I’m sorry, but I really need to deconstruct this….

Some people follow sports, some follow reality television, some follow the news and the markets, while others, like myself, have in their quiver of interests more obscure fascinations.  So….I still occasionally observe the going’s on of a growing ecclesiastic franchise  that was fundamental in shaping, both for good and ill, my perspective of the church-scape of America.

Yes, I am again pontificating on the business-driven corporate culture of the megachurch, specifically as represented by NewSpring.

About once or twice a month, I make a point to visit Perry Noble’s blog, just to see which way the wind is blowing at that particular place. Just recently, I found this gem of insight, Two Types of Church Planters, wherein Noble, artificially and self-servingly I think, bifurcates church planters into two groups, those with The Victim Mentality and those with The Victory Mentality, a success-driven framework that would make any C.E.O., or L.Ron Hubbard for that matter, proud.

What I find in Noble’s post is an abject lack of anything resembling grace and humility, but more of an American and business-like ‘just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,’ attitude that stands in sharp contrast to the Christian ethos of generosity, humility, and mercy. Perry infers that he and his church did it, got successful without outside help or handouts, and it is inferred, so should you. Such attitudes are understandable because you generally do not expect quiet mercy and grace from a measurable-driven corporate entity, and that is exactly the foundation upon which so many American churches set themselves.

My overarching question to Perry is this: Good for you that you never had to humble yourself to ask for ‘hand-outs’ or discounts, but how did your acquire the funds to grow your church and to attend those ubiquitous ‘leadership’ conferences to begin with? I will tell you. You shilled for funds and then people gave you money in the form of tithes and donations. You did not design a product and sell it on the market to make a profit so as to use said profits to fund your excursions. So, how dare you chastise a poor, struggling church plant, essentially call them losers, that dares ask your multimillion dollar church for help. What one finds in Perry’s post is a breath-taking example of hypocrisy and pride. Quite frankly, I think a Divine favor has been set upon a church that they should not be able to attend one of Noble’s business/leadership seminars.

Ultimately, the hyper-focus on business-driven, and often narcissistic, leadership skills and the elevating of tangible measurables as an indicator of success leads a church to a place of arrogance and pride. The counting of ‘salivations’ is ultimately not the job of the church. Such is reserved by God for the angels on the day when wheat and chaff are separated. It may be bold hubris on the part of a church to take that task upon themselves so as to measure the success of their efforts and methods.

Further, the measuring of a persons righteousness by the percentage of their income given to a church is wrong on so many levels that I could exhaust hours on the subject, but so many churches do just that, teaching an errant doctrine of tithing, using inferred condemnation upon the already-redeemed Christian as a manipulative catalyst for giving in order to increase the bottom line of the business. Income is an easy measurable. Ask yourself this, if you attend NewSpring, how many times, in the course of a year, do you hear a message on tithing. When I attended, I would roughly estimate I heard a tithing message at least six times a year.

Sadly, many aspiring and eager church planters, seeing the growth, glamor, and success, seek in good intention to model their churches and methods after NewSpring, Elevation, and fellow travelers. (As an aside, if Elevation’s Code does not make the Christian nervous, make one squirm, over their somewhat cultic proclamations, especially that ‘pastor’s vision’ thing, nothing will. It deserves it’s own polemic post) Quite honestly, these franchises are not always wrong in all they do all the time. I believe you will find many therein who are fervent in their love for the Messiah. That all being said, one cannot give a pass to those who are fundamentally redefining the nature of  the church. I think, on the day of Judgement, there will be some small church in some big city that never grew large numerically but was faithful in their selfless caring for one another, that did not compromise the Gospel, that did not sacrifice orthopraxy on the altar of pragmatism, that will be far more highly exalted in the Kingdom that some multi-campus megachurch video franchise that lost sight of the fact that the Messiah is our faithful Shepherd gently tending after His sheep rather than an example of cooperate American leadership.

In closure, it is so interesting that NewSpring has ‘ownership’ classes rather than membership classes wherein you can speak to other ‘owners’. More disturbing business-speak. I thought Jesus was the ‘owner’ of His bride.

Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up

My group at work recently provided for its members an opportunity to attend a Get Motivated seminar. Among the noted speakers were Robert Schuller, Rudy Guilliani, and Steve Forbes. I have a strong, perhaps unique and maybe errant inclination towards cynicism in regards to such positive-thinking schemes, and I carried that cynicism with me to the seminar.

