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 shows us that they do indeed think massive scoreboards are all it takes to establish what’s right.

Here, in three questions, is why you shouldn’t trust some pastoral tweets:

1. What counts as a number? King appears to accept loose demographic numbers as evidence of the size of the church. In many regions of the world, people are born Catholic, whether they have any belief in Christ or even the teachings of the church. If someone calls him or herself Catholic, that seems to be enough for King, who in his own services regularly counts and reports on raised hands as evidence of strangers’ salvation. He seems to have a very low threshold for affirming someone’s membership in the local or universal church. Sometimes he’s going to be right, but he’ll also often be wrong, as he is here.
2. What do the numbers prove? NewSpring loves numbers, and points to them as proof that God approves of their work. In Noble’s Scoreboard riff, he says that numbers and changed lives assure him, and us, that he’s doing right. The problems is that, by one report, in 2010 the Muslims had 1.5 billion members, the Catholics had King’s 1.1 billion, leaving the Protestants bringing up the rear at just 593 million. The Muslims and Catholics can certainly point to lives changed, just as Perry does. If they’re going to live by Scoreboard logic, perhaps King and Noble can explain why God has abandoned the Protestants by letting the other teams run up the score on them.
3. Was the media right? There are good reasons for not trusting the media, though King’s (unsourced, as usual) major news outlet got this one right. According to the Catholic Church’s own media, numbers really are declining. Here’s the lead from the Catholic News Service story from last August: “The percentage of Catholics practicing their faith is declining almost everywhere around the globe.” The Catholic Church understands, even better than King does, that there’s a difference between saying you are a believer and actually being one. The Church doesn’t really think it has 1.1 billion members; it only counts practicing Catholics, and that is the number that has been in precipitous decline. The National Catholic Reporter declared in 2010 that the Church’s decline was “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.” And, as Martin Luther could tell you, the Catholic Church knows a thing or two about institutional crises.

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 to be present when the wise men knelt before Jesus?

As we study God’s Word, it’s helpful to understand the context in which these events took place. The Bible series, from television’s top husband-and-wife team Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, is the greatest visualization of the Bible we’ve ever seen. From Genesis to Revelation, this five-part series combines a powerful collection of stories with live action and truly amazing CGI.*

While context is essential in interpreting Scripture, how does a fictional visualization provide that, especially one created by a man who made his fortune helping us more effectively visualize selfish liars in bikinis in the Survivor television series? Does it matter what the destroyed temple looked like? Surely the point of that story is God’s providence and faithfulness, not the CGI of falling buildings.

Doesn’t the Bible provide enough of a word picture of what the flood was like? I might have assumed that part of the story about the raven and dove was that Noah couldn’t visualize what the world looked like and needed to rely on their evidence. If Noah couldn’t and didn’t need to see it, why do I?

How is a television screen going to help me feel what it was like to kneel before Jesus? The wise men fell down and worshipped because of who they knew Jesus was from Scripture, not from the specific elements of the scene. Burnett simply can’t give enough context just using pictures to describe the worshipful awe of being in the presence of the long-promised Messiah. Only the entire Old Testament can do that.

I can imagine Burnett advertising the show as something that brings the Bible to life, though it is surprising to see YouVersion, a Bible company, make such a claim. If you’re in the business of publishing the Bible, surely you ought to know better than anyone that the Bible is quite sure of itself that it is alive. All you need to do to see the Bible come to life is to read it:

The word of God is living and active. (Hebrews 4:12)

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:8)

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways [Scripture]. (Psalm 119:37)

The email finished with the following footnoted warning:

* Please note that these powerful stories contain scenes that are similar to PG-13 content. We encourage you to make the best viewing decisions for your family.

The real Bible tells its readers to repeat its contents to children, and its central character invites children to come to him and warns against anyone who would hinder them. If you can’t make the Bible into movie that children can watch, perhaps that’s not what it was intended for.

Another inherent weakness with the series is that it only purports to make Bible stories come to life, but the Bible is so much more than stories. The stories were never supposed to stand on their own, and they are usually given meaning by a broader narrative or by explicit teaching or prophecy. If you only read Scripture for stories, you’re not reading the whole of Scripture.

A few days after the YouVersion email, Holly Furtick, wife of Steven, used her blog to enthuse about her husband’s ability to also make the Bible come alive.

This weekend we began our series, In Fin 8, a series about the 8 greatest bible [sic] stories ever told.  We started in Genesis this week and we will end with the crucifixion and resurrection on Easter.

I have to be honest.  When I heard my husband was preaching on Adam and Eve this week I was not excited.  It is not at the top of my list of favorite Bible stories.  But once again, my husband took a passage of scripture [sic] I have heard so many sermons on and made it fresh and practical and inspiring.

Mrs. Furtick has a list of favorite stories? Why, and how does she organize her list? By entertainment, apparently. We saw this back in 2009, when her husband tweeted this observation:

Holly just told me the entertaining Bible stories are God’s way of apologizing for Leviticus.

As you can read in the ’09 post, Furtick rejoices in Moses’ death because he wants to get on with the story of Joshua, and one of his Elevation pastors complains that God made Deuteronomy too repetitive.

The impression we get is that the people who lead Elevation think the Bible is boring, so they’re especially thankful that Steven can work his magic on it to bring it to life. Steven does this, as his often does, by making the story of Adam and Eve all about us in a process that Chris Rosebrough calls narcigesis, making the point of Bible stories all about the preacher and the congregation.

The special irony here is that Furtick, just four days later, tells his congregation that if they don’t think they’re getting enough good teaching from him, they shouldn’t complain but read their Bible by themselves.

People in our churches: you also have a responsibility. If you refuse to study the Word, apply it, pray some during the week, join a small group and dig deeper with others, there’s not much we can do to help you. Your malnourishment won’t be cured by anything we give you on Sunday.

He’s right about the malnourishment on Sunday, but if the people in his leadership and congregation think the Bible is boring, even its most important stories, he’s failed in one of his most fundamental duties as a pastor.

Unfortunately, a low view of Scripture isn’t isolated to Furtick’s church. Noble’s staff put their lack of appreciation for Scripture on display in an official NewSpring devotional about how we hear from God. In it, it also bemoans the Bible’s lack of sizzle:

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that God is going to provide us with a burning bush to deliver His message. But, God still speaks today.

Why is that unfortunate, unless you thought God’s written revelation to us was insufficient? This assumes that we ought to look for more exciting, lively revelations, an assumption that denigrates the majesty and miracle of Scripture.

I agree with the God-still-speaks sentence, but if you thought that they are assuming, with me, that God still speaks today through Scripture, you’d be wrong. They say in the devotional that the Bible is just the foundation for God to speak new things to us, which he also does through the Holy Spirit and community. The devotional ends with the following advice:

In scripture [sic], we see God speak in a number of ways including an audible voice, visions, dreams, and even through a donkey. God can and does speak in miraculous ways but that does not mean He can’t or doesn’t speak through normal means. We can expect Him to amaze us but that doesn’t mean we should not use the tools He has already provided for us to hear His guidance and voice. He will speak and we can trust that His guidance will never contradict what He has already revealed in the Bible.

