Look who’s coming back

Gary Lamb has been hinting for a while that he wants to start another church, and an alert reader noticed that perhaps the first step in his rehabilitation occured a few weeks ago, on the same day that Noble was preaching a sex sermon inspired by Lamb’s own failure.

The church that welcomed Lamb back on stage was Life Church in Rome, Georgia. The church’s corporate twitter thought it was worth trumpeting:

Had @garylamb sharing his story today.

The church’s music minister added a few more emotions:

Great morning @lifechurchrome, @garylamb shared his story, confessed sins, showed brokenness, and lives were changed fo the kingdom of God!

We thought you’d like to know.

Oh, Lamb’s host church is about to do a “Porn Sunday” and has been posting porn ads on Facebook. As some of you may remember, these were the same kind of topics that Lamb’s church was doing when he was getting into trouble. Here’s some of their chatter:

just posted a porn ad on facebook for @lifechurchrome whole nutha level

YEs @lifechurchrome seen salvations again today and our porn ad is working thats right i said porn ad. 7 more days until we attack that

our local alcohol commision turned down girls gone wild but @lifechurchrome is going through with porn sunday, yeah come on

Like a dog returns to its vomit…

Chemistry at work

What-could-possibly-go-wrong-with-that advice from Gary Lamb’s friend and advisor:

NEVER underestimate the importance of chemistry in regards 2 who you work with…doing WHAT u r called 2 do w/people u love is AWESOME!

Lamb thought so too.

Perhaps professionalism should be more important than chemistry, but who am I to argue with success?

How Perry Noble’s legalism failed Gary Lamb

The Gary Lamb story will happen again, mainly because the men who think they’re learning lessons from this and other failings are clutching at solutions that will ultimately fail them.

A few observations:

1. Structures aren’t the same as sanctification. Perry Noble has preached IN CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation marks to his fellow ministers about how to avoid sexual failings.
   

   Call me legalistic…but I am a FREAK about particular personal boundaries…such as…

   • I do not ride in a car alone with a woman other than my wife!
   • I will not be on an elevator alone with another woman. (I have literally gotten off on a floor that was not my destination in order to keep this value.)
   • I will not counsel a woman alone.
   • I will not share a meal in a restaurant with a woman with it being just the two of us…under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! EVER! (And PLEASE don’t hand me that crap about how it is “business!”)

   We’ve seen just how well Noble’s legalism worked for one of his two primary proteges. There is nothing wrong with establishing procedures for avoiding trouble, but you can’t rely on them to protect you from a corrupt heart.

2. Women aren’t wicked. Perry Noble’s crass advice to pastors seems premised on the assumption that women are more infectious than the swine flu and must be avoided at all costs.
   

   My advice…take RADICAL steps. Make a committment to NEVER be alone with a woman! EVER…under ANY circumstances.

   There’s a difference between being alone with a woman and having sex with her that most of us have no problem recognizing. One will happen often and be outside your control; the other shouldn’t happen at all and is within your control. The refusal to apologize to Elena or her husband seems to be consistent with this view of women as immoral agents who are on the prowl to bring down otherwise good men.

   The problem is not women; it’s men who can’t control themselves around women.

3. Self control is seriously compromised. Noble and Lamb have been subjects of criticism on this blog in the past for their gratuitous lack of self control. In discussing their inability to control their tongue, I asked “How can either of these men credibly teach people about purity, sobriety or self control?” The answer, it turns out, is that they can’t. They can’t even teach themselves about it. Perry Noble’s Twitter entries are a constant reminder of his lack of self control or self denial. He is a man of big appetites who relishes in publicly satisfying them. A few weeks ago he made a big deal about driving down to Atlanta just for lunch.
   

   I am seriously thinking about driving to ATL tomorrow just to have lunch @ Fogo!!! It’s just a thought…am I crazy? Anyone wanna go?

   He ended up taking at least two of his staff members. Here’s another example:

   Here is a HUGE surprise…I am hungry…really desire to consume large amounts of food!!!

   It goes on and on.

   Understand my point. It’s not a sin to eat; it is a sin to lack temperance when it comes to eating. When you act like a three year old expecting your loudly announced needs to be satisfied whenever you have them, why would you expect to have developed the discipline to deny yourself when you do get some alone time with a willing woman? These men have few obvious self-control muscles.

There is wisdom in setting guidelines to help reduce temptations. Perry Noble’s counseling of Lamb didn’t help him because it didn’t deal with his selfish and childish heart. A bad heart will always overcome good rules.

Who could have seen this coming?

Look at Gary Lamb’s recent preaching series in light of his recently announced adultery with his personal assistant.

His body just went where his mind has been all year.

What’s next for Gary Lamb?

A few more thoughts on the Gary Lamb story.

1. Elena Stoeckig is being trashed. I don’t know her story, but she’s not getting a fair deal here. Lamb didn’t apologize to her. Noble didn’t either. The official Revolution staff statement ignores her completely as well. She was a paid staff member who lost her job and perhaps her marriage because of the actions of their pastor. One would have thought that Christian decency at least owes her an apology. Instead, she is being trashed. Witness this reaction to her from someone who knew Elena and appears to be involved in the Revolution church:
   

   Wow! Hope you are proud of yourself you manipulative, psysco! Karma is a bitch, better prepare!

   In Lamb’s one-sided apology, he said he is 100 percent responsible. I don’t buy it. By refusing to apologize to Elena, the subtext is that she was the aggressor and he was the victim. Until I see that apology, Lamb’s statements about taking responsibility are just formulaic and hollow. He’s saying what he needs to say to save his career.

2. Elena has disappeared, but Gary remains. Elena Stoeckig’s blog has disappeared. Her twitter account has vanished. Ditto for her husband. Gary Lamb, however, is still as big and bold online as ever. Lamb and his people are circling the wagons around Gary, but leaving Elena in the cold. As Ron Burgundy said, “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.”
3. The sin will be excused. If we’ve learned anything about what matters in these churches, it is that it’s all about bringing people to Jesus. Lamb’s supporters will soon discover that his replacements won’t be as effective at it as Lamb was, so the longer they keep him away, the more that they’ll be complicit in populating hell. It’s the same thinking behind a recent comment on another post on this blog.
   

   Each week people are meeting Christ and even if it’s just one person, that is one person that won’t go to Hell. Yes, there are things that happen that I may not agree with but I don’t know anything in life that I completely agree with, 100% of the time. As I have said to others, who are we to cast the first stone? I know I’m not perfect.

4. Lamb will be back in the pulpit, probably at Revolution, within six months. As much as his church is supposedly not about the man, they are about to find out how much it probably was. The rhetorical style of preaching is built on passionate outrage, so they’ll have trouble finding someone who can match Lamb. My guess is that they’ll pipe Noble in and make Revolution at least a temporary NewSpring video franchise.
5. No other pastors will reassign their personal assistants. Where did this job title come from anyway? Hollywood? Affairs with secretaries are a staple of business life, but at least there’s some official separation between the boss and a secretary or administrative assistant; both are working for the same entity. Labeling someone a personal assistant changes the relationship and makes the person the vassal of the boss, someone who works primarily for the man rather than for the organization. Administrative assistants are people who help the boss do his job; personal assistants are more likely to be seen as someone to be used by the boss for whatever he wants. Note how Lamb just thought Elena was his for the taking. That thinking coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the affair. Perhaps it’s time for these show-time pastors to rethink that relationship.

Gary Lamb resigns

Gary Lamb announced that he’s resigning from pastoring Revolution Church in GA because he has been having an affair with his married personal assistant, Elena, for the last six weeks.

Ten months ago, she and her husband caught his eye.

Speaking of the next generation of world changers…..We have a very cool young couple who have been attending Revolution for a while now. Kyle and Elena Stoeckig have been in ministry at some pretty cool churches in the past and God has them hanging out in Canton for a while as they get ready for the next leg. They are praying about starting a church in downtown Atlanta and I’m praying God keeps them around Canton for a while longer. Pray for them as they seek God will for their next steps!

Seven weeks ago, Lamb chronicled a bit of a staff reshuffle in his church. From April 19:

Elena Stoeckig who is on our staff is going to be assisting in my office. She’s great at what she does, I trust her, and she has thick skin to put up with me.

Crap, I’ll probably steal her from Tim permanently. There aren’t many advantages to being the pastor, but there are some.

Then six weeks ago, he moved in:

I have officially stolen Elena from Tim as my new assistant….

I think she is going to do a great job. She’s very sharp, pretty tough, and has a heart for ministry.

Narcissism bites.

(If anyone ever sees an apology to, or request for prayer for, Elena or Kyle Stoeckig from Lamb, direct us to it in the comments.)

Can we use just anything in worship?

Gary Lamb opened his service with a new song from Montgomery Gentry last weekend. Here are some of the lyrics:

There’s one in every crowd,
brings the party in us out,
good time Charley with a Harley, whiskey bent and hellbound,
he’s got the next round, but he always drinks for free,
there’s one in every crowd, and it’s usually me.

He’ll bum a light and steal your girl,
then laugh at you for gettin’ all upset.

He’s a hard drinkin man’s man,
and women love him when they can.

Lamb is using the song in a series called Party, which supposedly describes the reaction in Heaven when a sinner is saved.

Gary, this is not an appropriate song to use to describe that holy event. The character in this song is unconcerned about going to hell, steals women from other men and laughs at their misfortune, and an adulterous drunk.

How does this have any relationship to your worship of God?

Wait, never mind. I think I know.

Substituting scatology for theology

If you’ve listened or read to much material from pastors like Perry Noble, Steven Furtick or Gary Lamb, you’ve been exposed to a great deal of profanity. A search for “crap” turns up 141 pages on Noble’s blog, 145 for Lamb and 102 for Furtick (and now at least one for me). That’s commitment to the cause.

The incidence of this kind of language is a blight on the pulpit and on the church, and it sends exactly the type of message that no pastor should want to be associated with.

1. It testifies against sanctification. One of my first online introductions to Perry Noble came through this account of a conversation he had with his pal, Gary Lamb (yes, the same guy who breathes out murderous threats against the church). He had asked Perry how many people he thought might attend the first Unleash conference.
   

   His response was (and Jason Moorhead was there to prove it) that if 300 people showed up he would “crap his pants” and if 400 people showed up he would eat his underwear. Well, I am assuming since he said he would crap his pants he was meaning those were the pants he would eat. SO that has me motivated to make sure 400 people are there.

   They are at a little over 200 now. We are taking between 30-40 people so we need some other churches to step up. I personally would find it funny to see Perry eat his crap filled pants.

   BTW, I am only slightly joking.

   How can either of these men credibly teach people about purity, sobriety or self control?

2. It treats culture as an elevated source. After I had criticized NewSpring’s youth pastor for using the BAMF epithet against the church, the defense, such as it was, was that this was a term that had been popularized by a television comedian. These are people who excuse their refusal to use the word Christian because it is only used a few times in the Bible and may have been created by people who weren’t themselves Christians; however, language that they hear in an HBO special is uncritically adopted.
3. It twists Scripture. Some pastors point to Philippians 3:8 and say that Paul used a word akin to shit or crap, so they can use similar words for shock value themselves. Matt Colvin researched the actual use of the word, skubalon, and found that it was generally used by Greek authors in a medical context (i.e. faeces), or to refer to household refuse that’s thrown to the dogs (compost or scraps) or agricultural uses (manure). It means something useless that is thrown away. It was not used by the Greeks in comedy or other bawdy literature. In other words, it was not used to shock or titillate the way that our cussing pastors use similar words today.
4. It trashes the audience. If someone is a guest in my home, or a visitor to my office, I generally expect that they will watch their mouth and speak civilly as a mark of respect. If you started with the gutter talk, I would assume you thought I was as low-brow as you. What do cussing pastors tell their congregations, who are members of Christ’s body, about what they think about them when they replace theology with scatology?
5. It terminates creativity. These cussing pastors generally pride themselves on their ability to present the Gospel in new and creative ways. Why, then, resort to the most unoriginal and base language around? As someone said,
   

   Swearing is the outlet of the unimaginative, the dull of wit.

6. It titillates instead of trains. It seems as though some preachers can’t teach a lesson without trying to spice it up with something that will shock. A case in point is a personal lesson by Steven Furtick about propriety in witnessing. Everything was going well until he got to the point of his lesson with this sentence:
   

   What the crap would make me so self-conscious that I would stop talking to my wife about the God who means everything because somebody might think I’m one of those weird Christians?

   Who talks like that? The profanity seems so contrived as to suggest that the only reason it was there was because he was reaching the end of the post and needed to drop something unsavory into it.

7. It taints teaching. I and many others enjoy the teachings of Mark Driscoll, yet the crudity and language that seeps into his speech make it difficult to fully embrace what he does. It’s like being treated by a doctor who keeps wiping his runny nose with the back of his hand. He probably knows what ails you, but you’ll always wonder if he knows what ails him.
8. It trivializes our witness. Lowering our standards of conversation to the world’s is not any way to communicate a call to holiness. The implication is that when you become a Christian, you really won’t have to change many of your current vices if you don’t want to, because–look at us–we’re pastors; when they told us we were going to be fishers of men, we thought we needed to be able to swear like fishermen as well. The message (intended, I think) is, Our God is just as badass as your gods, so why not make the switch?
9. It intoxifies the preacher. Letting so much poison flow out of your mouth has to have deleterious effects on the soul. God apparently thinks so, according to James 3:6. John McArthur does too:
   

   Many of the world’s favorite fads are toxic, and they are becoming increasingly so as our society descends further in its spiritual death-spiral. It’s like a radioactive toxicity, so while those who immerse themselves in it might not notice its effects instantly, they nevertheless cannot escape the inevitable, soul-destroying contamination. And woe to those who become comfortable with the sinful fads of secular society.

   Profanity from the pulpit is a multiple-victim offense. It corrupts everybody.

A pastor’s lament

• In the early days of people attending your church they will love your passion.  When the newness wears off, they will hate your passion.
• People will come to your church because they love your heart to reach lost people.  Over time when they realize it isn’t about them, they will hate that you have a heart to reach lost people.
• People will love how “real” you are in life and from the stage but then you will do something they don’t like, that is human or they feel crosses the line and they will hate how “real” you are.