In this video from IMPART, Steven Furtick is joined on stage by special guest Perry Noble. The first thing that hit me after watching this video is that someone paid $700 to watch these guys sit around and talk. Apparently, being able to draw a large crowd to a church service makes you an expert on all things. For instance, from the video, here’s Noble on marriage:
The problem with some pastors marriages is you want your wife to understand you and she don’t. She loves you. She married you. She will never understand you.
Maybe this is true in some cases, but Perry doesn’t strike me as a particularly complex guy. I mean, here’s what he says just a couple seconds later:
We’re men. If it doesn’t have anything to do with sex we forget it.
Luckily for us, Perry doesn’t stop there. He continues to impart his valued wisdom. On women:
Two guys can get in a fight and five minutes later we can go to lunch and be best friends again. Two women get in a fight, they’re not even gonna talk in Heaven.
Man. I wish I had known that women were incapable of forgiveness and grace before I got married. Oddly though, In the past twelve years, I’ve found my wife to be the most forgiving person I’ve ever met. I guess if Pastor P is right, she’ll show her true womanly vengeful side soon enough.
Now, that wisdom alone would have been worth at least $700 to me, but believe or not, Perry shares more. On parenting:
(To an older pastor) How did you raise a little girl that doesn’t hate church? He said this, I wrote this down. He said, “I never talked negatively about the church in front of my little girl.”
That’s good. I do wonder if the opposite is true. Should Perry talk negative about his little girl in front of the Church? I mean, it does seem that every time she has a bathroom accident, he tweets it.
Now, I know that more was discussed at Impart, and I hope that there are subjects where Steven and Perry are more adept, but with Unleash coming up soon, Impart just finished, and who know what else after that, I just don’t understand the draw. What do you think these guys will say that is worth paying to hear? I think it all comes down to the large crowds and hoping some of that success will rub off. The critics are always accused of jealousy, but I think you have to be pretty envious of someone to pay $700 just to hear their secrets.
It’s kind of like dieting, I suppose. We all know how to lose weight: Eat less, exercise more. Yet millions of books and videos are sold each year that in some form or another tell people just that. We keep buying these products hoping that there will be some magic combination that will allow us to wake up and be the person we want to be… with little or no effort. My guess is that is the motivation for a large group of people that keep going to these conferences. Ok, I’ve read my Bible. I know what the Church is, and what it should be…but maybe, if I go to this one more conference, I’ll hear the secret that will bring me 10,000 members overnight.
Let me save you some money: It’s not gonna happen. Even if you follow Furtick’s advice point by point and do everything exactly the way he did it, your odds of getting similar results are almost non-existent. I think even he would tell you that, though if you really believed it, he would lose money.
This weekend, I heard an incredible sermon on the Prodigal Son. This sermon further strengthened my belief that God’s Word is living, because despite the fact that I’ve heard this story a thousand times, I saw it in a new way. I want to specifically look at one small section of the story. I don’t think I’m guilty of reading more into this than is intended:
Luke 15: 25-30
25“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.26And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.27And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’28But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him,29but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.30But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’
The older son skipped the opportunity to celebrate the return of his younger brother. He was upset that the father had chosen to bless the younger son. It was unfair. The younger son didn’t deserve it at all. He had wasted his inheritance on foolish living and prostitutes, yet the father was overjoyed to see his youngest son. He even ran out to greet him, and kissed him, and had him clothed in the finest robe.
The father in this story, showed a great act of grace and mercy. Out of the goodness of his heart, he decided to pour out extravagant blessings upon a very unworthy recipient. The older son didn’t understand. He just didn’t “get it”.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been questioning my own motives. I must admit, that on the surface I bare a striking resemblance to the older brother. I can see where an outsider would make that connection. After all, churches like Elevation and Newspring are being blessed. I think (despite the conferences and such) even they would admit that they are wildly unworthy. It appears that I am unhappy about it. Older brother syndrome. I see that.
Something else I’ll admit: I am wholly unworthy of the Father’s blessings as well. While I am pretty strong on theology and doctrine, I am pretty weak on sharing the Gospel with the people I encounter in my daily existence. Sure, sometimes they notice that I don’t cuss much, or that I try not to gossip. If they ask why, I might hint towards my belief in Christ, but in general, I live as if we have forever. We don’t. We are not even promised today. I know that many of my colleagues are completely lost in their sin…and I don’t care enough about their eternity in Hell to share the Gospel with them. I can give you a ton of excuses. I might even lose my job if I were to begin evangelizing co-workers. All that means is that I care more about my standard of living, than I care about the souls of the lost.
What does all this mean? Am I going to stop pointing out error where I see it? No. The stakes are too high. People are being led astray at an alarming rate, and I won’t be quiet. Some of the issues seem minuscule, but they have to be discussed. Deception starts with the small points. Overlooking even the tiniest venture from Scriptural truth will only lead to larger errors in the future.
What this does mean is that I have to rededicate myself to reaching the world with the Good News of Christ, starting right here in my office. My passion for purity of the Church has to be matched with a broken-heart for lost souls.
I won’t ignore error, and I won’t ignore the lost. I will try to join in the dance and celebration when Father decides to put His best robe on a younger brother.
I like what Furtick has to say on his blog today. I have often questioned the motives of mega-church pastors, and it’s good to know that Steven is beginning to question his motives as well. Here’s a little snippet:
And my friend felt like the Lord responded to him with a challenging thought:
“What if I do everything you’re asking me to do in your city, but I do it through someone else’s ministry? Would you still pray as passionately? Would you be okay with that?”
That’s a good thought for any of us involved in ministry. Steven admits that he is not to that point yet, and that he’s not even sure he’s ready to work on it, which is a good start:
I’m not sure I’m entirely ready to wrestle with my own motivations at that level. This is pretty advanced stuff. But ultimately, I’d like to get to a place where my heart rejoices with the same intensity because another church in town baptized 100 people as it does when Elevation baptizes 100 people.
I’m not there yet.
Maybe it’s time for some of these guys to really examine where their audience is coming from, and why they are showing up. I know the programmed response is that it doesn’t matter as long as they are hearing the Gospel, but if Furtick is concerned about the Universal Body of Christ, like this post implies, then it does matter.
Maybe instead of throwing up another video campus, or promoting your online service so much, you could partner (rather than compete) with an established church in that area. Maybe there will come a time when Elevation will be struggling like some of the older churches are now. Will a newer, shinier church swoop in to pick from their remains, or will the new church lend a hand to an older brother in need?
Here’s hoping that Furtick continues digging into this thought…and acts accordingly.
Don’t ever compromise God’s vision. For anyone. Or anything. At any time. Stay true to His purpose. At any cost.
I would be very interested to know what Steven means by “God’s vision” in this context. If we go on what he has said in the past, we can assume that he is talking about some extra-biblical revelation…almost certainly, extra-biblical revelation that furthers Furtick’s personal agenda. Steven has been known to get imagination and divine revelation confused in the past.
I find it unsettling that a guy who has been more than willing to compromise God’s Word, is completely unwilling to compromise his own imaginary vision.
Is there anything good that can possibly come from this mindset?
God got very angry with David for taking a census in 2 Samuel 24. In fact, this single act of disobedience resulted in a plague that destroyed 70,000 people. The level of punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. All David was doing was taking inventory of his kingdom. But God is about to send a reminder: it wasn’t his kingdom. These people belonged to God, and David had no business claiming the increase of Israel as his own.
That’s not a bad lesson to learn. Everything belongs to God. True, but for the sake of clarity, I don’t think that was the exact problem in this passage of scripture. Here are a couple of excerpts:
2 Samuel 24: 2-4, 9 -
2So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, “Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.”
3But Joab replied to the king, “May the LORD your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?”
4The king’s word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel…
…9Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.
Furtick sees this as an ego issue for King David. God got mad because David was proud of how large the Kingdom had grown. Again, this would be a wonderful lesson for Steven to learn, but I think the actual problem for David was not ego, but lack of faith. Rather than relying on God’s protection for Israel, he was putting his trust in the number of troops available.
However, if Steven interpreted it that way, it wouldn’t be much use to him in justifying his ministry practices.
The post continues:
As leaders, we’ll always be tempted toward an unhealthy preoccupation with quantifying our own success.
Nope, he actually makes an attempt to justify it two paragraphs later:
Here’s the distinction: it’s good to be concerned with numbers. But we’ve got to be concerned about the right numbers…for the right reasons. We’ve got to make sure we’re measuring ministry numbers to measure our effectiveness and enlarge the Kingdom of God…not simply to placate our ego.
This is where the real problem rears its head. You absolutely cannot measure your effectiveness in the Kingdom of God by counting the number of people who attend your event.
The Muslims and Mormons are increasing their numbers daily. Are they being effective for the Kingdom of God?