(A small but not insignificant point: Did you notice how often Holly Furtick and the NS devotional don’t capitalize Bible and Scripture? You can be sure they never miss the capital P in Pastor, but they routinely miss it for Scripture. It tells us something important, I think.)

Not only does Noble teach that his church should be dissatisfied with normalcy in religion, NewSpring presents the Bible as merely normal and decidedly non-miraculous, as if the Bible isn’t itself a miracle. The Bible is a marvelous living expression of God’s careful, infallible and sufficient written revelation to us. The miracles of Scripture are there to continually amaze us, not to make us require new ones, otherwise every generation would need a new miraculous display. Review the Old Testament, for example, and note how many times miracles are followed by instructions that the Israelites tell the story to their children. God expected his people to trust the word of the original witnesses, and not expect that we would see the same thing ourselves. John makes the point carefully at the end of his Gospel. After describing Thomas’ experience of the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection by letting Thomas see his wounds because he didn’t believe the eyewitness accounts of his fellow disciples, Jesus asks him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

The point of the Thomas story is to tell us that we must take John and the other Bible writers’ word for what happened. Look at how John gives us the point directly in the next verses:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John continues the lesson with the prediction of Peter’s death and the rumor about whether Jesus had said that John wouldn’t die. What’s his point? That John and Peter are going to die shortly, meaning that the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ teaching and miracles would be gone. With that in mind, he pens the epilogue to the Gospel:

This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Yet after saying that he could keep writing, he stops, and he has already told us that what we have is enough for our belief. Although John’s Gospel wasn’t the very last thing written, it does tell us that revelation would be closed when the last apostolic eyewitnesses died. So although it is true that God revealed himself to his prophets and apostles in miraculous and unusual ways, John tells us that we aren’t to expect or require more. Even in Scripture, such revelations were unusual and often terrifying for the people who experienced them (see Cornelius, for example). They weren’t normal, even in Scripture.

NewSpring also assures us that we know these abnormal revelations are from God because they won’t contradict Scripture. It’s an empty claim, because not only would new revelation affirm Scripture, it would be Scripture, and, as we’ve already established, John has told us that it’s closed (at the end of his Gospel and at the end of the Book of Revelation). Whose voice are we hearing in Scripture but the Holy Spirit’s? It is impossible for the Holy Spirit, whose word is perfect, eternal and true, to recant his own affirmation that his written revelation was perfect and complete (in the sense that it is finished and sufficient, though not in the sense that it tells us everything).

God does indeed still speak today, but it’s through his own Scripture. He wrote it perfectly for 70 A.D. and for 2013 A.D. If we want to hear the Holy Spirit, he’s told us where to find him. In his infallible voice heard in Scripture alone.

You might have expected, if they thought that what Maxwell and his friends did was wrong, that they would have changed their aggressive rhetoric. Not so. The fascinating thing about this podcast is that it represents Noble’s advice to other pastors and leaders. A year and a half after they’d come after me, Noble shows no signs of having learned anything as a leader.

(For NS readers, as you continue reading consider how much risk Noble and Duffey are putting NewSpring in with this kind of talk. Wouldn’t you expect that they’d have a duty to keep quiet at least until after the case was resolved?)

The partial transcript reproduced with commentary below is taken from Noble’s leadership podcast.

To introduce the idea of the jackass, Noble and Duffey start with a quote from their 2009 Unleash conference.

Ignore the Jackass. In Greek, jackass is translated blogger.

Perry says the Lord gave him this idea. He continues, still from the 2009 conference, by criticizing bloggers who copy and splice parts of sermons.

Who has time for that? The jackass. You’re watching right now. There’s a reason you have time to do that. You have no friends. The reason you have no friends is you’re a jackass, and I will say that to you. Everybody in this room had wanted to say it to you, unless they’re jackasses. That’s your problem. That, and you’re either demon possessed or oppressed, because when a move of God is working and people are getting saved and lives are getting changed, who would criticize that? God or Satan? Ask yourself that question. ‘I’m going to blog about you.’ I don’t read it. I don’t. If we ran out of toilet paper, I’d have someone copy and paste it and we’d use it for that, but that’s about it. That’s what I think of your blog.

This is really as close as Perry ever gets to arguing his position, but it’s a typically abusive and irrelevant ad hominem attack. Although these were in the early days of Pajama Pages, Noble was aware of this blog, so much so that he sent his youth pastor as an emissary to meet me to try to stop it. He was also very aware of my friend Chris Rosebrough, who was sitting in the audience and at whom Rosebrough says Noble was looking as he delivered the taunt. A couple of points about what Noble is saying here:

1. Mob mentality. Noble assumes every one of the several thousand pastors in the room agrees with him, which, if you’re Rosebrough, was probably intended to be threatening. 
2. Malevolent motivations. Claiming that other believers are demon possessed is a terribly reckless assertion for such an influential pastor to make, unless he really thinks that his critics are unbelievers. By framing his enemies as outside the family of God, it makes it much easier for his followers to bare their fangs against them.
3. Movement morality. Noble assumes that he is proven right by results. Every false teacher in history worth the church’s attention has always had mass conversions with life change. That’s not to say that Noble is ipso facto a false teacher, but a lot of flash and activity doesn’t give you a free pass to do and say anything; based on Paul and Peter’s warnings, it puts you first in line to have your message carefully examined by other believers.
4. More mistruths. He said he doesn’t read blogs, but did habitually read this and other blogs like it. He read them so much that managing his reactions to them became a problem.
5. Miserable muck. Was it really necessary to drive home the point by talking about Perry’s bathroom preferences, which say more about Perry than it does about the bloggers, I think.

After playing the Unleash clip, Duffey describes Perry’s talk as “very provocative.” On one hand, Noble and Duffey will admit that their speech is provocative, yet on the other hand they grow faint at the thought that other people might object to what they say. Perry enjoys the buzz that his bad-boy, anti-church antics create, yet won’t allow space for other Christians to push back.

Noble says it’s too easy for people to criticize now because of the Internet and because they can do so anonymously. Sure, but this is a claim made on a podcast that is distributed to pastors around the world through . . . the Internet. And, yes, some criticism is done anonymously, though savvy Internet readers take that into account when they sift through information online. I don’t know of a single blog that’s critical of Noble that is written anonymously.

Next, this question from Duffey:

The people that I’ve seen who criticize you and/or our church really come at you from two ways. They either criticize how you teach scripture (PN: Sure.), or they criticize the method we do church. (PN: Yes.) Tell me which of those two, if either, sting the most?

If bloggers are focusing on preaching and church methodology, things are working properly. This is good news. What’s more important in a pastor’s duties than the way he preaches and the way he leads his church?

Duffey, again:

Most of our conversation until this point has probably centered around bloggers, or people outside the church, hating.

Where’s the hate? This claim is so tired and lazy, but surely it cannot be hateful to criticize a pastor’s handling of Scripture or his methodology. You can’t get 20 minutes through a Noble sermon without hearing him criticize the teaching or methodology of other churches. If the mere existence of criticism is hateful, Noble… Well, you fill in the rest.

Noble says of bloggers:

Most of the time all these people want to do is tear down. In fact, I would say [that] all they want to do is tear down and kill and destroy. Somebody else wants to do that. No, seriously. Who is the accuser of the brethren?

Here we go again with the demonizing. What did Paul do when he found false teachers? What did Luther do when he found corruption? Sometimes tearing down can be a positive thing.

Instead of blogging, Noble wants disputes to be resolved quietly:

If you have a problem with someone, try to have a conversation with them, either through email, either through letter, either through a phone call.

Words not to live by, apparently. I contacted Noble by regular mail and email well before the harassment happened to see if he wanted to meet. His response: a phone call behind my back to my boss.

Duffey then notes to Noble that “one of the worst things about giving attention to some of these jackasses is the distraction and the toil it takes on the church,” to which Noble gives this example:

What I used to do is, I would read something that somebody said about me or our church in a negative manner, and I would literally get up from my desk and I would walk down the hall and I would go in about five or six offices, and I would go, “Can you believe what so-and-so wrote?” And everybody was like, “No,” and I’d pull it up online and I’d show it to them, and then everybody on the hall is P.O.’d  for the rest of the day, angry. And it wasn’t the critic’s fault; it was my fault. As a leader, I was focusing my staff … on incredibly negative, draining stuff rather than, “Guys, this is what people are saying, but this is the mountain we’re climbing. This is the hill we’re taking. This is what we’re called to do.” And God rebuked me for that as a leader. He was like, “You are a fool.” And I had to repent of that sin and come back around and go, “You know what? I’m wrong, God. I’m sorry. I helped focus people on the wrong thing, rather than Jesus, his Gospel and the mission he’s given us.”

Remember how he said that he didn’t read this stuff and would only use it for toilet paper? One of these statements isn’t true. Not only did he read them himself, he got so worked up that he would go through the office and stir everyone else up as well.

One of the questions we had going into the case was how Maxwell and his friends came to know about Pajama Pages and be so worked up about it. You don’t suppose that he learned about it from work, do you?

(Another side note to NS readers: Did you notice how Perry acknowledges “fault” for his staff’s angry reactions? In the middle of a case about his staff’s angry reaction where their official defense was that it was the critic’s fault? Does it concern you just a little that there was nothing governing him to keep these kinds of damaging and potentially expensive outbursts to himself? Is this how a leader should demonstrate self-discipline?)

Lest anyone think that Perry doesn’t want to hear anything negative about himself, he reassures us with this claim:

I want to hear unfiltered criticism from people who love Jesus, love this church, love me, and have everyone’s best interest in mind. That person can always, always be trusted. But if they don’t have those four qualities, I don’t have time for them.

Doesn’t have time? Not even for “a conversation with them, either through email, either through letter, either through a phone call”?

Anyway, after saying he wants unfiltered criticism, he describes a four-level filter.

1. Loves Jesus. Not a blogger.
2. Loves this church. NewSpringer.
3. Loves me. Staff member. No one else is allowed to know him in any closer sense than a man on a stage.
4. Everyone’s best interests in mind. Agrees with Perry, to whom God has entrusted the vision for the church. If you disagree with Noble, you disagree with the vision, which means you disagree with God. To see how this unfiltered criticism works, just ask Tony Morgan.

Duffey starts to bring the podcast to a close:

Before we check out, I just want to give you one more opportunity to share whatever’s on your heart in regards to critics and/or jackasses – I just want to see if I can say that one more time – while we’re doing this.

Classy.

Then Perry makes this remarkable admission:

I have done some things. I have taken some shots at people on my blog, or I’ve taken shots at people as I’m teaching, or I’ve taken shots at people as I’m doing certain things that are kind of – I don’t ever call them out by name, but, like, everybody knows who I’m talking about – but I’m even getting convicted of that. That’s just not right. I’ve got something to say to somebody, I need to man up, or woman up. You need to man up and you need to go and say that.

That would indeed be good if Perry were being convicted of taking shots against unnamed targets, though it appears as though the conviction wore off quickly. As I noted most recently here, Noble defames Christianity in general when he attacks the church without naming names. When he calls bloggers satanic without specifying whom he’s talking about, he leaves the reasonable impression that all bloggers who criticize him are demonic. So, yes, it would be good to see him “man up” someday.

Duffey then puts the lid on it:

That’s it for today. We’ve covered everything we could about jackasses, so don’t… (PN: You said that word again. That’s awesome.) I got it in one more time. So ignore those.

Awesome indeed.

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 this:

I live in big house where my son puts signs on the doors to my many upstairs rooms forbidding penguins from entering. He sometimes even gets me to help him write the signs, though I don’t always know what he’s putting on the signs.

The moral of the story, according to the preacher, was that his congregation should put “No Doubters and Haters Allowed” signs on the rooms of their spirit and on the rooms of their faith.

The blogger, wanting to make the point that this preacher was training his congregation to scratch their itching ears, had the preacher advocate this strategy as the spiritual discipline of selective hearing. The blogger wanted to just call it itchy hearing, but he thought that would be too obvious.

Stretching credulity a little bit, the blogger also imagined that the preacher took a bunch of verses out of context and ignored other verses that shouldn’t be let into the rooms of faith. For example, the preacher told his congregation that Jesus said they could do all things, though the blogger assumed that his readers would know that Paul said it, and that the all things referred to all tribulations, as in: We can go through all kinds of troubles with the help of Christ who strengthens us.

The pastor in the parable also forgot to quote other verses with the kind of negativity that isn’t allowed in the rooms of faith. He could never refer to passages that refer to our hearts as wicked and deceptive. Thoughts like that must be kept out and have no place in the rooms of a faithful heart.

If this insistence on only listening to nice things God and others have to say about us seems a little childish, the blogger gilded the lily a little bit by imagining that the preacher would brand his parable with a graphic like this:

No Grownups Allowed

The blogger also tried to add a few layers of meaning into the preacher’s parable, providing the key lesson in the middle of the tale. The pastor, apparently oblivious to what he was preaching, laughed about how his son asked him to make a sign that kept him – the father – out of the rooms.

Selective hearing blocks out the Father.

Yep, that’ll preach.

UPDATE: Steven Furtick really did preach this parable. What are the odds?

The diatribe speaks for itself; nevertheless I’ll interrupt with a little bit of commentary here and there.

Hi there!

I don’t know how else to reach Perry personally,

Monk is apparently a keen member of her church, but doesn’t know how to reach her pastor. Perhaps this is a clue that a church has grown too large and a pastor too remote. I’m not suggesting that pastors must meet every member whenever and wherever they want to, but members should at least know how to ask.

but I HAD to write him and the NewSpring worship team after watching ‘Culture in the Church vs Church in the Culture’ a video from the Elephant Room. Just to say thank you.