While we did not attend the entirety of the seminar before retiring to a local restaurant for a meal, one which I enjoyed, I came away from this team building exercise with some thoughts that validated my ingrained cynicism. I also came away with some perceptions and insights. In all the ‘three steps to success’ and ‘dream it and achieve it’ exhortations being pandered to the massive auditorium full of starry-eyed salespeople and entrepreneurs, I could, with little imagination, picture myself in typical Joel  Osteenesque mega-church where the greatest sin perhaps is not living up to your potential and achieving your dreams. With tangible irony, Schuller, a minister ostensibly of the Protestant faith, his church financially and spiritually bankrupt, was the first to speak. While trotting out iterations of his thread-bare “If you can dream it, you can do it!” schtick, I was thinking to myself, you are lying, you bankrupt minister. Try hard as they might, not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. Sometimes life, Providence, puts you in a place from which you cannot escape. Preach your positive-thinking to an inner-city gang of youths and tell me how it floats with them. Try motivating someone impoverished in Africa, dying of AIDS. Trot out your spiel in North Korea. Such positive-thinking rhetoric only works for those who really have a chance at your definition of success to begin with. It offers no hope, or false hope to many.

What I mulled over, also, was the meaning of success in this success-drenched circus. The making of more money was always an underlying goal, and not necessarily a bad one. Success was at times defined as having lofty goals and putting plans in place to achieve them, perhaps despite daunting obstacles, and again, not necessarily a bad thing. We were given three steps to achieve this and five steps to achieve that, and until then, it had never dawned on me that this uniquely American vision of success was apparently so easy as to be distilled into kindergarten platitudes. I mentally palmed myself on the forehead upon that epiphany. But what I really arrived at was the conclusion that, by their definition of success, I am a loser. I have no overarching goals other than to work with my mind and hands to provide for my family, perhaps enjoy the fruits of my labor now and again, and help those in need. I have no goals or desires of ticking off entries on some bucket list. I want to live honestly, not worrying about money because I have little to worry about (at least my American standards – big picture – I am stinking filthy rich). If you say you trust in a God Who says He will provide for His children’s basic necessities, then you should be content with that.

Having money to retire on was a goal spoken of at times. As I look back down the corridors of the past, I dawns on me that only in recent western history has the concept of not having to work during your latter productive years so has to enjoy a perennial vacation been the common expectation. We either put money aside to retire on, sacrificing during our now for a hoped-for leisurely later, or our employer pays a lifelong pension. Again, retirement is fine, but it not an entitlement. It never has been over the course of history. I think of that laying up of treasures on earth with the rust and moths and thieves thing the Jewish King and carpenter spoke of. While it is wise and prudent to put aside money for a rainy day and hard times, do we really need to plan on not having to work for thirty years? I will work till I cannot. There is, I think, honor in that. Without regard to the market, I refuse to worry about money or spend substantial amount of time thinking about it. If that makes me a failure, I will wear that label proudly. I could pontificate ad nausea, but enough for now……

If it were laid upon me….

I sat on this post for awhile due to the issues described  here,  internally debating whether or not I should post it. After all, how could I authentically speak to issues of ecclesiology if I struggled with doubts of even belonging to the church militant?  Without regards to such issues, I decided to unveil my thoughts, anyway.

If I ever were to pastor a church, which would only happen if God has a great sense of irony and loves to use the weak, the foolish, those prone to sin and despises it, and those with no leadership or interpersonal skills, these are some things I would insist upon:

• Sundays would not be a polished affair with state-of-the-art audio and visual accouterments. Musical instruments would probably be in the back of the church. Focus is to be on the Word unfolded so as to feed the sheep, not on a musical performance.  I would refuse to play any music that was programmed to draw in people who would not otherwise go to church.

• I would never, never, never, ever lay the burden of the  tithe, an unbiblical practice as taught by the contemporary church,  upon the sheep. I will not pastor over the church of Galatia. There would be relatively few sermons or speeches on financial stewardship. Though important, you don’t need Jesus to teach you to balance your checkbook and save for a rainy day. Plus…I am not so good with money, myself. It just does not mean that much to me as it does others.

• I would probably be bi-vocational.

