Tips For Spotting Evangelical Frauds Like Ravi Zacharias Ahead Of Time (Part 3): The Hero Of His Own Story

In September of 1981 I was a newly arrived freshman at Wheaton College, and the guest preacher for Spiritual Emphasis Week annoyed me.

There was no questioning his skill. He was an exceptional communicator: direct, listenable, insightful, having no trace of preacherly affectations, compellingly conversational in tone without being flip. It was a master’s class in how to give a series of talks.

So what didn’t I like? The first thing he did when getting to the pulpit was take several strides away from it and then stand there in plain view to give his message. The only motive for this move, it seemed, was to show us that he was speaking without notes. Later that day my gym teacher (yes, we had gym) said, “Wasn’t that a great sermon? And I can’t believe he did the whole thing without notes!” Cynical young me (who later morphed into cynical old me) thought, Of course. That’s exactly what he wanted you to think. He made sure we all knew he had the ability to deliver a message stored in his brain as effortlessly as Mozart stored a concerto.

Perhaps that is a mere quibble. But there’s more. Repeatedly during the course of that week he told stories that reflected well on himself and his example. He was, by all accounts (well, by his own account), an amazing family man. A colleague had asked him: “If the devil were to take you down, how would he do it?” – a provocative jab intended to reveal some vulnerability where he would need to be on guard. He dodged that challenge brilliantly by replying, “Well I know how he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t get me through my family.” That was because he was so great with his wife and kids. He prioritized them even above his ministry, and everyone could see that about him.

He went as far as to tell us (holy COW was this a red flag) that someone said to him, “The women of this church love you.” They saw how attentive he was to his family, and they delighted in the example he set for their husbands. He explained that he never sat in a chair up on the platform before it was time to preach: he sat in the pew, with his family, arm around his wife, stroking his son’s earlobe. The whole congregation would see that and think, “Now THAT’S a man who gets it right with his wife and kids.”

I cannot say that I was shocked when, six years later, Gordon MacDonald resigned as president of Intervarsity because of an extramarital affair. That affair went on for months even while he was writing his bestseller “Ordering Your Private World.” No! Him??? How could a man who was so great with his family that women loved him possibly fall into adultery?

Sometime later MacDonald was restored to the pulpit of the church he betrayed. (It appears that the fact that his return deeply divided that congregation did not weigh so heavily on his conscience as to prevent his resumption of the pastorate.) In the ensuing years whenever I had occasion to hear him I could not help but notice that he was still indulging the habit I detected nearly 40 years ago: telling stories where he was the hero. He was having lunch with a friend and he said just the right thing. He gave an apt word of encouragement to a troubled person that turned things around. He sacrificed comfort to come to the aid of someone in distress. He had a brilliant reply to someone who had tried to trip him up. Even his adultery was put to good use: it equipped him all the more expertly to steer fallen souls (like Bill Clinton!) through the treacherous waters of repentance and restoration.

The “And-here's-another-time-I-excelled” brand of illustration is one that characterized the preaching of disgraced fraud Ravi Zacharias. I was never a close follower of him, but he was impossible to avoid in the circles of Evangelicalism in which I have walked. And in the bits and snatches of his sermons that I heard over the years, I don't think I’m exaggerating when I say he couldn’t go 15 minutes without relating some story in which he refuted a skeptic, or wrested respectful acknowledgement from an opponent, or sparked a revival, or gave a clarifying insight to some poor muddled soul. Now that so many of his lies have been documented in gory detail (the man claimed to be a professor at Oxford when he was never even a student there!), one begins to wonder if any of his self-flattering stories were true.

But even if they were all true, the Bible still says, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” (Proverbs 27:2). A faithful servant of God is far more likely to tell you about the time a stranger showed him kindness than about the time he showed kindness to a stranger. He will relate wise counsel that somebody gave him more willingly than the wise counsel he gave someone else. He remembers with photographic clarity the times he was forgiven, but is extremely forgetful about the times he forgave. He will extol others’ charitable acts, but his own you will never discover until someone else reveals them.

