Steve McCoy hit a nerve in his post about “video preaching,” the new ‘trend’ of feeding sermons through a video link to remote locations, instead of having live preaching or starting a new church. His commenters bring up many interesting points, including the possibility of franchised churches — Second Baptist Church of Houston of Springfield, Missouri, anyone?

I admit that I’m intrigued by the possibilities here. What if a church were known for originating excellent ministry rather than preaching? In other words, ministry must be local — must teaching be local? I know many (like Mark Dever) have taught the ‘primacy’ of preaching; is it a degradation of this primacy for a local church to decide to outsource excellent preaching?

Why is this happening now and not a generation ago? It seems like telecasting has been feasible for awhile. Is it the preaching that has gotten better, or the ability to construct local ministry? For example, when I visit smaller churches, I’m not usually shocked by the preaching — but I am shocked at how much more professional the music and presentation have become in the past decade. Everyone has a projector with animated slides, slick bulletins, a decent website, pretty good video, etc. These were the marks of a moneyed ministry a decade ago, but now they seem commonplace.

Or is it that radio and TV ‘preaching’ has raised the quality expected by churchgoers, much like Starbuck’s has raised the quality of coffee? You can tell me that you don’t like Starbuck’s, but few can deny that Starbuck’s (in general) led consumers to expect more from their coffee. Has it reached the point where so many churchgoers expect Rick Warren or John Piper that they won’t settle for less? If so, will this change the career path of aspiring preachers? Might it be ‘better’ to start out on radio or internet, gather a proven following, and then parlay it into a megachurch pastorate?

There’s been a debate in several places about sermon plagiarism. I guess I don’t mind that some pastors re-preach* Rick Warren’s old sermons (again [RW: 1995], and again [RW: 1993)], and again [RW: 1989!]). Rick apparently enourages a little ‘plagiarism’ now and again. But I think some pastors forget that their tape and broadcast ministries sell those sermons and the notes as the pastor’s own. That seems a little closer to outright theft or copyright violation, doesn’t it? Just to make sure, I asked the authority:

JtB: What license comes with sermons I might purchase on pastors.com? For instance, am I allowed to resell the notes or my own presentation of the information?

Pastors.com: No, you cannot sell the notes, or put them on public radio or television. You can post them on your website if it is restricted to your own congregation.
God bless.

Is there some other licensing scheme I’m not aware of? If not, this seems to be a widespread, yet questionable, practice.

* Or copy nearly verbatim. Compare this with this. One could assume they copied from each other — or that they copied from Rick’s 1986 sermons.

Adrian Rogers: September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005.

A truly great Baptist figure and large church leader with a pastor’s heart. More at adrianrogers.org

A theme I’ve been hitting lately is that it’s dangerous to take good ideas, and try to turn them into God’s ideas. Challies’ has a few examples of “exegetical fallacies” worth noting. The first one he lists, Proverbs 29:18, strikes me as a dangerous method of sanctifying the imagination, when it seems to mean something quite different.

Peter Drucker, the ‘father of modern management,’ died yesterday. More than just a management consultant, Drucker spoke out strongly on the need for non-profits to be effective, and his theories highly influenced the Purpose Driven Church. His voice will be sorely missed.

The NY Times obituary is here.

Has ‘The Message’ become a joke? A blogger trying to explain his take on Jesus, kids, sports and and ‘losers’ says:

Before I talk about what Jesus thought about poor losers, let me say that I am pretty sure Jesus never told anybody to “put on their big girl panties and deal with it.” Not even in the Message by Eugene Peterson [!][ed warning: link involves disturbing man-in-diaper picture]

Does everyone think the ‘The Message’ stretches things too far? Seeing it as a punchline made me realize there’s a lot of talk about translations lately. Maybe events at my own church have made me more aware, but I’m starting to see a lot: Focus on the Family recently took on the TNIV for changing masculine pronouns (Wayne Grudem responds here, on a blog devoted to Bible translations); there’s a new set of essays about Bible translating (reviewed at Challies.com), along with this article about “literal” versus “dyanmic” translations.