I am beyond blessed to have a church and a pastor who UNAPOLOGETICALLY describes the way we do worship. In the video Perry is chatting with James McDonald, Mark Driscoll and other well known pastors about Perry’s decision to have Highway To Hell open up NewSpring’s Easter services. After bantering back and forth with Perry, James McDonald looked to the four pastors (Steven Furtick, Matt Chandler, David Platt and Greg Laurie) sitting behind him and asked if any of them would play that song in their church. Of the six other pastors in the room, not one of them said they would have played that song. Their excuses

Excuses? This is backwards, though consistent with Perry’s perspective. Monk assumes that it’s a given that the right thing is to play Highway to Hell, and that the other pastors are in the wrong for not playing it. Isn’t it Perry who should have the burden of offering the excuse, not the more orthodox (at least in this instance) pastors?

were “their own flesh”, “they knew the weight of God’s grace and reverence”, “worship should be glorifying to God”, etc etc

Hallelujah. As much chaff that did come out of the ER series, at least in this moment a couple of pastors understand what worship really is. This is heartening, though not to Monk.

After listening to each pastor defend why they wouldn’t play the song, and hearing Perry explain why he did, I am SO PROUD of what NewSpring stands for.

Except that he lied about what he stood for. He told the ER audience that he made the decision after prayer, not because he wanted to “piss people off.” As this YouTube clip shows, he had claimed the opposite to his Unleash audience just a few weeks earlier. He wanted to find something that would “piss off the religious people.”

Besides the lie, there are a few interesting points about his Unleash story.

1. He was thinking about pissing of the religious people because Easter was coming. Forget celebrating the most significant event on the Christian calendar, for Perry, Easter becomes a cudgel to beat up other Christians.
2. He was listening to Highway to Hell while he was praying. If this is Perry’s devotional music, using it in worship makes sense.
3. He mocks a perfectly appropriate resurrection song, though, as Monk has already suggested, pastors need to give an excuse for playing reverent worship songs.

We are a church desperate to reach out to the unbelievers or those who have walked away from the Lord. NewSpring does whatever we can to reach the lost, and meet them where they are, exactly like Christ did! Perry’s ‘defense’ to McDonald

The ‘quotes’ are appropriate.

was how God used astrology to lead the wise men to Jesus in Matthew 2.

And Perry is breathtakingly wrong and demonstrates an AC/DC-level understanding of Scripture. The Old Testament messianic prophecies, especially from Daniel, allowed wise interpreters of Scripture to anticipate that the Messiah would be born exactly when he was. The wise men read the Bible and their astronomic calendars, not their astrological horoscopes.

Even though McDonald dismissed it, I believe Perry and NewSpring’s vision align PERFECTLY with that illustration.

I agree. NewSpring is led by a pastor who believes that God genuinely speaks through anything, including horoscopes.

To the typical “church-background Christian”

Why is this in quotes unless you want to suggest that you’re not talking about real Christians? Watch a video of Noble preaching, and you’ll see his “finger quotes” almost every time he talks about non-NewSpring “Christians.”

anything and everything about NewSpring is terrifying.

We are not terrified of NewSpring (well, some of us are). Is it possible we have principled objections to NewSpring’s message and methods?

They have probably never been to a church where you were allowed to wear jeans, or where the women didn’t have to wear dresses and panty hose!

Show me a church where this is required or where jeans are banned. Monk seems to be effectively repeating the ugly caricature that permeates Noble’s weekly preaching. Really, randomly pick any Noble sermon, jump in at any point, and see how long it takes for him to take a swipe at other churches or Christians. The problem is that it comes to the surface so often that listeners like Monk seem to have accepted his vision as accurate.

It’s worth noting how quickly Monk, in the same fashion as her pastor, jumps to a slur against almost all other Christians. There are no qualifiers to specify that she’s only talking about a few unusual examples. No, if you don’t go to NewSpring, you must be a jeans-free uptight hose wearer.

They have probably never been greeted at the front door with people were were actually happy and EXCITED to be there.

This is the attitude that bothers me about the ubiquitous “I [heart] my church” T-shirts we see all over Anderson. They are more a taunt than a celebration. The message is that other people just endure their church, but NewSpringer’s really love theirs. Not all NSers who wear that shirt think that, but that was the spirit behind Noble’s sermon when they were first distributed.

They have probably never been surrounded by people actually worshiping the Lord with the sound of hands clapping or the sight of a man’s hand’s raised high in the air.

Like in this celebrated worship scene from NewSpring?

A photo of worship featured on NewSpring’s Instagram feed.

Sure, you won’t see hands raised or hear clapping in all churches, but I’d guess that at least half of American churches in 2013 see this every Sunday. I’m curious why Monk thinks an absence of clapping and waving is a problem. If you’re playing H2H on Easter, what are your rules for acceptable worship?

And those with children have probably never heard their child begging to go back to church next Sunday.

Perhaps not, but why is this relevant? Children shouldn’t determine where the family goes to church. Also, why are the NewSpring kids begging their parents to go back? They aren’t even allowed in the main service.

But worst of all they have probably never heard the FREEDOM of the Gospel. With so many sermons on “Thou shalt nots”

Because the Bible does have a lot of “thou shalt nots.” God coined the phrase, actually.

I’m sure they were never exposed to the raw and beautiful unrestricted Gospel that Perry brings EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY.

Except when he recruits preachers to preach about Perry.

A Sunday at NewSpring has to be terrifying as they slowly realize their whole life has been structured around religion instead of a relationship.

There’s nothing wrong with religion, so long as it’s true religion. Monk has her own religion too, but it’s a religion of relationship. If you are going to reject the institutions and creeds that the Apostles and our Christian forefathers developed for us, you’d better be sure that you are getting very solid teaching about the object of your relationship. In Noble, I don’t see it. In fact, his teaching about Jesus isn’t even predicated on what he reads in Scripture. I wrote about this three years ago, but this Noble quote is worth repeating here:

All too often we seek answers in the Scriptures when we should be seeking Jesus…because HE will ultimately BE the answer to whatever we are facing.

Noble believes in a savior that can’t be found in Scripture. If this is the relationship that Noble and Monk are building their whole lives on, they (and we) ought to be worried. They are creating a fictional Jesus, so there’s a very good chance that at some point their religion of relationship will become a false religion, if it’s not already. That is terrifying.

If you want to explore this idea further, this 23-minute Rosebrough analysis of T.D. Jakes’ heretical argument argument against Scripture is worth a listen. If Jakes’ and Noble’s positions sound similar, it won’t surprise you that Jakes is one of Noble’s role models.

On the other hand… To the typical non-believer, I’m sure anything and everything about NewSpring is NOT normal.

Perhaps not, but that ought not be the standard against we measure churches, which are collections of believers who gather every Sabbath to worship, hear God’s Word preached, and participate in the sacraments. Churches aren’t to exclude non-believers (with the exception of excommunication, but that’s not what what we’re talking about here), but they shouldn’t be built to meet non-believers’ expectations. When you invite friends to your home for dinner, I’m sure they find some of what you do and the ways you’ve arranged your home strange and uncomfortable. Ought you design your home for them? No. It’s designed for your family, even though it’s not so totally foreign that friends can’t find themselves welcome and mostly comfortable there.

Church is the gathering place for God’s children. It ought to be designed and operated with them in mind first.

What do you mean I don’t have to cover up my tattoos? Are you sure I don’t need to wear my “Sunday best”?

Again, please point to a church with these rules. Most churches I know will welcome anyone and ignore their tattoos and wardrobe choices. One of the evidences of belonging to God’s family is that we gradually grow in sanctification. We might hope that after being exposed to God’s preached Word in church, there might be a tattoo or two that we think ought to be covered up based on their content, or that our understanding of worship would encourage us to prepare for it as seriously as possible. For some, that preparation might also mean they want to dress in special ways, too.

Noble and Monk operate as if tattoos, jeans, dresses, etc. are matters of rules, apparently not understanding that for some they are reflections of the heart. A healthy church will encourage heart change, meaning that rules for or against these things aren’t necessary.

How come these people are smiling at me like they are excited about me being here? Why am I not getting weird looks when people notice my nose ring? They don’t care that I have three children under five and I don’t have a wedding ring on?

If I’m a solo parent with three kids, I’d hope that someone would care. Though try to take your kids with you into the service, and you’ll see how quickly their bouncers care.

Whoa, I listened to this song last night, are they ‘allowed’ to listen to that?

Again, this is a sanctification and heart issue. A growing Christian will naturally grow concerned that their playlists honor God.

This pastor is talking about WHAT??? Dang, I’m living in my mom’s basement playing video games all day, and he is actually calling me out on it… RESPECT.

Wait, I thought he preached the raw gospel? Why is he making up rules like this? Wear jeans on the Sabbath Day, but thou shalt not play video games. Sounds like something a man-made religion would do.

Did he just say his wife was hot from stage????

How does that even get into a sermon? He should be telling that to her, not us.

Instead of feeling beat up from all the bad stuff I’ve done in my life, I actually have hope for the first time…that’s different.

This is a profound shame, and suggests that the gospel isn’t actually being preached. What is it that has given this imaginary visitor hope? If it’s just to have a better life or to join an exciting movement, that can be found with Oprah or in politics.

The good news of the gospel is that I can be saved from the sins that have caused my death. In this way, law and gospel work together. The law shows me my wretchedness, and unless the Holy Spirit makes me aware of the depths of my fallenness, usually through preaching, I won’t see a need for a savior. If I don’t feel broken because of all the bad stuff I’ve done, what am I being saved from? To whom am I looking for that salvation?

We already know that Monk appreciates the lack of “thou shalt not” preaching she hears from Noble, but it’s essential for the gospel. Paul anticipated the fact that “though shalt not” preaching wouldn’t be popular, but commanded Timothy to preach it anyway. Here are the first few verses from 2 Timothy 4:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Good preaching must include reproof and rebuke, otherwise the exhortations just feed our sin. This sound teaching is difficult to listen to and difficult to attract a crowd with, yet Paul continues by telling Timothy to endure and be sober-minded. It’s God’s pattern for preaching, so it matters.

Man, this church thing is really different than what everyone has always told me, I think I’ll come again next week.

Why? Why are people feeling like this? Because NewSpring has the GUTS to BE DIFFERENT! NewSpring as a church has taken its NEXT STEP to be NOT NORMAL!

I agree again, though abnormal is not always good.

And guess what.. It’s working. Lives are being changed, people are meeting Jesus and Heaven is getting a little more crowded!!!!! PRAISE GOD for a church and a pastor who has the guts to pursue the lost with everything they’ve got!

The problem is that the found tend to be neglected in a system like this. Where are the shepherds who feed Christ’s sheep with everything they’ve got?

Do you know why I think other churches don’t want to play Highway to Hell? Not because it’s not ‘glorifying to God’ (clearly if a man got saved that Easter Sunday then God was glorified…just saying)

This is an argument that Monk repeats in her postscript below, and it’s an important one. We need to answer two questions: was playing H2H good, and did it bring God glory? The easiest one to answer is the second one. Yes, playing H2H brought God glory, though that answer needs some explanation.

• God is always glorified. God brings glory to himself (here’s John Piper on this). Because he does all things perfectly, God is always perfectly glorified. Also, because God providentially guides all things, nothing that happens, including pastors playing H2H at Easter, diminishes his glory in any way.
• Sin brings God glory. The Fall brings God glory by presenting his Son as our redeemer. Judas’ betrayal of Jesus brought God glory by fulfilling prophecy and leading to the crucifixion and resurrection. David’s adultery with Bathsheba brought God glory by leading to the eventual conception of Solomon, through whom the line of Christ ran. Joseph’s kidnap and sale into slavery glorified God by preserving his people in Egypt. We could go on. The point is that God, through his infinite mercy, always uses sin for his own purposes. What we can say then is that sin glorifies God, though it is not glorious in itself. God uses sin for good, though sin itself is never good.
• Sin shows God’s glory clearly. Our recognition of God’s goodness is enhanced by understanding our fallenness. Job, who was reduced to nothing, saw God’s glory in profound ways by understanding the difference between the creature and the Creator. Think of it this way: If you’ve seen Usain Bolt run, you know that he’s a glorious runner. If you saw him race against me, he would appear even more glorious.

So, to say that Highway to Hell glorified God doesn’t exclude the possibility that playing it was sin. I’ll discuss the reason more fully by citing Leviticus 10 below, but I think it’s safe to say that playing H2H in worship – well, anywhere – is a sin. (How many tithed dollars were paid in royalties to the composer of that evil song?) But, the second part of the argument goes, it was good because someone got saved. By this reasoning, any environment wherein someone is saved is good and God glorifying. Let’s see where we could take this:

• People were saved in Hitler’s concentration camps, therefore the Holocaust was good.
• Many American slaves were saved, therefore slavery was good.
• Someone was convicted of sin while visiting a brothel, therefore brothels are good.
• etc.

These statements are obviously false. Both Scripture and history show us that God is not limited by circumstances in being able to reach the people he saves. Apparently, he can even bring someone to salvation in a church that decided to play H2H to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. Praise God for his amazing grace.

but because they are TERRIFIED of the reaction of their congregation.

Hallelujah. Those pastors should be happy that they have discerning congregations.

They know they will get backlash and nasty emails and dirty looks from those people that are set in their ways!

Those people? This was the quote that the NS Twitter feed used to point to this article, so they seem attracted to the phrase. This is the same attitude exemplified with the quotation marks around “Christians.” Monk and NewSpring itself seem eager to emphasize the distance between themselves and those other Christians.

