes stuff up out of the scriptures like this? This is completely out of line and illogical.
“If you are the Son of God, speak to these stones to become loaves of bread.” Matthew 4:3
Jesus responded with the following.
“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4
Just like Satan, Pringle below is teaching the Body of Jesus Christ to speak to their difficulties to become mammon. In fact, we have written in the past how Pringle’s idea of faith is practically connected to the ‘faith’ of the occult.
This video reveals Pringle’s inept ability to handle scripture correctly to justify his pagan faith. Pringle reduces Jesus (the Word of God Himself),to a tool, wand, law and principle, to prophesy (to speak or confess) things into existence. It becomes evident that Pringle’s double speak reveals that his confession is “Jesus is law” not Lord. For someone who doesn’t “box God” or “limit God”, Pringle does a tremendous job of enslaving God to serve his lips and heart. (See more double-speak towards end of the article.)
To Pringle, Jesus is nothing but a pagan entity summoned to fulfill Pringle’s desires. D.R. McConnell and Hank Hanegraaf document how Word Of Faith heretics like Pringle deify man and reduce the sovereignty of Christ, their historical research linking these heretical teachings to the teaching one finds in the occult. As a result of Pringle’s occult teachings, Pringle’s mutilation of the biblical texts is horrendous.
Pringle’s use of John 1 is highly blasphemous. For a start we were never in the beginning with God. To allegorise John 1 to say our beginning is 2011 and we can have the laws of the Word to speak to our future is delusional at best. The use of these biblical passages are so rorted, it is hard to dispute rationally how Pringle is so inept. Nothing in John 1 supports Pringle’s claim that we are to speak to our new year beginnings to get the things we want in the future.
Pringle’s use of Mark 11:12-14; 20-25 is not teaching us to speak to our sickness and debts in ‘faith’. While Pringle also uses “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” (Proverbs 18:21), he treats this to be some kind of magic ritual to summon Jesus like a pagan God to do the things Pringle desires. But this passage simply talks about the influential power the tongue has over our lives and others so we can reap blessing or destruction.
Pringle also shamelessly Hebrews 10:23 here says, “Let us hold fast the confession” and then stops conveniently to continue shaping his loopy origami theology. What’s the context?
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:18-23
He is turned the church’s universal faith confession of Christ’s finished work into a money-grubby, confess-for-gain magic formula. He also unashamedly lies about what Jesus says in the bible. Jesus does not say, “You’re dried up from the roots.”
Different Spirit, Different Jesus, Different Message
Below is the transcript:
“This morning, I want to talk about creating a future. Not just trying to weather forecast what’s going to happen but actually making what’s going to happen, happen. You become partners with God in creating a future. And the greatest tool that I know for making that happen is prophesying.
One of the reasons the bible has- about one third of it’s statements are prophecies- or written by prophets, is because if they didn’t say it, it wouldn’t happen. God makes things happen through words. God created the universe through words. And at the beginning of a new year like 2012, in the beginning was the Word. Amen!
So I want us to be able to have in our lives . . . I believe in our lives we can have this Word. And we find this Word is God. That’s the amazing thing. When you speak the Word of God into a circumstance, you’re not just speaking words. You’re actually speaking God into a situation.
You can never afford to underestimate the power of your words. You have the power of life or death in your tongue. And one of the first things the devil will try and do in your world is destroy your confession or your profession, try and mangle your words or corrupt your speech so that you find yourself constantly complaining, declaring negative things about your life. “I’m to this, I’m too old, I’m too big, not skilled enough, that’ll never happen for me, this modemo [?] doesn’t work, my car’s so old, I never have enough money-“
People say that sort of stuff all day long and wonder why their lives are so awful You have got to change your mouth. You’ve got to let your tonguebe born again. I mean I know that the money issue is a big issue for some people but THIS is even bigger. I think it’s easy to convert my wallet than it is to convert my tongue. God is so specific about it all the way through scripture – ‘In the beginning’ of 2012, what are you going to prophesy about this year? What are you going to say? “Yeah I’ve tried that before but things went wrong.”
Did you keep on saying it? “No. I just agreed with the wrong things.” That’s called walking by sight not by faith. Cos you see the things that are going wrong and you’re saying, “All things are going wrong.”
You’re meant to walk by the Word Of God and speak what it’s saying, no matter how long it takes for that circumstance to conform to the reality you are speaking. Your reality is a higher reality then what’s surrounding you. It doesn’t negate it. I’m not talking about some denial or a Christian Science thinking where we don’t even acknowledge that there is evil. No there is evil. There’s things that go wrong. No denying that!