As long as ministers measure success by worldly standards, they will have to continually compromise God’s Word to achieve their desired results.
In this post, Steven Furtick shows us how he gets people to do exactly what he wants:
Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the LORD swore to their forefathers to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance.”
-Deuteronomy 31:7
As a leader, remember: you’re not the only one God has made promises to. The people you lead have dreams. They dream of impact. They dream of influence. They dream of maximized creativity and realized potential.
The first thing we need to notice is that Furtick immediately equates God’s promises to our dreams. The dreams listed sound much more like a lust for power and a selfish desire for personal fulfillment than anything God has promised in His Word.
Lead them into their land. Develop them to be their best. Help them to establish ownership of their acreage. When you focus on calling out the potential of those you lead, you’ll usually find that your standard will become their standard. And your vision will come to pass as a byproduct.
Let’s summarize this handy manipulation tactic:
Find justification in Scripture for your tactic. Any reference will do, really. If you can’t find an entire verse to support your position, just use a word or two from a verse.
Take note of human nature. People want power. People want influence. People want acceptance. Play on those desires.
Make the people believe that what you want is really what they want. Then, they will work hard to get you what you want.
Your best innovation flows from revelation. You must prioritize the presence of God in your life.
More can be accomplished in a nanosecond of prayer, worship, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit than a month’s worth of strategy meetings in the flesh.
Many leaders have created virtually no margin to make room for the kind of divine encounters that birth true vision and revolutionary concept. I can trace the genesis of many of the most important ideas in the history of our church to a specific moment in the presence of God. I can trace my most frustrating seasons to a deficiency of time allocated to my most important task: seeking the wisdom of the Lord.
What would Moses have missed had he never turned aside to see the burning bush?
If the leaders in the church in the book of Acts had neglected prayer and the Word to serve tables, how might the influence of the Gospel been impeded worldwide?
What revelation, inspiration, imagination and innovation is left undiscovered in your life because you’re failing to prioritize the presence of God?
Is Steven talking about extra-Biblical revelation again? Is this really what “leadership” is about in the modern church? Mighty man of God climbs his own metaphorical Mt. Sinai to await divine inspiration. Those of us who are commoners just have to sit dumbly and wait for our leader to speak…
Really?
1 Peter 2:9 ( and the entire New Testament honestly ) seem to infer that we all have a direct connection to God through His Son Jesus. His Word has been given to us all, and is sufficient revelation for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. What did God leave out?
Furtick gets imagination confused with revelation. In his final paragraph, he seems to equate the two.
Products of my imagination will carry more weight if I claim them to be divinely inspired. Just ask Joseph Smith.
I was horrible at math in middle school. But I was pretty good at similes. Remember those?
Yellow is to sun as ____ is to moon
Guns n Roses is to best band ever as Tiger Woods is to ____
God is to Satan as dogs are to ____ (the answer, clearly, is cats)
Here’s a ministry simile for all of you who are currently facing a resource challenge.
Resources are to the vision of a ministry what wake is to a boat in the water.
Furtick may or may not have been good at similes, but he was clearly no good at all at analogies.
Ok, now that the nit has been picked, let’s get on to the beef of this post, which is pretty much “name it claim it” Word Faith bunk:
Wake follows the movement of a vessel in direct proportion to the velocity. And it always trails behind the motor.
Resource follows the movement of a vision in direct proportion to the velocity of the vision. And it always follows behind the vision. Behind the risk. Behind the initiative.
Don’t wait for the wake to magically appear. Produce it by moving forward.
Stop waiting for resources to fall out of the sky. Go forward as hard as you can as fast as you can with all that you’ve got.
Soon you’ll be skiing on the wake.
So, all you got a do is step out in Faith and follow your vision, and God will provide the material resources that you need. As always, a little scripture to back that up would be nice, but I suppose it is not necessary when spoken from the mouth of a visionary.
Of course, the fact that this didn’t work for the Apostles in the New Testament, or Jesus himself, should probably make us stop and think.
On Sunday, my wife and I were talking about Little House on The Prairie. We were discussing the church on that show, and how everyone in the town went to the same church, and the Pastor was active in the life of each family. Families who were at odds with one another sang hyms in peace on Sunday morning. Everyone from merchants to servants sat in the same pews as the Reverend delivered his message. As we reminisced about the TV show from our childhood, my wife asked a question that really made me think.
What if someone in Walnut Grove didn’t like the church?