• There would be no sermons with seven steps to this or five keys to that. Legalism lite leads to Jesus lite. Legalism is a path that leads to Hell

• I would do my best to talk a lot about Christ using few if any personal anecdotes. I want you to learn about the Messiah, not about me. If I cannot teach redemptive Biblical history, the historical and true story of Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, by the authority of the Bible alone, to the glory of God alone without telling stories about me and my life experience (boring thought it would be), I do not need to claim to be a pastor. If I ever become a pastor, which is highly unlikely,  I will not be there to entertain you. When I die, I would just as soon be forgotten then be remembered as having been a charismatic leader.

• I would not ask for your personal testimonies, though you are certainly free to share – but, foremost, tell me Christ’s story in church, not yours. Your changed life, though I am happy for you, is not necessarily the Gospel. Paxil changes lives, AA changes lives, art changes lives, Mormonism has changed lives for the better. The Gospel story is what breaths life into rotten corpses. The apostle Peter probably had many interesting stories, but he told Christ’s story every time, all the time.

• There would never, never, ever be any altar call nor any other crass emotional manipulation of the flock. If Jesus and the apostles did not need them, then neither do I need that extra-biblical and rather recent and often detrimental appendage to the Gospel call. No. Sappy. Music. In. Church. Ever. Too, why do I need to close my eyes and bow my head during altar calls? Seriously….

• I would seek to heal you with the Gospel rather the Law. Too many preachers wield the Law like an anvil against the sheep when a salve of grace is called for.

• Preaching would be mostly expostional. Exceptions to expostional preaching might entail, for example, teaching about the lives and doctrines of the early church fathers and martyrs. I would also like to learn and teach on church history. Doing a class on systematic theology in the evenings would be cool, too. Theology is a fundamental part of the church. If I ever pastored a church, it would be lovingly doctrinal. Doctrine is the spine and immune system of the church.

• I would strongly discourage the turning of hobbies into ministries. You like to golf, hunt, and ride motorcycles. Such is fine with me; just don’t baptize them. Let me know when you want to go for a ride though. It would be fun to join with you.

• The crippled, the poor, the mentally ill and emotionally scarred, those not so articulate would welcomed and embraced.   Along the same lines, introverts are welcome and loved. I understand because I am an introvert, too. If you are uncomfortable in certain social circumstances, we can fellowship, you and me, over a cup of coffee or can of beer where ever you are most comfortable. I personally like sweet tea. Occasionally, a shot or two of Evan Williams is fine. Church is not easy, sometimes, for introverts.

• I would insist that the elders and teachers hold the the Doctrines of Grace. If not, you can be a part of the church, cherished and loved deeply, but never teach.

• No. Skits. Ever. No drama teams, either. You want drama, entertainment, go to a theater. The Word, being potent in and of itself, does not need our help. Drama merely adds extraneous layers. As an aside, it amazes me that people can feel comfortable playing the role of Christ in musical dramas and plays. I recall Peter requesting his body to be crucified upside down because he deemed himself to be unworthy to be crucified in the fashion of the Messiah.

• I would not make too big a deal about secondary issues such as eschatology, though they would not be ignored.

• Communion would be a real meal, I think, not a piece of bread or a plastic shot glass of grape juice. Wine would be available if desired. I also am not wed to the amount of water used in baptisms. Sprinkle or dunk, I can accommodate either. No major problems with either paedo and credo-baptism. I see valid Biblical arguments for either, though I lean towards credo-baptism.

• I would never say, as many do from the stage and pulpit, that I would not sacrifice my family for of the church, though I would hope I would never face such circumstances. Such statements, though common, seem strange and present a hopefully false dichotomy. I would die a thousand times for the church of the Christ. If my wife or children are not with me on this, then they turn their backs on the bride and body of Christ. I would not.

• I will not be a Christian culture warrior, ever. I will not try to dress unregenerate corpses up with the Law when they need the Gospel. You want a moral nation above all, have Utah succeed and move there. They are nice, family-friendly, moral people even without the Gospel delivered by the apostles. I would never preach pure moralism. It is the anti-thesis of grace.

• Children will not have to go to kids church when big people church starts if the family wants their children to be with them. Distractions are OK, to a degree, and a part of life, and a part of the body, a part of families. You hear me on this one Furtick and Noble​? I will not force families to split up when the preaching starts. Shame on you, Furtick, for removing Christ from your service for being a distraction to your show…..as you do the the least of these……

• I would probably not let my church grow much beyond 200 people if I had such control. Should it do so, and this would be a great thing, we split into two sister churches, each with trained and approved elders and pastors. If a pastor cannot at least recognize his sheep, he needs to have others step up to help feed, lead and shelter the flock. Move half of them to another pasture.  Keep growing the flock, and then splitting off to new pastures.

• Naive on my part, perhaps, but I would hope the hypothetical church I fed would not be success oriented with tangible metrics. Leave that for businesses. I would not count salivations. That is no ones job but the Holy Spirits; no one else is qualified to separate wheat from chaff. I would hope we would have an orientation of humility. If the seats are filled, fine. If not, fine. It will be Christ who grows His church, not me.

• I would literally die to protect my sheep from wolves, from bad theology. You will not see Wild At Heart or The Shack as recommended reading the churches library. I would never endorse heretics like TD Jakes as have many nominally orthodox pastors.

• I would never, ever have a fund raiser. If someone is in deep financial need, I would sell my possessions, give up vacations, and work overtime to help you. I hope the flock would do the same. Saddest thing I have seen in a long time is a large, evidently wealthy church holding a bake sale fund raiser for a child needing surgery.

• If you want to volunteer to help in the church, that is great. If not, that is fine with me, too. I know your probably work hard to support your family and need no extra burdens. Quite frankly, when you get rid of all the extraneous parking teams, media teams, creative teams, hospitality teams, volunteer coordination team volunteers, you find you do not need volunteers so much.

• Small groups, meh. I have seen them too often be pools of ignorance to which, not so long ago, I helped make even more deeply ignorant. If we do small groups, it will be elder led and Word focused. They are what you make of them.

• If you want a God of second chances, go to where the Gospel is light and cheap. I will give you a Gospel for dead men and women who float hopeless in the dark waters. They don’t need second chances. I, and they, would mess up the second chance, and the third, and the forth. I will point you to a Savior, to paraphrase Paul Capon, if memory serves, who dives into deep water to breath life into sin infused, rotten corpses, dies in the process, and later appears on the shore alive and waits for you having defeated death and sin.

Enough of my orthopraxic utopianism…

A Narcissistic Bride

On the often misplaced focus of much of the attractional church

To state the obvious, words matter. They give shape and substance to ideas, and ideas, when put into play, often have far-ranging influence. As an observer of the ecclesiastic landscape of the American church, I find myself grieved and dismayed by the subtly misplaced focus of many in the latest iteration of entrepreneurial church leaders. I think that the root of the problem may be found in the phraseology used to describe those they are attempting to attract. The particular term I have in mind is ‘unchurched.’ In reading the prominent leaders in church growth circles, one finds admirable evangelical admonitions to reach the community, but those that need reaching are most often described as the ‘unchurched’. The clear inference by the terminology, maybe intentional, but maybe not, is that the solution to being unchurched is to get people ‘churched,’ terminology not found in the Bible.

There was at time, not so very long ago, when biblical language was used to describe those to whom the Gospel was to be sent. Those not redeemed by Christ, people who had not heard the good news of a resurrected Savior, were described as lost, as pagans, as a field where the Gospel seed needed to be sowed. Today, the rhetoric is much softer, much less offensive. The ones needing the Gospel are often described as being ‘far from God’ with the inferred task of the Church being that of a guide tasked to lead those far from God near to Him. The biblical language, however, never mirrors the inoffensive language of contemporary evangelism. Rather than being described as far from God, the unregenerate are described as being spiritually dead, as being lost in sins and trespass. Rather than being described as seekers, they are described in the Bible as being rebels, as being hostile the God of the Bible. They may be seeking a god, but the god they look for is not the Triune God revealed in the text of the Old and New Testament. The so-called unchurched do not need church, they need a risen Savior. The redeemed in Christ are the church. The Sunday gatherings are for the redeemed to be fed from the word by an under-shepherd, a pastor.

The world wants to hear what it needs to do to approach a god and what that god will do for them – in the here and now – in return. However, the offense of the Gospel is that you are helpless, that you can do nothing, that it all has been done for you, that it had to be done for you. The offense is that you cannot even choose God if left to your own devices. Unfortunately, in seeking to avoid unnecessary offense, there is an over-reaching that leads to a place where the real and cutting edge of the Gospel is often dulled to make it often impotently palatable to the so-called unchurched.

Further issues seep to the top of this linguistic morass. The very nature of the Church, the bride of Christ is redefined in this evangelical linguistic sleight of hand. If the problem is that many of the community are unchurched, then the solution to the problem, as aforementioned, is to get them involved in church life, to get them churched. To get the unchurched into church requires clever marketing and content relevant to meeting the felt needs of the unchurched, a tactic that may often lead to the eradication of the true offense of the Gospel. The real and present danger is that the church may become, without intention, the de facto savior. The church helps you fix your money problems. The church helps you fix your relational problems. The church helps you overcome your addictions. Jesus is mentioned, but sometimes, and I think without intent, only as one attraction among others. When you listen to video testimonies recorded by many churches, you so often hear people speak of how they found their meaning, their help, their restoration at their church…and Jesus saved them, too. From what they are saved from is not often made clear in these testimonies. I have even heard testimonies where the ones sharing their story actually proclaim that their church saved them.

Rather than preaching, rather than expositing the text of the Bible and tending to the flock as did pastors from the birth of the church, the new breed focuses on their leadership skills, often at the expense of their Biblically mandated pastoral duties. Rather than partaking of a rich biblical meal served up by a scholar/pastor, everyone is exhorted by the CEO/leader to shape up and get with the program. If you expect to get fed by him, shame on you. You need to quit being selfish. You need to get busy and volunteer for this, volunteer for that, get out and shill for the church. Fill up those seats. Get people in the door by giving away prizes, by putting on cheap knock-offs of television shows like ‘Deal Or No Deal’ during the sermon. Start the service by having the band play some twenty year old hair band heavy metal song or some honky-tonk drinking song. I have seen all these antics first hand. With great and unintentional irony, those who wish for more substance in the preaching, who hunger for something beyond the constant rotation of sermons on money and relationships, on how to reach their full potential, are the ones disparaging labeled as consumers. Sometimes sheep are starved and goats are entertained.

As a not so subtle segueway from the previous statement, the interesting thing is that these methods and messages seem work at their intended task of getting people outside the church inside the church. What happens once inside and embedded in this church culture is that you become worker in an organization more than a member of a family. I have heard some in this cadre of leadership state that Jesus has saved you, but the rest is up to you, so get busy! I have also heard these leaders state that their leadership is more important than their preachership, and that is a true statement in context with the newly and errantly redefined church. Rather than sheep that need shepherding, the church attendees are seen as a potential pool of free labor, volunteers that need leadership to enable them to perform efficiently. The internal structure of the organization is not unlike that of any number of successful secular businesses. Too, as a business, these churches are successful. Many have, in leveraging technology to grow multi-site video campuses, become franchises. They market their brand, their pastor, with great acumen. The metrics are easily understood and tracked. It is a game of numbers, both in bodies and money. If both grow, then success is evident. If both do not grow, then the leader tweaks the organizational machine, firing or hiring, so that the output increases. It all becomes performance driven rather than grace driven.

At the end, where does it all lead? I think the answer is found in this post from the influential pastor/CEO Perry Noble of NewSpring Church which ends with this question: “Here comes the BRIDE…is your focus on her?”

If you can, Christian, tell me what is wrong with that question. I will tell you as to where the focus should be: the Bridegroom. Let your mind linger for a while on this image of a bride fascinated with her own beauty as the Bridegroom waits for his bride to tear herself away from the mirror. Behold, He is standing at the door knocking as she becomes lost in her thoughts of finding innovative ways to to market herself to the world.

Addendum 9/18/10
I stumbled upon this video  at FBC Jax Watchdog that validates some of assertions made in this post, especially in the member vs. owner language.  Here you find a mix of core truth and  egregious error.   Much more could be said, but for now, watch and weep…

Grace seems to have taken a holiday from the church…

Addendum….

This post, written upon leaving NewSpring, may be of interest…

The Death Knell of the American Church?

I ran across this quote, from JonathanHerron.com,  taken from a leadership conference hosted at a local church:

Your church needs your LEADERSHIP more than your PREACHERSHIP.

I became aware of this trend, this hyper-focus on leadership skills, this desire of  CEO/lead pastors to run their churches like a secular business, a few years ago.  My question is this: Do you think the title of this post is ‘prophetic’ or exaggerated?

Understand, too, that this post is not a personal dig at Jonathon Herron, nor do I infer that leadership skills are not important within the church.  What I am concerned about is the seeming demise of the Biblical under-shepherd/pastor model of servant leader and the concurrent rise of the sheltered entrepreneurial CEO/leader model so commonly found in so many contemporary evangelical churches.

