Open Letter to Ed Stetzer

by Frank Turk

Dear Ed,

Aha! See -- now that it's actually a real blog post, all the fun comes right out of it, doesn't it, Ed? It's all fun and games until it's your name in the headline ...

Let me start off here by saying thanks for your years of internet-style friendship toward me, and your encouragement even when we disagree significantly. Because we can maintain that real tension and still turn to Christ together as our savior, I value your attention, and I hope I don't abuse it here. I am also praying for your new church plant in Nashville in order that Jesus' name is made great.

That said, let me also thank you for your help in getting my 6 minutes on TheNines last year -- the votes of our readers got the attention of the promoters, but your kind words to them helped them over the hump of giving me a shot. And I think the result speaks for itself -- I think I did right by the Gospel and our faith by making a point which was somewhat overlooked in the hours of video in that conference.



Some think this is an affront to God because Len Sweet loafed his chance at theNines to preach the Gospel of Jesus rather than the Gospel of Sweet. As I have tweeted: only some of the people, but all of the time.

Anyway, we have some mutual friends, and I hope they will receive this note the way I am sure you will receive it -- generously, and in the spirit it is written.

So let's get down to brass tacks. I think one thing people often miss about you is that you're a faithful son of the SBC. In that, your research and insights (I think) are usually framed the way any faithful son would approach his family when they are somewhat screwed up: with a bias toward exposing the faults of our ilk. So sometimes when one sees the trend line, rather than choose to tread the media rei, one is instead intent on posing the corrective in a way which steers harder away from the ditch than is necessary to stay in the middle of our right-mined theological and pastoral lane.

So you don't beat the drum of doctrinal purity so hard, right? Because the SBC is the resurgence denomination -- we're the ones who turned away from the liberal course, away from post-biblical theology, and back to the bedrock of inerrancy. We probably don't need the lecture about sola scriptura. We don't need a reminder that the Bible is foundational to our faith and message.

But when you looked at us, what we did need was a little self-awareness. The SBC -- especially in the last 10 years -- has looked a little dated, and that's not because we were being so faithful to a timeless truth. It's because we had embraced one demographic in the American sociological spectrum and were holding on to it for dear life. We had really become a lot more Southern than was probably wise or even useful, and it was overshadowing our great heritage as Baptists.

And in the end, I think that was exactly the objective of all your critiques and your books and essays and insights into church and culture: the SBC had to stop telling itself that the only decent music was Gaither Homecoming, and the only decent attire for a preacher was a deep gray or black suit, and the only method of fellowship was sunday school, and the only way to reach the lost was through revival meetings. We didn't just need to announce the Gospel, or proclaim it: we have to announce it to somebody, and we have to proclaim it to somebody, and that somebody might be a runaway street kid in LA, or a black single mom, or (if we were especially holy) hipsters who know what sort of latte they like and what kind of beer they like and what kind of TV and movies they like.

You know: amen! Amen to that kind of wake-up call. Amen that the church should actually be seeking and saving the lost.

Here's my problem: in doing just that, I think you have also left the proverbial barn door open. Now before I say why, I have an anecdote for you.

You might have heard: I have a blog. I have a couple of blogs, in fact, but that's besides the point. Having these blogs causes people to e-mail me, and most of the people who e-mail me are either lost or otherwise un-Christian. They are folks who, as they say, love Jesus and not the church. And I get to talk to all kinds of people who all tell me the same story: they cannot find a local church who will talk to them about their doubts, their fears, and their inexplicable attraction to Jesus.

So they come to me, and I get to talk to them, and some are just talkers -- but some are actually infants in the faith who just need the right kinds of encouragement. I mention it, btw, because I want you to know I "get it" that this is who we are dealing with in the post-Christian age. We are dealing with people with questions which are profound, but who don't even have the philosophical equipment to frame their questions well enough to get them answered.

I think you and I see that, and we both share the SBC urge to drop the Gospel bomb on them. We want them taken out of death into life -- and therefore brought into the family of God. But as I have read you over the years, I think you are steering hard to get the SBC (and like-minded other church people) out of the ditch of old and dead cultural distinctive, and you re steering toward the other ditch, which is the ditch of community over truth, or unity before orthodoxy.

Now, hear me out -- because I learned my lesson with the Horton letter. I am not saying you're a heretic, or a coddler of heretics. I'm not saying you have ditched the confessional clubhouse. What I am saying is this: I think you have advocated that "method" is only a pragmatic choice and has not much theology to govern it, so it is a matter of pastoral freedom. So for example, we should embrace without a lot of questions the methodologies of Saddleback, Willow Creek, and Mars Hill as all equally-acceptable. Because they "work" and they seem to draw a lot of people, I have seen you point to these as say, "We reformed types could learn a lot from Bill Hybels."

Well, when Bill Hybels decides that it's his job to teach the Bible rather than teach people to be "self-feeders" (cf. the book of Titus), I'll ask someone to open up the floor for him to start teaching reformed people about Christianity rather than business process. There's no doubt us reformed people and our chilly churches need at least a spoon full of spiritual fructose, but it should be from the fruit of the spirit and not the bleached processed sweetener that comes in a generic, humanistic label you can find both at WAL*MART and at the Mormon church.

I could riff on that all night, but here's my point: you're not just a smart guy. You're not just a large cog in the Lifeway juggernaut. You are a church planter, and a man who has held spiritual authority and has reaped a good harvest. And you do know better: you know that people who just get self-help advice over a cup of coffee are not actually better for it. So my note to you is simple: find a better way to say what you mean.

I remember reading Comeback Churches and wanting to like it -- wanting to see it as more than just a travelogue of charismatic front-men who used local cultural hooks to draw people in. But it never got to the punchline. It never got to the place where it made the specific and unadorned point that bringing people in without bringing them to Christ was pointless. It does mention that a couple of times, but in spelling out how to make a church "Come Back", it never really spelled out how the Scripture and its centerpiece in the life of the church actually sets all the boundaries we need to be a church and not just another community group.

You can do better than that. I know it because I have heard you preach, and I have spoken to you. I know what kind of person you are. I know Christ is precious to you. So with that in mind, I leave you with the question: how can one make sure that this is the message and the overarching method behind ministry? How can we be that faithful?

And I leave it to you in Jesus' name. God be with you.

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