Pajama Pages ← Church, Media, Culture

An irrelevant King-sized scoreboard

Mar

2013

From Clayton King’s Twitter feed today: Why we shouldn’t trust the media: major news outlet says Catholic Church is dwindling while 1.1 billion Catholics say “Huh?” Huh? We’ve pointed out the weakness of NewSpring’s trademarked Scoreboard argument by asking whether they’d be swayed by it if it were applied to other religions, cults and sects. King ...

Dear megachurch pastors, the Bible is not boring

Feb

2013

I received this exciting email a week or so ago from the YouVersion Bible app (which I use and appreciate) with the subject line, See the Bible Come Alive this March: Have you ever tried to picture what Noah’s family experienced during the flood? What it looked like when Samson destroyed the temple? How it felt ...

NewSpring attacked my family, but I’m the jackass?

Feb

2013

In November of 2010 Perry Noble and Shane Duffey released a leadership podcast entitled Ignoring the Jackass where they took great delight in belittling and literally demonizing bloggers who dared criticized Noble’s teaching or NewSpring’s methodology. This was almost a full year after they took the Maxwell story public and months after we had filed ...

The parable of the preacher who made up parables

Feb

2013

Once upon a time, a blogger made up a parable to illustrate the dangers of pastors who’d rather preach about themselves than Scripture. It went something like this: One Sunday a popular preacher, finding no good verses to use, told his congregation the parable of the house with the closed doors. It went something like ...

Who knew you needed an excuse NOT to play Highway to Hell?

Jan

2013

A couple of weeks ago, NewSpring’s Twitter account linked to a blog post written by one of its members praising Perry Noble and the church. NewSpring rarely links to other blogs, so this appears to be a careful choice to advertise the virtues of their church and pastor. The post, written by Sarah Monk, whom I ...

Why we sued another believer

Jan

2013

A commentator at this post asked an important question today that I thought warranted a more substantial answer than just a reply in the comments because I assume it’s one that many other readers may have had themselves. No matter what happened between you and Perry Noble (whom I have no relationship with or affinity ...

Should Perry Noble be given the benefit of the doubt?

Jan

2013

Over the next few posts, I will be going through my old case files and reviewing some of the more surprising statements that Perry made in sermons and podcasts after the details of the 2009 NewSpring harassment against us were known to them. Neither side publicized the fact that a lawsuit was underway, so most of ...

Clayton King’s gospel of violence, or Why this will happen again

Jan

2013

One of the reasons that I have resumed blogging even after our case against NewSpring was settled is that the underlying issues that caused the problems are still there. NewSpring shows no evidence of having learned anything from the events of 2009, and, remarkably, continued to preach a violent response to critics well after they ...

Don’t blame NewSpring’s haters

Jan

2013

For the last day or two I’ve been working on a post partially titled “Why this will happen again,” the this being NewSpring’s angry harassment of Perry Noble’s critics. I found out this afternoon that the prophecy came true yesterday. A listener of Chris Rosebrough’s Fighting for the Faith show, which had broadcast an interview with me on Monday, ...

A new conversation with Fighting for the Faith

Jan

2013

If you want to take a 60-minute break from reading, here’s an interview I did with my friend Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith a few days ago. Share this: