An Open Letter to T4G

by Frank Turk

To my Dear Friends in Christ at T4G.org;

I waited and waited, but
nobody would join me for coffee

Everyone has an idiom in which his voice is most clearly heard, and unfortunately for all of us, mine is "Hitler Reacts" videos.

Just kidding -- mine is obviously the Open Letter.  I have taken a lot of flack from all sorts of people over the years for having the audacity to use a blog like this to write letters like that.  It has even made some wonder whether or not the Open Letter is a dead medium, a dead form.  Personally I love to write them because it gives both me and the readers of this blog the sense that we are actually speaking to certain people and not merely about them.  Moreover, I think I have a long record of using both gentleness and reverence in them (with a handful of exceptions that, frankly, prove the rule), so I am taking a break from my hiatus to write one to you.  I hope it finds you well, and in good spirits.

We're closing in on the early bird registration deadline (well: it's a month off), and it has caused my friends and I to have off-line chats about whether we are going.  I'm sure that's a common discussion happening right now as everyone tries to decide whether or not they have $1000 (registration, room & board, travel) to spend a week with 5000 (7500?  How many?) brothers and sisters in Christ.  I have gone in the past, so for the record I'm not casting any shade on those who will chose to do so this year.  (For those reading: if you choose to go this year, God bless you; may it bless you greatly; may it make you better disciples and better body parts in your local church [whichever part you may be]).  But, I'm not going this year.

Someone suggested I should have expected an invitation since other bloggers have been invited and I am an allegedly-famous blogger.  I think that's absurd on the face of it, to be honest: the "bloggers" invited to this event are actually proteges of the fellows instrumental in creating T4G, and I am not that; I'm not from SBTS, or CHBC, or from what used to be the Sovereign Grace network of churches, or a Presbyterian.  Given my close relationship to Phil Johnson, both public and private, it would seem more likely to see me invited to something GTY/GCC put on -- but Phil and I have discussed that, and I have no interest in being that guy.  And more to the point, I really am on hiatus from all things blog-related in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Maybe what those asking me that question were really asking me is this: since T4G is now a decade old, is it time for you to freshen up the mix?  For example, when we listen to the recording of Band of Bloggers last time, how fresh was that?  Was it really worth the price of admission -- even factoring in the Chick-fil-A and the free books?  Once we get past aggregating other people's work, and being famous for assisting better writers with getting their works into print, what are we seeing at BoB -- and why?  Would it help to include someone from outside the echo chamber those fellows represent to see what else could be helpful?

Personally, and to be as clear as possible, I have nothing to add that would freshen up that mix.  My currently-jaded perspective on how Christian celebrity works, and whether or not it's legitimate to cultivate such a thing, would not make that hour of discussion more helpful -- because I am self-aware enough to know that I am, currently, very jaded on that subject.  I am very weary and squint-eyed from disappointment in the public face of our faith.  I'm not yet 50 (but almost), and I would sound like a one-eyed centenarian misanthrope if you put me next to Colin Hansen and asked me anything about which both he and I could comment.  That would not be worth bringing me there to perform, or be worth anybody's money to pay and see.

But that question is still worth considering: what could refresh T4G and it's ancillary services?  What would revive, in the intellectual, catechetical or phenomenological senses, the vibe at T4G?  Maybe if you brought in that fabled faithful pastor who has been at the same church for 4 or 5 decades ...?

I can remember the first time I went, which was the second time it ran.  We were not filling the YUM Center yet but were still in the big room at the Convention Center in Louisville (I think it might have been the room the bookstore is in now, but that may be a faulty memory of it). You could hear the other men singing (and yes ladies: sorry, it was something like 99.9% men) in a way that (if you will forgive me for saying it) sounded like church.  It sounded like we were there together, and not merely there in attendance.  I actually accidentally one morning walked into the conference center next to CJ -- though I am sure he didn't know me from Adam, and I didn't realize it was him until we reached the end of the skyway.  It still had the sense, as you still propose it to be, of being a conversation among friends.

It's not really that anymore, is it?