I guess they would have gone anyway. With no other options for worship in town, no means of travel to get very far from home, and no internet campuses, the devout believer would have most likely continued in fellowship regardless of personal taste. Now, fast forward 150 years. My hometown, with a population of around 16,000, has 219 mainstream Protestant churches. That doesn’t include the charismatic off-shoots, non-denominationals, Catholics, and other groups that seem to pop up daily around here. Count in the thousands that are claimed to be going the virtual worship route, and you can see that this pie is being sliced thinner and thinner.
I will give Rick Warren the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was meaning well when he started Saddleback Church in 1980, and though he didn’t create the seeker-friendly concept, most of the major trends in evangelical churches can now be traced back to him. His influence on the modern church can’t be overstated. It could be said that Warren begat Ed young, who begat Perry Noble, who begat Steven Furtick.
With each successive generation we move farther away from Biblical Christianity, and more towards a pragmatic business model. The chain of thought seems to be:
If it draws people, it works.
If it works, it must be from God.
If it is from God, do it.
Of course, this line of reason is fundamentally flawed from the very first point. Scripture never tells us to do whatever is necessary to draw a crowd. We are told to make disciples (Matthew 28:19). We are told to test all things and keep what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). We are told to study to show ourselves approved ( 2 Timothy 2:15). We are told to do many things, but I’m having trouble locating anywhere in Scripture that advocates frivolous activity with the only purpose of drawing a large crowd.
Frivolous, you say? But wait Downing, these are ministers of the Gospel Surely you aren’t calling their actions frivolous. I am. You be the judge:
Of course, those are just the tip of the iceberg. We could come up with one hundred silly things that churches are doing to draw crowds without even thinking hard. And let’s be honest, if you are a new believer, or not a believer at all, are you going to the church with rock-solid theology, or are you going to the church that might just give you a plasma TV? If you start connecting the dots, it makes complete sense that there are more mega-churches in America now than ever before, but there are less Christians now.
When Rick Warren first polled his community to see what they wanted in a church, I can see where he was coming from. It is good to ask what is wanted in a church, but he should have been asking God instead of lost sinners. The result of his questionnaire could only lead to the type of watered down Christianity that is all too common today.
Sometimes, too much choice is a bad thing. If I let my six year old choose what she would eat all the time, she may occasionally put down cotton-candy long enough to eat a Happy Meal. Being that I love her, and know what is best for her, I don’t allow her that choice.
With that in mind, how loving is it for us to offer a dying world a steady diet of spiritual cotton-candy and fast food.
Do we know that there is something that is better for them?
God taught me the 5 Purposes of Church at 24, but few paid attention. Now,in my50s,I ask”What 24yrold should I be listening to?
Had God been hiding these purposes until 30 years ago? You mean to tell me the Church wandered around for 1,970 or so years without knowing its purpose, until 24 year old Rick Warren comes along and recieves some type of special knowledge from God?
Is Warren really hoping to find another man in his 20s who has received new divine revelation?
Which 24 year old should you listen to? Pretty much anyone who is clinging tightly to the Word of God. Of course, that wouldn’t be new revelation, but really, really old revelation…but at least it is real revelation.
Age shouldn’t disqualify someone from being heard, nor should it be the reason we listen to them. I am sure there are some 24 year olds out there carrying the true message of God…and I would love to hear them. I know for a fact that there are some men in their 60s who are faithfully delivering God’s word.
Why is the messenger all that important anyway? The message itself is what matters.
In this post, we find Steven Furtick, once again, tirelessly running through any snippet of scripture possible in order to justify his actions:
(ACTS 2:42) They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Did you catch it? They devoted themselves. Who devoted themselves? The new believers! Nobody devoted them to the teaching. They had to do it for themselves. The apostles taught with authority, clarity, and consistency. But the burden of discipleship rested primarily on the new believers, not the leaders of the church.
Gee, had Pastors for the last several centuries realized this, they could have saved much time trying to make disciples. Just dunk a load of people in an above-ground pool, and let them fend for themselves.
Of course, that becomes problematic when you read Matthew 28:19:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
If Steven is right, this verse must be speaking to non-disciples, and Jesus is telling them to make themselves disciples.
Wait…Jesus was actually speaking to the Apostles?
This is the danger of taking one word out of one verse, and trying to build doctrine around it. The vast majority of the time, you are going to get it wrong.
When I make comments about refusing to let critics upset me, it’s usually b/c a critic has just upset me.
