Talent

by Frank Turk



Having listened to all the talks now from the DGNC2010 conference, I think the best news is that there were no surprises. I mean, guess what: Al Mohler is still the smartest guy on the planet. John Piper can make you love God more and hate your pride -- he can help you see pride in places you didn't think you had a place for it. Francis Chan is still the Richie Cunningham of the Conference circuit. R.C. Sproul is still, as far as I'm concerned, the only guy who always gets Paul right from inside out. Rick Warren was commended by his hosts and, of course, criticized by all the right people (including me, before the torches and pitchforks come out).

So, yay team: nice one put to bed again. Jesus was praised one way or another, and we all got to go home edified. Some of us stayed home and were edified.

We all get to have our tidy theology and lives back, and we can go on reading Crossway with the right amount of humility and tranquility (that's not smugness, mind you: "smug" would be reading our Crossway on the subway or at Starbucks where people could see you reading Crossway, even if it's studying your ESVSB) to be edified that we are in the right place under God's sovereignty.



OK, I have to admit it: I did have a moment in listening to these talks and panels when I really, really felt like we had crossed into the surreal. There was one surprise. It was the first panel where Kevin DeYoung, Tullian Tchividlian, Burk Parsons and John Piper were sort of round-tabling with David Mathis soft-balling them with general questions about pastoral ministry.

The surreal part was not where John Piper called Rick Warren "an unbelievable communicator" in a completely-unironic way. It was the part late in that panel where he unironically said this (around 22:00):

Piper: I just think you should faithfully do what you love to do and are called to do, (I'm talking to Pastors now) and if it happens it happens. Now, I suppose Rick Warren would roll over in his, uh, not his grave but his study because that sounds so unpurposeful, but, I just, uh, it's just discouraging and paralyzing to take away specifics. There has to be a certain organic-ness to dreaming. Skill-sets and gifting and what he called SHAPE in his book Purpose-Driven Life are so crucial to the way you go about dreaming, the way you go about seeing what's not there. And you can just kill yourself trying to see what's not there that doesn't fit you at all. It doesn't fit your church, it doesn't fit your situation, and you may not know the dream God has planned for you, and so … you know, everyone speaks about their own trajectory … this is me talkin', not Rick Warren, and I just came to Bethlehem and I tried to preach the Bible faithfully.



And didn't have any other plans. I didn't. (in CEO voice) Oh, there's a 50,000 student University across the street - what's the strategy? (/voice) Well, they can come. If they want. [laughter] And there were a few other things thrown in along the way, but mainly I want to feed the sheep in such a way that the sheep love God, are so thrilled with God, they tell other people about him, and they come and worship and they love God so much, and yeah then you have to train some people and maybe a Tom Steller will join your staff and make something happen. I kinda want pastors to keep their focus clear and do a livable life, keep your wife happy, and your kids in the fold, and preach your heart out, and you really will do remarkable things. [ends at 24:25]

Now: why is that surreal? I mean, that's the reformed (small "r" intended) demographic schtick, right -- I'm just a simple preacher being faithful to God's word. That's how John MacArthur "did it". That's how Al Mohler "did it". That's how R.C. Sproul "did it". That's how Mark Dever "did it". And that, to put a fine point on it to keep our street cred, is exactly what Rick Warren said is unfaithfulness -- to be allegedly-faithful and unconcerned with fruit, to be more concerned with knowing the whole systematic ball but never leaving your study to take it out to the playground or the unreached people group.

Somebody might say that's not surreal -- that's the kind of people we are striving to be, isn't it? But look at the underlined part there. In the midst of detailing the reformed schtick under the cover of "organic" dreaming and avoiding too-hard burdens, of all people on Earth John Piper says, essentially, that intentional evangelism is not his first concern. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Let the Nations Be Glad. This is the guy who penned Don't Waste your Life. In essence, in a very transparent and self-aware way, he admitted that he doesn't have at top of mind lost people.

That is something, I think, no one expected -- because nobody heard it. Or rather: they all laughed! Nobody squared up to it and said, "well, Dr. Piper, is that why you invited Rick Warren in the first place? Isn't that a pretty dangerous diagnosis for you, given that you're in some way a leader and mentor for the so-called 'Young Reformed' movement? It plays right into the stereotype of calvinism -- and not in a good way."

Listen: that's got to be a wake-up call for all of us. That's got to be something that makes us ring hollow on the inside. If John Piper can admit that evangelism is not on the top of his mind when preaching, then I think we are all suddenly caught with the same look on our faces that the Coyote has when he runs off the edge of the cliff.

You know what? Rick Warren has a concern for people who are going to hell. Maybe we're all correct, and he's so riddled with faults and errors and unrepentant pride in his accomplishments that his message is not what we, the well-informed, would preach. But his first instinct is, as he says, "Come and See." Come and See if this is the Messiah. Taste and see the Goodness of the Lord. Look: I see the Heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!

So maybe I don't like Rick Warren. I'm actually not going to defend Rick Warren. But maybe it's not Rick Warren who needs defending, or who needs someone to justify what he does. Maybe it's the rest of us who have a perfect Gospel which we never think about taking to lost people.

I'm sure you have a full day, and this is just a blog post. Shrug it off. But I'm headed out to the yard because there's a single talent I buried out there someplace, and I think I better go dig it up before the Master comes home and asks me what I did with it ...

---

Comma Delimited

by Frank Turk



Yeah, yeah, yeah: Phil's at T4G, Dan's at home and I'm just barely on the North American continent. But my new friend Zach Bartels recently posted an interview of me at his blog for reasons which will be apparent in the near future, and in it I said this:

Maybe “discernment ministries” would be better off talking about what they believe and what the consequences of those things are rather than how many times Rob Bell sticks his foot in his mouth.

You know: we get it. Now what? What if everyone stopped going to Rob Bell’s church, and stopped buying Ann Lamott (sorry: I meant Donald Miller) books, and took all their PDL/PDC books back for a refund. Now what?…

I did say exactly that. And the response to that from "Christian Research Network" was this:

In an interview appearing here today Frank Turk, who blogs with Phil Johnson at Pyromaniacs, shares his love for online apologetics and discernment ministries, which apparently serve no purpose: ..

And you know what? I agree with their assessment -- except for the use of the comma in the last line.

Their interpretation of my statement is that all online and apologetic ministries serve no purpose -- the comma sets off the modifying phrase so that all these ministries "serve no purpose". The problem is that I think my statement applies to only those apologetic ministries which serve no purpose. If you remove the comma, you have said what I would say. But whether or not to use the comma requires actual discernment.

Thus, my actual point in action.

As you were. Comments are closed because I am not available during the day today to help you work this one out.

---

February 11: the most pivotal day in my life (part two [requested classic re-post] )

by Dan Phillips

My problems

So, as I explained, I had two problems. The minor problem was Jesus, the major problem was me.

How can I say Jesus was a "minor" problem? As I explained, I had this nagging awareness that His teaching wasn't really quite what my cult made it out to be. But in itself, that wasn't a huge issue. Jesus was one religious teacher among many. A really impressive "one," true; but just one. Knowing that He disagreed with me was not, in itself, shattering.

But when conjoined to the major problem, it took on a different significance. See, I had realized that I basically was the founder of my religion. I was my authority, my judgment and character were the basis. And I'd come to see that this foundation was irredeemably corrupt.

Praying, but not "through"

So I actually prayed, which was new. We Religious Scientists (like Christian Scientists) did not pray. To speak to God implied separation from God, and we believed we were one with Divine Mind. So we meditated, we affirmed. We didn't pray.

But now I did, as I became increasingly gripped with a desire to know God, and be saved—though I'd not have used the word—from the wretched heap of my internal life.

I remember praying once, in my darkened room, "Father—" I got no further. It was as if a voice came back: "Who said I was your Father?"

I had to admit, "I did." And that was precisely the problem.

So, shaken, I prayed that God would lead me to know Himself on His own terms, as He really was, whether He was such as I wished Him to be, or wholly other. I was willing to do anything, be anything. "Even if it means becoming a Jesus Freak," I said, because that was the worst thing I could think of.

Well.

God's mole

Meanwhile, as they say in the movies, I had been befriended by this Christian named Greg. He'd seen me walking home from school and offered me a ride. We went to the same high school, but I hardly knew him. Still, it was nice of him, and became a daily thing.

I asked Greg early on what his religion was, since that sort of think interested me. Greg told me he was a Christian. "If you ever want to know why, or have any questions, just let me know," he added.

"You bet," I replied. That was never going to happen.

Fast-forward a few months of this agonizing process I've described, and that all changed. I had shared with Greg about some of the garbage—though this was not my exact term, you understand—that I was finding within. Greg sympathized and commiserated. He was a very real person, not like most shallow, sloganeering, plastic Jesus-people I had known.

Greg gave me a gospel of John in some modern rendering, which I read. He also gave me C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I liked to think I was smart, but most of it was well over my head. Except one part. You know the part.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

I remember reading this with a sinking heart. Lewis was talking about me. I was always insisting that Jesus was a great teacher, the greatest—yet I had kept running into things that this "great teacher" taught, that I did not believe, did not want to believe.

And what of that? I'd already established that I, and my judgment, formed no fit foundation for life and thought. But what of Jesus? Here was someone we held to be the greatest teacher, the greatest example, the greatest mystic. His life was a life of integrity. The unparalleled symphony of miracles in his life, with the crescendo of the Resurrection, made perfect harmony with the claims He made for Himself. It all fit. If I was no fit foundation, was He?

So somewhere here I surely shocked my friend Greg by telling him I wanted to talk. And talk we did. For hours, and hours. First, at my parents' house. Then the next day, a rainy Saturday, after I'd been at a meeting for the Religious Science church youth group (I was a co-leader; also, I'd taken two of the cult's four-year ministerial training course).

I threw every question I had at Greg, and he kept telling me about Jesus and what the Bible said.

At the end of our second talk, Greg said, "Why don't you just ask God? Ask God if He wants you to believe in Jesus, in order to know Him. What would you be out?"

Made perfect sense to me. So ask I did.

...and the roof didn't cave in

The next day, I went to church with Greg. It was Van Nuys Baptist church, pastored by Harold Fickett. I remember that Fickett preached like a lawyer building an airtight case. I felt myself to be the defendant, and guilty as... well, as sin. I wish I could tell you what he preached. I can't. But I can tell you it was as if Fickett had read my journal. Hundreds of people there, the man had never met me, but it iwas as if he had m ein his cross-hairs and was squeezing off direct-hit after direct-hit. Fickett absolutely nailed me to the pew. And as it all fell apart, it all fell together.

At the end, Fickett gave an invitation. If you wanted to find out how to know Christ as Savior, come up front, someone would help you. Greg said he'd come with me if I wanted. I did want. So up we went. They may have been singing "Just As I Am," which would have expressed my longing exactly.

The man who talked with me used the Four Spiritual Laws. I remember with crystal clarity when the counselor talked about how my sin separated me from God. This described and made sense of exactly what I'd been coming to see within myself.

Then he showed how Jesus was the sole mediator between God and man, and this made sense of the unbridgeable gap I'd come to see between God and me. It also connected so well with that stubborn text, John 14:6, which had so bothered me (as I mentioned in the first part, and discussed more fully elsewhere). Jesus was the way, none could come to the Father but through Him. Including me.

Then the counselor showed the picture of the chaos of the self-ruled life, and this described me to a "T." I hadn't indulged in some of the particular vices of my generation. But had I loved God above all? Never. Had I taken His name in vain? Constantly and with gusto. Had I dishonored my father and mother? Since I could talk. On and on it went.

And then we prayed together, and I implored Jesus Christ in His fullness to be my Lord and my Savior, to make me His own, and to forgive me of all my sins.

Was it an emotional experience? The emotion I remember feeling first was relief, in the sense that I had come to rest on a real and true foundation in Jesus Christ. "Rock of Ages" was very meaningful to me, as was "How Firm a Foundation." That I now could know God, on His terms, and be forgiven my sins. The next I remember was how new everything was to me—God, me, my world, the Bible.

Almost especially the Bible. It was as if someone had come and stolen that dusty, dry, depressing, dead, irrelevant history-book, and replaced it with something that was electric, something that was alive. I could not get enough of it. On my knees, reading and reading, delving, diving, exploring, trying to absorb the whole of it. It was God talking to me!

And my, how I needed Him to talk to me. Everything had to be re-thought, re-learned: the meaning of God, of things, of people, of self; how to think and decide; how to pray; how to live. I was conscious that I had had it all wrong, and needed to get it right. Because it mattered now.

Everything changed for me on that day, and since that day: February 11, 1973. Thirty-six years, and counting. The progress has had ups and downs, lags and leaps, "many dangers, toils, and snares." But the Christ I prayed to that day became my Lord that day, and by His grace He remains my Lord, and by His grace and covenant will so remain.