Maybe it is.  Maybe that's what actually causes some of the comments like the ones sent to me about who gets invited and who doesn't: real friendly relationships can cause those on the outside of them to feel somehow left out.  People feel like maybe they have something that belongs with such a thing as T4G, and when T4G ignores it (intentionally or accidentally; and sometimes "intentionally" can even mean "because there's no more room for stuff here" rather than something more tawdry like "not invented here") it seems like a sleight because other people and other "stuff" get included when others did not.  But that's what happens when people or things get famous: fans mistake fandom for friendship, and when it turns out that Mark Dever really has no idea who I am or whatever, it seems like a slight when it's not anything like that.

Yet when we think about it that way, the riddle of what T4G has become still doesn't get puzzled out. It actually gets harder to unpack because we're really not talking about church here anymore, are we?  We're not talking about real human relationships but the experience. We're talking about something that looks and acts more like the other events that fill the YUM Center.  I mean: it costs $1000 to go to T4G if you live right.  It could cost one $2500 easily by simply picking different meal options and hotels.  To the average pastor, $1000 is more than a week's salary -- in some cases, it's more than two.  It stops being a conversation between friends when the first checkpoint of self-selection into the conversation is which quintile of income can afford to join in, doesn't it?

Now, look: this is not an attempt to heap scorn on you fellows for price or venue or any of that.  I think that the audio files from T4G are worth the price of a decent double album (note: I just dated all of us since most of the young fellers reading this have never seen the glory of Pink Floyd's The Wall in real vinyl in real dust jackets), and I have honestly been edified by every T4G since its inception.  The words of the message are clear every time.  I am worried that maybe there is something else being said by the medium which needs to be worked out more completely than by a sidebar panel discussion.  One speaker self-exonerating himself and the panel by saying his wife keeps him honest and there are no superstars in his household is not a solution to this conundrum.

So as people think about attending your event, and follow it on Twitter, and look forward to the able-bodied messages and the impressive line-up of powerful speakers both new and time-tested, I'm asking you to consider what you have become -- which is somehow both more and less than a conversation among friends.  You have become influential across denominational lines, and somehow have also lost the physical appearance of a local church.  And in doing these things, you are shaping others in ways that are probably unintended -- and as with all unintended consequences, it is the father of all manner of children.

Please be good fathers to the children you have made here.  Be good servants of Christ, because I know your faith in Him is both real and good, and your hope for His final victory is the same as mine, and the only real reason we should care about what we are doing personally, both privately and publicly.  He's our savior, our king, and also our judge.  Let's all be judged worthy by Him when we at last see his face.

In His name, and for His sake, I thank you for your time and attention.

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Created an Appetite

Every Friday, to commemorate the stellar contributions to internet apologetics and punditry made by our founder and benefactor, Phil Johnson, the unpaid and overworked staff at TeamPyro is posting a "best of Phil" post to give your weekend that necessary kick.

This excerpt is from the original PyroManiac blog back in July 2005.  Phil deals with the fleeting fads of evangelicalism as a warning to remember what is really happening when a "movement" starts.

As usual, the comments are closed.

Virtually all the people on Time magazine's list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals" share at least one glaringly significant trait:

For the most part, these are the fadmakers. They are the cheerleaders for whatever is fashionable. They are the designers of the programs that are peddled by the out-of-control Christian publishing industry and purchased and implemented with little critical thought or concern by hundreds of thousands of people in the movement that calls itself "evangelical."

• Rick Warren, who heads the list, is the chief architect of the currently-dominant fad, "Forty Days of Purpose" and all the other Purpose-Driven® spinoffs.
• Tim Lahaye is the "theological" mind behind the best-selling fad of all time—the "Left Behind" series.
• J. I. Packer and Richard John Neuhaus have been the prime movers in the ecumenical fad—probably the last bandwagon we would have expected evangelicals to jump aboard 20 years ago.
• Bill Hybels masterminded the "seeker-sensitive" fad.
• Brian McLaren basically took Hybels' strategy ("contextualizing" the message for the extant culture) to the next level. McLaren is the leading figure in the "emergent church" fad.
• James Dobson is the most powerful figure in the "culture war" fad.

Too bad for Bruce Wilkinson that Time didn't do this piece two years ago when the "Jabez" fad was still hot, or he would have almost certainly been near the top of this list. The fact that he didn't even get mentioned is a testimony to how fleeting the fads can be.

Fifteen minutes of fame

Someone will almost certainly challenge whether it's right to label all those trends and programs "fads." But that is exactly what they are. They are popular for the moment, but they have nothing to do with historic evangelicalism or the biblical principles that made evangelicalism an important idea.

Not one of those movements or programs even existed 35 years ago. Most of them would not have been dreamed of by evangelicals merely a generation ago. And, frankly, most of them will not last another generation. Some will last a few short months (like the Jabez phenomenon did); others may seem to dominate for several years but then die lingering deaths (like Bill Gothard's movement is doing). But they will all eventually fade and fall from significance. And some poor wholesale distributor will be left with warehouses full of Jabez junk, Weigh-Down Workshop paraphernalia, "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets, Purpose-Driven® merchandise, and stacks and stacks of "emerging church" resources.

...

How post-evangelicalism gave birth to the Fad-Driven® Church

So why has the recent culture of American evangelicalism—a movement supposedly based on a commitment to timeless truths—been so susceptible to fads? Why are evangelical churches so keen to jump on every bandwagon? Why do our people so eagerly rush to buy the latest book, CD, or cheap bit of knockoff merchandise concocted by the marketing geniuses who have taken over the Christian publishing industry?

To borrow and paraphrase something the enigmatic Dissidens recently blogged (see "Remonstrans"), evangelicals and fundamentalists alike "have a genuine affection for the ugly and the superficial, whether in their art, their preaching, or their devotion." A few years ago, marketing experts learned how to tap into evangelicals' infatuation with the cheap and tawdry and turn it into cash.

Some of the beginner-level fads have seemed harmless enough—evangelical kitsch like Kinkade paintings, Precious Moments® collectibles, singing songbooks, moralizing vegetables, bumper stickers, Naugahyde® Bible covers, and whatnot. Such fads themselves, taken individually, may not seem worth complaining about at all. But collectively, they have created an appetite for "the ugly and the superficial." They have spawned more and more fads. Somewhere along the line, evangelicals got the notion that all the fads were good, because the relentless parade of bandwagons gave the illusion that evangelicals were gaining significant influence and visibility. No bandwagon was too weird to get in the parade. And the bigger, the better.

As a result, several of the more recent fads have been downright destructive to the core distinctives of evangelical doctrine, because most of them (Promise Keepers, Willow Creek, and the various political and ecumenical movements) have taken a deliberately minimalistic approach to doctrine, discarding key evangelical distinctives or labeling them nonessential. All of them adhered to a deliberate strategy that was designed to broaden the movement and make each successive bandwagon bigger and easier to climb onto.

"Bandwagons"? Somewhere along the line, the bandwagons morphed into Trojan horses.

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Celebrity Pastors and the Roots of American Evangelical Dysfunction

by Phil Johnson





everal weeks before the Shepherds' Conference, all the plenary speakers were sent a sheet of survey questions. Their replies were excerpted and published in the Official Conference Guide.

The first question was, "What books have you read recently and how have they made an impact on your thinking?" The answer I gave was wordy and my reading list was—let's say "eclectic." (Some would say "motley.") So—no real surprise to me—my answer to that question didn't get published in the Guide. But I wanted to mention part of my answer here, because it prompted an interesting observation.

In answering that first question, I divided the lists of books I've been reading into "Biography & History; Theology; Commentaries; and Biblical Subjects." I didn't plan this, but the first three volumes I listed in the "Biography & History" category revealed an intriguing pattern:

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, by Kenneth Silverman

The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Debby Applegate

Apparent Danger: [J. Frank Norris,] The Pastor of America's First Megachurch and the Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s, (also published under the title The Shooting Salvationist) by David Stokes

The first two books on that list won Pulitzer Prizes. The third one is as compelling as any Pulitzer winner—a pastoral biography in classic true-crime genre. All three are books I would highly recommend.

The subjects of all three books are celebrity pastors—Cotton Mather, Henry Ward Beecher, and J. Frank Norris—three very different men whose ministries left indelible imprints on three successive centuries of American history. They represent three vastly different strains of evangelical Protestantism. At the peak of their ministries, each of these three men could have legitimately claimed to be the most famous pastor in the country. All three were too enthralled with their own celebrity status. And all three were at the center of scandals that diminished their reputations.

Consequently, all three books are instructive about the various dangers of evangelical mass movements and man-centered leadership models. Large personalities often have large character flaws. Celebrity leaders and the personality cults they tend to cultivate are fraught with danger. Sycophants and simpletons tend to mimic and exaggerate the shortcomings of men with big egos while spurning the lessons of their failures. The aftermath leaves a long wake. It's my belief that ripples of the various errors made by these three men are still reverberating on the surface of American evangelicalism.

Mather

Cotton Mather is the most likable of these three superstar historical figures. Two of his grandfathers (John Cotton and Richard Mather) were respected and respectable Puritan pastors who came to America with some of the first settlers. Their goal was to found a Puritan society. Cotton's father, Increase Mather, was also an excellent pastor and an influential political leader in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. So the heavy mantle of two previous generations fell on Cotton Mather.

The controversy for which Cotton Mather is remembered—and the episode that tainted his reputation in American history—was of course the Salem Witchcraft crisis. Mather chronicled the events of that catastrophe in a manner calculated to put himself in the hero's role, but when the witch trials were discredited and even one of the leading judges, Samuel Sewell, publicly repented for his part in condemning people to death who turned out to be innocent, Mather became the main target of critics and satirists. His sometimes pompous, overbearing demeanor made him an easy mark for ridicule.

In later years Cotton Mather became intrigued with German pietism. The virile, gospel-centered Reformed teaching he had learned from his grandfathers slowly, almost imperceptibly became mixed and diluted with whiny moralism and pious-sounding platitudes. Mather was satirized by young Benjamin Franklin, whose imaginary alter-ego, a cranky, outspoken, holier-than-thou woman named Silence Dogood, was based on Mather's personality. (Mather had written a famous book titled Essays to Do Good.) It's my conviction that Mather's moralistic shift unwittingly helped open the door for Socinianism and Deism in the generation that followed him.

Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher was likewise the son of a very famous preacher, Lyman Beecher. (The whole Beecher family were famous. One of Henry's sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Another sister was an influential women's-rights activist. A niece was married to Edward Everett Hale.) The elder Beecher was originally a strict subscriptionist to the Westminster Confession. At first he opposed the doctrines and methodologies ("new measures") that Charles Finney made popular. But Lyman Beecher later softened his stance against Finney and he himself began to advocate the "new measures." The famous patriarch of the Beecher family was subsequently charged with heresy and tried by his session, but he was acquitted.

The son, Henry Ward Beecher, a young, struggling pastor at the time, seemed to take his father's shift (and acquittal) as permission to throw off the shackles of orthodoxy completely. He began to employ methodologies and teach doctrines that were novel at the time but have become standard fare for today's seeker-sensitive and highly-contextualized ministry styles. Beecher was openly and proudly devoted to worldly values and stylish causes. He reveled in his celebrity status and the petty scandals his lifestyle provoked.

Then a major scandal broke when a parishioner (the wife of one of Beecher's assistants) admitted to her husband that she had engaged in an adulterous affair with Beecher. In those days adultery was a criminal offense, and Beecher was formally charged. After a scandalous public trial, which was played out on the front pages of every newspaper in America, the jury was unable to reach a decision, and Beecher returned to ministry. In my judgment Henry Ward Beecher bears as much responsibility as (perhaps more than) Charles Finney for the pragmatism that dominates evangelical ministry philosophy today.

Norris

Frank Norris had a decidedly different style and he was a classic fundamentalist with regard to doctrine, but he shared Beecher's love of celebrity and his penchant for scandal. Norris pastored two churches concurrently—one in Detroit and one in Ft. Worth, TX. Before the era of jet travel, he would fly back and forth between the two cities, preaching on alternate weeks at one location, then the other.

Norris's most notorious scandal occurred when he shot a man to death in the pastor's study in Ft. Worth. He claimed it was self-defense, but there were no witnesses, and he was charged with murder. Norris's trial was also meticulously covered by every newspaper in America. Ultimately, he was acquitted, but he incurred the contempt and distrust of many, including a number of his own former followers.

That wasn't even Norris's only criminal trial. He was charged on another occasion with arson when the Ft. Worth Church burned under highy questionable circumstances, but Norris was acquitted of that charge as well. The various trials and acquittals seemed to make Norris more brash and pugnacious. He epitomized the "fighting fundamentalist" style. Later fundamentalists, including Jack Hyles and Peter Ruckman, openly revered and imitated him. The Bible Baptist Fellowship considers Norris a founder, and his controversial style is definitely still alive in that group.

Three centuries. Three celebrity pastors. Three completely different ministry philosophies. And yet there are so many similarities. Reading these three books in relatively close succession drove home the point for me that evangelicals historically haven't been very good at differentiating between men who have character and men who merely are characters.

There's nothing inherently wrong with fame, of course. But a love of fame for fame's sake—the modern notion of celebrity—is deadly, especially in the church. We ought to learn the lessons of our own past, and we ought to heed the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:26-28).

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Faithfulness, "Fruitfulness," and the Twisted Notion of Evangelical Celebrity

by Phil Johnson



econd Timothy 3 begins with a stern, prophetic warning: "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty." And then Paul gives a dead-on job description for the typical 21st-century celebrity: "People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."

But get this: When Paul says "People," he is not talking about People magazine or the secular celebrities that grace the cover of that periodical. He is predicting a time when those traits will be characteristic of church leaders. Notice that the people he is describing "hav[e] the appearance of godliness, but [deny] its power" (v. 5).

We are living and ministering in a time such as Paul described. Watch today's rock-star pastors on their YouTube channels and you will see every characteristic Paul listed played out in vivid detail on the church stage.

So what are Paul's instructions to Timothy? Should he mentor these guys, invite them for Elephant-Room-style dialogue, become a headliner in their conferences, or publicly embrace and encourage them in the hope that he can harness their popularity and perhaps influence them for good? Not at all.

With regard to pastors and church leaders who promote and model innovative, worldly, self-loving ministry philosophies, "reckless [church leaders], swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure"—Paul wants Timothy to be a separatist: "Avoid such people" (v. 5). In fact the Greek term is active, aggressive: "from such turn away."

Paul then reminds Timothy of his singular duty to be both a student and a herald of the Word of God: "As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed . . . . All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work" (vv. 14-17).

This has been a repeated theme in Paul's counsel to Timothy. First Timothy 4:6: "put these things before the brothers." What things? "the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed." Verse 11: "Command and teach these things." Verse 13: "Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching." Chapter 6, verses 2-4: "Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing." Second Timothy 1:13: "[Hold fast] the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me." Chapter 2, verse 15: "Present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth."

New Testament pastors are called to be simple and single-minded in the carrying our of a single task. Yet, amazingly, the straightforward clarity of Paul's charge to Timothy seems utterly lost on many 21st-century church leaders. They have been blinded to it by the quest for celebrity and a worldly standard of success.

What's ironic about that is that even the great apostle Paul would not have measured up to their notion of "fruitfulness" and prosperity. Both of his epistles to Timothy end by noting how many unfaithful former companions forsook him when the cost of standing firm became too high. He was neither popular nor "fruitful" by the Elephant-Room standard of fruitfulness.

That ought to make us stop and reassess the direction of the contemporary evangelical movement. I, for one, don't want to go where the movement seems headed.

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A Conversation with Lane Chaplin

On Evangelicalism's Current Cults of Celebrity
by Phil Johnson

hanks to Lane Chaplin for taping and posting this:

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