Body-Count Evangelism
Due to a variety of reasons, I have been way too busy to blog much lately. I hope to remedy that in the next few week, but for now let’s just say that life is pretty hectic (in a good way) with ministry opportunities, missions projects, leadership adjustments and life in general. I do want to share another editorial from my good friend, Warren Smith, of the Charlotte World. Take a few minutes and read his opinion he entitled “Body Count Evangelism“.
Body-Count Evangelism
By Warren Smith
COMMENTARY–Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of The Purpose Driven Life, which has sold 25-million copies, is perhaps the most famous evangelical pastor in America. He writes often about church growth, leadership, and related issues. Heres something Warren wrote for the Mar. 16, 2004, Leadership Journal:
“Three key responsibilities of every pastor are to discern where (and how) Gods Spirit is moving in our culture and time, prepare your congregation for that movement, and cooperate with it to reach people Jesus died for. I call it ’surfing spiritual waves’ in The Purpose Driven Church, and its the reason Saddleback has grown to 23,500 on weekends in 24 years. You dont criticize a wave; you just ride it as best you can. When Mel Gibson showed me his film, The Passion of The Christ, last year, Iknew a huge wavea spiritual tsunamiwould hit when the film debuted on February 25 [2004], and we began praying and preparing to surf it.”
When I read this passage, I was taken aback. The celebrity name dropping, the appeal to size as an indication of God’s blessing, the propagation of an extra-biblical theory (”spiritual waves”) as a sign of Gods working, the pre-emptive strike against critics these are heresies and logical fallacies pervasive in the evangelical church today, all rolled into a single paragraph.
Warren continues:
“We booked 47 theater screens for members to take their lost friends to. Kay [Warren, Ricks wife] and I personally invited over a thousand lost community leaders of Orange County to a VIP premiere showing, including every mayor, congressman, superintendent of schools, other community leaders, and four billionaires. The results? Over 600 unchurched community leaders attended our VIP showing; 892 friends of members were saved during the two-week sermon series. Over 600 new small groups were formed, and our average attendance increased by 3,000. That’s catching a wave!”
When I read this, I wondered: Even setting aside the theological and philosophical problems, how could these numbers possibly be true? There was something about them that just didnt make sense. So I turned to Outreach magazine, which each year publishes lists of the largest and fastest growing churches. The 2005 list (which covered the period about which Warren writes) had Saddlebacks weekly attendance at 23,194. The 2006 Outreach list had Saddleback at 20,595. Thats a drop of nearly 3000. And at least according to these numbers, which were reported to Outreach by the church itself at no time did Saddleback have the 23,500 that Warren asserted.
Outreach reports the largest churches and the fastest growing churches on adjacent pages in the magazine. So I flipped the page and discovered something even more puzzling. Even though Saddlebacks weekly attendance fell by 3000, it reported a gain of 1,149 for the year! How does a church that loses 3000 report a gain of over 1,000? Maybe they planted a new church. That’s an admirable thing, but even if true why should Saddleback be reporting the numbers of another church as its own?
In the Leadership Journal article, Warren also touted his churchs ability to attract young people, saying that the largest Gen-X church in America is Saddleback with over 20,000 names under 29 on our church roll. Again, how could a church with only 21,000 members have more than 20,000 under the age of 30? And even if that is true, is it a good thing to have so thoroughly shut out those over 30? How could such a congregation possibly represent the true community or koininia spoken of in the New Testament?
Some pastors are growing wise to these self-aggrandizing perversions of truth. Dan Burrell is the pastor of Northside Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C. Burrell says he has grown disillusioned with the efforts of what I and others are calling the Christian-Industrial Complex to get him to participate in Body-Count Evangelism. Interestingly, the movie The Passion, which provided the context for Rick Warrens comments, provided the context for Burrells epiphany.
“I will admit that I got seduced with Mel Gibsons ‘The Passion of the Christ,’” Burrell writes. “I was convinced enough that it had evangelistic value that I bought out five screens at a local theatre before its public release and we invited scores of non-believers to join us in watching the movie and discussing it afterwards. I recall one ‘decision,’ but no conversions, after all the effort and I learned my lesson. From that point forward, Ive been pretty much immunized against ‘partnering’ with Hollywood. Upon further reflection, Ive reached the decision that pastors are actually being asked not to partner with, but to pimp for Hollywood.”
Burrell makes the important distinction between decisions and conversions. If that distinction seems a false one, consider this: The American Church Research Project reports that in 2000, only 18.7 percent of the U.S. population attended a Christian church on an average Sunday. Ten years earlier, in 1990, that percentage was 20.4. In other words, the percentage of churchgoers in America is going down, not up.
Of course, Warren is not alone in making outrageous claims. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association claimed in its 2005 annual report that 3.2-million people had made decisions for Christ as a result of its ministries. Emergent church leaders, Willow Creekers, and others constantly propagate the claim that they are reaching unchurched people. Im not saying that some of them are not doing good work, but the most basic demographic analysis suggests strongly that many of their claims cannot possibly be true. Indeed, it reminds me of the one-liner going around during the church-roll padding scandal of the Southern Baptist Convention a few years ago: “There are more Southern Baptists than there are people.”
The Southern Baptists took steps to clean up their scandal. I can only hope that Rick Warren and other megachurch and parachurch ministries choose to exercise more care and integrity in the assessment of and reporting of their impact. Because the inescapable conclusion is this: the Body of Christ in America is not growing either numerically or spiritually. It is, relatively speaking, shrinking — burdened by crass commercialism, a lack of integrity, and the quest for power and glory of celebrity preachers. An all but inescapable second conclusion is this: the rest of us, if we do not speak out against the lies of those who practice body-count evangelism, are standing by just as Paul stood by when he guarded the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen. We, likewise, are guarding this cloak of falsehood subjecting the Body of Christ to a modern stoning of its own.
—-
Warren Smith is the publisher of The Charlotte World. He can be reached at warren.smith@thecharlotteworld.com
Brad Raby said,
February 1, 2007 @ 12:30 am
This is an odd post for this blog. It is probably the weakest ‘anti-seeker’ ‘anti-Warren’ article I have ever read - and I have read many of them. Just to point out a couple of common sense points.
1. Is it possible to increase your attendance for two or three months and then have it level off again? Obviously - anyone who has read Warren’s materal without a legal pad to notate critisicim knows that he talks about various times when attendance increases.
2. Is Dan Burrell’s lack of success with the Passion movie indicitive of every single church that used the movie for outreach? Ask Johnny Hunt of FBC Woodstock about their success. Hunt is a conservative old-school Southern Baptist - not seeker driven in anyway - yet FBC Woodstocks had enormous success using The Passion movie - as well as many other pastors and churches.
3. Anyone who reads Warren’s materials knows they shave off ‘inactive members’ from their rosters more than most churches. They remove thousands every year in an effort to be more stategic in their membership ministry. He teaches it - because it help determine prospects and regular attendees.
4. Seriously, How obsessed are all these bloggers these days to research in an effort to find something negative to say about Rick, or Bill, or Andy, or Ed, or Joel (and I don’t care for Joel) or which ever Pastor is the flavor of the day. How many times have I heard pastors vent about church members ‘having them for dinner’ on Sunday’s. Church leaders do the same thing all the time to other church leaders - we are the hypocrites of all hypocrites.
5. The Wave, or looking for what God is blessing - one of the great heresies of the church today? Yeah, the type of rubber used in bases is one of the greatest problems in professional baseball today.
Big fan of this blog, check it ever so often - just hadn’t read something as unusually wierd and petty as this one. Believe me - having left the number crazy world of extreme fundamentalism along time ago - I sympathize with the ‘body count’ issue - but this article did not honestly support that issue.
Rus Hardin said,
February 1, 2007 @ 7:17 am
Well, I don’t like bringing out negative points on blogs but I have to add two here. (And this is not to say I disagree with Mr. Smith on all of his points).
1. Many Christians often use time-based terms like “revival” or “movement” or whatever so why is it he takes exception to “spiritual wave”? Perhaps in Warren’s book it’s out of context, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal to use this term to me in the context of the quote above. There are a lot more extrabiblical things for me to worry about than what appears to me as a “pop-phrasing” for the Holy Spirit being apparent in our lives.