Afterthought

But some of that was done "wrong," wasn't it? Altar call? C. S. Lewis? A "voice"? Four spiritual laws?

Some closing thoughts on that, and more, next time.

[This way to closing thoughts]

---

Sister... show mercy! (Annual repost #1)

[With some encouragement, I've made an executive decision to make this post from 2006 a yearly thing — with any editing I see fit to make — until I think the message has gotten through. It hasn't, so... Here y'go!]

Preface: "What are you? Nuts?!" Just thought I'd lead with the question you'll be wondering in a few minutes. I am about to stick my finger in the fan, about up to my elbow, and I know it. But I really think someone needs to say this — and why not me? I have less to lose than many who've thought the same thing, but daren't say it.

So here we go.

What will change, and what won't. Spring's sprung, and summer looms. Mercury rises, fashions change. But one thing that won't change, unless I'm happily mistaken: some good Christian sisters will not dress as helpfully as they could.

I chose that word with care: "helpfully." I am not talking about sin, shame, indecency, wantonness, or the like. Perhaps I could, with some justification. But that's for another time — and probably another writer. At this point, I just want to talk about being helpful.

Sister, if there's one thing you and I can certainly agree on, it's this: I don't know what it's like to be a woman, and you don't know what it's like to be a man. We're both probably wrong where we're sure we're right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.

"Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man" (Proverbs 27:20). Solomon doesn't use the Hebrew words that would indicate males exclusively, so this and Ecclesiastes 1:8 may apply across the gender-board. Libbie pointed out very ably that we men wrongly assume that we alone battle with temptations entering through the eye-gate.

But. But if men aren't alone in the battle, they may have a particular weakness for this aspect of it. Consider passionately-godly King David, whose psalms express aspirations after God beside which our own are pale, bloodless things. One day King David is in the wrong place, at the wrong time; sees a naked woman bathing next door, and boom! — he's gone (2 Samuel 11). Family, kingdom, God — all forgotten, consumed in the flash-flame of a lust that was only visual in its inception.

And what of that Israelite Philistine Samson and his own "eye trouble?" He sees a fetching young pagan, and bellows at his dad, "Get her for me, for she looks good to me" (Judges 14:3 NAS). Where did Samson's passions take him? How did his course end?

Unless all the men I've known personally or at a distance are completely unrepresentative, it's a lifelong struggle, a lifelong weakness. As I recall from a Proverbs lecture on mp3, Bruce Waltke says that his dad, at around age 100, told him, "Bruce, I still have the same struggles I did when I was 50." It was sobering for Dr. Waltke to hear; sobering for any man! (In fact, put me down for "disheartening.")

Where am I going with this? Oh, don't try to look so innocent. You know exactly where I'm going.

This is... church? So here comes this brother into the assembly of the saints, hoping for a rest from the battles of the week, a moment to regroup, sing, pray, get the Word, fellowship. He looks up to the choir, or to his left or his right — and in a tick of the clock, he's facing the same struggle he faced every time he turned on his TV, opened a magazine, or went down a city street. He's seeing things that make it far too easy for him not to keep his mind focused where it needs to be focused.

And he's not in a nightclub, he's not at a singles' bar, he's not at the beach. He's in church.

Now, some very direct disclaimers:

• Every man's sin is his own, and every man's struggle is his own (Proverbs 14:10)
• No one makes a man think or feel anything (Proverbs 4:23)
• It is each individual's responsibility to guard his own heart (Proverbs 4:23)
• Beauty is a wonderful gift of God (cf. Exodus 28:2; Song of Solomon 1:8, 15, etc.)

Having said all that: while it may be true that I'm the one holding the matches, you won't help me if you pile twigs all around my feet and douse them with lighter fluid. To be a little more specific: if you know I've had trouble with drunkenness, you won't offer me a glass of wine. If you know I battle covetousness, you won't take me window-shopping in high-end stores I've no business frequenting.

That is, you won't do those things if you love, if you care for me.

So I put this question: what are some sisters thinking, in how they dress?

"Attractive"? As the ladies pick clothes, they'll consider what's pretty, what's flattering, what's attractive. Who could blame them? But, "attractive" to whom? In what way? To what end? With what focus?

I want my lure to attract trout so they will bite and get hooked, and I can kill them and eat them.

A business wants to attract buyers so they will spend money and acquire their product or service and make them rich.

By that blouse, those pants, that skirt — what are you trying to attract? Attract to what, so that they will feel what, and want to do what?

Consider the questions again. "Is it pretty?" Fine question, no evil in it. "Is it comfortable, is it complimentary, is it fun?" No problem. I'd just suggest you add one more question: "Is it helpful, or is it hurtful, to my brothers in Christ? Will this unintentionally contribute to their having a focus that is harmful to their holy walk?"

Now, lookie here:

In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; 19 the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves; 20 the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; 21 the signet rings and nose rings; 22 the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; 23 the mirrors, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils (Isaiah 3:18-23)

...likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works (1 Timothy 2:9-10)

Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair, the wearing of gold, or the putting on of clothing-- 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious (1 Peter 3:3-4)

What it isn't. Immediately we'll swing in, as we always do, and say, "Now, the writer's not saying that women can't dress nicely, or wear jewelry, or blah blah blah." And we'll all disown our Fundie forebears who focused on nylons and lipstick, and came up with precise hemline measurements. We'll want to make sure that we're not advocating a new line of Bible Burqaware™ for evangelical women. All that will be true and valid enough.But... what is it? But I'm concerned that, in our anxiety to be sure to prevent the wrong interpretation, we effectively cut off all interpretation. We have swung from making the passages say silly things, to not letting them say anything. These passages have to mean something! They must have some application! What is it?

Surely the passages warn against vanity, externality, sensuality; and promote a focus on a godly character as true beauty. Who you are; not just what you look like. Remember: "As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, So is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion" (Proverbs 11:22 NAS).

Oh boy, I'm going to make it worse now. Deep breath....

Say what? What are your clothes saying about you, sister? What are they supposed to say to your brothers? "Hey, look at this?" Well, they actually are trying to look at the Lord; it's not good for them, not helpful for them, to be looking at that. No, it's not your fault that they have a problem. We established that. And it's really great that God has made you beautiful. May your husband (present or future) celebrate your beauty.

But, please hear me: you can help the brothers who aren't your husband, or you can not-help them. Which are you doing? If you're not married, and a man looks at you, is he thinking, "What a great character"? Or are you giving him reason to think something else about you is "great"?

I know many of the responses. I've heard them. "You don't know what it's like to buy women's clothes, you ignorant man!" Mostly true. My first just-for-fun purchase of (what I thought was) a pretty blue dress for my wife was, well, it was appalling. What a good sport my wife was. I took it back to the store immediately, and made a much better choice.

"I caaaan't." But this: "I can't find anything modest! It's all too revealing! It's impossible to get something that looks nice, yet isn't too tight, or too short, or too-something / not-something-enough!"

Sorry, but baloney.

I put "modest women's clothing Christian" in Google, and 43,200 pages come up. Yes, some are funny and quaint at best. But are they all Amishwear? "Can't find?"

More fundamentally: I do not accept that anyone has to wear clothes that are too tight or too sheer or too short — unless you are the largest and tallest woman living in the hottest part of the planet. Because I see larger, taller women than you walking around in hot weather, and they're all wearing clothes, every last one of them. They got those clothes somewhere, I reason. You could too.

"But — but they won't look good on me! The shoulders will be wrong!"

Need-to-not-know. I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but let's accept it and pose a counter-question. You tell me. Which is worse: your shoulders hanging a half-inch too low? Or a blouse/skirt that simply (shifting into turbo-delicate) provides need-to-know information to those with a need-to-not-know?

I'm sure we all agree that there are clothes that show off what others have no helpful business seeing. Here's what to show, in clothes-selection: show a Godward focus, discretion, a godly character.

And show mercy.

Parting thought. Darlene pointed me to a statement by Arthur Pink, which makes everything I've just said look awfully mild. But there's no denying that Pink has a point. I'll close with it:

Again, if lustful looking be so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with desires to be looked at and lusted after-as Jezebel, who painted her face, tired her head, and looked out of the window (2 Kings 9:30)-are not less, but even more guilty. In this matter it is only too often the case that men sin, but women tempt them so to do. How great, then, must be the guilt of the great majority of the modern misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of our young men? And how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses?

Now, note, Pink and I speak to different ends. I speak to those who I charitably assume are inadvertently dressing in an unhelpful manner. Pink speaks to those whose intent is to allure. Between the two of us, I can pray we've provided food for thought, prayer, reconsideration, and needed change.

One last thought: it is a mistake to think I have church-attire in mind. I am thinking of anywhere where both sexes are present.

---

Gospel Lite

Tastes Great; Less Filling
by Phil Johnson

[From an article published last year in GraceTrax.]

The defining principle of historic evangelicalism was an unwavering devotion to the gospel. But the broad movement that calls itself "evangelical" today no longer stands for any clear point of view and can't seem to find consensus on even the most basic of gospel truths. How did that happen?



he word evangelical used to be a good one. The term dates back at least to William Tyndale, and it refers to the belief that the gospel message—the evangel—is the vital heart of all Christian truth. To a real evangelical, everything that is of primary importance in Christianity is embodied and summarized in the gospel, and any belief system based on an aberrant gospel is not authentically Christian.

Evangelicals' passion for keeping the gospel at the center explains why historic evangelicalism has always been theologically conservative, biblically based, warm-heartedly evangelistic, and dynamically experiential.

But the contemporary evangelical movement has become something completely different. Evangelicals can't even seem to agree among themselves anymore about what the gospel is or whether the factual and doctrinal details of our message are really even all that important.

Practically every trend in the evangelical movement today attempts to redefine the very points of gospel truth earlier evangelicals had universally deemed essential. That's true of the New Perspective on Paul, for instance, which proposes a wholesale redefinition of what Paul meant by "justification." It's true of Open Theism, which redefines God Himself (denying His sovereignty and His foreknowledge) and then relentlessly shaves the hard edges off every doctrine thought to make Him seem "too harsh"—starting with substitutionary atonement. It's especially true of postmodern and Emergent approaches to Christianity, where almost anything goes and every truth of Scripture, including the gospel, is reimagined daily.

Yet postmodernism, Open Theism, and the New Perspective (along with several other similar aberrant ways of thinking) have managed to make themselves quite at home under the broad tent of the contemporary evangelical movement. Read any recent issue of Christianity Today if you doubt this.

How did it come to this?

For the past fifty years or more, people calling themselves "evangelical" have been systematically watering down the gospel; filtering out the hard parts; and trying every way they can think of to tone down the offense of the cross. They have been serving up "gospel lite"—a pale imitation of the true gospel, specially distilled to taste good and go down easy. As more and more "refinements" have been made to the recipe, few people in the movement seem to be asking whether the message we're now collectively proclaiming to the world even has enough gospel left in it to be considered authentically evangelical. (It's my conviction that the correct answer to that question is no.)

The problem can be traced, I think, to a craving for academic respectability and worldly admiration. In the middle of the 20th century, several leading evangelicals proposed a whole new kind of evangelicalism—less militant, more tolerant, and (above all) shrewd and market-savvy about public relations. The neo-evangelicals seemed to operate on the assumption that the way to win the world is by making the evangelical movement and its message as appealing as possible to worldly people. In other words, let's "sell" Christianity the way Budweiser sells beer.

Why not? If they like us, surely they'll like Jesus, too.

The early compromises were subtle—just a shading of the message here and there to make it sound more positive and winsome. Instead of starting with sin, the way Romans 1 does, evangelicals decided that God's love made a more harmonious opening note for our gospel presentation: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

By the 1970s, evangelical preachers seemed to have little to say about sin and human depravity. And the wrath of God was hardly mentioned even in a whisper. The problem of sin was never actually denied, mind you—it was merely shifted more and more into the background. The gospel's call to repentance was dropped in favor of urging people to seek personal fulfillment and "a personal relationship with God."

Soon evangelicals weren't mentioning sin at all anymore. It was as if they suddenly forgot that the human dilemma is all about eternal and spiritual matters. Instead, by the mid 1980s, the issues that dominated evangelical pulpits were temporal and psychological: low self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, a sense of purpose in life, a feeling of belonging, and (of course) how to be happy, healthy, wealthy, successful, and full of self-esteem. Evangelicals portrayed "the gospel" as a quick 'n' easy answer to those questions, and little else.

By the 1990s, some evangelicals were making scarcely any reference to the gospel at all. They were so bent on winning the world's admiration that their "outreach" strategy was reduced to trivial attempts to put some kind of spiritual-sounding spin on virtually every kind of worldly entertainment. And if they couldn't make something sound spiritual, they would sometimes do it anyway—just to entertain.