What I find a bit disturbing, too, in  this hyper-focus on inculcating secular leadership skills  into the church is, in reading their blogs,  a hyper-focus on the ‘care and feeding’ of the leaders themselves in seeming opposition to the care and feeding of their respective flocks.  I have heard so many of these leaders state their disdain for members of their church, be they on paid staff or not, when they fail to fall lockstep into some vision cast by the unassailable leader, when they ask to be actually spiritually fed by the pastor. I pity the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks in the Sunday audience.

Addendum on 12-4: Further elaboration on these thoughts can be found here.

…perhaps concluding with one of my ubiquitous rants…

I will probably refrain from blogging for awhile. I even toyed with the idea of deleting this blog, but decided not to do so, at least for the time being.  I increasingly think myself to be utterly unqualified to speak on weighty things. I also do not want to entertain any narcissism,and blogging, for me, can provide a temptingly fertile soil for such.  You see, I am a not very good Christian.   I am at times self-righteous and and prone to be an idolater.  I am often foolish in speech and action and prone to be self-absorbed.  I often beat myself up over my sin and shortcomings.  But I am redeemed by my Saviour, Christ Jesus.  In the end, that is all I got.  That is absolutely all I got to cling to, and I have to preach that to myself daily.  All I have is the fact that I can stand before my Maker because my Redeemer took upon Himself my sin.  He lived a sinless and obedient life for me and took my sins upon Himself on the cross.  He rose again, in time and space, in history, and defeated death.  Simul Iustus et Peccator (simultaneously sinner and saint) , I am not living my best life now.  That comes later.  What I am learning, thought, is that I have a great High Priest who intercedes for me.   I was dead in my trespasses, but my Redeemer breathed life into me, brought me to faith, to belief, to a trust that He is sufficient.  When I am weak, He is magnified.  If Christ uses the weak and foolish to confound the strong and wise of the world, then I hope I am His man.

Here are a few thoughts with which to give either the closing punctuation this blog or at least a pause:

• Are we more weighed down by the sins done to us than by the sins we have done to others, or for more importantly, against God? Do we truly ponder the gravity of of our rebellion, even as redeemed saints, in light of a holy, sovereign and righteous God? Without a heart broken and contrite over one’s sin, piety can be hollow and may be followed and fueled by a cold, self-righteous moralism. Each and every one of us is to varying degree a recovering Pharisee with a propensity towards  self-pity, self-righteousness,  and self-agrandization.

• No matter how bad we think our circumstances, in light of our innate fallen nature, we deserve no better. Why do we Christians complain about our supervisor at work, about our job, our financial worries, our relational issues, our health when each breath is a gift? To do so is to proclaim to God, “I deserve better than what you have given me!” And I am guilty. The lines do not always fall into pleasant places, and God is still sovereign, good, holy, righteous, and merciful. Our Redeemer knows we are made of but dust and our life is but a vapor. He knows, in His absolute sovereignty,  how we feel and what we are going through.  The Triune God uses trials mold us as a potter’s hand molds a lump of clay.  And He gives us good gifts and joy, too.

• Sometimes we have truly been wronged by others and the consequences linger for longer that we think necessary or fair. And sometimes our thoughts linger over such longer than necessary.  Grace does not abound in those places.

• When we long for righteousness, when we groan over sin, both ours and that of others, and I hope that is something no saint ever grows beyond experiencing, we know that He is near to a broken and contrite heart. The Messiah, the Word through Whom all things hold together, intercedes for us to the Father. He does not break the bent reed nor extinguish the smoldering wick.

• The one who is forgiven much, loves much.

• I do not think people often meet the Jesus they most profoundly need when all they are presented with is a Redeemer who’s overarching goal seems to be meeting all our felt needs and making sure we are happy and make good decisions..  Sadly, many are satisfied with that misrepresentation of Jesus who has a ‘wonderful plan for your life’. Sadly, I think this is the Jesus presented in many American churches.

• Expanding on that previous bullet point, I just  recently listened to three sermons from rather influential pastors.  Two of the sermons were on tapping into some inferred, innate leadership ability that resides in all of us. In a nutshell, the sermons go thusly: because we all know Jesus was a great leader, great insight into leadership principles can be gleaned from examining His methods.  We need to discover and apply those leadership lessons to our lives as our lives intersect with others.