2. His point about the percent of Americans attending church going down; If you look at the Census numbers, the percentage may have gone down but factoring in population growth there are nearly 2 million more Americans (1.89 or so) going to church in 2000 than there were in 1990. The percentage decline is more likely to imply that Americans are not “converting” at the same rate as population growth. Perhaps I’m being picky about his bad use of statistics but it’s quite ironic because he was pointing out some bad math being used by others in his article.
Bob said,
February 1, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
I have heard people say a lot of negative things about Rick Warren, but I have not observed or read anything he actually said that seemed that strange. I thought this interview was pretty good.
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17175.htm
John said,
February 8, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Hey Dan. Always enjoy reading your blog. I was a Saddleback staff member and we met on the FFF several years ago. I admire your balance.
Ok….the BUT. Lol.
I do know for a fact that there was a period when the attendence averaged 23,000 or so. Interestingly enough, it was a summer that Rick was not really preaching much and Doug Fields, the Minister of Youth spoke. Doug is an incredibly gifted communicator and it was not a surprise to me that attendence went up when he was preaching. One of the things I do admire about Warren is his willingness to “share the pulpit” with other talented speakers. I think it is healthy and helps keep a megachurch from becoming personality driven.
I do agree that there is too much a tendency to focus on numbers, in all of Christendom. Numbers are only important to the degree that souls are saved. I don’t think of a small church pastor to be any less faithful or called by God. God will work his will and way.
I have to agree with the other poster re: “spiritual waves”. Rick has tried to use less “churchy” words. I don’t agree with him when he says “You don’t ask questions, you hang on”.
Saddleback has between 60-70k on the database. Those are not all considered “members”. A member is a person who has taken CLASS 101 and attends a certain number of Sundays per year as I recall.
Look forward to your blogging more and less from Warren Smith. (smile)
Craig Snyder said,
February 12, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
Bob said,
*** I have not observed or read anything he actually said that seemed that strange.***
You’ve never heard R. Warren say anything that sounded like this,
Mat 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Mat 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and
few
there be that find it.
Or like this,
Eze 3:20 Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin,
and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered;
but his blood will I require at thine hand.
Eze 3:21 Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that
the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin,
he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.
nor does Warren sound like this,
Joh 5:14 …sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee
that he sounds NOTHING like the REL JESUS CHRIST,
is not strange, it is THIS,
2Ti 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
in the real world.
In the service of the TRUTH, the LIVING WORD, JESUS CHRIST,
Craig
Bob said,
February 14, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
I haven’t…or you haven’t?
Has he told you he does not believe in those verses Craig?
Tom Lambie said,
February 15, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Dan: A truly odd thing about Warren Smith’s column is his swipe at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Warren Smith knows first hand that the BGEA’s numbers are worldwde, not US, and that they are firm and valid and auditable. Yet he jabs at them, as though God wouldn’t possibly be doing anything bigger than Warren’s imagination.
The column is ostensibly about body-count evangelism, but in a larger context it seems really about Warren’s self-limiting worldview. One wonders what Warren would have written in his column about the Jerusalem church’s statistics after the first Pentecost.
Mark Rascio said,
October 2, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
My corporate HQ was in Schaumburg, IL for some time and I had the opportunity to spend a few months there over the years. This is near Willow Creek Community Church…while not Saddleback, they use similar methods and have received similar criticism. I was exploring the Purpose Driven Church at the time and attended Willow in the morning and then a Fundamental Baptist church in the evening. Interesting was that I was warmly welcomed at Willow and heard a very simple but compelling message for unbelievers and learned of ways to enrich my Bible study and learning on other days (Wednesday) and through small groups. At the Fundamental Church I was warmly received by the persons that welcomed me at the door but after that I felt like an outsider. I decided to talk with a nice couple in front of me…told them of my work and then about my visit to Willow. They asked ‘Do they even preach the Gospel up there any more?’. I was taken back since I was there that very day and heard it preached. I kindly responded that it was.
God Bless.