I am not saying it is always forbidden to draw attention to your example. St. Paul himself did so in 1 Thessalonians 2:9-10 among other places: “Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed.” It is appropriate to do that sometimes, especially when responding to false accusation. I believe it is a matter of degree, quantity, frequency, motive, and bearing. I am reminded of D. A. Carson’s perceptive comment about the apparent retrograde slippage of Nehemiah’s character as revealed by the fact that four times at the end of his book the Israelite administrator called upon God to remember him with favor for his good works, and to remember with disfavor his opponents for their bad works. (Nehemiah 13:14, 22, 29, and 31). Once is ok. Even two we’ll let pass. But four times? At some point we seem to cross a threshold that marks a descent into self-centeredness and self-aggrandizement.

What I have to say to fellow evangelicals is essentially this: we have been deceived so, so many times in recent years by celebrity evangelical evildoers that the time has come to ratchet up our standards and heighten our sensitivities to the telltale signs of fraud. Put this one on your list. Be on your guard against preachers who keep telling you what great things they have said or done.

Tips For Spotting Evangelical Frauds Like Ravi Zacharias Ahead Of Time (Part 2): Doctors Without Credentials

In my experience there are three kinds of people who might have a “Dr.” before their names:

(1) People in hospitals or clinics who wear lab coats and have stethoscopes around their necks and they treat your diseases.

(2) Wicked-smart individuals with earned PhDs from real universities who typically teach college students.

(3) Evangelical preachers who don’t have the chops to be either of the above but who are desperate to be honored with the title “Doctor.”

Don’t trust anybody in category 3. They are scandals waiting to happen. I’m just letting you know ahead of time. A preacher who calls himself “Doctor” is a good candidate to burn you like Ravi Zacharias did.

Mr. Zacharias claimed to be a doctor for many years before atheist Steve Baughman began calling him on it in 2015. Zacharias’ bios even said that he had three doctorates, but neglected to mention they were all honorary. (Honorary doctorates are nice baubles but do not count). In response to mounting pressure Zacharias finally scrubbed the title “Dr.” from his bios and books and promotional materials. But had he not been exposed he would have been “Dr. Zacharias” to his dying day.

There are of course some preacher-scholars (or scholar-preachers) with genuine Phds from real institutions of higher learning. Here's a few: D. A. Carson (Cambridge), Kevin DeYoung (Leicester), Scot McKnight (Nottingham), John Piper (Munich). Though these men have real credentials to match their sharp minds, none of them (as far as I have been able to determine) ever present themselves as “Dr. So-and-so.” When the title “Dr.” appears before their names it looks like it's someone else’s doing. For decades I have noticed again and again that worthy individuals who actually earned the title never seem to use it.

Contrast that with the stampede of lesser souls and smaller minds in Evangelicalism who pop up on Christian radio saying, “Hi! This is Dr. John Smith...”. Let that phrase trip the “Fraud Likely” sensor on your spiritual antennae. I guarantee you will not find a meaty dissertation under that man's name on file at a place like Princeton or Duke. Rather, a little digging will typically reveal that his doctoral claim is misleading, wispy thin, or just laughably false.

For example:

(1) “Dr. David Jeremiah” of Shadow Mountain Community Church does not have a Phd. His website says, “Completing additional graduate work at Grace Seminary, he was granted the Doctor of Divinity degree from Cedarville College in 1981,” which is technically true. But his bio neglects to say that the degree was honorary. Again, honorary degrees are flattering, but they are ceremonial trinkets and do not give the recipient any right to call himself a doctor for the rest of his life.

(2) “Dr. Mark Jobe”, president of Moody Bible Institute, actually has a doctorate of sorts, but it’s in “Transformational Leadership for the Global City,” which you’ve never heard of and which sounds an awful lot like a spoof degree concocted by the satirists at Babylon Bee. But that is in fact what it is called at Jobe’s alma mater, Bakke Graduate University. If you look up BGU, you might soon find yourself laughing out loud at your computer screen the way I did yesterday.

Bakke is a self-named institution (there’s a warning sign! See last week's essay about eponymous organizations) created by the Bakke family in 2003. Of the 12 individuals listed as faculty, only two have Phds, and one of those lives in France. Of the remaining 10 faculty members, seven got degrees from BGU itself. Among the 17 additional adjunct faculty there is only one more Phd, but 14 more Bakke grads. How does Mark Jobe get a Phd (as he claims to have on his Linkedin page) from a university that hardly has any Phds on its own faculty - and that tends to find instructors from its own ranks? A friend of mine familiar with Bakke protested to me that it does indeed carry on a legitimate ministry, and that I am glad to hear. But whether it should be issuing advanced degrees is another story. As an educational institution it frankly wafts the aroma of a degree mill. I put this one in the category of not technically fraudulent, but still awfully paper thin.

(3) The poster child for Evangelicalism's doctoritis is Bryan Loritts. The facts concerning his fraudulent degree are covered in detail at the Julie Roys website. Here’s a summary:

Loritts calls himself “Dr. Loritts” on his website, Instagram and Twitter. He got his doctorate from “St. Thomas Christian University,” which does not exist, but is simply a front for a con artist who charges people $1500 for a cap and gown and a certificate that calls them doctor. And that’s all there is. It’s a 100 percent sham from beginning to end. To me it is inconceivable that anyone who knows these facts would ever want to hear a sermon from Loritts or read anything he wrote. But somehow he is still getting interviewed on WMBI where he offers his wisdom and promotes his latest book, and he was recently hired as an associate by megachurch pastor and Southern Baptist Convention president J. D. Greear.

Oy. Oy vey.

The funny thing is Jesus himself addressed the issue of delighting in titles. In Matthew 23 where he condemned scribes and Pharisees, he mentioned among their sins the fact that "they love...being called 'rabbi' by others." (See verses 6 and 7). Substitute our cultural equivalent "doctor" for "rabbi," and you will see why I am warning you not to trust these people.

Tips For Spotting Evangelical Frauds Like Ravi Zacharias Ahead Of Time (Part 1)

For the umpteenth time in recent years a celebrated evangelical preacher and author has just been unmasked as a fraud. This time it’s the late Ravi Zacharias. Those who liked him often tagged him as the greatest Christian apologist of his generation. Those of us who didn’t were unsurprised to hear of the mounting evidence that shows this greedy liar was guilty of habitual adulterous sexual harassment.

Add him to the list that includes such giants of Evangelicalism as Ted Haggard, Bill Hybels, James MacDonald, Tullian Tchividjian, Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, and Jerry Fallwell Jr. These are men who counseled presidents, wrote best-sellers, pastored megachurches, chaplained professional sports teams and led Christian universities. And they’re fakes. No, I do not regard them as “flawed heroes of the faith who wrestled with their demons and through whom God accomplished great things despite (or because of) their brokenness.” Those are weasel words. They’re just fakes. False brothers. Real believers must not sit at the same table with them (1 Corinthians 5:11) until, like Charles Templeton or Joshua Harris, they acknowledge openly that they are not Christians at all.

Someone will say, “But these are among the most important leaders of our faith tradition!” I know. I also know that one’s status in the world of religion never counts as a point in one’s favor. Jesus said to the most influential religious leaders of his day: “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). The spine-tingling fact of the matter is that a society’s foremost religious leaders can be demon spawn. And I maintain that the current state of North American Evangelicalism is hardly less corrupt than first century Israeli Phariseeism. It really is that bad. Ring the alarm bells.

How did the fakes mentioned above (and I’m afraid there are many, many more) acquire and maintain for so long their positions of influence in Evangelicalism?

A big part of the answer is that they had enablers, both primary and secondary. The primary enablers were the associates, elders, staff, board and family members who saw the corruption daily but never said anything because they shared it, and they stood to gain a lot (millions, sometimes) from being part of the power structure. A pox on them, a pox on them all. The secondary enablers were we the Evangelical public – we dumb sheep who missed warning signs and blew past red flags and went on attending their churches, buying their books, going to their conferences, sending our children to their colleges and contributing to their ministries (even while local churches shepherded by humble servants of God shriveled and died on the vine).

It’s that second group - the accidental enablers - that I want to help. I’d like to offer some tips for spotting wolves in shepherds’ clothing ahead of time, before the scandalous behavior becomes public and wreaks destruction and maims sheep and hobbles the church and rejoices enemies of the cross of Christ.

Here is the first tip:

Never trust any gospel minister who names an organization, ministry or website after himself.

Zacharias of course did that with RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries) and the RZIM academy. Fake Christians love to put their name in lights. But true men and women of God hide behind the cross, and even when asked, “Who are you?" they would rather say (with the hero of The Princess Bride) “No one of consequence” than (for example) “Alexander Hamilton!!!”

Followers of Jesus Christ say, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30). Their hearts are stirred to joyous longing when they sing the last stanza of “May The Mind Of Christ My Savior”:

May His beauty rest upon me,

As I seek the lost to win.

And may they forget the channel,

Seeing only Him.

Here is an alphabetical list of evangelical preachers who have self-named ministries or websites:

Tony Evans

J D Greear

David Jeremiah

Mark Jobe

Tim Keller

Andy Stanley

Ed Stetzer

Paul Tripp

Ron Zappia

And here are some who do not:

Alistair Begg

Don Carson

Francis Chan

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

Mark Dever

Kevin DeYoung

Erwin Lutzer

John MacArthur

John Piper

Some comments:

(1) The lists above are extremely inexhaustive and non-methodically selected. I just googled a bunch of evangelical figures whose names randomly popped into my head and then selected nine from both lists.

(2) By far the biggest surprise above was Tim Keller, who has a "TimothyKeller.com" site. He should know better. His friends and colleagues Don Carson and John Piper would never think of naming a site after themselves. But honestly none of the other 17 names surprised me.

(3) I am not saying that all ministers who self-name a ministry or site are phonies. That is certainly not the case. I am saying that it’s a huge red flag, a warning, an indication that when combined with other factors will show that you’re dealing with a self-promoter rather than a Christ-promoter.

(4) Please understand that I am only applying this self-naming principle to preachers. If you are primarily an artist, athlete, politician, author or business owner then it is perfectly appropriate to stamp your name on your output or product. Murray Schwartz will call his delicatessen “Schwartz’s Deli,” and he is right to do so because it’s his Reuben sandwich, and he gets the credit if it’s good and the blame if it isn’t. But we gospel preachers don’t create anything, and we don’t own anything. We are mere stewards and caretakers of a sacred trust and a sacred message. We don’t get to stamp our names on it.

Where Is The Atheist Julie Roys?

My wife and I are big fans of Julie Roys, and urge you to check out her website. She is a Christian journalist who tries to reform the evangelical wing of the Church by exposing the sins of its leaders. There is no shortage of scandal to fuel her work. Many of evangelicalism’s biggest churches, denominations, colleges and institutions are rife with a corruption that grieves followers of Christ and that buttresses the unbelief of skeptics.

Roys is not the only Christian whistle-blower in blogland. Many, thank God, have chronicled the misdeeds of evangelical kingpins like Bill Hybels and James MacDonald and Jerry Falwell Jr, and have helped catapult these creeps from their seats of influence into the slime of opprobrium where they belong.

Christian investigative reporters like Roys focus zealous indignation on their own kind – their own “tribe” if you will. If there are any serious Christian journalists out there chronicling the corruption of atheists, I have yet to discover them. I could be missing something, since I am a modestly informed armchair schlub myself. But isn’t it the case that the Christian muckrackers mostly concern themselves with cleaning their own house?

This phenomenon alerts me to an asymmetry that I find instructive. Are there any atheist Julie Roys’s? If so, please let me know so that I can revise or take down this post. What I observe every day is lots of Christians saying, “Our house is filthy: we must clean it!” and a chorus of atheists chiming in, “Your house is filthy: you must clean it!” (Actually, from reading their websites, I think many of them would prefer that we just burn it down.) But do any atheist spokespersons devote themselves to cleaning their own house? Is there a comparably earnest self-reflection going on in that community? Maybe there is, but I never find evidence for it on (for example) my Facebook feed.