They know that people might actually walk away from the church if they were to play Highway to Hell. But NewSpring isn’t afraid. NewSpring is running the good race, SPRINTING towards Jesus.

See, this is why we’re confused by the choice of that hymn to Satan. If you’re sprinting towards Jesus, why would you open a service that proclaims exactly the opposite? Worship is not typically an ideal setting for irony.

Perry isn’t afraid of what the ‘world’ might do to his church, but what God might to do him if he isn’t doing everything as a pastor to reach these lost souls.

If so, he hasn’t paid enough attention to Leviticus 10.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized [strange] fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them.

And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.

God cares very much about the way he is worshipped. The sobering thing about this incident is that Nadab and Abihu were making their offering to God, apparently thinking they were doing something good, but it wasn’t what God had asked for. If it was a sin for them to try to worship God their own way, what do you say about someone who thinks you ought to worship God by praising Satan? Worship matters.

So in closing, I have to say Perry, NewSpring staff, thank you thank you thank you for your unwavering faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for taking YOUR next step in pursuing the lost. Thank you for continuously pouring out to the community and to each other. Without you… I don’t know where this state would be. I pray you are encouraged by this not just for today, but for 2013, for this is your best year yet. I know that God’s not done with this church or with it’s pastor. I also have a feeling that God is going to ask you to do some pretty outrageous stuff

What will count as outrageous? One assumes Monk is anticipating antics that won’t be supported by Scripture but by a vision God has given Perry. If you accept Highway to Hell as worship, how much room for outrage is left?

in this lifetime and I know without a doubt that my church has the guts and the faith to say, “yes” to God.

“Yes” to God’s what? What command was Noble obeying with H2H? Unless you can show that you’re saying yes to God’s written commands in Scripture, all you can be sure of is that you’re saying yes to the pastor’s dreams. I think the New Testament Bereans would suggest that Mrs. Monk treat Noble with a healthy dose of doubt, just as they did for Paul.

Praise God for NewSpring.

With love and blessings,
Sarah Monk

ps. My best friend and her husband were initially turned off to NewSpring because of the ‘secular’ music. They both loved Perry’s message, but preferred the traditional music. At the beginning of the year they attended the New Years Service where Perry addressed the ‘angry birds’ who disagreed with the music and read the email from the man who received Christ via a secular song NewSpring played. Almost instantly their hearts were changed.

Why do you have to read an email to support your worship practices? Shouldn’t a pastor want to answer the “angry birds” with Scripture?

Both attend NewSpring regularly now and claim they are closer to God than ever.

pss. My husband and I attended the Charleston campus before he was stationed on Oahu, Hawaii. We just wanted to send a HUGE thank you for allowing us to watch live every Sunday morning. We can’t wait to get back home to our Charleston NewSpring family, but until then I guess the Anderson worship team will do

I understand that Monk loves NewSpring, but aren’t there any churches in Oahu that would benefit from having her family join their congregation, even if temporarily?

Love you guys!!!!!

No matter what happened between you and Perry Noble (whom I have no relationship with or affinity for), do not your actions constitute a direct violation of the teaching of I Cor. 6:1-8?

For background, here’s the text to which he refers:

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!

Before I get to my answer, let’s put a couple of other passages on the table as well so we can let Scripture provide its own context. The first is Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

The third is from Matthew 5:23-26:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Based on the scenarios described in Matthew 18, I see a hierarchy of desirable dispute resolution between Christians.

1. Resolve the dispute privately.
2. Resolve the dispute with a small group of three or four (the disputants plus the witnesses). It appears that the witnesses are also judges, because they end up having to something to say that can either be listened to or ignored.
3. Resolve the dispute more publicly in front of the church. At this point, it appears that this is more an exercise of reproof and discipline than immediate reconciliation.
4. Settle the dispute as if the person were not a believer.

Because all of Scripture is inspired by a single author, Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians must remain consistent with Jesus’ teaching, so it’s not a new rule that cancels out Matthew 18. We need to determine what step the Corinthians were failing at. It appears that the Corinthians were going from failed attempts at private resolution directly to public resolution, bypassing the small group and the church. I think Paul is giving us more detail about how the second, small-group step is supposed to work.

Paul’s argument is that as Christians we are being prepared to rule the angels in Heaven, so we ought to be able to exercise godly wisdom in judging comparatively trivial earthly matters. Paul was upset that the Corinthian believers were bypassing the judgment of the saints in the church and submitting their affairs to ungodly secular judges. The problem was not necessarily that they were disputing with each other (we see from both Matthew passages that such disputes will arise), but that they were looking to the wrong judges.

Some interpret Paul’s rhetorical questions at the end (Why not rather suffer wrong?) to mean that we should just take it on the chin and never sue fellow Christians for any reason. It’s not an unreasonable interpretation, but I don’t think he means it to institute a blanket ban for three reasons:

1. It would contradict Matthew 5. Although this advice is written to the defendant, we can infer that the plaintiff if also a believer because it comes immediately after Jesus mentioned a dispute with a brother. Because the settlement between the brothers is financial, this appears to be a civil dispute before a court over some loss of property.
2. It would contradict Old Testament property rights. The Old Testament moral law clearly establishes the obligation of an offender to restore property to a victim, often in multiples of the original loss. I don’t see that Paul is telling the Corinthians that this moral law is void if the offender is an obstinate Christian.
3. It wouldn’t contradict an intra-church small-group settlement. If we put Paul’s advice inside the context of either step two or three from Matthew 18, we see that he’s telling the disputing parties to trust the outcome of godly mediation. A godly judge is probably not going to assess a case the same way as an ungodly one, so one or both parties may be at a disadvantage by staying within the church. Paul would rather Christians be willing to take the risk of losing their good case inside the church, and so be wronged or defrauded, than to go outside its walls.

In other words, it’s better to lose your case inside the church than win it outside. Notice that Paul sees the benefit in such an arrangement as primarily flowing to the judges, who get to practice Heavenly activities, than to the people being judged.

(If you want to see what happens when Christians assume they have blanket legal immunity from other Christians, look at the mess with Sovereign Grace Ministries.)

If it’s not possible to get a churchly judge, we can move on to step four from Matthew 18. Paul says this is a shame because there’s better judgment to be had inside God’s house. He doesn’t forbid it, though, surely understanding that the more desirable process requires the consent of both parties, and we see in Matthew 18 that this doesn’t always happen.

At this point, according to Matthew 18, we are allowed to treat the opposing party as if they were not believers, which also suggests that a Corinthians don’t-sue-believers rule no longer applies.

Our intent was not to sue NewSpring or its leaders, however it was my judgment as a husband and father that my family had suffered losses at the hands of NewSpring that warranted restitution. We had preferred to do it quietly and privately, though that option was taken out of our hands by NewSpring’s refusal to meet followed by its attempts to shame us for trying the private route.

We wish it hadn’t worked out this way, but we think that, given that NewSpring didn’t want to meet with us, we did right by both Matthew and Corinthians.