During the heyday of the seeker-sensitive movement in the early 90s, someone showed me a video featuring one megachurch's idea of how evangelism ought to be done. It was a 90-minute variety show, featuring comedy, drama, and dancing. Not one mention was made of the gospel and not one verse of Scripture was ever cited during the entire parade of acts. It was sheer entertainment. But then at the very end, an "invitation" was given, encouraging those who wanted their lives to be more meaningful to "accept Christ." Nothing in the entire presentation had given viewers any clue about who Christ is, what He did, why we need Him, or what it means to believe in Him. In other words, the gospel was totally missing.

I remember thinking even then that the quest for milder-than-ever flavors of Gospel Lite had already destroyed the evangelical movement.

Now, after several years of that kind of gospel-deficient ministry, multitudes of people who think of themselves as "evangelicals" are suffering from severe spiritual malnutrition. If trees may be known by their fruits (and if the latest Barna polls give any indication of what the evangelical movement is truly like today) it seems fair to assume that multitudes who call themselves evangelicals have never really been converted at all. And without any clear concept of the gospel to guide them, they are gullible, naïve, and susceptible to whatever false doctrine or spiritual ambiguity happens to be currently in vogue.

There's no denying that the evangelical movement has utterly lost its way. If that fact weren't already sufficiently clear, the point has now been punctuated emphatically—twice in the past year—with the resignations of top leaders from the movement's two most important umbrella organizations.

First it was the president of America's flagship evangelical society, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Exposed in a sordid scandal involving repeated instances of infidelity, homosexuality, and drug trafficking, he admitted that he was a "deceiver and liar"—and that he had been so "for all of my adult life."

Fewer than six months after that story broke, it was revealed that the president of the movement's largest and most important academic fraternity, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), had quietly converted to Roman Catholicism. He eventually resigned from ETS—even though (judging from various evangelical op-ed pieces and discussions on the Internet) he might well have been able to hang onto his post as ETS president if he had so desired. Majority opinion within the organization appeared to be in favor of keeping him in office. It seemed as if no one could think of any fundamental difference remaining between evangelicals and Roman Catholics.

When the NAE president disqualified himself, evangelicalism's house organ, Christianity Today, was having its 50th anniversary celebration. The magazine had marked the half-century mark by sponsoring a series of articles about the future of evangelicalism. In the first of those articles, CT's editors more or less admitted even they aren't really sure what a correct definition of evangelicalism would be nowadays. But their working description of the movement began with the observation that evangelicals are now amazingly broad, diverse, and ecumenical. Those, of course, used to be the primary badges of liberal Christianity.

It's crucial to understand that the demise of the contemporary evangelical movement does not stem merely (or even primarily) from a failure of leadership. It is mainly owing to the whole movement's chronic neglect of the gospel as it is presented in Scripture. All those attempts to tone down and tame the gospel have changed the fundamental character of evangelicalism's message. By systematically doing away with all the hard parts of the message, evangelicals have essentially done away with the gospel itself.

It is not now and never has been a valid goal to make our gospel message more winsome, more politically correct, more sophisticated-sounding, or simpler than it already is. Since Scripture recognizes and makes no apology for the fact that the message of the cross is itself a stumbling block and mere foolishness to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 1:23-25), Christians who are determined to devise a smart-sounding or inoffensive message are not being faithful ambassadors for Christ. He has commanded what our message should be. Our only duty is to deliver it without altering the sense of it.

Evangelicals for the past half-century have done a miserably poor job at that task, and it's time to take our calling more seriously.

The Gospel in Brief The entire New Testament makes it clear that the gospel demands a response of faith and offers salvation and eternal life to all who do believe (Romans 1:16; Ephesians 1:13). In very simple terms, the gospel is the good news of how full redemption from sin has been accomplished solely through the atoning work of Christ, and how it can be applied to sinners (cf. 2 Timothy 1:10). But what are the essential facts and doctrines that make up the gospel message? The apostle Paul summarized the gospel succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. That passage is an outline only, and not an exhaustive treatise on the gospel, but it is perhaps the best starting place in all the New Testament to get a concise overview of what the gospel message consists of. Notice that Paul makes it clear both here and elsewhere that a correct understanding (and proclamation) of the gospel includes not only the historical facts of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection but also the true meaning of those events "according to the Scriptures." So even though some might suggest that Paul's shorthand gospel outline omits certain other doctrines Christians generally regard as fundamental precepts of gospel truth (such as Christ's deity and incarnation—or the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures), those things are necessary presuppositions of the facts Paul does list. Those and many other truths are included implicitly in the words "according to the Scriptures." Jesus' deity, for example, is essential to a right understanding of what Paul means by "Christ." The principles of substitutionary atonement and justification by faith permeated all of Paul's teaching and consumed his energies when he wrote in defense of the gospel, so that there's no doubt he regarded those truths as utterly non-negotiable, too. It would be a serious mistake to conclude that because he omitted explicit mention of those points in this summary, he must have regarded them as extraneous to the gospel message. They are clearly assumed and subsumed in the statement "Christ died for our sins." Remember, Paul condemned the Galatian false teachers for proclaiming a different gospel (Galatians 1:8-9), even though nothing suggests they ever disputed any of the historical facts Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 15. Instead, their error related to the question of whether obedience to the law was instrumental in justification (Galatians 2:16). That, Paul said, is a fatal corruption of the gospel.

---

How the Church Should Be Different from the World

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Lord’s Own View of His Church and People," a sermon first published in 1887.

he church is a separate and distinct thing from the world. I suppose there is such a thing as "the Christian world"; but I do not know what it is, or where it can be found. It must be a singular mixture. I know what is meant by a worldly Christian; and I suppose the Christian world must be an aggregate of worldly Christians. But the church of Christ is not of the world. "Ye are not of the world," says Christ, "even as I am not of the world."

Great attempts have been made of late to make the church receive the world, and wherever it has succeeded it has come to this result, the world has swallowed up the church. It must be so. The greater is sure to swamp the less.

They say, "Do not let us draw any hard and fast lines. A great many good people attend our services who may not be quite decided, but still their opinion should be consulted, and their vote should be taken upon the choice of a minister, and there should be entertainments and amusements, in which they can assist." The theory seems to be that it is well to have a broad gangway from the church to the world: if this be carried out, the result will be that the nominal church will use that gangway to go over to the world, but it will not be used in the other direction.

It is thought by some that it would perhaps be better to have no distinct church at all. If the world will not come up to the church, let the church go down to the world; that seems to be the theory. Let the Israelites dwell with the Canaanites, and become one happy family. Such a blending does not appear to have been anticipated by our Lord in the chapter which was read just now: I mean the fifteenth of John. Read verses eighteen and nineteen: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."

Did he ever say—"Try to make an alliance with the world, and in all things be conformed to its ways"? Nothing could have been further from our Lord's mind. Oh, that we could see more of holy separation; more dissent from ungodliness, more nonconformity to the world! This is "the dissidence of Dissent" that I care for, far more than I do for party names and the political strife which is engendered by them.

Let us, however, take heed that our separateness from the world is of the same kind as our Lord's. We are not to adopt a peculiar dress, or a singular mode of speech, or shut ourselves out from society. He did not so; but he was a man of the people, mixing with them for their good. He was seen at a wedding-feast, aiding the festivities: he even ate bread in a Pharisee's house, among captious enemies. He neither wore phylacteries, nor enlarged the borders of his garments, nor sought a secluded cell, nor exhibited any eccentricity of manner.

He was separate from sinners only because he was holy and harmless, and they were not.

He dwelt among us, for he was of us. No man was more a man than he; and yet, he was not of the world, neither could you count him among them. He was neither Pharisee, nor Sadducee, nor Scribe; and at the same time, none could justly confound him with publicans and sinners. Those who reviled him for consorting with these last did, by that very reviling, admit that he was a very different person from those with whom he went.

We want all members of the church of Christ to be, manifestly and obviously, distinct persons, as much as if they were of a separate race, even when they are seen mingling with the people around them. We are not to cut ourselves of from our neighbors by affectation and contempt. God forbid. Our very avoiding of affectation, our naturalness, simplicity, sincerity, and amiability of character, should constitute a distinction. Through Christians being what they seem to be, they should become remarkable in an age of pretenders. Their care for the welfare of others, their anxiety to do good, their forgiveness of injuries, their gentleness of manner—all these should distinguish them far more than they could be distinguished by a livery, or by any outward signs.

I long to see Christian people become more distinct from the world than ever, because I am persuaded that, until they are so, the church will never become such a power for blessing men as her Lord intended her to be. It is for the world's good that there should be no alliance between the church and the world by way of compromise, even to a shade. See what came to pass when the church and the world became one in Noah's day: when "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair," and were joined with them. Then came the deluge. Another deluge, more desolating even than the former, will come, if ever the church forgets her high calling, and enters into confederacy with the world.

---

Land of 1000 Dances

by Phil Johnson

Throwing both caution and long-established protocol to the winds, I'm going to import part of a debate from Frank Turk's blog (where these intramural squabbles really belong) to PyroManiacs (where we almost never argue amongst ourselves). I'm doing this to try to extract the question of whether it's good to turn the church into a discotheque from the more volatile and not really essential question of teetotalism. So the latter subject is off limits in this thread, and let's be nice in the meta.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

n the topic of church activities, Christian testimony, and our collective influence on the world, I wanted to point out that the message we send with our lifestyle is to a very large degree subject to the interpretation of the observer anyway.

Let's concede (for the sake of argument) that if some quixotically missional church advertises cigars and poker as the centerpiece of their men's ministry, that may very well be all it takes to convince some spiritually-naive, intellectually-stunted biker type that Christians really aren't just stuffy prudes whom he could never relate to. But it seems just as likely (much more likely, really) that relegating "men's ministry" to the smoke-filled room would offend many more than it would "reach." I'll go further: that approach is likely to derail some men for whom a man-sized dose of Jerry Bridges, J. C. Ryle, or the apostle Paul would be a thousand times more edifying than another stogie.

(Yes, I know: Spurgeon smoked. Not during church meetings, though.)

o I grew up in a modernist church where we had dances all the time. It was the default activity for our youth group. And if you think church dances are a novel idea, you've been wading in the shallow-evangelical end of the pool for too long. In fact, the most famous incident regarding a church dance I can think of occurred in 1949.

HT: to James White for what follows. I spent all day Tuesday with him. (That, of course, was before the current flap arose. We were no doubt conspiring to commandeer Technorati for the "TR blogosphere," or something like that.) In the course of our conversation, James reminded me of the following true story.

In 1948, Sayyid Qutb was part of an early wave of privileged middle-eastern Muslims who came to the west to study. He spent a couple of years at the State College of Education in Greeley, Colorado—taking classes toward a master's degree in education. Displaced from his own culture and relatively isolated in middle America, he viewed almost every aspect of American society with a jaded eye. He found American jazz melodramatic and distasteful, American sports crude and primitive, Americans themselves materialistic and shallow. But above all, he was utterly appalled by how self-centered, "distant," worldly, and utterly unspiritual American religion looked from inside a typical place of worship.

Where'd he get that impression? Well, it seems someone invited Qutb to a dance at a Methodist church in Greeley. Here's an excerpt from Qutb's own description of that evening, taken from his book The America I Have Seen:

After the religious service in the church ended, boys and girls from among the members began singing hymns, while others prayed, and we proceeded through a side door onto the dance floor that was connected to the prayer hall by a door. . . Every boy took the hand of a girl, including those who had just been singing hymns! The dance floor was lit with red and yellow and blue lights, and with a few white lamps. And they danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire. When the minister descended from his office, he looked intently around the place and at the people, and encouraged those men and women still sitting who had not yet participated in this circus to rise and take part. And as he noticed that the white lamps spoiled the romantic, dreamy atmosphere, he set about, with that typical American elegance and levity, dimming them one by one, all the while being careful not to interfere with the dance, or bump into any couples dancing on the dance floor. And the place really did appear to become more romantic and passionate. Then he advanced to the gramophone to choose a song that would befit this atmosphere and encourage the males and the females who were still seated to participate. And the minister chose. He chose a famous American song called "But Baby, It's Cold Outside" . . . and the minister waited until he saw people stepping to the rhythm of this moving song, and he seemed satisfied and contented. He left the dance floor for his home, leaving the men and the women to enjoy this night in all its pleasure and innocence!

Sounds pretty tame by comparison to the kind of things that are happening today, doesn't it? But to Sayyid Qutb in 1949, it was a shocking sign of superficiality and an impertinent lack of proper reverence. He saw it as proof that Christianity is not a faith to be taken seriously—because it isn't even taken seriously by "believers." That night was a major turning point in Qutb's thinking, and it was one of the main reasons he later gave for rejecting Western values and the Christian religion altogether.

