Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

17 January, 2008   comments: (0) Today's Pragmatism   Responses to 'Finding God in Pop-Culture' Earlier this week I posted an excerpt from Tim Stevens' soon to be released book entitled Pop Goes The Church, which I found to be a troubling mandate to go looking for God in today's popular movies, TV shows, magazines, and music. The post I wrote was centered around Tim Steven's blog entry that he entitled "I Re-Wrote Part of the Bible", which paraphrased a section of Romans with Tim's trendy pop-culture views being eisegeted into a textual makeover. My post generated a lot of, if I may borrow a term from Tim's marketing genre, a lot buzz, on his blog and here on Old Truth. Here are some of the highlights, or lowlights, depending upon your point of view. One of the problems with Tim's book idea is that we are living in a fallen world, whose god is the devil; 2 Corinthians 4 tells us that this god has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. It is from that world system that pop-culture emerges with it's entertainment. Tim Stevens however, erroneously promotes the concept that we should be looking for God in these pop-culture venues. But the difficulties with looking for God in very popular shows like South Park for example, which is perverse and constantly mocks Christianity, should be obvious to us all. Tim, who is also a pastor at Granger Community Church in Indiana, linked to my critique in his own follow-up in which he said that he "got slammed yesterday over on the Old Truth blog". You can read what he and his commenters had to say. Some of our readers wrote-in to let me know that Tim was not posting their comments, only the ones that agreed with his point of view were posted. Eventually however, Tim did let one Old Truth reader (Robert) go through with a comment. One of the biggest problems that I see with the comments being posted there versus the ones that many of our readers are posting here, is the appeal to scripture - which is absent in Tim's commenters up to this point. I've also had a number of anonymous emails sent to me, calling me various names, and rebuking me for "slamming Pastor Tim", but none of these contained any scripture to indicate why they felt Pastor Tim's view are correct. I would think that as Christians, we would look to the bible to tell us how to evangelize this lost world. The bible should be our source for finding out how men who are blinded by the god of this world are set free and made children of God. As we saw in the Apostle Paul's writings, we should be looking to the Holy Spirit to make our evangelism effective in this corrupt world, and not the clever and wise methods of man, which Paul warns against in evangelism (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). Well with that said, I thought I would review some of the comments posted by Tim Stevens readers, and interact with a few of the good, the bad, and the ugly remarks. There are even a couple of humorous comments to help us lighten the mood a bit: Larry writes: "Tim--keep on doin' what you're doin! The bottom line is Granger is seeing lives changed for Christ and that's all that really matters!" This is the mindset that fuels the Church Growth Movement; a more refined statement of pragmatism would be hard to find. I suppose we could justify robbing a bank to fund foreign missions using that logic. After all, the only thing that matters is the end results, right? It was a short comment, so maybe I'm not being fair. But I would hope that this commenter would add some caveats to that, because outward evangelistic 'results' are NOT the only thing that matters. Terry writes: "Tim, I read with a heavy heart as far as I could on the Old Truth blog before tears filled my eyes and I could not read any further. My heart breaks for those people. Thank you so very much for being one of my beloved pastors and for standing up for the old truth that is presented from our platform every week. I was raised in a very traditional church and gave my heart to Christ at a very early age. I studied Catechism when I was young and have studied the word throughout my life. I would say that while I'm not an expert, I do have a pretty good working knowledge of the Bible and know what it says pretty well. That being said, I will tell you that in all of the years [we] have attended GCC we have never heard anything come from the platform that was contrary to God's word. Trust me... if I had, we would not still be attending. Thank you to you and our leadership team for helping me and thousands of other people to take their next steps toward Christ. Remember that Jesus was also mocked and ridiculed by 'religious' people in his day. He kept on telling the truth anyway. Go and do likewise. Thank you. That makes for as good of a backdrop as anything that I can think of for a reminder of the