Maybe it’s just me, but they are a never ending source of entertainment. Whether it’s crazy televangelists, a “Christian discernment ministry” website, or just crazy people at Walmart, I can’t get enough.

So, you can imagine my joy when I came across a new show on National Geographic called Doomsday Preppers. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really need to. It’s pretty amazing.

The show highlights various people, usually families, and their attempts to prepare for the apocalypse they are convinced is just around the corner. The episodes I saw this weekend featured, among others, a couple in Texas, two families in South Carolina, and another couple in Utah. Each had a different expectation for how the world will come crashing to an end.

The couple in Texas believed that a terrorist attack will bring an end to the United States as we know it. The families in South Carolina were convinced that a global economic meltdown will bring the world to its knees. And the couple in Utah was convinced that a nuclear apocalypse is just around the corner.

To prepare for these doomsday scenarios each family has gone to some pretty incredible extremes.

The couple in Texas used steel shipping crates to build a house modeled after a medieval fortress. Their hope was to create a place from which they can defend their homestead from roaming bands of mauraders who might want some of the 20 year supply of food they have stored up. To make sure their house was as safe as they hoped it was, they fired their .22 rifles at it to test whether it was bulletproof or not. It was.

The families in South Carolina teamed up together to go ahead and get off the grid. They’ve created a farm complete with chickens, cows, a pond for storing drink water, and enough dried food to last them for years. Like their apocalyptic peers in Texas, safety was also a top concern for these families. Trip wires lined the property. Secret caches were hidden across the farm and contained backup supplies in case the families were forced to flee the main house and seek refuge in one of their strategic hideouts. And of course, both families made sure that everyone, including the children, were proficient in shooting a wide variety of firearms, just in case thieves showed up to “take food out of their families’ mouths”.

Not to be outdone, the couple in Utah had constructed an immense underground lair and stocked it with several years worth of food and other supplies in preparation for the nuclear apocalypse they were convinced is sure to hit…….Omaha. Seriously. Omaha, Nebraska. Not to be outdone by their colleagues in Texas and South Carolina, the Utah couple also had a not so small arsenal to defend themselves when humanity inevitably turns on each other.

Maybe you hear these stories and you think to yourself, “Man, I really need to get on the ball and start stocking up on bottled water and freeze dried beans.” Well, good luck with that. I’m just not convinced the world is hurtling towards the apocalypse. And, frankly, there’s nothing you can tell me that will convince me otherwise.

But just for the sake of this post, let’s assume that we are hurtling towards the apocalypse. If it is, then is what we see in this show really how we should be reacting? Or perhaps, more importantly, what does it say about us as people, or specifically as Christians, if we do choose to react this way?

I’m sure it says a lot of things, but there are just a few that I want to focus on.

To begin, this approach demonstrates a profound lack of hope for the future, but also for people. I think a lot of the blame for this can be placed at the feet of Hollywood, or at least our inability to separate the fiction of apocalyptic movies from reality. Are there scary things happening in the world? Of course. Are people capable of great evil? Absolutely. But the assumption that catastrophe necessarily results in the devolving of humanity into soulless monsters is much more the result of apocalyptic movies than it is grounded in reality.

Certainly there are instances of rioting and madness that arise in moments of uncertainty and outrage. But I think we need look no further than the very real catastrophes of the recent past to see how people actually react in apocalyptic type scenarios.

When tornadoes ripped through Alabama last year, when the levees burst and destroyed New Orleans, and when the earthquake leveled Japan, though there was initially some rioting and violence, the ultimate outcome was the outpouring of love and support as strangers helped other strangers rebuild their lives and their community. People turn on each other and destroy society in the movies because it makes for an entertaining storyline, not because it is the inevitable reaction of people who have suffered through a catastrophe. In reality, life goes on. History teaches us that civilizations rise and fall, but society continues no matter what disaster befalls humanity.

As Christians, when it comes to the future, we simply can’t follow this hopeless path. We can’t pray “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” and live as if that is an impossibility.

Secondly, I think that all of this doomsday preparation demonstrates how powerfully we can be captivated by fear. This is ironic because if there was one thing all of these families had in common it was their declaration that they weren’t afraid. They can say that until they’re blue in the face, but it was fear of the unknown that drove them to stockpile for the apocalypse and it is fear of running out that keeps them committed to their preparations. There is no such thing as having security or even needing a sense of security apart from fear. Fear creates the need for security. However, security does not eliminate fear. It only masks it for a while.

Without hope a person should be afraid. But as Christians we find hope in the return of our Lord. For the people of God the “end of the world”, so to speak, is something to celebrate, not something to fear. We claim that Jesus is returning, not to the destroy all things, but to make all things new and bring heaven to earth.

If Jesus is our hope for the future, then this should be a time of preparing the world for its coming King, not abandoning it and leaving the King with a dump to return to.

Finally, I think that this sort of doomsday preparation belies an underlying self-centeredness both in the apocalyptic hoarders, but also in those of us in the church who forsake the world for our future in heaven. Too many of us are not interested enough in helping society survive  and thrive in the here and now, let alone rebuilding it in the case of an actual global catastrophe. Instead, we’re only interested in “me” and what happens to “mine.” We want our ticket to paradise, the rest of the world be damned. It’s this very mentality that would make the prophecies of these doomsday planners come true. So, it’s ironic, if not a bit insane, that they (or we) think such a mentality would also be the solution for the future.

As Christians, this sort of life is antithetical to what it means to be the people of God. By definition we share this life together and have been called out together for the sake of the world. If we focus only on ourselves, ignoring everyone and everything else, then we have no right to call ourselves the people of God.

Ultimately, I think we should all be asking ourselves whether our not the apocalyptic landscape presented in this show and so many of the movies we watch is a sort of world that any of us would even want to live in. If it’s not, then perhaps we should begin trying to change the future, rather than simply making preparations to survive it.

Instead of stockpiling a decade’s worth of food or training on an arsenal of weapons in order to kill anyone who steps on our property, I want to suggest that we should be working now to change the course of history. Apart from the return of Christ, the future is not set in stone. The future is very much what we choose to make of it. We could choose to wipe ourselves out, but we could also begin living the kingdom life in the here and now.

If there’s one thing Doomsday Preppers can teach us, it’s that we should prepare for the future, just not by running for the hills or building bomb proof shelters. We should begin to work towards building a better world now, rather than panicking over what could be or what would be if we do nothing. Instead of picking up a gun and bullets we should reach for a hammer and nails and transform the world we live in. And above all, we must learn to love and serve others, rather than seeing them as enemies out to steal what’s “mine”.

Of course, if you’re still convinced that guns and freeze dried bananas are the only hope for the future and all that stuff about loving, serving, and transforming is just too idealistic and naive, then the person you’re going to want to mock and criticize isn’t me…..it’s Jesus.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

A couple of weeks ago Matthew Paul Turner leaked a Mars Hill ‘discipline contract’ along with a subsequent internal memo to members instructing them about how to interact with the excommunicated former member.

Well, yesterday Mark Driscoll tweeted that Mars Hill is looking to hire a new Youth Director. While that is in no way connected to the discipline contract, there is another leak involved.

If you are interested in the job you must register with the church’s website in order to access the job application.

However, we have created a satirical work of fiction that is in no way the actual job description or application leaked this secretive application for all to see. So, if you’re interested in joining the Mars Hill staff or just wanted to know what it takes to work there, you can check out the application below.

Not surprisingly, just like Mars Hill itself, it’s not your average job application…..

The following is the final installment in a series of posts on why I believe the church must abandon evangelicalism. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve gone down to an altar and “given my life to Jesus”.

Growing up in an evangelical denomination, especially one with roots in the revival movement, a church service doesn’t go by without an invitation to “come down and lay it all on the altar.”

That’s true for church camp too. You may spend the day playing ultimate frisbee, swimming in the pool, or finding your next significant other, but once service begins in the old outdoor tabernacle it’s time to get down to business. It is time to make sure you have “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

I’m not sure that there is anything more intrinsically attached to evangelicalism than a “personal relationship with Jesus.”  Today it seems so fundamental to the faith. In order to be a Christian you must have a personal relationship with Jesus. However, historically speaking that hasn’t been the case, at least not in the way we speak of it today. In fact, it was American Evangelicalism that gave birth to the modern notion of a personal relationship with Jesus. The phrase itself is found nowhere in the Bible. Now, is the idea of humanity having a relationship with their Creator in the Bible? Abosolutely! It’s written across every page and is the very reason for the Bible’s existence.

However, I believe that the relationship between God and man, between us and Jesus, that we see described in the Bible is very different that what we in evangelicalism describe as a “personal relationship with Jesus.”

For starters, “personal” is a very American phenomenon. Our country exists because men and women wanted to live and worship how they “personally” saw fit. This isn’t always a bad thing. However the American, and with it the evangelical, concept of “personal” is a concept foreign to both the Bible and the Christian faith. When we speak of the “personal” today, we are usually talking about individualism, our own personal taste, beliefs, preferences, desires, etc. Personal is what I what to do, what I want to believe, what I like. In other words, “personal” is primarily about “me” and doesn’t require the input of or interaction with anyone else. So, when we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus we are describing an internal, individual relationship that is confined to our own prayers, meditative thoughts, and the occasional act of worship (by which we mean singing songs).

While maturation as a person is usually part of this equation, the primary goal of the “personal relationship with Jesus” is heaven. We are sold on the need for a personal relationship with Jesus because it will get us out of hell and into heaven. We “accept” Jesus as our “personal” Savior so that we can get to heaven. And we make sure we never screw up too bad so that our personal relationship with Jesus will continue and we’ll make it into heaven.

Though this all might sound good, it’s actually not very Christian, it’s certainly not very Biblical, and it’s actually not Christ-like at all.

To begin, the individualism that defines evangelicalism’s personal relationship with Jesus is antithetical to concept of the “people of God” and the “body of Christ.” The Bible is a story about God’s chosen people, not individuals. God chooses Israel the nation, not just one man. When Jesus arrives on the scene, not even the Son of God walks around alone. Instead, he surrounds himself with others. When the church is established, it’s not a bunch of individuals saying prayers alone by their bed at night. It’s a family of faith that is constantly interacting with one another and inviting others to participate in that community.

This community is but a reflection of the God she serves. When we speak of God as Triune, we mean that God is in a community of relationship. Just as there is no such thing as “Jesus and me”, there is no such thing as just “Jesus and the Father”. We often forget about the Spirit, but the Spirit plays a critical role in both the Godhead and in our own lives. It is the Spirit that is the breath of life. It is the Spirit that empowers and emboldens the church to go out the very ends of the earth. And it is the Spirit the calls us all together reminding us that, like God, this is not a one-on-one relationship. We are one Body with many parts. So, despite what the famous Footsteps poem may claim, Jesus wasn’t the only one carrying you on the beach. The Father, the Spirit, and the Church were there too.

Perhaps most importantly, and this is probably going to sting a bit because it’s the core tenet of evangelicalism, but Jesus did not die on the cross for “you” or “me”. He died for “us”. Are you and me are a part of that us? Absolutely, but when we individualism salvation, then the faith becomes primarily about us. In the process, we turn inward, putting our own needs, wants, and desires before those of both the church and rest of the world. In short, when salvation is about “me”, when Christianity is exhausted by “I”, then it becomes a form of idolatry in which we make Jesus into our image and transform him into a personal servant we call upon whenever we need something fixed.

That’s not to say that a personal relationship with Jesus isn’t important. It’s absolutely fundamental to the faith, but we must understand what that personal relationship looks like. To do that, we have to look no further than the Gospels. There we learn that a personal relationships is not something that happens inside your heart. They are something which is embodied.

Jesus has numerous personal relationships with people in the Gospels, but none of them are defined by inward thoughts and emotions. The personal relationships that happen with Jesus in the Gospels are something that happens on the outside, between people, not inside their individual selves. For the Gospels, a personal relationship with Jesus was something incarnated. It was dynamic. It required someone to reach out beyond their own “person” and love, embrace, and care for the other.

Clearly, Jesus doesn’t physically walk the earth today, but that doesn’t mean we are exempt from participating in this same form of relationship. But to do so we have to understand that despite what we have been told our entire lives, Jesus does not live in our hearts. I know that may come as an intolerable shock to your system, but Jesus never said he would dwell there and it is not until the advent of American Evangelicalism that this idea becomes orthodoxy. What does dwell within us is that which Jesus promised to give us, the Holy Spirit. He gave us the gift of the Spirit that we could be empowered to encounter and embody him. And where do we do that? In our relationships with others.

Jesus says very clearly, “when you do these things to the least of these you do them to me.” In other words, our personal relationship with Jesus happens when we reach out to love, embrace, and care for the least, the lost, and the dying. Simply put, it is impossible to have a personal relationship with Jesus that only exists inside your heart. Through the power of the Spirit, you must incarnate that faith, so that in your relationships with “the least of these” you encounter and befriend Jesus himself.

Additionally, this sort of personal relationship must exist among the persons who make up the body of Christ. As I have quoted here many times before, the hand cannot say to the Body ‘I don’t need you’. Likewise, a person cannot say ‘I have Jesus in my heart, so I don’t need the Church or anyone else’. There is no personal relationship with Jesus apart from our personal relationships with his Body and the people he came to serve….

….which makes the evangelical obsession with “getting out of here” and on to heaven so problematic.

We get so focused on an eternal encounter with Jesus that we miss the opportunities to meet Jesus in the here and now. N.T. Wright does an incredible job of articulating this issue in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, so I won’t pretend to try and top him. Just go buy the book. But I will say this, heaven is an already and not yet present reality. We live on earth as it is in heaven when we do the work of extending grace to the least of these which Jesus has called us to do in the here and now. And it is in those moments that we both meet and embody Jesus in the world.

In closing, it is this obsession with a “personal relationship with Jesus” is at the heart of all my critiques of American Evangelicalism over the past several days. It’s the thing that we hold over people’s heads to control them. “They” must have a personal relationship with Jesus, but if it doesn’t look the way we say it should, then they’re going to hell. It is the thing that allows us to read Scripture however we choose and then weaponize it in order to defeat our enemies.  Worst of all, it is the thing that causes us to exhaust the mission of the Church in the making of converts. If all that is required is a “personal relationship”, by which we mean intellectual ascent, warm feelings, and prayer, then the least, the lost, and the dying are left to fend for themselves and we will have failed in our mission.

Contrary to what you might assume from reading this series of posts, I believe that the church does have a bright future. I see glimpses of it everyday when the teenagers in my youth group reach out to one another in times of need without me creating a program or telling them to do so. I see it when broke college students turn out their already empty pockets to give millions of dollars in the effort to end slavery. And I see it when drug addicts and prostitutes sit in the pew on Sunday morning next to business executives and stay at home moms. But in order for this bright future to become our present reality I believe that the church must abandon American Evangelicalism and all the follies it has brought with it.

Instead, we should pursue an authentic relationship with our Lord. One which begins among his people, but extends out into the world to love, embrace, and care for the lost, the least and the dying. In doing so, we must never use our gifts to manipulate or oppress. Neither should we turn the Bible into an idol, or worse, a weapon to destroy our enemies. And throughout it all, we must always remember that the Christian faith is something to which we belong, it is not our possession.

There will surely be many more challenges for the church in the future. And I’m sure several of them will be ghosts from her past. But if we can learn from our past, rather than ignore, I believe that we will find vast resources to help us carry out the mission of the church in the 21st century.

God has called us to go and to great things. But to answer that call we have to be willing to stop focusing on “me” and actually go. If we can find the humility to put ourselves last, if we cling to another, and if discover the courage to trust in the Spirit to work through broken and imperfect people, then as John Wesley once said, we “will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Rev. Billy spends the first minute or so of this clip begging his viewers to call in and send him money.

Nothing he said moved me in the slightest to send him even a dime.

Then he started singing and all that changed.

If Rev. Billy is available for birthday parties, then I would gladly pay him to come and perform his rendition of “Saydum Done Lied To You” for my birthday next year.

We tease because we love, but seriously; listening to this guy sing is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

For the past several days I have been writing on the problems with evangelicalism. I will continue that series later, but after reading John Piper’s latest statements about God, I wanted to take a moment to address them. Since my last post on evangelicalism discussed the epidemic of celebrity pastors, I think it seems fitting to take this brief detour.

As you are probably already aware, during the recent Desiring God Conference John Piper declared his belief that God intended Christianity to have a masculine feel to it. Several others have already written great responses to this absolutely absurd claim. So, I won’t add to what is already out there, except to point out that without women who were brave enough to visit the empty tomb on Easter Sunday and then return to preach the gospel to a bunch of cowardly men, there would be no church for Piper to exclude them from.

Instead, I want to address Piper’s latest remarks which I find to be profoundly disturbing. In The Christian Post, John Piper responded to the question “What made it OK for God to kill women and children in the Old Testament?” with the following….

“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die. God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God’s hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs. So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing.”

Did you catch that?!

John Piper literally said that God gives people cancer and has others shot to death. But not just that….according to Piper, God’s callous and remorseless executions are good things!

As ridiculous as his views are about masculinity and Christianity, this is beyond the pale. Simply put, the God that John Piper worships, the God that he proclaims to his congregation, the God he would have us all believe in is nothing more than a monster.

Piper calls it grace that God allows us to live, which is true. But when God is allowing us to live so that at a moment of God’s choosing God can strike us down with cancer or send someone to shoot us in the head, then that isn’t grace. It’s sadomasochism.

So just to refresh, according to Piper, when that father in Washington hacked his sons to death before setting his house on fire this week, that was a God thing. When a woman is abducted, brutally raped, and then murdered, it’s a God thing. And of course, when Hitler had over 6 million people butchered during the Holocaust, it was also the will of God. That’s not the crazy, hyperbolic ranting of a blogger. That is literally what John Piper is saying.

There is absolutely no getting around the fact that this sort of God is in no way worthy of worship. This is a God to be terrified by, to be repulsed by, a God to be condemned. This God is a monster more evil than anything humanity could ever imagine.

But Piper wasn’t finished…..

‘”The part that makes it harder is that he commands people to do it. He commanded Joshua to slaughter people, okay? You’ve got human beings killing humans, and therefore a moral question of what is right to do. The Bible says, “Thou shalt not murder,” yet God says to Joshua, “Go in and clean house, and don’t leave anything breathing! Don’t leave a donkey, child, woman, old man or old woman breathing. Wipe out Jericho.” My answer to that is that there is a point in history, a season in history, where God is the immediate king of a people, Israel, different than the way he is the king over the church, which is from all the peoples of Israel and does not have a political, ethnic dimension to it. With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time.”

If that last part of the paragraph, the part about people being God’s instruments of judgment, if that part sounds familiar it’s because it should. Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the 9/11 hijackers all said the same thing before they flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Every time a jihadist straps a bomb to his or her chest and blows up innocent people, they do so with the belief that they are God’s instrument of judgment in the world. Once again, there is no hyperbole here: this is exactly the sort of thing John Piper is justifying.

Worse still, if we are made in the image of God and this is how God behaves, then this sort of violent, vengeful, murderous behavior is how we should be living.

What I think we see in Piper’s statements is the only destination of biblical inerrancy, fundamentalism, and a refusal to allow the Bible to be anything other than a list of normative behaviors. Like any other fundamentalist, Piper seems to assume that if the words “thou shall not” don’t precede the sentence, any subsequent behavior which is described in the Bible should be emulated. However, the Bible is filled with stories of how not to behave. Abraham slept with a female slave. Jacob stole his brother’s birthright.  Gideon tested God even though God said “do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Solomon married hundreds of women the Law specifically forbade him to marry. The Bible is a book of stories and like many of the stories we learn as children, sometimes those stories are used to teach us how not to behave.

Likewise, when citing moments like the flood or the conquest of Canaan, I think that Piper fails to make a critical distinction between judgement and cold-hearted murder. Certainly God has the right to exact judgment, and as a just God, God should exact judgment. When God chooses not to, we call that grace and forgiveness. However, judgment and evil are two very different things. While there is not space enough here to get into a detailed discussion about theodicy, we can at least state that just because God’s judgement may be destructive, that in no way makes God also the force behind evil. The two are not intrinsically connected. Neither will it do to pretend as if evil is not evil, but simply the “will of God.”

Ultimately, if God wills all evil, then God is the source of evil and the author of sin. If that is true, then God is not love, God is evil. In that case, the writers of the New Testament, as well as Jesus himself, were all either liars or incredibly deceived when they talked about God’s love and grace. Piper’s only defense to this is that God apparently suffers from split personality disorder. During some “seasons” God chooses to be “loving” and let people live.” In other “seasons” God arbitrarily decides to kill people. This just leaves us with a God who is equally hateful as God is supposed to be loving, an irreconcilable contradiction in nature.

Perhaps the most confusing and ironic part of all this is the title of Piper’s most famous work, his blog, and his annual conference: “Desiring God”. Why would anyone desire such a God? Because they fear that God will send them to hell? If God’s behavior is as erratic and contradictory as Piper describes, then what confidence could anyone have that even if allowed into heaven, God wouldn’t one day change God’s mind, arbitrarily cast everyone into hell, and start over? Piper’s God is the source of all evil, so there’s no reason to believe that in eternity that evil would not rear it’s head again.

Worst of all, there is no room for hope in Piper’s gospel, no space to allow for the comforting of the dying or console families who have lost their loved ones. According to Piper’s gospel, the correct response to a mother whose baby dies tragically in a car accident is “God killed your baby because God wanted your baby to die. I don’t know why God wanted your baby to die, but you should love God anyway.” Is it any surprise then that so many people in Piper’s tradition end up leaving the church and abandoning their faith? Who would want to serve such a God? How could you ever love such a God? Why would you ever think such a God is worthy of worship?”

Personally, I can’t blame anyone for hating such a God.

I know that my plea will go unheeded, but nonetheless I have to ask, “Can we please stop giving celebrity pastors like John Piper a platform to spread their gospel of hate?” Likewise, what will it take for the church to realize just how truly awful the theology of the neo-reformed movement can be? I guess if comments like Piper’s don’t sway the neo-reformed faithful, or worse, these comments only reinforce their ideology (which usually seems to be the case), then I guess nothing ever will.

Sigh.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

I love Rocky and I love Jesus.

So this video just makes me sad.

The following is the fifth installment in a series of posts on why I believe the church must abandon evangelicalism. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here.

For the holidays this year, my wife and I got to spend Christmas Eve with the Pope. Thanks to the impeccable connections of my father-in-law the Benedictine monk, coupled with 4 hours of waiting outside in St. Peter’s Square we were able to grab coveted aisle seats inside St. Peter’s Basilica for Christmas Eve Mass. During both the processional and recessional we were literally within arms length of Il Papa.

I’m not Catholic, but it was a great privilege nonetheless. Absolutely the most majestic church service I have ever attended.

While it was certainly a deeply spiritual night for me and many others, if you had just kept an eye on the guy next to me, you would have thought we were at a Justin Beiber concert.

Seriously.

During the recessional I was getting myself situated to redeem the terribly blurry pictures I took during the processional. Out of nowhere a guy started elbowing his way in between me and the woman standing next to me. Being focused on the task at hand, I was annoyed, but didn’t make a big deal about it. Had I known how that guy would react when the Pope walked by, things would have gone a bit differently.

When I say it was like being at (what I assume) a Justin Beiber concert (would be like), I’m not exaggerating. In the blink of an eye this adult man turn into a hysteric teenage girl. He was literally screaming, flailing his arms, and jumping up and down to get the Pope’s attention. If for no other reason than he was creating a ridiculous scene, he got his wish and Benedict looked our direction. It made the guy’s life….and ruined any chance I had of getting a steady picture.

We may not have a pope in Protestant evangelicalism, but we have plenty of Christian celebrities of our own. In fact, it’s become an epidemic.

Some of them pastor mega-multi-site churches. Others shepherd much smaller congregations. Still others neither pastor nor teach theology, yet manage to produce a never ending stream of Christian literature aimed at teaching us all how to live out the faith. In each case, these evangelical celebrities create a cult of personality around themselves (whether intentionally or not) in which followers pledge their allegiance and unquestionably accept virtually everything they say, or at least refuse to hold these figures accountable when they say something abhorrent.

We need look no further than  Mark Driscoll’s declaration that “God hates you” or John Piper’s recent statement that “God intended Christianity to have a masculine feel” as examples of the unquestioned loyalty of their followers. When critics, myself included, pushed back at these absurd claims, few if any of their followers were willing to concede the misstep. Instead, they quickly came to their defense, arguing that any criticism was an invalid attack on men just trying to serve the Lord.

This same situation happens on a smaller scale at churches most of us will never hear anything about. There are countless small and medium sized churches whose pastors have become the focal point of church life. Congregations show up on Sundays to hear them speak, their personal theology is orthodoxy, the congregation pledges unyielding loyalty, and any dissent is quickly squashed and/or shoved out the door.

What results in these situations, both big and small, is a frightening amount of control. Matthew Paul Turner made us all aware of just how damaging the cult like control can be when he posted a so-called “discipline contract” from Mars Hill, along with instructions on what its members should do and say to the excommunicated member should they happen to cross paths. Tragically, but not surprisingly, people came out in droves in response to tell their own stories of spiritual abuse. And that’s exactly what it is: spiritual abuse. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but absolute spiritual power destroys the soul.

God appointed shepherds to serve the church, not control it. When these shepherds take on the role of ultimate authority and arbitrator of truth, they become the very anti-thesis of Jesus who did “nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit”, but rather “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” The church needs more servants and fewer messiahs.

Unfortunately, this cult of evangelical celebrities affects us all and ultimately it has a devastating effect on the church. When there is no over-arching authority or unified voice to speak for the church, these Christian celebrities are allowed to become the faces and voices of the church. As a result, the church is perceived by the rest of the world as disjointed, irrational, anti-intellectual, and often times hateful. However, the problem here is not simply bad press.

In the 21st century, television, the internet, and social media have become our town squares. They are the places where we gather to learn about the world and formulate our opinions. When the majority of what is said about the faith in these modern town squares comes from these evangelical celebrities, their personal opinions become the accepted theology of the majority and by extension the de facto popular orthodoxy.

This is a terrifying proposition, not least of all because the theologies espoused by these celebrities often run counter to the historical Christian faith and too often are simply hateful and ignorant. When this happens, the church quickly becomes populated by hateful and ignorant people convinced they are simply being Christian because the voices they believe they should trust, the ones at the center of the town square, tell them those things they believe are actually Christian. Likewise, when people allow these celebrities to do all of their thinking for them and those celebrities are subsequently either proven wrong or abuse that trust, the followers’ faith is more often than not irrevocably shattered.

In an ever increasingly connected world I think trying to reverse this onslaught would be like trying to fix a massive rupture in a dam by sticking your finger in the hole. We could try to counter their celebrity with “better” celebrities, but I think that would just result in more noise. Instead, if the church is to at least stem the tide of insanity, I believe that it will only come about through better, healthier discipleship at the local level.

I think a large part of the reason that people attach themselves to these evangelical celebrities is that they aren’t finding substance at their own church or from their own pastors. This might not always be a fair charge, but if we as pastors are so failing our people that they think they need to turn to celebrities to learn the faith, then we should begin to reevaluate and retool our own teaching methods. In either case, I think the church is capable of equipping her people with the tools to recognize the difference between a strong, healthy spiritual leader and a self-absorbed publicity hound. And in the meantime, I think it is imperative that those evangelical celebrities with such an enamored following, if they genuinely care about the church and her people, should make sure that they continually go out of their way to remind their followers of their own humanity and fallibility. It would do both them and the church a great amount of good.

Simply put, the cult of personality that gives rise to evangelical celebrities and provides pastors with absolute control over their congregations is something that must come to an end if the church is to enjoy a healthy and vibrant future.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

Doug Pagitt was kind enough to send over a copy of his newly released book, Evangelism in the Inventive Age, for me to review a couple of weeks ago.

I meant to have this posted sooner, but as so often happens, ministry responsibilities foiled my best laid plans.

Nevertheless, I thought that in light of the current series of posts on evangelicalism, it would be an appropriate time to post a review on a book about evangelism.

Clearly, the issue of evangelicalism is something that resonates deeply with me. So, I was eager hear what the pastor of Solomon’s Porch had to say about the subject. I am happy to report that I was not disappointed.

I found Evangelism in the Inventive Age to be a fascinating and challenging critique of the current model for evangelism, one which obviously defines much of evangelicalism. It’s the cookie cutter model that Pagitt is critiquing, the model which views the gospel and its presentation as a stagnant, monolethic thing which never needs adapting. It can be published on a tract or proclaimed from a street corner with no consideration for the audience. For Pagitt, however, “Evangelism is not the act of telling. It is the act of communicating.”

Perhaps there was a time when the monolithic approach was, on some level, effective, but as Pagitt clearly demonstrates in the book, this is no longer the case for a global, interconnected society. According to Pagitt, and I think he is correct, the church needs an approach to evangelism that “resonates” with the listener. This concept of resonance is something that appears constantly throughout the book, and it should. As Pagitt explains, people are not going to connect to the gospel unless it resonates with who they are, what their context is, or where they are on their personal journey.

That’s not to say that the gospel should be fundamentally altered, but rather Pagitt argues, we should follow the lead of the early church in Acts and speak the language of the culture. In other words, he says, we need to not put up unnecessary barriers that hinder the ability of the listener to hear the gospel. Rather, we need to find ways to help them discover how their own story resonates with the story of God. As Pagitt explains, “Evangelism in the Inventive Age demands that we deliver the good new of God by finding the resonance between God’s story and the story playing out in each of us.”

I think this is a brilliant and timely insight, something all of us need to hear. Too often we force our own version of the faith onto other people and other cultures. We speak to others in what is for them a foreign language, and then wonder why they don’t understand and respond. If we are serious about evangelism, then we need to accept the fact that the majority of people on this planet do not speak, look, talk, think, act, dress, eat, play, or worship exactly how we do. But that’s ok. Diversity is a wonderfully beautiful thing that only adds to the church. It never “soils” it.

If the church is seriously interested in making genuine disciples, if the church is seriously interested loving and embracing “the other”, if the church really wants to follow in the footsteps of her founders, then I think this book would make a great tool to get started down that path.

Whether you’re in full-time ministry or not, all of us have been called to preach the gospel to the very ends of the earth. So, help yourself out in answering that calling and pick up a copy of this book today.

A big thanks once again to Doug Pagitt for his generousity in sharing his work for review. It was a book well worth reading.
Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

The following is the fourth installment in a series of posts on why I believe the church must abandon evangelicalism. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

I love theology.

I think it’s a profoundly important and inescapable component of the church.

Theology shapes our identity. It tells who we are, or a least who we should be. It also reminds us about who we should not be.

So, when I say that I think evangelicalism has problem with dogmatism, I am not suggesting that the church (something separate from evangelicalism) should abandoning theological claims.

Dogma is not always a terrible thing.

The church began with a particular and absolute claim “Jesus is Lord”. With this declaration the church drew a line in the sand. There is no Lord other than Jesus.

While it might be easy to suggest that the church should somehow revert to the simplicity of this claim (if that simplicity ever really existed), I’m not sure that’s either possible or desirable. There are countless questions and issues that stem from this seemingly simple claim. To abandon the answers that have been offered to those question by ancient creeds and historical confessions would be, I think, both an arrogant and profoundly naive move to make.

That we may not always like the historical theology of the church, does not render it invalid. Likewise, to think that we could “reverse course”, simplify things, and believe they would always stay that way is, frankly, absurd. The world is becoming more complex, not less so. The church should lean on her vast theological resources to address the questions and issues that arise from that complexity, not toss them aside and unnecessarily attempt to reinvent the wheel.

However, this is not a call to theological retrenchment.

I believe the church should abandon the dogmatism of evangelicalism. But I do not believe that it is an “either/or” proposition between retrenchment and theological relativism. I believe that the church can and should find a way to maintain her historical, orthodox faith while finding ways to engage an incredibly diverse global society. This can be done because for the church has been doing it, although not always perfectly, for 2,000 years.

If the church is to chart that path forward, then I believe there are 2 remnants of evangelical dogmatism that she must abandon.

The first is evangelicalism’s love affair with the dogmatic litmus test. Visit an evangelical church long enough, read enough Christian literature, or simply listen to a few celebrity preachers and you will very quickly learn that there is a theological litmus test that you must pass in order to be a “real Christian.” To be fair, the notion that there are demarcation lines in the faith that separate Christianity from, say, Buddhism are not a terrible thing. The church needs guidelines, direction, and sometimes even lines in the sand to say “this far you may go and no further.”

However, the current obsession with the dogmatic litmus test is problematic for several reasons. To begin, many of the people administering the test often have no authority to due so. Take for example, our friend Mark Driscoll. By his own confession he ordained himself. Which means, regardless of what he may want to say otherwise, his ultimate authority, like so many of his other autonomous clergy friends, is himself. This frees them all to make definitive theological claims with no regard to any historical church tradition. They are free to pick and choose at their leisure what is “essential”  for the faith, or rather, what the dogmatic litmus test is. As a result, any self-ordained prophet can decided for his (rarely her) church what they “must believe” and then label those who dissent as “wolves among the sheep.”

What we see then are theological tenets that have never been the markers of orthodoxy, turned into the heart of Christianity. For example, for many evangelicals today the dogmatic litmus test requires a person to reject evolution, affirm Biblical inerrency, never allow a woman in a position of leadership, and subscribe to a particular view of the atonement (usually penal substitution). However, there is no historical creed or church council (at least when there was such a thing as “one church”) that affirmed these things as the demarcation lines for orthodoxy. They are simply theological gut feelings and personal Biblical interpretation.

And I think that’s what the church must remember. Just because we believe something in our heart or are convinced that the “Bible plainly says so” does not mean it is true, particularly when our truth claims have never been affirmed by the church. We may think they have, but that is only because our perspective of what is or is not Christianity only goes back, at best, one or two hundred years.

American evangelicalism is profoundly, and tragically, influenced by the rise of Christian fundamentalism. These religious zealots have so infiltrated the church that it is hard for many of us to know what really does define the faith. These are not always the fiery tent preachers of yesteryear. Often times, they dress the part of hipster, play the latest worship music, and occupy the trendiest of spaces, but their message is the same: conform or leave; turn or burn.

The result of this infiltration is, what I think is the other great reason for the church to abandon evangelicalism: There is no beauty or imagination in fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism, to which I think evangelicalism is inextricably tied, is not interested in understanding the world. It simply wants to reshape the world in its own dogmatic image and burn anything that gets in its way. The goal is a monochromatic faith in which everyone blindly follows the leader and any opposition is quickly and harshly dealt with.

When fundamentalism is allowed to reign, the Christian faith is reduced to a crude caricature. In fundamentalism, there is no room for beauty and diversity, only conformity. If other Christians don’t look, act, speak, think, vote, and dress exactly like me, then they must not be true Christians. In fundamentalism, there is no space for imagination and artistic expression, only secular rejection and mimicry. Any art that is not particularly religious in nature and conforming to a particular sense of taste is tossed aside or condemned. When art is produced, so much of it is lacking in originality, nothing more than a cheap parody of something that was successful in the “secular world.”

The church must rediscover her capacity for diversity, beauty, and imagination.

To achieve this, I think the church must relearn her ability to allow for diversity on non-essentials. To do this, however, we will need to gain a bit of perspective and realize that many of the things evangelicalism tends to cling so tightly to were not held by other Christians for most of the church’s history. This is true particularly those of us in American Protestantism. We must find a way to understand that Christianity is not a white, middle-class, American faith. It is a faith which has been incarnated across countless generations, cultures, and languages. If anything, Christianity has very little to do with white, middle-class, America. That is not to say that our particular demographic has nothing to contribute. Rather, we should know our place in the history of the church and it is a profoundly small one.

Despite the seemingly infinite diversity of expressions of Christianity over 2,000 years she has managed to not only survive, but thrive, all the while maintaining at least the semblance of orthodoxy. I think the church should learn from this and abandon the fear mongering of fundamentalist, dogmatic evangelicalism. Jesus has continued to be known over the centuries and the gospel has continued to be preached no matter what pressures of time or culture it has faced. Simply put, God doesn’t need us to defend God. God is not afraid of questions or doubts and God is certainly not afraid of diversity. To say that God is Triune is to affirm that fundamentally God is in a diverse relationship.

If we are truly people made in the image of that God, then we must learn to embrace the beauty of that diversity. In doing so, the church can boldly face the future knowing that the diversity and complexity she will encounter will only make her stronger. And in turn it will give her the imagination she needs to proclaim the gospel in unforeseen ways for generations to come.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

The following is the third installment in a series of posts on why I believe the church must abandon evangelicalism. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.
 
 
I have a confession to make.

I sort of have a thing for Christian television.

It’s kind of like a drug for me.

Your drug of choice might be CSI or Dancing with the Stars or maybe Survivor. Mine is bad Christian television shows. I know this sounds crazy, but I love watching TV preachers. You can ask my wife, I’m often literally sitting at the edge of my seat waiting to see what insane idea is going to come out their mouths next. Now, not all of them are crazy. There are some great men and women of God on television, but I don’t watch them. They’re just not as entertaining to me.

One of the shows that I just can’t turn away from is called Way of the Master. In a lot of ways, I think it’s a great representation of the evangelical obsession with making converts. The show exists to teach people how to convert others to Christianity using a technique called “confrontational evangelism.” The way it works is that the hosts (Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron) will go up to strangers on the street with a video camera and microphone and conduct an impromptu interview with eternal consequences.

It goes like this every time: Have you ever told a lie? Yeah, I’ve told a few white lies before. Have you ever stolen anything? I think when I was kid I might have stolen a candy bar. Have you ever looked at a woman lustfully in your heart? Sure, I guess so. Well, according to the 10 commandments you’re a liar, a thief, and an adulterer. Jesus says when we die he is going to judge us all by the 10 commandments. Based on your response do you know where you’re going to go when you die? Apparently, hell.

And then, if the person hasn’t punched the interviewer in the face, they’ll offer to lead them through a prayer of salvation.

The problem with this is at least two-fold. First, Jesus never ever held the law over anyone’s head. Ever. In fact, it was his very refusal to conform to this Pharisaical approach to the law that resulted in his crucifixion. More over, Jesus never said that at the judgment seat he is going to judge us by the 10 commandments. You can go look through all four gospels; it’s not there. Jesus, does however, tell us exactly what we will happen at the judgment seat and it is nothing like these street preachers would have us believe. In a passage I have quoted on this blog many times before, Jesus says,

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

The second problem with this sort of evangelism is this, and not only is it tied directly to the first, but I would argue that it is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings that evangelicalism has about the faith; Jesus never ever ever said “go and make converts.” He said “go and make disciples.” These are two very different things that lead us to very different ways of living. In fact, these are 2 entirely different gospels.

Making converts reduces the gospel to nothing more than a sales pitch. It simply requires us to make an intellectual decision, say a few magic words, and then we can go on our way, tucking our faith in our pocket not needing to pull it out again until judgment day. In doing so, we have robbed the gospel of all of its transforming and redeeming power, leaving it no different than a self help book on Oprah’s list of favorite things.

This type of evangelism is about adding notches to our convert belt, but more tragically, this type of Christianity is an inward faith. Sure we might tell someone about it once in a while, but it stops there. There is no real need to transform the world around us because this sort of Christianity begins and ends with a legal transaction. All this sort of faith is concerned with is whether a penalty has been paid for so that we can get out of here and on to heaven.

Too often, evangelicalism stops at the cross and never takes us on the transforming power of the resurrection.

What we are called to be and to make is disciples; and being a disciple is very different than being a convert. Being a disciple requires much more that intellectual ascent, it requires our entire life, and making a disciple requires just as much. Being a disciple means being like Christ and Jesus didn’t come to get people to buy into his sales pitch. He came to redeem and transform all of creation; to put his people back in right relationship with their Creator. Before He ascended he left us with the call to go and do likewise, to become his agents of grace in the world, doing the work of redeeming and transforming all of creation.

This work can’t be accomplished simply through a sales pitch. It must be lived out for all to see, not just in our personal lives, but also, and especially in how we interact with the world around us. This is why Jesus describes the end of all things the way He does. Yes, the doctrines of the church are important. They shape and form how we live our lives, but in the end Jesus will not be standing in heaven with either the 10 commandments or a check list asking us: Do you believe in the virgin birth? How about the parting of the Red Sea? What are your thoughts on baptism?

Instead, he will look us each in the eye and simply ask: “I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was thirsty. Did you give me anything to drink? I was naked. Did you clothe me? I was a stranger. Did you invite me in? I was sick and in prison. Did you come and visit me?”

This is the work and power of the gospel. This is the life we are called to live. This is true evangelism. It is a life in which we rise up out of ourselves and reach out to extend God’s grace to the world. It is a life that doesn’t stop at the cross, but continues on to the transforming and life giving power of the resurrection. If we stay at the cross, then we are left with an incomplete gospel. If we never make it to the cross, then we have no gospel. But if we continue on the resurrection we encounter a living God beckoning us live the resurrected life with him.

I believe that if the church is to be who and what she needs to be in the 21st century, she must abandon her obsession with making converts and rediscover her calling to make disciples. Discipleship is a lot harder than conversion. It means understanding that “winning souls for Jesus” happens through love and listening, not arguing and condemning. It means establishing a relationship with people, rather than abandoning them at an altar. And it means feeding, loving, and taking care of others regardless of whether or not they “make a decision of Jesus” or listen to our gospel.

It won’t be easy, but this is what it means to be the church.
 
 
Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

 
Coming Monday…..Dogmatism