Qutb went back to Egypt seething with outrage and contempt against the West's unbridled materialistic selfism, and he began to produce a body of writings that became the manifestos and chief handbooks for today's Islamofascism. Qutb was chief mentor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who in turn mentored Osama bin Laden. One of bin Laden's closest friends reported that bin Laden read Qutb's works intently and considered him the most important influence in the rise of radical Islamism in the current generation. (See Dinesh D'Souza on Sayyid Qutb.)

Anyway, before someone accuses me of being sympathetic with Qutb's values, let me just say I'm advocating no such thing. I'm not suggesting his perspective of Americans or Christians in general was fair and accurate. It clearly wasn't, and Qutb belongs in a hall of shame alongside Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot as some of the twentieth century's most demented megalomaniacs.

Also, I'm not suggesting (as some of our more zealous fundamentalist brethren might want to) that the club atmosphere in that one Colorado church is directly to blame for the fall of the World Trade Center towers.

But the Greeley church dance episode certainly does illustrate that not all the world is charmed by worldly religion, and the apologetic value of "Disco Night in the Sanctuary" is by no means a given. In short, taking pains to demonstrate how hip and liberated we can be in our places of worship might not always be the finest "missional" strategy.

That's one reason I personally don't find such arguments persuasive. Those who want to turn the church into a dance hall really ought to try to find more legitimate biblical support for what they are advocating. And if they can't (which, BTW, they won't,) they should reexamine the strategy.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God (1 Corinthians 10:31-32).

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:13-16).

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (James 4:4).

by Phil Johnson

"No Statement of Belief"

by Phil Johnson

watched the following video last April or thereabouts, and I intended to link to it on our blog. But I can't find any reference to it in our archives, so I rather suspect it hasn't yet got the sort of attention it deserves from Pyro-readers.

There are lots of sound bites here worth singling out. I'll let you discover them all for yourselves. My favorite is the remark made by the woman at about 4:20.

As a matter of fact, lots of the people in this video emphatically assert in unvarnished terms some of the very things I have cautioned are dangers in the post-evangelical drift. Invariably, when critics suggest this is what you'll find on Main Street in Emergent Village, we're accused of exaggerating. Watch for yourself:

PS: If that left a bad taste in your mouth, here's an Altoid for you:

---

On Catering to the "Spiritual Tastes" of Carnal People

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Resurrection with Christ," a sermon originally preached 12 April 1868 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

he blind man has not come into the world of light and color, and the unregenerate man has not come into that world of spirit, and hence neither of them is capable of judging correctly.

I sat one day, at a public dinner, opposite a gentleman of the gourmand species, who seemed a man of vast erudition as to wines and spirits, and all the viands of the table; he judged and criticized at such a rate that I thought he ought to have been employed by our provision merchants as taster in general. He had finely developed lips, and he smacked them frequently. His palate was in a truly critical condition.

He was also as proficient in the quantity as in the quality, and disposed of meats and drinks in a most wholesale manner. His retreating forehead, empurpled nose, and protruding lips, made him—while eating, at least—more like an animal than a man.

At last, hearing a little conversation around him upon religious matters, he opened his small eyes and his great mouth, and delivered himself of this sage utterance, "I have lived sixty years in this world, and I never felt or believed in anything spiritual in all my life."

The speech was a needless diversion of his energies from the roast duck. We did not want him to tell us that. I, for one, was quite clear about it before he spoke. If the cat under the table had suddenly jumped on a chair and said the same thing, I should have attached as much importance to the utterance of the one as to the declaration of the other.

And so, by one sin in one man and another in another man, they betray their spiritual death. Until a man has received the divine life, his remarks thereon, even if he be an archbishop, go for nothing. He knows nothing about it according to his own testimony; then why should he go on to try to beat down with sneers and sarcasms those who solemnly avow that they have such a life, and that this life has become real to them?

---

Bullwhip Guy

posted by Phil Johnson

    don't know who made this spot-on parody of Rob Bell's "Bullhorn Guy," but I want him to head the TeamPyro Film Division:



Bingo.

While I'm at it, here's another classic response to the Nooma disaster by our good friend (and honorary PyroManiac) Todd Friel:

Part 1:


Part 2:

---

Wake-Up Calls, Apologies, and Wrong Turns

by Phil Johnson



    few weeks ago, I made a post about the failure of the Willow Creek strategy, in which I pointed out some of the ironies surrounding this videotaped admission from Bill Hybels.

Consider, for example, that various critics of the Willow-Creek model have been saying these things for two decades:

1. Polling people to find out what they want and then giving it to them is an unbiblical approach to church growth (2 Timothy 4:2-4).
   
2. The so-called seeker-sensitive strategy actually stints discipleship.
   
3. It engenders worldliness and false conversions.
   
4. In fact, it's filling the church with people who think they are Christians but have no basis for that confidence because they have little or no true understanding of basic gospel truth—and no appetite for studying God's Word on their own.

The critics have given numerous biblical reasons for those concerns. But the Willow Creek staff refused to hear any of it until data from an opinion poll proved the critics right—and then Hybels had the audacity in this video to pretend the data were telling him something he could never in his wildest imagination have anticipated.

That's the main irony I'm talking about.

Here's another one: Willow Creek's reflexive response was to do some more research by polling, and let that determine how they would respond to the collective failure of their many programs. The result is a slick new website, book, and yet another multi-phased program, which Willow Creek is now exporting to the same churches that followed the original—now failed—strategy. And, of course, it all starts with a shiny set of new tools to make it easy for those churches to conduct their own opinion polls.

Anyway, I recommend you listen to Todd Friel's first-hour broadcast on Way of the Master Radio from 1 November. He did a much more thorough job than I did analyzing the Hybels's mea culpa video, and Todd had some excellent exhortations for all of us, as always.

Now (in matters only tangentially related to that) last week, right here at PyroManiacs, Mark "Marko" Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties, paid a visit to our meta to lodge a (very polite and fairly mild) complaint about my insinuation that his company had a major role in derailing youth ministry, starting some three decades ago or so. Many of you will recall that my chief complaint was about the fun 'n' games approach to youth "ministry," where activities just-for-fun replace biblical teaching as The Main Thing. I referred to this as "the 'Youth Specialties' approach to student ministry."