• (Warning: engaging rant mode) Without exception, in each of the sermons, the pastor spent most of his time elaborating on personal anecdotes and experience as well as referencing secular books on leadership principles. Without exception, and like most every thematic sermon on felt needs, each pastor started off with a pet project and with good intention and then twisted and distorted whatever Scripture was used out of its intended use and context. I am no genius, but I do know how to read. I see when context is ignored. What I see in each of these sermons is a grand adventure in missing the point of the text and jumping off onto pet projects of felt needs, of reducing the grand narrative of the Bible, the story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption through Christ, into a self-help manual.

• Here, too, is a portion of a sermon I listened  to  from on of the guys who  gave the leadership seminar/sermon:

Your God is so great that when Moses asked Him in Exodus 3:14 what’s Your name and who shall I tell the Israelites who sent me, God could not confine Himself to a particular description so he announced His presence by saying “I AM who I AM.”  I love that! You can’t box Me in. I AM who I AM. The old King James versions says, I AM that I AM. I think that a good interpretation of that statement into into a modern translation would be…”What ever you need, thats what I AM.” “I AM that. That’s what I am.”

This section of the sermon goes on a bit about how God is there to meet your financial, emotional, and relational needs and then concludes thusly:

“He is. He simply is so maybe we should just say today…God is…. fill in the blank. What do you need. Thats what He is.“

Now, the rest of the sermon was not completely without merit or without Gospel implications, but to say the that God’s ontological disclosure of I AM who I AM means ‘I AM whatever you need me to be’ tends to reduce God to a servant to our felt needs, a God who seems to exist  to make us feel good, to make us happy.  God is not as concerned about our happiness as much as we are.  He is more concerned about our sanctification.  I think broad swaths of the church makes much of God making much over us almost as much as they make much of God.  Whew…..

I would really love to hear these guys try to exegete the book of Jeremiah.  If they did, it would  probably end up being a sermon on finances. leadership, sex, or marriage  Yea, I know I am being a bit cynical, but the only time I heard hard things from these guys is when they preach their ubiquitous messages on tithing, and even then, the message usually ends up massaging a felt need, a desire for financial blessing.  Also, what stood out in stark relief for me is how much these guys talk about themselves on stage. Perhaps more than half of each sermon consisted of humorous  stories of their childhood or some personal anecdote that was somehow used in sometimes tenuous ways to segue into the theme of the speech. And if they are not talking about their life experience, they often talk about their church and its history. I remember listening to a pastor state that he was going to preach on a passage of Scripture from the Sermon on the Mount, but God told him to preach on the history of his church instead. That was not God, but ego,  speaking to the pastor and instructing him that His word is to be trumped by a narrative on the  pastors empire.

Without conscious intent, what happens in a purpose driven and market driven church is it ends up personality driven. They often reduce the objective truth of Gospel to a personal, subjective narrative of some nebulous ‘life change.’ And you know what, these pastors seem like truly nice guys. I believe treat their friends and family well.  They are kind to animals and pay their taxes.  They are well-intentioned.  And sometimes God uses such men in spite of their error.

And I am finished listening to bad sermons.  I do not know why I subject myself to such other than to practice discernment.  I guess too, I am more deeply nourished by and thankful for sermons of substance after having imbibed sugary sermons that in the end do not satisfy.

A quote from ‘The Courage to Be Protestant’…

by David Wells:

Across much of evangelicalism, but especially in the market-driven churches, one therefore sees a new kind of leadership among pastors now. Gone is the older model of the scholar-saint, one who was as comfortable with books and learning as with the aches of the soul. This was the shepherd who knew the flock, knew how to tend it, and Sunday by Sunday took that flock into the treasures of God’s Word. This has changed. In its placed is the new ‘celebrity’ style. What we typically see now, Nancy Pearcey suggests, is the leader who works by manipulating the feelings of the audience, enhancing his own image with personal anecdotes, modeling himself after the CEO, and adopting a domineering management style. He (usually) is completely results-oriented, pragmatic, happy to employ and technique from the secular world that will produce the desired results. And this leader has to be magnetic, entertaining, and light on the screen up front. (pg. 40)

I am so thankful for the pastors, the scholar-saints, the under-shephards, that remain faithful to the Biblical mandate and calling to feed the sheep.

Perhaps now, after so many posts on ecclesiastic issues, I will move to and graze in other topical pastures in this ‘blogging’ venture…..

A couple of quick hit and run thoughts….

