The Fad Driven Church

I was directed to this excellent article this morning, which is actually the transcript of a message given by Phil Johson (the Phil Johnson associated with John MacArthur and his ministry) at the 2005 Shepherd’s Conference. It’s sad to see that not much has changed since he delivered the message, except that the monster that he saw on the horizon (the emergent church) has now “emerged” full-force and is no longer on the horizon, but close enough to smell its foul breath and count its razor-sharp teeth.

Johnson begins by looking at a well known evangelical leader, Tony Campolo. Honestly every time I read something about Campolo, I am convinced he can’t fall further off the horse, but then I am proven wrong once again. Johnson observes:

Listen, for example, to Tony Campolo, arguing that today’s evangelical seminary students need to be taught marketing savvy rather than theology and Scripture. This is from a book he co-authored with Brian McLaren, ironically titled Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. Yet Campolo himself has missed the point. He is actually arguing that church leaders should follow the culture and study marketing techniques rather than theology. And he suggests this would be a good thing. He writes: “What if the credits eaten up by subjects seminarians seldom if ever use after graduation were instead devoted to more subjects they will actually need in churches—like business and marketing courses? It is not true that with a gifted preacher, a church will inevitably grow. Good sermons may get visitors to stay once they come, but getting folks to come in the first place [will] take some marketing expertise. … Maybe it’s time that some business school courses find their way into seminary.

This is troubling, but nothing new; Johnson points out that George Barna suggested this sort of thing a generation ago. Johnson then continues by showing that the word “evangelical” (which was virtually unknown in mainstream America prior to the presidency of Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s) has come to mean absolutely nothing concrete in today’s language (no more so, in my estimation, than “religious”). Reflecting on an issue of Time magazine, he comments:

Here’s why I don’t think [the rise of evangelicalism is] a particularly encouraging development: I read the Time magazine list of 25 influential evangelicals. That article by itself would have been enough to convince me the evangelical movement is in serious trouble. The list included people like T. D. Jakes, who denies the Trinity; former Lutheran-turned-Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus; Joyce Meyer, the jet-setting charismatic prosperity-gospel preacherette; and Brian McLaren, the postmodern pastor who denies the authority of Scripture and wants to see the church make a radical break with just about everything that’s rooted in historic Christianity. Thirty years ago, not one of those people would have even been included in a list of “evangelicals.” They are not evangelicals in the historic sense of the word. What’s changed? It’s not that more people became evangelicals, but that the concept of evangelicalism has been expanded to become all-inclusive. The word evangelical has lost its historic meaning. These days it means everything—and it therefore means nothing. It’s clear where Time magazine thinks evangelicalism’s clout is being felt the most. It’s not in spiritual matters, but in the realm of politics and culture. And you know what? They are right. The word evangelical used to describe a well-defined theological position. What made evangelicals distinct was their commitment to the authority of Scripture and the exclusivity of Christ. Now evangelicalism is a political movement, and its representatives hold a wide variety of theological beliefs—from Neuhaus’s Roman Catholicism to Jakes’s heretical Sabellianism, to Joyce Meyer’s radical charismaticism, to Brian McLaren’s anti-scriptural postmodernism. There’s only one person in the entire list who would remotely qualify as an evangelical theologian, and that’s J. I. Packer. But Packer himself has been on a quest for the past 20 years to make evangelicalism as broad as possible. Frankly, none of these people I just named would even agree among themselves on any distinctive points of doctrine. They wouldn’t even agree on the essential points of the gospel message. The one thing they do agree on is that they’d like to see the evangelical movement become as broad and inclusive as possible. But that’s not really historical evangelicalism, is it? That kind of latitudinarianism has always belonged to Socinians and Deists and modernists and theological liberals. It’s antithetical to the historic principles of the evangelical movement.

Johnson also notices something else this strain of evangelicalism has in common — the purpose of the almighty fad:

There’s another common trait shared by many of the people on Time magazine’s list of 25. For the most part, these are the fad makers. These are the people who have designed 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 evangelical movement. Rick Warren, who heads the list, is the father of the hottest prefabricated program of the moment, “Forty Days of Purpose.” Tim Lahaye is co-author of the best-selling fad of all time—the “Left Behind” series. Packer and Neuhuas 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. McLaren took that to the next level with the “emergent church” fad. And James Dobson is the godfather of the “culture war” fad. (Too bad for Bruce Wilkinson that Time magazine didn’t do this piece two years ago when the “Jabez” fad was still hot, or he would have almost certainly made the list.) Now, I have labeled all these trends and programs as “fads,” because that is what they all 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 these movements or programs even existed 35 years ago. Most of them would not have been dreamed of by evangelicals a generation ago. And, frankly, most of them will not last another generation. They will all eventually fade and die, just like the Jabez phenomenon. And some poor publisher or wholesale distributor will be left with warehouses full of Jabez junk, Weigh-Down Workshop paraphernalia, “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets, and Purpose-Driven merchandise (complete with the authorized trademark symbol).

In contrast, Johnson mentions that John MacArthur had a problem getting Twelve Ordinary Men published, since the complaint was “it’s just too biblical.” How sad. And it just gets worse, as seen in the emergent church movement. Johnson points to one of the proponents of this movement and what he says about the nature of preaching:

At last year’s Emergent convention in San Diego, one of the speakers, Doug Pagitt, pastor of an Emergent Church known as Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, told Emergent church leaders he is convinced preaching is no longer a viable methodology for worship or evangelism in a postmodern world. “Preaching is broken,” he said. Postmodern people don’t trust authority figures. They don’t want to hear someone stand up and expound the Word of God. It’s unhealthy, he says. It’s abusive. “Why do I get to speak for 30 minutes and you don’t?” he asked. He went on: “A sermon is often a violent act. . . . It’s a violence toward the will of the people who have to sit there and take it.” Let me say this: That epitomizes the direction all these fads are moving. The fad-driven church cannot be a church governed by the Word of God. If you get your direction by seeing which way the winds of change are blowing and following the prevailing trend, you are being disobedient to the clear command of Ephesians 4:14, which instructs us not to do that.

How are the winds of fad blowing these days? Johnson notes that among other things, fundamental Christian doctrines (such as the doctrine of justification) are being attacked, and because of the nausea from riding the wind and waves of fads, the church is ill-equipped to deal with it:

The way the wind is blowing these days is not good. The doctrine of justification by faith is under attack on several fronts. In England at the moment, there’s a huge controversy brewing because one of the most popular and well-known young British evangelical media figures—a man named Steve Chalke, published a book last year titled The Lost Message of Jesus. In it, he attacks the doctrine of original sin. He denounces the principle of penal substitution, suggesting that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement as evangelicals have historically understood and proclaimed it amounts to “cosmic child abuse.” He insists that God would never punish His Son for other people’s offenses. On page 182 of the book, he asks, “How have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent His anger and wrath [against sin] on His own Son?” How have we come to believe that? I’ll tell you how I came to believe that: because the Bible says so (Isaiah 53:10): “It pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. [He made] His soul an offering for sin.” The problem is, in the contemporary, fad-driven evangelical culture, almost no one is left who is both equipped and willing to answer a view like that. Someone decided several years ago that the word propitiation is too technical and not user-friendly enough for contemporary Christians, so preachers stopped explaining the principle of propitiation. Now that this idea is under attack, we have a generation of leaders who don’t remember what it meant or why it’s important to defend. And the overwhelming majority of British evangelicals have rushed to Steve Chalke’s defense, claiming his critics are just overweening negativists who are behind the times and out of touch with this postmodern era. The leadership of the evangelical alliance in England are busy wringing their hands about the “tone” of the debate and the “unity” of their movement—and frankly if things follow the historical pattern, ultimately very little will be done to stem the tide of heresy this book has already unleashed. … Something seriously needs to change in order to rescue the idea of historic evangelicalism from the contemporary evangelical movement. And here’s what needs to change: A generation of preachers needs to rise up and be committed to preaching the Word, in season and out of season, and be willing to ignore the waves of silly fads that come and go and leave the church’s head spinning.

What’s the solution? It’s not a new one, and it’s not a fad. Ministers must do what they were called to do — preach the word of God:

Scripture is better than any fad. Preaching the Word of God is more effective than any new methodology contemporary church experts have ever invented. I don’t care who thinks preaching is “broken.” If we would get back to the clear proclamation and exposition of God’s Word, everything that’s broken about contemporary preaching would be fixed. The nature of God’s Word guarantees that. And that’s exactly what I want to do in the time we have remaining in this session. I want to preach to you about the superiority and the excellence of Scripture.

As an illustration of the power of God’s word, Johnson relays this great story about George Whitefield:

There’s a story in the biography of George Whitefield about a man named Thorpe, who was a bitter opponent of everything that is holy. He and a group of his friends—all of them young, rebellious thugs—conspired together to mock and oppose George Whitefield’s evangelistic ministry while Whitefield was preaching in Bristol, England. George Whitefield had severely crossed eyes, if you have ever seen a realistic likeness of him. And these guys used to refer to him as “Dr. Squintum.” They called their little gang “The Hell-Fire Club,” and they disrupted meetings, mocked Whitefield on the streets and in public places, and generally tried to make his ministry a reproach in their community. Whitefield’s preaching had already made a deep and lasting impact in Bristol, and these young ruffians hated him for it. So this guy Thorpe got one of Whitefield’s published sermons and took it to the local pub, where the “Hell-Fire Club” was gathered to drink together while they make a burlesque of Whitefield. Thorpe was apparently pretty good at doing impressions, and he had all Whitefield’s mannerisms and gestures down pat. So he stood in the center of this pub and crossed his eyes and began to deliver a derisive rendition of Whitefield’s sermon. But in the middle of the sermon, the Word of God pierced his heart, and he suddenly stopped and sat down, trembling and broken-hearted. Right then and there, he confessed the truth of the gospel and gave his heart to Christ. His aim was to taunt and ridicule, but he accidentally converted himself! Or rather, the power of the Word of God penetrated his soul and cut him to the heart. He became a preacher himself and quite an effective evangelist, because he knew so well the power of the Word of God to penetrate hardened hearts.

Finally, there is simply this amazing story about how one man’s trash is God’s treasury:

My friend Joe Aleppo, who is here this week, introduced me to a man in Sicily who came to Christ during a severe paper shortage after World War II because of a single page of Scripture from a Bible someone had thrown away. Paper was almost impossible to come by, so merchants used old newspapers and other scrap paper to wrap whatever they sold in the marketplace. This man went to the fish market and bought a fish. When he unwrapped it at home, one of the papers used to make the package was a page from a discarded New Testament. He read it, and this man who had been a lifelong Roman Catholic and had never before read a verse of the Bible for himself became a believer. That man’s conversion was the beginning of the first significant Protestant movement on the island of Sicily.

That, dear friends, is the power of God’s holy word, and we can never lose sight of that — even in the midst of world (and a church) that loves to chase after fads.