I've been struggling with how to share my viewpoin...

I've been struggling with how to share my viewpoints on where Bayside is heading as a church for a few months now but I finally felt equipt enough to write a review on them. I have attended Bayside pretty regularly for the past five years and while I've definitely seen the church go through it's share of ups and downs, I have loved being a member of this Christian community. I have made many great friends and my faith and maturity have grown greatly from the teachings they have provided and the community I've been a part of. No church is perfect, however something has changed in the past year with Bayside and the changes are not good.

Several red flags have come to my attention over the past year that concern me greatly and have seriously made me consider wanting to find a new church. For the most part, Bayside has always been a great expository verse by verse teaching church with their focus being on the Gospel and Word of God as well as serving the community. I have begun to see a dangerous trend though in their worship, the preaching styles lately, who they promote from the pulpit, and the topics of their weekly messages.

Bayside has "weekend" worship teams who are talented musicians but they choose generic contemporary worship music to sing each week. I am not saying they need to be writing their own music, but I wish they chose better worship songs. What I mean by that is for the most part, all Bayside sings is Hillsong songs. That is not bad in and of itself. Many Hillsong songs are biblical and come from a great heart of worship for the Lord. Bayside unfortunately has done more than just sing the songs of Hillsong. Several times, especially in the past year or so, Bayside has praised Hillsong church in their sermons as well. If you know anything about Hillsong as a church, you know why this is a problem. The Hillsong community of churches are word-of-faith humanistic Pentecostal ministries that preach primarily the prosperity gospel of health and wealth. This is false doctrine and so incredibly dangerous, especially for a church with such a large world-wide platform. Sin and repentance are barely ever preached from a Hillsong pulpit. I question the discernment of Bayside pastors when they support dangerous ministries like Hillsong. Recently as well, the worship team sang a Jesus Culture song. Stemming from Bethel church in Redding, California, Jesus Culture is false to the core. We as Christians should have nothing to do with their heresy. What we do when we promote their music is we tell people we support their ministries too (the Bible is very clear about how we should handle false teachers.) Unknowing new Christians will seek out where the songs came from and start adding the church podcasts to their phones or watching their sermons online and be fed false messages leading them away from the cross.

I can genuinely say that over the past five years Bayside has done an amazing job preaching God's word in interesting and convicting sermons each week.I've been feeling much less equipt lately though with the messages Bayside preaches. The messages are lukewarm and provide little in the way of growth or maturity for the Christain's life. I am noticing with each new sermon they preach, how much more they are starting to resemble the prosperity gospel.

Overall, I definitely think Bayside has solid Christians who love Jesus and want to grow their faith, but something dangerous is changing the church's focus in a bad way and I'd say if I had to recommend a church for a new believer or seasoned Christian alike, I'd say look somewhere else. Sadly I've seen Bayside grow into a church who cares more about attendance and making people feel good than tending to their flock and building up genuine believers. My best advice would be to test everything they do and say to Scripture. If you start seeing things not align with God's Word and heart, pray for the church and pray for wisdom and direction from the Lord on whether or not Bayside is a healthy fit for you as a Christian community.