It seems that the Message and the TNIV are (re)opening a serious discussion about what’s fair game in “intepretation.” As noted in the comments to the last article, “count yourself lucky” isn’t quite the same as “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.” (PS 32:1).

Just in time for Christmas! What Would Jesus Do? I Watch Joel Osteen pins!

HT:Challies.com

One of the ideas I’d like to unpack in this space: most of the ‘how to do church’ books that are popular today were written in the mid to late 1990s. Obviously, this includes “Purpose Driven,” but it also includes “Planting Growing Churches,” and a lot of the related how-to books.* Those books, in turn, are based on the organizational theory of the late 1980s and early 1990s, written by people like Peter F. Drucker and John Kotter.

I don’t think it’s wrong to use organizational theory to inform church decisions — as long as you realize your theory is just a theory. Business school ideas aren’t more reliable just because they’ve got a thin veneer of scripture. But if you’re going to use business school theories, make sure you’re keeping up with the times. A lot has changed since the early 1990s — especially the role of the CEO.

Remember the CEOs of the 80s and 90s? The CEO was king; the board was there to fulfill his vision, the staff was there to carry out his whim, the audit committee was there to justify his pay and his house. There was very little accountability, and there was little demand for it, since easy credit and a zooming economy made it easy to make it look like things were going well. And then came Enron. No large company in the United States works the same. The government now demands greater openess and independence by Boards of Directors. Directors and CEOs can be held personally liable for making the wrong move.

Except, guess who’s still hearing about the virtues of the unaccountable, super-CEO? The people reading church manuals from 15 years ago, based on the organizational theory of 20 years ago. Can you imagine any business allowing a CEO to turn his independent board into full-time customer relations consultants? Or allowing him to be accountable only to the vice-presidents he’d hired? Or letting him tell shareholders that their pesky voting is slowing down his near-divine go-go growth plan? Yet that’s the basic governance plan of Purpose Driven.

The Corporate scandals of the 90s revealed the enormous pressure on senior leadership teams to produce consistent growth. This pressure, combined with unaccountability proved to be a volatile mix. I am afraid that the same pressure to produce big numbers, combined with similar unaccountability, will trip up many aspiring Pastors, with even greater consequences. Warren’s book rightly points out that a 100 member church can’t operate the same way as a 10,000 member church. But his recommendations need to be updated. Jesus is timeless — but Drucker and Kotter change.

More thoughts later…

* Yes, yes, they say you’re not supposed to follow them blindly, but my guess is that Warren’s polity advice goes unchanged in most cases.

Totally unrelated, but funny.

I’ve heard more than one person say: “I don’t know enough to know whether Paul has done anything wrong, and I’m not doing anything until I do.” Paul reinforces the idea when he says that a coalition of people are upset for many reasons (over the KJV, or women in leadership), but that no one is truly upset about the lawsuit—in other words, the true source of conflict isn’t about what you’ve heard.

We can’t say Paul has done legal wrong, but haven’t we all seen enough to know that he’s done moral wrong?

Haven’t we seen Paul use the office of Pastor to hide the existence of a baby, help the baby’s father flee from his responsibilities, and then uphold him as a “better father and Christian?” Don’t we know that Paul, at best, told “white lies” to his congregation and to New Orleans Seminary? And isn’t FBC’s ability to communicate the Truth of a Loving Father compromised until the congregation responds to this misuse of church resources?

I’m not picking on any particular person, and you could tell me you don’t think it’s a big deal — but that much seems to be easily observed. If you disagree, I’d love to understand your position better. And if you hear someone say “I don’t know enough to know,” send them this way. Even if you don’t want to post publicly, I’d still appreciate your thoughts. I’m at: Jon at jonthebaptist.com.