To begin this series, I’m going to start with something relatively brief. This is from a sermon preached on July 17, 2011, entitled Frequently Asked Questions: Part 3. The first quote starts at 47:42 in the audio version of the sermon.

Listen, listen. I’ve got several people that don’t like me personally

He’s about to describe critics of the church, so why is this relevant? It’s much easier to dismiss criticisms of NewSpring as being based on emotion or personal dislike than to acknowledge that they’re based on principle and reason.

– they’ve never met me,

His choice, not mine.

probably wouldn’t like me anyway – and it’s not people who attend here, it’s people, critics of our church. And listen, here’s what’s weird. On matters of theology, all of these people that I know of and that I’ve read some of their stuff, we would all agree. We all agree on the substitutionary atonement of Christ, we all agree on the authority of Scriptures,

Not really. One of our complaints about Perry is that he diminishes the authority of Scripture by adding extra revelation to it. When you dilute it with your own visions, we say you’ve undermined its authority.

we all agree on the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Apparently not, either. NewSpring’s youth pastor, Brad Cooper, has flirted with Rob Bell’s marginalization of the historic resurrection.

We all agree on matters of theology. It’s matters of methodology that most people have a problem with.

You cannot separate theology and methodology, just like you can’t separate belief and practice. Our understanding of God and his holiness informs our understanding of worship and, consequently, our practices in worship. Whether or not you play Highway to Hell as an Easter hymn has everything to do with your theology of worship. Even if Perry rarely preaches clear theology (that’s not being mean; he boasts of it), we can infer what it is from his methodology.

And, listen, when we confuse theology and methodology, we’re just like the Pharisees who crucified Jesus.

Wait, I thought we all agreed on theology. If all we disagree about is methodology, why is Perry calling us Pharisees and blaming us for killing Jesus? Unless, of course, you really can’t separate theology and methodology. See, the Pharisees embraced a religion based on methodology, and Jesus rejected it because rested on a foundation of false theology, assuming that man knew better than God what holiness was and how it was to be secured.

So I would say that this church is going to be a church that does anything it takes short of sin

Is there a nice bright line that distinguishes sin from not-sin? How does NewSpring determine whether using Highway to Hell in worship crosses that line? Plenty of us think it’s way over the line. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul calls us to separate from unrighteousness. If we’re even considering doing something that’s “short of sin,” aren’t we sinning already?

to reach people far from God

This phrase contains profound theological and anthropological assumptions, about which we disagree. Our distance from God is not one of degree; it’s based in our very being. We are dead sinners in the presence of a living, holy God; the distance between us is infinite.

and bring them to where they need to be.

Another theological issue. Is it the church that “brings them” anywhere, or is that the Holy Spirit? Where is it that they need to be? What happens when they get there? This short mission statement contains theological (the nature of God), anthropological (the nature of man), soteriological (the nature of salvation) and ecclesiastical (the nature of the church) assumptions that many of us think Noble and NewSpring get wrong. The statement assumes that man can move towards God based on his own effort, or with the help of the church, after which God will reward their combined efforts with salvation. People like Martin Luther thought those kinds of assumptions and the methodologies that sprung from them warranted a Reformation.

Speaking of which, does Noble think that Luther was a Pharisee who killed Jesus? After all, Luther’s initial objection was to the methodology of selling indulgences. What could be wrong with that? The Catholic Church wanted people to find forgiveness and salvation, and who’s to say that you shouldn’t do it that way? People were getting closer to God, and God’s kingdom was being built, especially back in Rome. As a contemporary politician might ask, What difference, at this point, does it make, anyway?

A bit later in the sermon (1:05:20), he turns his attention to his leadership.

If there are days where is seems like I don’t know what I’m doing, there’s a very simple explanation for that. It’s because there are days where I don’t know what I’m doing. I constantly feel overwhelmed and over my head. And I’m constantly begging God to never take his hand of favor off this church and to please continue to be with me and to be with us and guide us in everything we do. But let me promise you something. I am going to mess up because I’m human, and I’m going to make mistakes. And you know what? This church is going to mess up. And this church is going to make mistakes. In fact, the majority of the mistakes that the staff make is because most of the time I led them in the wrong direction, so I take complete blame for that.

Well, in theory. In practice, they were swift and savage in blaming Josh Maxwell for what he did when he followed Noble’s and Clayton King‘s leadership.

But this is all I’m asking, because if you come here long enough, we’re going to make you mad. We’re going to make you upset. We’re going to offend you. We’re going to do something that doesn’t sit well with you.

Define we. I’d be sympathetic to this line of thought if he was saying that God’s Word was going to do these things. The Word, well preached, will often make our sinful natures mad and upset as it diagnoses and treats our sin. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what he meant, though we can hope so.

And at the end of the day when you’re mad and you cuss and you scream or you tweet or you blog or you Facebook about how much… All I’m asking you is this. At the end of the day, would you be willing to give us the benefit of the doubt?

Why? He just said that he didn’t know what he was doing and that he regularly messes up. More than anyone else, pastors ought not ask, and ought not receive, the benefit of the doubt for what they do or say. Here’s why:

1. The Bereans were responsible. When the Bereans in Acts 17:11 heard Paul preach, their doubts drove them to Scripture to confirm what he had said. Here’s an Apostle who is preaching the literal, authoritative Word of God, and his listeners are praised for doubting him.
2. The bar has been raised. In the qualification for church overseers in 2 Timothy 3, Paul says that, among other things, the overseer must be above reproach and be well thought of by outsiders. These are not benefit-of-the-doubt standards; these are no-doubt standards. Also, rather than assuming leaders can skate by by lowering the standards by which they are judged, James 3:1 raises the bar. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

Pastors who ask their congregations for free passes should be listened to with caution.

In my next post, I’ll show you what it looks like when someone writes a pastor a blank check to do or say whatever he wants to.

Our argument was that Josh Maxwell acted in accordance with a culture of anger and violence that Perry Noble and other NewSpring leaders had carefully created and embraced. We expected that after anticipating that we were going to make that argument to a jury one day that they would try to dial back the rhetoric so they could claim that Maxwell’s actions against us were unfortunate, unforeseeable and unusual.

Not even close. NewSpring took money from other churches and pastors to train them to be as angry and agressive as they were. They also paid their teaching pastor, Clayton King, to pinch hit for Perry and teach the same thing to all of NewSpring’s members (a service King also performs for Steven Furtick). Had we gone to a jury, Clayton King’s violent teachings would have been one of our most valuable collections of evidence.

For a little bit of context, Clayton King is NewSpring’s contracted “teaching pastor,” which means that he is an official NS pastor and regularly fills in when Noble is on vacation. He also teaches for NewSpring at their annual Unleash conference. Perry calls him his best friend and accountability partner. King is the campus pastor at Liberty Univeristy, and preaches relatively frequently for Steven Furtick in Charlotte. He manages his own ministry as an itinerant preacher. He also regularly preaches at Anderson University, where I work and where he was awarded an honorary doctorate just last month.