I appreciate Steven’s honesty. I have often wondered why the Turnstile pastors spend so much time talking about, blogging about, tweeting about, how much they don’t care about what their critics say. Perry Noble even took the time to develop a well-reasoned apologetic for his critics: SCOREBOARD. If you follow these guys on any given week, you will notice that it is extremely rare for them to make it a few days without addressing critics in some way. Why do these guys think they are above criticism? Perhaps the idea comes from Purpose Driven mentor Rick Warren, who made this statement in his book The Purpose Driven Church:
Do not criticize what God is blessing.
This is one of those weird statements that seems OK upon first glance, but might require a little more digging. What is Warren really saying here?
How do we know what God is blessing? Is it because of a large congregation? Financially prosperous? Large number of converts?
What about the false prophets Jesus warned against in Matthew 7:15 ? Wouldn’t it be possible that these false prophets looked like they were being blessed by God?
1 Thessalonians 5:21 tells us to test everything. That would seem to imply that we should even test things that which God is blessing. Perhaps, if God is truly behind it, it will hold up to criticism.
I think it is fairly obvious that what Warren really meant was:
Do not criticize what Rick Warren thinks God is blessing.
I have a slightly different concept: Criticize everything. I think this holds up pretty well in light of 1 Thes. 5:21 . God will not be offended if you test His work against scripture. Nor will God’s work ever fail that test. Not all criticism will be helpful. Not all will be scriptural. This is what the passage means by holding on to the good, and discarding the evil.
A question we routinely get here is, “How would you feel if people were criticizing you?”
I welcome it.
You may have noticed that we leave the comments open for you, and as long as you are civil, you are allowed to say what you think. Furthermore, if your criticism is well founded and based in Scripture, I may actually benefit from hearing it. So, I encourage you to criticize all that I say. If what I say does not line up with Scripture, discard it and correct me.
However, if you find that what I say does line up with Scripture, that may require action on your end.
After watching this clip, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just be angry. I think I’m starting to settle in on anger, and here’s why:
He starts out by saying people have problems with multi-site churches because they played basketball for a team that didn’t keep score because everybody was a winner, and you think life should treat you fairly. Not only is this one of the more ridiculous statements ever made, it insinuates that ministers who disagree with Perry are just afraid of the competition. That’s right, Noble’s response to a serious, pertinent issue facing the modern church is to insult the manhood of those asking the question.
Next, he says that a pastor who criticizes the multi-site model is just an insecure pastor. As we’ve seen far too often with this crowd, it isn’t possible to have a legitimate biblical concern with one of these guys. It is clear: If you disagree with Perry, you are wrong, and the only reason you could have for that disagreement comes from some flaw in your character.
He says we have to stop competing with each other. This is quite confusing, considering that his opening argument was that we aren’t competitive enough.
He says when a Pastor walks out on stage and takes shots at other Pastors, he needs to repent before God. What a hypocrite! And I’m not talking about the fact that he does this every Sunday. He’s already done it twice in this two minute clip!
Finally, and this is by far the most serious error in this ridiculous little clip, Perry claims Acts 8:1 as the biblical backing for his multi-site model. One quick glance at that scripture shows that it says nothing about 21st century, video-driven, church campuses. In fact, the only argument that could possibly relate is by reading down to verse 4. It states that all the individuals who were scattered through the region preached the word wherever they went. This is much more indicative of individual church plants being sent out from one central place, than anything dealing with one Pastor preaching to multiple sites. Regardless, none of that is the point. If you read that passage of scripture, it is clearly about the execution of Steven and how God even used the persecution to advance His Kingdom. Perry Noble pays tremendous disrespect to the text by twisting it to claim God’s endorsement of Perry’s empire. I am not stating this as an opinion. Perry is dead-wrong in his treatment of this scripture. Now, there are only two possibilities: Either He’s an ignorant buffoon that is completely incapable of understanding such a simple passage, or he is purposefully twisting Scripture to accomplish his own agenda. I’ve seen him do this too many times now to believe that it was accidental.
Why is this such a big deal? 900 people were baptised at Newspring Sunday. With a shepherd who has no respect for God’s word, what is to come of all these new converts?
This blog is mine alone and does not necessarily–or very often–represent the thinking or sentiments of anyone who disagrees with me, my wife, my employer, my friends, my family, my pastor, my brother, my church and, almost certainly, God. After I hit the Publish button, it doesn’t always even reflect my own thinking. It does seem to often reflect the thinking of Tommy F, Twit Conway and some guy in Minnesota, however.