But you see, one law defeats another law in the worlds of God. Okay, their is a law of gravity. There’s a law of gravity. It’s very powerful law. It works all day long. It works as you get older in a very serious manner, amen.
There’s this gravity that pulls- keeps us on earth! It’s good. But it makes things fall. But you know? There’s a law of aerodynamics. You can overcome the law of gravity. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means you found a law that overcomes another law. And if you push the thing forward with a certain winged structure, you lift off and gravity has no power over you. You’ve beaten it.
[5:19] And so when you have things going wrong in your life, there is a law by which you can actually transform that thing. And that’s by understanding that in the beginning of anything that God does, is the Word. At the beginning. It’s the seed of your future.
The beginning of this year, 2012, make sure the Word, the Word of God is in your lips. and the Word about this coming year. OK. Now we suddenly go to a new word here. He was in the beginning. When Jesus was on earth, He went about doing good in healing all who were oppressed by the devil. [6:02] The Word is Jesus. It’s not an ‘it’. It’s ‘He’ was in the beginning with God.
[6:10] As soon as you start speaking the bible, the scriptures, into your circumstance, Jesus leaps out of your mouth and starts walking into your circumstance, casting out demons, healing the sick, stilling the storm, walking on water supernaturally, making things happen that wouldn’t happen unless you did it.
[6:31]Here’s the thing guys. When I first discovered this, which was nearly forty years ago, I- I was nervous about sharing it with anybody. Cos I thought, ‘If they get a hold of this, there will be too much competition. This is really good! It works! Aw! I’m not going to tell anybody! It’s like I got a secret here that-‘
The Lord said, ‘Share it and I’ll give you more’.
‘Alright.’ So I shared it. But I didn’t need to worry. I don’t need to worry at all. Cos nobody does it. You see cos you’re sitting here going, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah’ but you’re going to walk out of here. You gotta do this!”
It’s not agreeing with me going, “Yeah! Amen! Wow! That’s powerful!
[8:00] “I’m talking about a thing called the Word of God. And it is more enduring and powerful than anything you’ve got within your reach. And when you start to speak that, you’re putting something into your world, into your future that is undefeatable because it’s Jesus Himself. And they tried to crucify him once. It didn’t work. He’s a get-up-and-go kinda guy. And he just got up out of that grave. Death couldn’t hold him. Sickness couldn’t hold him. Killing him couldn’t hold him. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your circumstance, it can’t hold you down if you’ll put the Word of God into your circumstance. Resurrection comes into your finances, comes into your family, comes into your home, comes into your people, into your work, into every area of your life.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. Oh- now you got me going. . .
[10:04] All things were made by Him. Not evolved. They were made complete and finished. They were complete. We’re going the other way guys! We’re not going up. We’re gonna- the earth is going to fold up and all be gone. I- and you know I’m just grieving. If it was anybody, I would save the tigers. But the fact is, is- the deal is that the bible says, “Oh! It’s decaying. It’s physical. It’s got a lifespan. It’s got a shelf-life.” He says, “I’m making you a new eternal home.” And he only took six days with this one. He’s taken two thousand years with the other one. The new one. Can you imagine what it’s gonna be like? This place is pretty amazing.
So here He is. All things are made by Him and without Him, nothing was made that was made. Everything’s beautiful in the world. Jesus is beautiful. Mountains, oceans, bananas, pelicans, you. It’s all beautiful! Mostly. Amen! No, you are!
Without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life. The life was the light of men. Light shines in the darkness and the darkness didn’t comprehend it. Or in other versions, ‘did not overcome it’. All right!
So, God’s spoke and said, ‘Let there be light’. That’s how He did it. What are you going to prophesy over your year ahead? What are you gonna say?
And once you’ve stated it, Hebrews 10:23 here says, “Let us hold fast the confession-” that word is also profession, which is a Greek word: homologia. And that means to speak the same thing. I’m writing in tongues.
Let us hold fast the profession- hold it fast cos it slips away. Your salvation is based on this: “He who believes with his heart and confesses with his mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord shall be saved.”
And so here’s the thing. Once you’ve got this profession in your life. This confession of hope or this confession of faith, without wavering, you’ll discover that God is able to bring to pass the words you are speaking. When you combine what you are wanting to happen with God’s Word, you’ll find faith comes on the inside of you to actually bring it to pass.
Jesus did this . . . over in Mark 11 verse- when he’s speaking about a fig tree. It says, “Now in the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.” I mean, some of you got some stuff you needed dried up from the roots. But a- he says, “And Peter remembering him remembering him said, Rabbi, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered away. So Jesus answered him and said, Have faith in God. I say to you, Whosoever says to this mountain, Be removed and be cast into the sea; and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things that he says will come to pass; he shall have whatever he says.”
[13:28] The reason you need to hold fast the confessional profession of your faith, is because once you start speaking it, [it] doesn’t immediately appear to change anything. It’s not a Harry Potter magic wand thing. Woo! BAM!!! And it just changes.
When Jesus spoke to that fig tree nothing looked different. It looked exactly the same. The surprise was the disciples the next day saying, “Look! That fig tree’s now died!” It didn’t look dead yesterday the way- leaves are still waving in the wind. Your debts are hanging around in the wind. The sickness is still waving in the wind. Leaves are still there. The tree’s looking good. But Jesus said, “You’re dried up from the roots.” But it was still there. It still looked alive.
It took a day to take effect. If Jesus’ words take a day to effect, you should not be worried if something you’re saying is taking a year. Amen. He did live on a slightly different plain to the rest of us. So what you are saying with your mouth is forming your world. And if you are unhappy with your would as it is, the thing that changes is not to try to change your world but change the thing that’s making your world, which is your mouth. And you have complete control and government over that thing.
But you know, you know James says the tongue, is very hard to control. Slippery little sucker aint it and you know. Kay. It just comes out. And isn’t it awful when you something and you’re- and it’s gone out and you’re going, “I wish I didn’t say that.” And you want to pull it back. It’s a very powerful thing, your mouth. You don’t want to underestimate it and think, “I can say what I like. But God’s still bigger- He’s gonna make things happen. He’s given you laws to live by, principles to live by- and you can’t blame Him for stuff actually has comes out of our activities.
There’s no good- if you drive on the wrong side of the road and you have a smash, don’t go down to the Roads & Traffic Authorities saying, “Hey! I had a smash you guys!” They’ll say, “What side of the road were you driving on?”
“Well, I drove on that side. I just felt like I wanted to. You know. It’s my time to drive on the other side of the road.” Well that’s – you missed the point. We do it because it’s not our fault. We have got responsibility for saying, “You know what? I’ going to use my tongue as a powerful instrument for creating the future. In the beginning of 2012, I resolve inside my self, that I’m going to control this sucker. And I’m actually gonna bring about all kinds of beautiful things in my life because God has given me the power of creativity. I’m a child of a creator. [15:55] And in my life is the same genetic code that’s in His life. He created by speaking. I am- like a child of His, will create my world by speaking into it in Jesus name.” And every body said: Amen.”
Jesus is Pringle’s wand to get what he wants. His allusions to witch craft (Harry Potter) and Christian Science indicates he possibly knows what he is peddling. If he is dead honest in his confession that ‘God’ spoke to him about this ‘secret’ , then he has heard from a demon. Pringle’s faith is not taught in Christianity. But his teaching is promoted in the metaphysical cults and the occult. Ronda Byrne’s book, ‘The Secret’ reveals Pringle’s true spirituality. Read here.
If you follow this article, we record Pringle teaching people they are “involved with a person, not just a principle, living this Christian life is a whole lot different.” This is clearly double speak again.
Finally, to stress emphatically the source of this teaching, we would like to point out Pringle saying,
“When I first discovered this, which was nearly forty years ago, I- I was nervous about sharing it with anybody. Cos I thought, ‘If they get a hold of this, there will be too much competition. This is really good! It works! Aw! I’m not going to tell anybody! It’s like I got a secret here that-‘
The Lord said, ‘Share it and I’ll give you more’.”
Pringle indeed has “a secret”. Once you compare Pringle’s faith to New Age Rhonda Byrne’s ‘faith’ in her book ‘The Secret’ above, a plausible claim can be made that Pringle is receiving a demonic doctrine. Pringle has made a deal with a spirit that is not of God. This spirit is not the Holy Spirit. It is not God. Why? Jesus says this about the Holy Spirit,
“Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” John 16:7-12
The spirit Pringle got this ‘secret’ from simply reduced Jesus to a spiritual law, confined to a sinners lips. It glorifies the sinner and takes glory away from God. This spirit has convinced Pringle that he could be like Jesus and speak to his circumstantial stones to become mammon.
It is sad to see such a man applauded by a congregation who does not test his teachings against God’s Word. If you feel led, please pray for Phil Pringle and those in the C3 movement who are deceived by his false teachings.
C3 Church Watch 