He is in demand and respected by many people. Nevertheless, he is dangerously wrong and biblically backwards on one of his apparent specialties–how to protect your pastor.

Let me show you why.

2007: Be bodyguards

In October 2007 King delivered a sermon entitled Protecting your pastor where he said that pastors are attacked by rumors, criticism and jealousy. Even though he complained about the criticism, he did acknowledge that “you can’t say some of the things that Perry says and not expect to be criticized” (24:12, audio version). On this one point I agree with him, but King goes on to describe what steps NewSpringers should take to stop the criticism by “waging war on the Devil” on Perry’s behalf. He preaches from the example Beniah, one of David’s bodyguards, to explain that everybody should take on the role of pastoral bodyguard. (He may have forgotten his proof text a little later in the sermon when he mocks as crazy a rumor that Perry has armed bodyguards. Perhaps not, but when you have preachers advocating bodyguards for preachers, such rumors aren’t baseless.)

He says that pastors need people he trusts who will have his back and defend him. He’s willing to join the bodyguard ranks himself.

I will not let people talk about my friends. I will defend them.

So, even though King acknowledges that Perry says things that ought to be valid targets of criticism, people must not be allowed to talk about him. The people who do are working for the devil and ought to be confronted with military might.

2010: Be pitbulls

At this point, NewSpring leaders know about the actions of their security guard and of his church-security friends (just a meaningless coincidence, surely). They know that they are being sued for their role in creating a culture that encouraged the aggressive behavior of their staff and volunteers. Clayton King also surely knows the details of my case, serving as he does as Perry’s closest confident outside of his own family.

On March 4, 2010, NewSpring hosted its annual Unleash conference, where a couple of thousand pastors and church leaders pay NewSpring to teach them how to do church the Perry Noble way. One of the breakout sessions was given to Clayton King who reprised his teaching on Protecting your pastor, which was subtitled The sermon your pastor wants to preach but can’t.

Now we know why King is hired to come and do these sermons for Noble and Furtick. They endorse what he says, but they don’t want to say it themselves. Which raises a little question: why not? Paul calls pastors to preach the Word. Nothing more, nothing less. If protecting your pastor is a lesson solidly based on God’s Word, a senior pastor who doesn’t preach it is failing in his most basic duty. If it’s not based on God’s Word, senior pastors are being faithless to their congregations by recruiting hirelings to preach something to advance a personal agenda.

In this Unleash session, King had actually amped up his 2007 teaching by deputizing the congregation to be attack dogs, not just bodyguards. According to NewSpring’s own outline notes from his session, he advocated shutting critics out and encouraging the congregation to race to see who could defend the pastor first. Then came this gem:

Defend them!! Be a pitbull.

2011: Get physical

In October 2011, Perry brought King back in to preach another protect-your-pastor message on his behalf, this one called I got your back. At this point, NewSpring was well aware that one of our complaints was that we had been assaulted by one of their staff members. Nevertheless (though by now we know why it’s not a surprise) King responded by amping up his rhetoric to advocate assault.

No kidding.

At first, he demeans Perry’s critics as cowards.

I’ve got his [Perry’s] back. And if you’re one of those cowards who says something stupid on the Internet about him that you wouldn’t have the courage to say to his face, standing on level ground, looking eyeball to eyeball with him, I want you to know that if I ever meet you face to face, I’m going to cause a scene. [Applause]

By now, you know the story of Perry’s changing rules about meeting critics like me who do have the courage to meet with him face to face. Around this time, I had the surreal experience of listening to King speak to students at the university where I work where he smack talked about online critics who are too cowardly to talk to Perry in person. He’s come to the place where I work to talk about online critics; it’s obvious to everyone who cares about Perry that he’s talking about me. But he’s not telling the truth, and he knows it. He’s also in my physical presence promising to cause a scene and inviting anyone else to do the same thing. I got the message.

So, what kind of scene ought someone following King’s lead cause? In his NewSpring sermon he tells the story of an airport security guard who was about to arrest King after he had joked about carrying bombs onto the plane. As King has been pushed against the wall and is about to be handcuffed, he says his mother rushed through the security barriers towards him to touch the guard and put a stop to the arrest.

That, my friends, could be construed as assault.

King uses the parable of his mother as the example for NewSpringers to follow. Actually, she was his momma, not his mother in this instance. Here’s his distinction:

There’s a difference between a mother and a momma. A mother will warn you; a momma just starts throwing punches. Big difference.

Sucker-punch theology. This is what you can quickly get to when your preaching is not constrained by Scripture, and why shepherds and their sheep are always so much safer when preachers limit themselves to what’s written and don’t go beyond it.

And just in case anyone had missed the point, King finishes the sermon by spelling out the connection to his assault story.

My momma got my back. That’s what our leaders need. That’s what our staff need. That’s what pastors need. That’s what Perry needs. We need to know that our people [have] got our back. That we [have] got each other. I praise God for this church. You’re doing a great job.

By Noble and King’s standards, they sure are.

(While this post was being written, the prediction that this would happen again came true. You can read the account here.)

A listener of Chris Rosebrough’s Fighting for the Faith show, which had broadcast an interview with me on Monday, had used a Twitter account to link to that interview and suggest that people listen to it. Yesterday, a NewSpringer named Jacob Morris posted the following threat to Rosebrough’s listener:

@MgaChrch_MndCtl if you do not stop harassing/hate tweeting NewSpring church, as an anonymous member I will personally take you out. #stop

The first time I read it, I assumed it was someone’s attempt at humor, trying to reinforce the point that even NewSpring has said that criticizing it is dangerous. But a little more reading made it clear that the author was indeed a NewSpringer who was trying to defend Perry. The threat was angry and very real.

Today, the author has heard from the Twitterverse and has apologized to the person to whom he made the threat. It appears as though the author has learned a bit from Rosebrough’s listeners this afternoon. The conversation, if you follow it, is heartening. Morris was reproved, repented and reconciled with the person he had threatened.

It was a good thing for him that Rosebrough’s listeners were looking out for him, but where was his pastor? The early stages of the conversation had enough @newspring and @perrynoble tags in them to have popped up on NewSpring’s radar; they have a full-time position (or two) whose job is to monitor Facebook, Twitter and blog chatter about Perry and NS. After their inaction on Maxwell, this should have triggered some alarms and prompted NewSpring’s pastors to reach out to Mr. Morris. Judging by his Twitter feed, no such outreach was offered.

Why not?

Perhaps they don’t care. When you have 27,000 attenders, it’s hard to really pastor them all.

Perhaps they don’t dare. To publicly reprove their own Mr. Morris would require them to recant too much of their own teaching. You see, Morris was doing exactly what Perry Noble and his deputy preacher, Clayton King, have been teaching for the last five years.

Morris’s violent fruit was simply the result of poisonous preaching.

In my next post, I’ll give you a taste of some of that preaching.