Marko demurred:

funny -- i was reading the post and agreeing with so much of it. then i got to the last bit and found it ironic that the this "fun and games" approach to youth ministry was being called the "youth specialties approach"! wow, i can only be left with one of two conclusions: 1. either there's a different youth specialties than the one i'm president of, the one that has publicly apologized for our role (decades ago) in promoting a program-approach to youth ministry, and regularly rails against this approach today. 2. or, your only contact with youth specialties was decades ago. the commenter who flagged tony jones' book with the claim that it is gnostic and neo-hindu (ha, tell that to the early church fathers!) might have a less misplaced "accusation". but to say YS is about fun and games youth ministry is certainly not reflecting who we are, what we say, or what we publish these days.

(What is it with these Emergent guys and their shift keys, anyway? Do they think capital letters contribute to global warming, or what?)

You can read that comment-thread to see my reply to Marko. Just do a search on that page for his name.

But I've been looking for the apology Marko referred to. He might have been speaking of a famous article written by the late Mike Yaconelli: "The Failure of Youth Ministry" (which was later toned down with this apology). I don't think he was speaking of the infamous skit fiasco from earlier this year, in which both Marko and the Skit Guys admitted that one particular bit of fun 'n' games went too far.

Then I found this page of articles about youth ministry, mostly rants by Yaconelli. He had a few good things to say and a lot of really bad ideas. His discomfort with the direction of modern student ministry was evident in several articles. But I couldn't find the place where he specifically acknowledged and repented of the enormous role he and YS had played in bringing the problem about in the first place.

In fact, here's what disturbs me most about both Willow Creek's recent admission and Marko's tacit acknowledgement that YS did indeed have something to repent of: In neither case do we see any of the fruits of real repentance.

Instead of reemphasizing the centrality of Scripture in what we teach our young people, Youth Specialties took a hard turn toward the leftward extreme of the Emergent spectrum. They now publish Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Chris Seay, Spencer Burke, and several other similarly unorthodox authors you probably haven't even heard of yet. And that has been in addition to (not instead of) the fun 'n' games manuals they originally built the company on. Oh, and don't forget their brand-new study guide and "devotional" based on the hit movie, Evan Almighty.

All Willow Creek's rhetoric about their so-called "Wake-up Call" likewise seems only to signal a deliberate, headlong Shift in a self-consciously postmodern direction. It is clearly not going to mean a turn toward a more biblical philosophy of ministry.

I do think Bill Hybels's admission that his strategy has failed needs to be taken at face value. I believe it signals the beginning of the end for the seeker-sensitive approach that has dominated the evangelical movement for more than twenty years. But I'm also convinced that what's coming next will be even worse.

In fact, if you miss nothing else in all the current popular re-imaginings of various ministry styles, please don't fail to notice the absence of any stress on biblical principles of ministry. Coming in the midst of all these confessions of seeker-sensitivity's heedless, reckless failure, that dark silence is noteworthy. It belies the pretense of candor in all these mea culpas. I think it is a harbinger of some truly evil things on the horizon.

---

Still Not Clear on the Concept

A Two-Part Rant Prompted by Things I Found in My In-Box
by Phil Johnson

ut of Ur has this post provocatively titled "Willow Creek Repents," and I've been getting e-mails from people who wonder what I think about it. The tone of a few of those e-mails has been like, "See there? Now you need to get on the Willow Creek fad-wagon."

No, thanks. Out of Ur includes a link to a video of Bill Hybels explaining how he supposedly got "the wake up call of [his] adult life." I watched the video, and frankly there's not a hint of "repentance" in it. It's just a slick announcement about Willow Creek's latest program.

So am I the only one who finds it both ironic and disturbing that when the framers of ministry philosophy at Willow Creek finally are faced with the desiccated fruits of their program-driven approach to ministry, their instant response is to announce a new program?

Really, I would love to sound more positive and affirming about Hybels' "wake up call." But critics of Willow Creek have been pointing out for years that the seeker-sensitive ministry philosophy severely stunts Christian growth. Even worse, Willow Creek's methodology seems to multiply the number of almost-converts who dabble in spiritual matters until they are no longer amused, and then fall away without ever coming to authentic faith in Christ.

Hybels has blown off all those criticisms for years. He only reluctantly and partially accepts them now because he can't very well wave aside his own staff's opinion-poll data.

Get it? Opinion-poll data?

Try to caricature that.

n a similar vein, several people have pointed me to some recent articles by J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine. He has been exposing and condemning some rather egregious examples of charismania gone to seed, and his articles illustrate how easily blind Charismatic credulity can breed moral rot. An e-mail I received this morning urged me to recognize and commend Grady "for the work he is doing" to "expose the systemic corruption, lies and immorality" in certain high-profile charismatic circles.

OK. Fine. But he's not saying anything that wasn't already being said thirty years ago by sober critics of the charismatic movement. And these are not new problems he is "exposing," but corruption that Charisma itself knew about and worked hard to conceal for many years.

As a matter of fact, Grady starts this week's column with the stunning revelation that his first task at Charisma fifteen years ago was "to sort through dozens of files of disturbing allegations" made by numerous women against Bishop Earl Paulk. He now admits "national charismatic leaders" should have listened to those allegations (which were credible if only for the sheer number of witnesses against Paulk), rather than permitting the Bishop to "thrive unchallenged."

But again: What Grady is now saying is precisely what many critics of latter-day charismatic "prophets and apostles" have been saying for more than three decades. Bishop Paulk is no anomaly in the charismatic world, nor is he even close to being the most heinous example of gross moral failure among the charismatic elite. So I think it's seriously overblown to hail J. Lee Grady (the way some have) as prophetic.

What's most striking about Grady's article, however, is this paragraph: "We charismatics, who claim to have the gift of discernment, should have smelled this cultic deception a mile away. But instead, even though the list of allegations grew year by year, leaders in our movement continued to allow Paulk to air his broadcasts on national television."

I'm glad he said that. I could not have said it without incurring the wrath of every charismatic friend I have. But it is, after all, a point that really does need to be dealt with: Charismatic claims about questionable prophecies, miracles, gifts, and callings regularly and systematically breed willful gullibility, not discernment.

Just like seeker-sensitive methodology stunts rather than stimulates spiritual growth.

The problems in both of those movements are serious and systemic, not superficial and cosmetic. They are problems that are rooted in their respective movements' most distinctive ideas. Until their leaders see that and actually change direction, it seems a bit overly optimistic to refer to their mea culpas as "repentance."

---