What Would Jabez Do?
November 19th, 2007
(By Phil Johnson)
This is a continuation of our series from last week. These articles come from a 2005 Shepherds’ Conference seminar delivered by Phil on the “Fad-Driven” Church.
I first became aware that trendiness (the ebb and flow of fad after fad and “every wind of doctrine”—trendiness) was becoming a driving force in the evangelical movement some 15 years ago.
At first it seemed to me like the fads were a particular problem in the charismatic movement. Remember in the early 1990s, when “the Kansas City Prophets” were all the rage? And for a couple of years, it seemed, book after book on modern prophecy was coming out. There was a book called Some Said it Thundered that made the rounds for awhile, making the Kansas City Prophets out to be the modern-day equivalents of Agabus in the New Testament. That lasted until the most prominent of the prophets turned out to be using his gift to manipulate women into lewd behavior with him.
And then a guy named James Ryle wrote a ridiculous book called Hippo in the Garden. Ryle claimed God had revealed to him that the reason the Beatles’ music was so successful was that they had a special anointing from God, and he said God was going to release the anointing again. At about the same time, Wayne Grudem released a book attempting to give an exegetical and academic defense of that kind of modern revelation.
And soon, it seemed, everyone was confused about whether God is still revealing truth, and in the charismatic movement there was an unprecedented outburst of people claiming to have received all kinds of preposterous messages from God.
But that fad died out within a couple of years and was replaced by the next big charismatic fad: the “Toronto Blessing.” I could see the amazing impact—and the growing influence—these fads were having by the volume of mail we would get from people in our radio audience who wanted to know what Grace to You thought about the latest charismatic fad.
The Toronto Blessing phase managed to keep the limelight for a couple of years or so. People would go to church to get drunk with laughter. It was a bizarre, highly emotional fad, and it was obvious from the beginning that it could not be sustained very long.
Then there was the Pensacola Revival, which brought an obsession with gold dust and gold teeth-fillings that supposedly appeared miraculously out of nowhere. And I hope you remember all of that. I’m not going to bore you with it. But I bring it up just to say that suddenly in the early 1990s, you could see this pattern of wave after wave of new charismatic fads. For a while, I was naive enough to think that this sort of trendy mania was a uniquely charismatic phenomenon. I never thought the whole evangelical world would get caught up in the same kind of fad-driven hysteria.
I did notice a very strange and surprising fact in the early 1990s, however. No matter how bizarre things got, the latest craze always drew in more people than the previous one. A lot of formerly non-charismatic churches were duped by the Toronto Blessing. That’s not easy to explain rationally. Why would a church that had resisted charismatic influences for forty years want to affirm something as irrational and unbiblical—and over-the-top silly—as a room full of people claiming to be drunk in the Spirit, rolling on the floor and laughing uncontrollably?
But it shows the power of the fad mentality and the lure of a big enough bandwagon. If enough people do something, and it becomes popular enough, it doesn’t matter how bizarre, unbiblical, or irrational it is, other people will always line up to get in on it.
Then these undulating fads started to spill over into the mainstream evangelical movement. The first big one I noticed was Promise Keepers. For about two and a half or three years, you were nobody if you weren’t in on Promise Keepers.
I remember someone—a friend who lives in another part of the country—called me up to talk about something. Then before he hung up, he asked, “Will I see you at Promise Keepers?”
This was before I really even aware of the size of the Promise Keepers movement. So I was clueless about what he was talking about. I sad, “See me at Promise Keepers? What do you mean?”
He didn’t explain to me what Promise Keepers was. He didn’t think he had to. All he said was, “Everyone is going to be there.” And it seemed like practically everyone was.
Then we had the “What Would Jesus Do?” era. Overlapping those was the Jabez phenomenon and the astonishing success of the “Left Behind” series. And suddenly evangelical fads entered a whole new realm. Publishers were literally raking in billions, not just millions, of dollars with WWJD jewelry, Left Behind books and their spin-offs for kids—and especially Jabez Junk. Coffee mugs, Tshirts, pens and desk calendars, wall plaques, and literally whole catalogues of Jabez merchandise.
The fads were suddenly bigger than ever, but they were beginning to look cheaper and have shorter shelf-lives than ever before. Last year’s “Passion of the Christ” fad lost steam before the DVD even hit the shelves.
Then the biggest fad of all came, with its own built-in expiration date: “Forty Days of Purpose.” As of two months ago [in March 2005], The Purpose-Driven Life had sold more than twenty million copies, making it the best-selling non-fiction book of all time, surpassing The Diary of Anne Franke within a few months of its release. According to a news release I read in December, spin-off Purpose-Driven merchandize has generated nearly five million units of additional sales, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
“Forty Days of Purpose” is already the most successful evangelical fad in the history of the world, making a lot of people rich and guaranteeing that we’re going to see a lot of similar marketing plans and 40-day programs in the months to come. Rick Warren has already announced his next one: “Forty Days of Community.” It starts in April, and you can get on the bandwagon now. The cost for a ticket to ride this fad is tailored to fit the size of your church. If you have a church of 100 people, it will only cost you $700.