dangers of self-deception. Granger is one of the most biblically controversial churches that I have seen people discuss in the blogs. The thing that is so dangerous about self-deception is that you don't realize it's happening. So while we all might think it's 'the other guy' who is the self-deceived one, it could be me that is instead. That's something we all need to be prayerfully concerned about. Paul T. writes: "For most of my years as a believer, my mindset about God, His Word, and Christianity would have fallen right in line with what your detractors on the Old Truth blog would believe. I understand what they say because I understand their worldview, their paradigm, their attitudes about life and how God wants them to live it. Fortunately for me, God has granted me grace to see beyond that paradigm and see the glorious beauty of who He is, what He has done, and what He wants to do. ..." I had to include that comment because if you flip that around 180 degrees, you have my story exactly. I went to a church like Granger for years and was sold on all of the same cutting-edge pop-cultural-compromises, but after a while I saw that evangelism isn't about being as much like the world as possible, instead - it has to do with being different than the world. It is that other-world-liness that is our evangelism platform. Anyway, it's interesting how my testimony would be the exact opposite of his. I suppose neither one of us can really say "they don't understand our way of looking at things", because we've both seen it from the opposite sidelines. Yet, I'm often told that I "just don't understand the approach" of these church innovators who are thinking outside the box. Michelle Wegner says: "They compared my husband to Hitler. Sounds like they must really like you. We are all so proud of you Tim, and pulling for you. I am sorry there are so many mean Christians out there." Wow. I really had to strain my brain to think of when I might have compared somebody to Adolph Hitler. But later I remembered that Rob Wegner (another Granger pastor) was mentioned in a post I ran almost 2 years ago, in which I opened up with a "what if" scenario of a future culture who began to once again be enamored by Hitler's book Mein Kampf. The question I asked was, would it be right in this hypothetical scenario for future evangelists in such a culture to springboard off of Mein Kampf, by excerpting it's popular parts but omitting it's harmful parts, in an effort to get Christianity noticed within that future culture? The conclusion I was shooting for was, no - that would be wrong to use something immoral as a means to promote something spiritual. This then lead into a discussion of Granger's "Finding God In Your iPod" sermon series in which popular songs with poor morality were being used to promote God. Was I comparing Michelle Wegner's husband to Hitler? I'll let you decide. Steve said: "I am friggin PUMPED to be one of the reviewers of the book. I can't wait. I'm salivating over my keyboard right now awaiting the book to hit my inbox. oops, I just drooled on my space bar. Got a napkin?" I wonder if any Old Truth readers will salivate over the books I'm going to give them for completing the 2008 Puritan Reading Challenge! I'm pretty sure Chad will. Jeremy said: "...I'm pumped to read through the book, and take a small part in helping you get it done. As for the people slamming you I read this on Perry's blog the other day. It was attributed to Billy Graham via Rick Warren (you probably saw it, but I love this)..."...when you wrestle with a pig both of you get dirty but only one of you will enjoy it!"" Blessings man! Let's see, from Billy Graham, to Rick Warren, to Perry Noble, to Jeremy, and finally over to Tim. Regardless of how it's been passed down, and while I do like ham, I have to admit that I am not 'pumped' about being compared to it:-) Michael said: "I've found that getting 'slammed' by old truth is a sign that you're doing something to reach people for jesus." Michael as you might know, is the leader of OakLeaf Church and an ambitious follower of Granger's methods including their improve your sex life sermon marketing campaign; he says that Tim Stevens is one of the great church leaders of our day. As a long time critic of ours, Michael has repeatedly promised his audience that he's DONE talking about us "pharisees at Old Truth". Apparently not on Tim Stevens' blog however. Michael's notion that we are anti-evangelistic is about as misleading as the earlier comment claiming we compared the t-shirt cannon pastor to the leader of the 1000 year Reich. Phil said: "That was the first and only time I'll check out 'old truth'." Wow. Our site is a treasure chest of some of the greatest quotes and excerpts from protestant history, plus all sorts of training videos to help people understand the bible better, but never mind all of that, everything here is now Old Trash, because of one critique of Tim Stevens' book. These Granger folks are a tough crowd:-) And finally - Tim Stevens himself comments to our friend Robert: "I know you read through the comments over at Old Truth, because you participated in those comments. And as for their tone not being slamming, uh, how about these words: careless, not saved, worldly, pantheist and blasphemous. We might disagree on what "slamming" means. I would actually love a mature dialogue on the topic, but I've gone down this road a hundred times and it always ends up with name-calling. I've just determined that this isn't the place for a dialogue. So, guess what? I wrote a book. It will be out in a couple months, and contains an entire chapter on the theology of engaging the culture." Yes, the commenter named 'Steve' above is really looking forward to that very book:-) But back on a serious note, in response to Tim. Careless, worldly, pantheist, and blasphemous are all descriptions of actions that should be fairly straight forward to prove or disprove. (I'm not sure who said "unsaved" though - maybe someone can point-out that one to me). But why not interact with what the commenters have said and use scripture to show whether those claims are either true or false? Hearing things like that requires some tough skin, but you have to admit - we've had to have some tough skin to work through many of the blog and email slams coming back in our direction. I think that even some tension is worth it, whenever two sides can discuss things from the bible however. We are still interested in seeing Tim and his readers produce some scriptural arguments for why we should look for God in pop-entertainment like South Park for example, or in films that most children are not even allowed to watch. The closest anyone came in trying to appeal to scripture to prove Tim's view of finding God in pop-culture was not from Tim, but from a comment posted on Old Truth by one of his readers. Unfortunately, the writer of this comment strayed out of our posted Rules of Engagement, so this particular comment was never posted. But I didn't want his key point to go unseen, so I'll paste it here: "When Paul quoted Aratus and Epimenedes, I wonder if any of the other Apostles would have chastized him for "seeing God in" pagan poets whose works were overall out of line with the Gospel." Did you catch that? He's talking about Acts 17:28 in which Paul refers to a popular poet of the times. Does that fly? I'll leave that one up to you, the commenters, to talk amongst yourselves and see if you can come to a conclusion on it. My hat is off to that commenter though, because like I said, he was the only one to take a shot at coming up with some scriptural justification for Tim Stevens' pop-culture ideas. When two Christian groups disagree over a matter, hopefully we can see more of these biblical points being discussed, rather than just a bunch of name-calling, anonymous posts and emails, and emotional responses that make no effort to wrestle with God's truth. For now I'm left to conclude that the thesis of Tim Stevens' book is NOT a biblical teaching. Comments are open, in case anyone wants to try and change my mind; I will try to listen with an open-mind. UPDATE: Here's a short excerpt from Francis Schaffer's classic film "How Should We Then Live", talking about the danger of, and end result of, looking for God in the culture. Of course, we all know Francis Schaffer was totally against evangelism and engaging the culture. No, on the contrary, Francis Schaffer was totally about evangelism by engaging the culture with the truth of God's Word. We encourage Tim Stevens fans to get a full length copy of this classic film. Hat tip to Dan R. for the video excerpt above, and the link to Lane Chaplin's excellent YouTube page. UPDATE 5/8/08: Chris R over at A Little Leaven last week, posted nothing much more than one of Tim Stevens news videos and two scripture verses relating to it. You can read more of the fury by Tim's supporters calling Chris' blog commenters malcontents and implying they are pharisees. I guess this is what you should expect if you say anything that disagrees with Granger church growth tactics. Likewise, towards the bottom of the comment thread on this page, Michelle Wegener (whose husband Rob Wegner is a Granger pastor) is back, several months later, bringing out the same tired "you compared my husband to Hitler" claim "and now my children have to read this about their father on Google" we are told. We've answered this claim before, and answer it once again (see below). No such comparison was ever made. We provide a link for you to review it for yourself. The comparison was a hypothetical one between Hitler and some specific rock groups today (not Rob Wegner). Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.909   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism