As a lifelong student of rhetoric, I’ve always had a fascination and fondness for preachers. I’ve spent many years studying their manners and methods in order to learn how they are able to communicate to large groups in a way that feels intimate and familiar.
For instance, one of my favorite pastors spent an entire year preaching about sin. Each week he’d rail against backbiters, slanderers, hypocrites, perverts. And each week I went home feeling the message had been meant just for me. The sermons never failed to stir me, probably because he used the effective rhetorical tool of ending each example of wickedness with “. . . like Joe Carter.”
I even considered becoming a pastor myself since the vocation combines my love of communication with three of my other passions: telling people how they should live, avoiding manual labor, and getting paid a full salary for doing part-time work. But while I may have missed my calling, the experience (i.e., incessant church-hopping) has helped me to develop a keen eye for judging the merits of a minister.
As a way of sharing my my hard-won wisdom I offer eleven surefire ways to know that something isn’t right with your pastor:
1. He’s a founding member of the ecumenical project, “Evangelicals and Scientologists Together.
2. He claims his favorite work of systematic theology is John Calvin’s Institutes of Vishnu.
3. He supplements his income by serving as the chaplain/DJ for the topless bar out by the airport.
4. He proposes moving the Sunday morning service to Tuesday evening because he just got a “sweet NFL package on DirecTV.”
5. His primary reference work is the Dan Brown Study Bible.
6. His favorite hymn is Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”
7. He tells his congregants they are wicked degenerate sinners who are bound for hell if they don’t change their ways—while coaching the church sponsored Little League team.
8. He plans to spend the next month preaching through the Gospel of Judas.
9. His nickname in seminary was Pelagius.
10. He illustrated his sermon series on Song of Songs with a graphic 150-slide PowerPoint presentation.
11. His name is Joel Osteen.
August 19th, 2010 | 2:50 am | #1
After a long and goofy list, you suddenly make a surprisingly personal attack in #11. What has Mr. Osteen done to provoke this public denunciation?
August 19th, 2010 | 3:44 am | #2
How to Spot a Bad Preacher
Voted for Obama.
Is an Egalitarian.
Preaches and teaches Evolution.
Preaches and teaches that the Bible has errors.
Is a theological and political liberal.
Blogs on Evangel.
August 19th, 2010 | 4:01 am | #3
How to Spot a Bad Preacher
Is a theological and political liberal.
Here’s one: Someone who…
(1) Received funding from Leftist Billionaire George Soros.
(2) Said that it was a lie that they received funding from George Soros.
(3) Covered it up by deleting pages from their website.
(4) Did not repent of his false accusation that the other person is a liar.
Read it all: Here.
Can you say Jim Wallis?
I knew you could.
August 19th, 2010 | 9:37 am | #4
Dear C. Ehrlich: Joel Osteen is apparently the Ann Rice of this week.
August 19th, 2010 | 9:44 am | #5
I don’t think I’m a “horrible” preacher, and my nickname was Pelagius in seminary. Maybe my congregation feels differently.
August 19th, 2010 | 10:04 am | #6
C. Ehrlich What has Mr. Osteen done to provoke this public denunciation?
The late Michael Spencer explained it best,
August 19th, 2010 | 10:10 am | #7
Oooo….I can play this game!
How To Spot a Bad Church Member
1. He has never even heard of John Calvin, except that he is the rascal who taught predestination.
2. He has never even heard of John Wesley, except that he is the rascal that taught you could lose your salvation.
3. The most pressing sanctification concern he has is whether or not he can drink beer.
4. Despite #’s 1 and 2, he still thinks he knows everything about the Bible and theology.
5. All of his proof text Bible references begin with, “Doesn’t it say in there somewhere that…”
6. He is a deacon.
7. He wishes he had the pastor who had the “sweet NFL package” on direct TV.
8. He believes that using your brain is not real work…like manual labor is.
9. He makes jokes that the pastor only works one day a week.
10. He misses half the summer in church due to Little League baseball commitments, and then he complains that no one contacted him to see why he was out.
I have to stop here…this could go on all day!
August 19th, 2010 | 10:13 am | #8
TUAD
If only Jim Wallis did his work under the cloak of anonymity like you do, he wouldn’t have these conundrums.
August 19th, 2010 | 10:21 am | #9
Pyromaniac Daniel J. Phillips has a short post titled, Breaking news: Jim Wallis shaky on the truth! that highlights that Wallis is a liberal.
That’s his conundrum.
August 19th, 2010 | 11:12 am | #10
Prayer, as someone has said, is not about overcoming God’s reluctance but laying hold of His willingness. That is how Joel Osteen views faith. He does not teach people how to manipulate God. It is not about trying to get God to do what we want, getting Him over a barrel or somehow overcoming His reluctance. Quite the opposite. It is about taking God at His word, believing His promises and expecting to see them fulfilled.
To include his name in your list, Joe, is quite gratuitous and perverse.
With the “reboot” of Evangel, I was expecting that the tone might change and we we would, perhaps, see less of such mean-spiritedness. How ironic, then, that only a few days later, you come out with such a cheap shot. Instead of raising the bar, you have lowered it.
August 19th, 2010 | 11:38 am | #11
Jeff Doles To include his name in your list, Joe, is quite gratuitous and perverse.
Osteen has been preaching a pagan, New Age gospel for years. He is leading people to hell. Now maybe that doesn’t bother you. Maybe you’re the type that gets more worked up by a snarky tone on a small blog than by Gospel-less preaching in one of the biggest churches in America. I hope not. And I assure you that’s not the stand I take.
I’m not going to turn a blind eye to paganism in the pulpit simply because some people might get upset when you point out that people who proclaim to follow Christ are preaching a message that is antithetical to orthodox Christianity.
You might have noticed that the name of this blog is “Evangel.” That was intentional. We intend to take a stand for the Gospel, which means standing against anti-gospel messages like “Health and Wealth” and the “Prosperity Gospel.”
August 19th, 2010 | 11:55 am | #12
How to Spot a Bad Preacher
Suppose there were only two preachers in two churches in a small town. Jim Wallis and Joel Osteen. Which church would you go to?
Jim Wallis or Joel Osteen? Joel Osteen or Jim Wallis? To go to church or not to go to church?
Osteen or Wallis? Osteen or Wallis?
Who would you pick?
August 19th, 2010 | 12:13 pm | #13
I don’t think he preaches a Gospel-less message. Many people who come to salvation in Christ at his church. They have had the gospel preached to them and have believed the message. His broadcasts (which, by the way, do not constitute the whole of his message or his ministry) end with a Gospel invitation.
You do me a disservice to suggest that I care more about a snarky tone than I do about the Gospel.
Having something of an affinity with the Word of Faith, I have seen and experienced that what has often been derided as “Prosperity Gospel” and “Health and Wealth Gospel” is nothing more than believing the promises of God and taking God at His Word ~ about salvation from sin, about deliverance from demonic oppression, about being made whole from sickness and disease, about “always having all sufficiency in all things, and abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). See, Joe, the Gospel and salvation are not just about going to heaven when we die ~ it is deeper and broader than that.
I’m not a big fan of Osteen, and I don’t always agree with what he says and does, but I see that God is using him to encourage many and bring many to salvation. He is no pagan; his message is not New Age but the Word of God. So I object to seeing him disparaged as a pagan.
August 19th, 2010 | 12:27 pm | #14
Jeff Doles,
Based on what you said about Joel Osteen, and if given the hypothetical scenario that I wrote above about having to pick between Osteen and Wallis, ….
I’d probably pick Osteen.
August 19th, 2010 | 1:53 pm | #15
[Comment moved to here: http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2010/08/whats-the-problem-with-the-prosperity-gospel/#comment-12963
August 19th, 2010 | 2:08 pm | #16
One more thought Joe.
If you’ll email me a mailing address I’ll send you a copy of the pretty much definitive book on the “prosperity gospel” Kenneth Hagin’s, The Midas Touch, and then you can tell us what he says that you disagree with. I’m pretty sure it will be much less than you suppose. Here’s the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Midas-Touch-Balanced-Approach-Prosperity/dp/0892765305/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282241225&sr=1-1.
August 19th, 2010 | 4:32 pm | #17
Thank you Joe for your subsequent post that addresses your use of Osteen in your post. Somehow given the outrageous nature of the other ten items (kudos, it’s not easy for a blog to make me snort coffee!) I think his name didn’t fit. I suspect most readers of Evangel would have misgivings about Osteen’s ministry. I think I would have used Depak Chopra.
August 19th, 2010 | 8:22 pm | #18
The comments prompted me to go to Joel Osteen’s website. They list on the “What We Believe” page:
–the entire Bible is inspired by God, without error and the authority on which we base our faith, conduct and doctrine.
–in one God who exists in three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to this earth as Savior of the world.
–Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for our sins. We believe that salvation is found by placing our faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross. We believe Jesus rose from the dead and is coming again.
–water baptism is a symbol of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ and a testimony to our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
–in the regular taking of Communion as an act of remembering what the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross.
–every believer should be in a growing relationship with Jesus by obeying God’s Word, yielding to the Holy Spirit and by being conformed to the image of Christ.
–as children of God, we are overcomers and more than conquerors and God intends for each of us to experience the abundant life He has in store for us.
I didn’t see anything shocking or pagan in that. Am I missing something? I’ve never heard him speak nor have I read his books, so it’s definitely possible I’m missing something…
August 19th, 2010 | 9:09 pm | #19
nshapland, did you see the Michael Spencer quote above? It’s possible to have all your doctrinal ducks in a row, but if you relate to God like a pagan relates to his idols, (and so deliberately that you also encourage others to relate to Him like pagans) that’s pagan, and seriously compromises the gospel, if not quite denying it.
August 20th, 2010 | 6:05 am | #20
Jim Wallis is still worse than Joel Osteen.
August 21st, 2010 | 7:37 pm | #21
Regarding Jeff Doles comment – the list of what the word of faith teachers believe (and I do understand that you are probably giving a general summary, not a definitive statement) is that it leaves out what is central to the Christian life – a call to deny oneself and take up the cross and follow Jesus. When Paul speaks of God’s power being perfected in weakness in 2 Cor. 12:4 the word weakness there is generally used of bodily illness or affliction. Granted what you said regarding 2 Cor. 9:8 that God gives us all we need, but Paul says in I Tim 6.18 that if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. In other words, if a word of faith teacher teaches that our material needs are more than food and clothing then he has gone beyond the Scripture. I’m not arguing for an extreme asceticism here, but what most of us find objectionable in word of faith teaching is the association of material surplus with spiritual blessing. Our New Testament forbears experienced quite the opposite – following Christ most often lead to material deprivation. The process of sanctification, at root is a process of self-denial and carrying one’s cross into deeper and deeper depths to self, and this is a message that we don’t hear from the word of faith movement, in fact quite the opposite.
August 21st, 2010 | 8:21 pm | #22
WOF does not leave out the call to deny oneself, take up the cross and follow Jesus.
The word for “weakness” in 2 Corinthians 12:9 refers, first of all to lack of strength, whether in body or in soul. It can refer to sickness, but here it does not. Paul’s thorn was not an illness ~ he expressly calls it a messenger of satan, which is not used of illness. Also, the weakness he speaks of is contrasted with power (Greek, dynamis) not health.
August 23rd, 2010 | 4:54 pm | #23
Jeff, saw your reply on one of the other threads and it is one of the best and most well nuanced defenses of WOF I have ever seen, so I want you to know I am not trying to be hostile here.
Still, while glad to hear that WOF doesn’t leave out the call to deny oneself and take up the cross, is this central to the WOF definition of a Christian life. Jesus seems to indicate that this is the definition, or as Calvin would say, the sum total of the Christian life.
Secondly, I’m willing to allow for some ambiguity on the thorn in the flesh. I looked up Hughes commentary on 2 Cor today and he wisely pointed out that Paul didn’t define it precisely and there is wisdom in that – we shouldn’t be too dogmatically precise on that. Actually, I would be happy with your words on weakness – as a lack of strength in body or soul. This would include all illnesses or injuries of body, and would also include insults and persecutions. But it seems to me you are ruling out bodily weakness here, unless you want a sharp distinction between bodily illness and bodily weakness, because this is a messenger of Satan. But why couldn’t a messenger of Satan (sent by God of course) be a bodily illness as it was with Job and his boils?
But this discussion on the particulars of the role of bodily weakness and illness and the thorn in the flesh gets us a bit off track from my overall concern about WOF (a trek off-track that I admittedly started). It seems to me that the WOF errs badly if it does not make suffering (in whatever form it takes), self-denial and cross-carrying the heart of the Christian faith.
August 23rd, 2010 | 5:47 pm | #24
WOF talks about the core of the Christian life usually in terms of seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness instead of worrying about ourselves and how we are going to be taken care of. I do not believe that this imperative of Jesus is substantially different from denying oneself, taking up the cross and following Jesus, with which WOF also agrees.
There has never been agreement in the Church as to exactly what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was, not even in the early Church.
The reason we should not take “messenger” (Greek, angelos, which is often translated as “angel”) as a sickness is because the Bible nowhere else speaks of messengers or angels as sickness. Indeed, the Bible has a number of other words it uses to refer to sickness and disease, but “angel” is not one of them.
Nor does the Bible elsewhere use “thorn” to denote a sickness or disease. But it does speak use “thorn” to speak of persons, for example, in Numbers 33:55, of the inhabitants of the Promised Land, saying that if Israel did not drive them out, they would become “thorns in your flesh.” Joshua reiterates this in Joshua 23:13, “They shall be snares and traps to you, and scourges on your sides and thorns in your eyes.” And in Judges 2:3 we find, “They shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”
Since the Bible nowhere else uses “thorn” as a metaphor for sickness, and since it does use “thorn” to speak of other beings, when I see Paul speak of his “thorn in the flesh,” and he expressly describes it as “messenger” or “angel of satan,” I do not think he is talking about a sickness but about a personal being, a demonically motivated human being, or maybe a demon. But I find no basis in the text to suppose that he is actually talking about a sickness.
There is suffering in the Christian life. Jesus promised there would be tribulation, or persecution. But the Christian life is not all about suffering. There is the resurrection as well as the cross. There is victory in Jesus, who makes us more than conquerors. And there is overcoming by faith. And there is the abundant grace that we may always have all sufficiency in all things, but plenty more besides for every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8). God did not promise lack, but quite the opposite, provision for every need.
WOF takes both persecution and provision into account. There is suffering for the sake of Jesus and the cross and the Gospel, but there is also the resurrection power of God at work in and for and through us. There is the priority of seeking the kingdom, but there is also “and all these things shall be added unto you.” And it makes sense of the many Scriptures that speak of healing and provision, where the theology that focuses on being sick and broke does not.
August 23rd, 2010 | 6:16 pm | #25
David and Jeff,
Maybe I could help by translating Jeff’s points into Reformed categories. On the Puritan view of sanctification, there is not only mortification connected to the death of Christ, but vivification connected to the resurrection. So, it is a balance between crucifying the old and putting on the new. Check out the way William Ames balances these two in Marrow of Theology.
Also, under the category of adoption as part of union with Christ (the central motif of Reformed thought in my view), Puritans like John Owen will talk about receiving all of the benefits of sons and daughters of God because of the covenant given to us “in Christ.” I am thinking here of Owen’s Communion with God.
Thus putting on the new image of God “in Christ” also involves receiving all the benefits conveyed by the promises of God embodied in the covenant. To focus on suffering is to focus on mortification to the exclusion of adoption and vivification.
This is another reason why forensic categories alone cannot get at union with Christ, and why more Reformed folks like you David need to re-assert the fully Reformed understanding of union with Christ and all this spiritual union (= through the Spirit) conveys.
There is a fruitful conversation to be had on these points in which both can contribute to and learn from one another.
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