Now, I’m not going to try to squeeze a critique of The Purpose Driven Life into this seminar. There are plenty of helpful critiques available on-line, and one by our own Nathan Busenitz in the book you’ll be receiving from Crossway titled Fool’s Gold? I imagine most of you have read enough of the book to have a feel for its style and content.
But let’s set the critiques aside for a moment. Even if we had no bone to pick with the content or the underlying philosophy of The Purpose Driven Life—is this a really the kind of book that deserves to be the best-selling evangelical work of all time? Is there anything profound or original or exceptionally brilliant about the content of this book? Is it great literature, or especially superb Bible teaching, or excellent theology made understandable in simple terms? It’s none of those things. The extraordinary success of this book stems from a very clever marketing scheme that targeted a specific market at the most opportune time. It hit the shelves at a moment when the evangelical culture was ripe for fads and stampedes.
The evangelical movement is filled with people who have been trained and conditioned and encouraged to respond to every wind that blows. Rick Warren thinks it’s a good thing, and he compares it to surfing. You just ride wave after wave, and that, he says, is the means God uses to bring about church growth. In The Purpose Driven Church, he says this:
At Saddleback Church we’ve . . . tried to recognize the waves God was sending our way, and we’ve learned to catch them. We’ve learned to use the right equipment to ride those waves, and we’ve learned the importance of balance. We’ve also learned to get off dying waves whenever we sensed God wanted to do something new. The amazing thing is this: The more skilled we become in riding waves of growth, the more God sends!
Ah! so that’s why we have this proliferation of fads. Evangelicals have gotten so skilled at surfing the latest fashions that God just sends more and more of them. And they get bigger every time.
I always think of my favorite Flip Wilson character, Reverend Leroy. Remember him? You surely remember his best-known parishioner, Geraldine Jones, whose signature catch-phrase was “The Devil made me do it.” Reverend Leroy was the esteemed pastor of “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.” In the ’60s, that was funny. These days it’s no joke. It seems like every church wants to be “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.”
And that is an extremely dangerous position for the evangelical movement to be in. Today’s fad may seem benign enough if you don’t care much about biblical discernment. Rick Warren says he just wants to meet people’s “felt needs” and insists he wants to remain biblical at the same time. Where’s the harm in that? But that philosophy is wrong and unbiblical, because it’s contrary to Paul’s clear command in 2 Timothy 4, to preach the word and refuse to cater to the itch of people’s “felt needs.” Meanwhile, all these fads are moving us further from our evangelical commitment to the principles of sola fide and sola Scriptura.
Phil,
You have a keen way of assessing things! Thank you!
As I read, I was reminded of how subtle the ways of the evil one are to draw us away from truth. We have not demonstrated as evangelicals that we possess much discernment. How will we be able to understand when things of eternal importance are a consequence of our decisions?
Are we being conditioned to accept even that which Scripture tells us will separate us from eternal life? (The mark of the Antichrist)
Blessings.
This was an excellent article Phil. If I am correct, you are scheduled to speak at next years’ Shepherds Conference. I wish I could be there. I will definitely get the mp3’s.
As I read up on the “Downgrade Controversy” I noticed that one observation of a common thread among churches that got on the downgrade was that their view of Scripture changed.
I, along with three other families, started a church this past January. One of the concerns we have is that we keep our church true to the Word of God. Evidently this is not easy since most of the churches I know have moved away from them in one way or another. There seems to be an epidemic of lack-of-discernmentitis.
The answer: PRAYER. Lots of it.
“Publishers were literally raking in billions…”
Walking into a “Christian” bookstore is similar to walking into a souvenier shop at an amusement park. Lifeway, Family Christian and others have you surrounded by gimmicks, jewelry (because if you are not wearing it on your sleeve, you must not be a Christian) and other seasonal and best-selling items. You almost have to ask…”Where are your Bibles?”
Thanks for these articles. Even in our city of 9000 we have several chuches that have started with the feel good , water it down , offer them what they want mentality. One even began with the 40 day premise. One has the emphasis on attracting cowboys. Another church in this area is a motorcycle church. What is next ? Nothing can replace the clear teaching of God’s word.
A dear friend of mine is in “Spiritual-pain” after recently leaving a church where the pastor replaced the Sunday night services with a video series of one of these “fad” preachers. She just couldn’t make peace with what she believed to be erroneous teaching from this video series. I have printed these articles for her.
Well Phil you’ve provided the seed bed for my thought life once again. In the last few days I’ve tried to reason through why “evangelicals” feel they need Rick Warren’s plan or anyone else’s for that matter. I too had been caught up into Promise Keepers as well as other programs or plans that were designed to make one “better” or “more fulfilled”. My former church seemed to embrace a number of these schemes with little or no lasting results. So, the question in my mind is, what void is the evangelical church trying to fill?
I believe the answer seems somewhat simple but is non-the-less accurate. The church today is filled with nominal Christians or non Christians who have little if any real understanding as to what it means to be a child of God. Years ago the theologian Francis Shafer coined the term—personal peace and affluence. The basis of his argument was, as a culture we desire to have what we want, when we want it and as much or it as we can get. Along with that, we desire to be unobstructed in our quest in the illusion that personal peace is a result of material wealth and not having to be accountable to anyone.
This pervasive attitude has infected the church with an unbelievable gusto. As “believers” we apply this narcissistic approach to our relationship with God and with each other. We attempt to come to God, not to worship but to be worshipped. We desire to have others to think highly of us and stroke our egos. We build relationships based on a corporate structure, where those who appear to be spiritual are regarded as the elite, while those who barely have enough to eat are secretly regarded as the “untouchables”. They are allowed to come into the sanctuary—as long as they don’t sit too close, and are fed from the benevolence fund. Class envy runs amok.
This attitude of “me first” never satisfies and yet it is often seldom addressed and as a result God refuses to bless our hedonistic self-centeredness. I believe this same attitude has left the church with vapid, anemic parishioners (and pastors) who wander about in an aimless pursuit of something. This something is an intimate relationship with God. Just as the perpetual dieter is looking for that one program that will allow them to eat the calorie count of a third-world nation and not gain weight, so the church is filled with folks who want Godliness without having to die to self . We look for that one program that will get us there with the minimum expenditure of effort. Yet we expend great effort trying to come to God on our own terms not understanding that He will have none of it. He wants worshippers who worship Him and not themselves.
Our felt needs are symptomatic of self-glorification. We as a church bought into the lies that embrace the world. We line our churches with the mirrors of self and walk the smoky aisles of illusionary godliness. We, like the churches in Revelation, do not perceive our own perilous condition. We have substituted the creature (us) for the Creator.
We race from fad to fad because the last fad didn’t work! It’s like we tried to cure our arthritis with a copper bracelet, and that didn’t work, so now we’re sticking magnets to ourselves.
Sidelight: How does a guy get his blog considered for blogroll? See blog above for interested candidate.
Phil,
Great series on a very serious issue within the evangelical movement. I heard Pastor MacArthur teaching on how to spot a false teacher. In one of his points, he said, that at the heart of all false teaching is the goal to make money. Well, I believe it is safe to say all of these fads has certainly resulted in some serious money.
However, I think the biggest thing for me is that most of the authors for these trends would say that scripture is sufficient. If scripture is sufficient, and (I believe it is) why do they need anything other than preaching the word of God? The answer is pretty clear, they do not rely on God, but on man which is the biggest downfall of Armenian and Pelagian, and Semi-Pelagian theology.
We do not need another fad:We need faithful and committed expositors of the Holy inspired, God breathed scriptures with the message that we are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ alone and not the next fad!
Young immature Christians will go through a fad stage. I did. But we need to grow up.
Thanks for sharing this very well written piece. I pray that the Church would grow up into the deep things of God’s Word. And then we will be strong in order to wrestle with the “rulers of the darkness of this age” and “spiritual wickednesses in high places”.
Keep the good articles coming.
Fads like these only show the importance of holding to the bible only as our sole source of doctrine and instruction on living the Christian life. Any time we depart from the scripture we will end up in error.
The sales numbers for Warren’s PDL are very misleading. As I learned when our church went through the 40 Days campaign*, every member of the participating church is strongly encouraged to get their own copy (at a discounted price).
Because the vast majority of the sales were the result of coercion (of a sort), I don’t think the total book sales numbers can be compared with the sales of other books (where each purchase was entirely the unforced choice of the purchaser).
* Happily, our church did not end up embracing the PDL ministry model.
Phil,
I am truly delighted to get such a thoughtful article on Purpose Driven Life. By the way I am from India. You know, I was appraoched by a company in India to translate it in one of the vernacular language. I Beleive that it is God’s doing that I literally did not sense God leading me to do the Job. It has been more than 8 months now, and I came across your article. I have refused to translate the book. Thanks for the information. Do the good work and save the Evangelicals from such fad.
Dear Phil
Thank you for reviewing for me the fads that have hit in the last 20 years. I am thankful that the Lord has kept me from getting involved in most of them. Another fad that came along during this is Basic Life Principles. This hit a huge populus in the 70’s and early 80’s. It was in a seminar where I first began to question how scripture was being used. Your article solidifies even more what the Lord has shown. I did attend Shepherd’s Conference in 94-96 and it was there that everything really came together. In our town Wenatchee, WA many churches have done The Purpose Driven series. Thankfully, we have found a church which is still preaching the Word. Thanks Again. Keep it up!! LynnO