Church reviews / Pennsylvania
★
Hilltop Baptist Church
Today we will be looking a church that one of our readers has asked us to review, Hilltop Baptist Church of Pittsburgh, PA lead by Pastor Mike Gestrich. Thanks to the vast far reaches of the internet most churches have made it possible to review them via their websites and media centers. As always we like to be as fair and accurate as possible with our review of churches, especially when we do one via the web and have never personally visited said church. In order to do a proper and fair review we spend a lengthily amount of time researching the church and watching or listening to the Pastor preach his sermons to gain a fair assessment of what he is or is not teaching. We are always open reviewing churches suggested by our readers. If you want a church reviewed please email us in our contact section and we be glad to asset you.
If you do not live in the Pittsburgh, PA area you can visit Hilltop Baptist at www.thehilltopbaptistchurch.org. This is the site from which we will be gathering our information for this review. As with any church that we are asked to review a good place to start is at the begging and in this case the begging is in the What Do We Believe section. In this section we find Hilltop’s state of faith, which is your typical Baptist statement of faith. They seem to profess belief in all the essential doctrines of Christianity and have their beliefs backed by correct biblical scriptures.
While a church can have a great statement of faith that says all the right things the real meat is in the preaching. A church must follow their statement of belief in the pulpit otherwise the statement of faith is pointless. Sense the real meat and potatoes come from the pulpit we have taken the time to listen to several of Hilltop’s sermons preached by Pastor Mike Gestrich. These sermons can be found at http://www.thehilltopbaptistchurch.org/media.php?pageID=34 for your own review and listening pleasure.
Upon listening to several of the available sermons preached at Hilltop Baptist church we have gotten an overall impression that there seems to be a lot of Law and little Grace being preached from this pulpit. We are not saying this meaning that the preaching is overall bad just that Pastor Gestrich could preach more Grace and a little less Law. This over emphasis on the Law can be demonstrated in several of his sermon series like Broken Things for example. While in this sermon series the overall message is biblical, Gestich has taken the blessing we receive from God and have made it conditional upon what we do. If this is the case that our blessings are based upon the condition of what we do than our blessing hence become a matter of our works not God’s blessings from His Grace for His elect. They stop in every sense being blessings but become works. Again this is not to say that the over all preaching that is coming from the pulpit is not biblical. We are just pointing out an area that needs to be improved upon.
After reviewing the available sermon series we can conclude that the preaching style of the Pastors at Hilltop Church are more over a Topical style rather than a exegetical, verse by verse, style. The Topical style of preaching does lend it’s self to some questionable habits within the purpose of preaching. For one thing, with this style of preaching story telling and joke telling can be come a center stage attraction instead of God and His Word. Sad to say we did note in almost every sermon preached at this church an opening joke or story to kick of the preaching. This can be problematic in the overall sense that when a pastor is up in the pulpit it’s time to hear and learn about God and His word not to tell jokes or stories that distract from the teaching of His Holy Word. While it seems that the Pastors at Hilltop are trying to do their best with this Topical approach to the sermon giving they may want to try a more strait forward biblical of just preaching what the bible says. They may want to leave the jokes and stories for after church.
Another area of concern for us is in their use of alter calls after every service. In Scripture we do not find the use of altar calls in the New Testament church after the word has been preached. The use of altar calls is a relatively new practice that came about in the mid-19th century. The use of altar calls after every service can lead to a misrepresentation and judgment of the effectiveness of the message being preached by the pastor. Pastors often gauge the effectiveness of their message on the congregation by how many people come forward during the altar call. Nowhere in the New Testament is this talked as an effective measure of the effectiveness of God's word. if a church is trying to be biblical in its representation of the word than the altar call should not be used as a standard method for setting new converts.
As typical with most Baptist churches they hold to the Old Testament teaching of tithing in order to receive blessings from God. Many churches and denominations misrepresent the teaching of the Old Testament tightening practices as a standard for New Testament giving for their church's. Churches that hold to the teaching that tithe is still necessary are promulgating the teaching of the Law and not Grace under the New Testament. They oftentimes teach that in order for you to be blessed by God you must tithe otherwise you will not be blessed. In the New Testament we are told to be cheerful givers and to give according to our hearts not according to the Tithe. Churches like Hilltop that teach on tithing in this fashion are causing a dangerous mix of legalism pitting Scripture against Scripture and are not teaching the true meaning of New Testament giving.
Over all Hilltop Baptist Church is a biblical church and preaches the word of God. While like everyone and every church we all can’t get everything right all the time, if you find the perfect church run because you will ruin it. We are all growing in our sanctification as we walk with the Lord; this goes for Pastors and church bodies too. Hilltop Baptist Church is no exception to this growth in sanctification. While the pastors of this church should work on just preaching the word of God strait and simple and leave being relevant to the culture outside the church they are not unbiblical in their approach in speaking the Gospel. If you are attending this church pray for your Pastor that he may preach the Word of God with out compromise from the pulpit.