…..on leadership, relevance, and the contemporary American church

• I am all for good leadership, both within and outside the church (and I know the following will be misunderstood or considered unreasonably judgmental by by some), but in reading the blogs of more than a few church planters, pastors, and church “CEOs” of ‘relevant’, attractional churches, I perceive something of a leadership ‘fetish’. Sometimes, I will mentally remove any mention or implication of the the Gospel from the blogs and posts of some of these church leaders, and, sadly, very little is changed in the content their published thoughts. Sometimes, all I find among the ubiquitous calls to engage boundless creativity, bold leadership, and cultural relevance is the occasional exhortation to ‘make Jesus famous.’ Many church leaders publish a ‘what I am reading’ list, and it honestly grieves me that most of the titles being read seem to be secular, trendy, ‘flavor of the day’ books on on leadership principles, business practices, and marketing strategies. It would be refreshing, given we are talking about the reading habits of pastors, to see a bit of John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, or Spurgeon, an occasional systematic theology put into the mix. When something of a spiritual nature is listed, it is often a title of questionable theology like The Shack, or Wild at Heart. Too, is there perhaps a bit, a hint, of self-aggrandizement, of unrighteous pride in self and methods, in this hyper-focus on leadership skills? As an aside, I recall reading a post on a web log of a pastor/CEO (his claimed title) of a church I once attended wherein he briefly comments on and unpacks some passages from Romans through, and I quote, ‘the eyes of a leader’. Nice to see something from Romans on his web log, but are the ‘eyes of a leader’ the correct lens through which to filter the inspired words of Paul to the church at Rome? Perhaps the eyes of a repentant sinner, humbled by the Cross, would be a more correct lens. Nothing wrong with leadership per se, but in engaging biblical leadership, it must be affirmed that the church is not a business. Our benchmarks and measurables are not those of the world; faithfulness is not a quantifiable commodity. The Gospel is not a product to be marketed. The first will be last and the last will be first. Christ is not dependent on our skills, but we are dependent on His sufficiency in all things.

• Related to the above bullet point (and I have addressed this subject ad nausea before), I find so many church planters, pastors, and leaders stating that it is their job to lead the flock rather than ‘feed’ the flock. Also stated by some of these leaders is that a leader should not have to feed his staff. In all honesty, my heart is broken and grieves over this unbiblical redefinition of the role of an under-shepherd. The flock needs, I need, a pastor, not a vision caster! The pastors first responsibility is to the flock, not the world. His mandate is to prepare the flock to go into the world, to ‘lead’ his flock into Christ-likeness. I recently spent some time on another post on this subject of pastoral responsibility (or lack thereof) and ‘sheep feeding’, but had second thoughts about publishing it. I opted to keep it private. Still struggling with a polemic attitude and perhaps a hyper-focus on my part regarding this subject.

• Relevance, the clarion call of many a ‘contemporary’ church……… This is, in a very broad sense, what the mainline denominations engaged in accommodating the Gospel to the modernists of the previous century or so. Where are those churches now? They abandoned orthodoxy and engaged apostasy and are in death throes. Today, those who seek cultural relevancy are often unwittingly abandoning orthopraxy (and orthodoxy at times, too) to make the church ‘experience’ more palatable to (post-) modern tastes; all to often, many churches, in the quest for relevancy, unwittingly engage strange fire. Corporate worship becomes horizontally focused rather than vertical. Though I do not know enough about him to make any kind of overarching endorsement, I do like this quote by Dean William Inge of St Paul’s Cathedral in London: “Those churches who marry the spirit of the age become the widow of the next.” So many churches will find themselves chasing after wind in their pursuit of relevance, and what they do manage to grasp will eventually turn to dust. Only the Word will remain. Build on that foundation alone. Could have ended here, but one last thought on relevance experienced…….Out of curiosity, I recently listened to a bit (thirty minutes of part one) of a sermon series, from an evangelical community church, titled ‘Theologgins for Your Noggins’ (HT: Pyromanics) wherein the pastor exegeted (more truthfully, as one Pyro commenter stated, engaged in eisegesis of Horton Hears a Who or whatever it was) the works of Dr. Suess for spiritual truths. I am sure the pastor and leadership of the church are nice, agreeable people who act from good motives, but I do not have words to describe the anger (especially during minutes 15.30-21.30) that washed over me as I listened to Dr Suess being mined from the stage/pulpit for spiritual insight. Ultimately, what we find in such stunts is a lack of confidence it the power of the Word faithfully expounded. What we also sometimes find, too, is the bride admiring herself in the mirror and exalting her creativity and relevance while the Bridegroom waits in the adjacent room.