Take the matter of historical apologies. For decades I’ve been reading Christian laments about “our” medieval crusades, Salem witch trials, and complicity in the ownership of human beings. Can somebody please send me a link to an essay where an atheist apologizes to us for Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and the Kim Jongs? Turnabout is fair play. If Christians must bear the guilt of crusades that killed a few million some eight hundred years ago, then I suppose atheists should lament their part in the slaughter of tens of millions in just the last hundred years.

If I were an atheist, I would respond to that zinger by saying, “Oh come on. What a cheap shot. I will not be linked in common cause to geopolitical monsters who happen to share my philosophical materialism. I’m not responsible for them, and our shared biological reductionism in no way inspired their atrocities.” To which I as a Christian would say, “Good, now you know how I feel. I don’t identify with butchers and bullies and sadists and scoundrels either - no matter how hard they claim to be Christians. I urge their downfall and celebrate their exposure. I will not be painted with the same broad brush that includes them, and I am certainly not going to be baited into apologizing for crimes I never committed but have instead opposed with unrelenting vigor.”

But even in the above imaginary exchange I let my atheist opponent get away with something that I do not grant: “[B]iolgical reductionism in no way inspired their atrocities.” Yes it did. Of course it did. According to atheism it must have inspired their atrocities, because nothing else could have. In atheistic biological reductionism, all human ideologies, and all human actions, are determined by neurons and chemicals in our brains interacting with their environment in strict observance of physical laws outside a person’s control. Even the control you think you have is itself biologically determined. And the only wiggle room in that deterministic complex comes from quantum uncertainty at the atomic level, but of course no one has ever tried to base a serious doctrine of free will, rationality or moral accountability on that.

According to atheism, Stalin’s atrocities – and, for that matter, Lincoln’s benevolence, and Ted Bundy’s murders, and Tom Hanks’ sweet nature, and Robert Sapolsky’s biological reductionism, and my Christianity - are all inspired by atoms in our brains that no soul ever moved because there’s no such thing as a soul. So, atheist friend, yes, biological reductionism did in fact – according to you – inspire Stalin’s atrocities (not just a belief in biological reductionism – but the reductionism itself). Just as it inspired Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews, and the selfless behavior of Doctors Without Borders, and the Civil Rights movement, and the KKK, and my Christianity, and your atheism, and this conversation we’re having now, and any objections you have to the words I’m putting in your mouth, and to the counterarguments you imagine yourself to be marshalling in protest. All thoughts, according to you - including the ones you’re thinking now – are, in the end, biological knee-jerks masquerading as rationality.

The fact that atheism thus delegitimizes all thought, including its own, and provides an inescapably deterministic account of all behavior, including Jerry Falwell Jr’s, never seems to trouble the atheists with whom I am acquainted. Their inability to reflect upon the validity of their thinking or question the certainty of their moral judgments (or why they have moral judgments in the first place) suggests to me a blindness so egregious it can only be explained by a willful closing of the eyes. For example, just a few minutes ago, by complete coincidence while looking up something unrelated, I came across this popular quote from an atheist: “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they’ve found it.” How can such a sentence emerge from a conscious thinker before a nanosecond’s reflection crushes it like a grape? All one has to do in response is ask, “Is that statement true?” If it isn’t, well, then disbelieve it and act accordingly. But if it is true, then clearly it is a truth the speaker has found, and by his own admonition you should run away from him because you “infinitely prefer” to be with those who are only seeking the truth. What in the world prevents this herd-of-elephants-in-the-room question from even getting asked? What accounts for the atheistic inability to subject its own thinking to the rigors of a principle it has just laid down as law?

I have a prediction to make should there ever appear on the horizon the morning star of an earnestly self-reflective atheistic Julie Roys eager to reform the moral outrages she discovers within herself and her own group. Her faith in atheism will soon prove to be as unstable as radon. When she turns from the agreeable, energizing, self-affirming task of denouncing her neighbor’s untidy house to the galling, repulsive, humiliating task of cleaning her own I believe that there will arise troubling questions about right and wrong and the existence of true rationality for which atheism can give no account. When those destabilizing thoughts occur she will want to distract herself with entertainment or return to the simple comfort of condemning those with whom she disagrees. Or, she might just give up and bow the knee to that God she frankly wishes would go away and leave her alone.

Open Letter To Dave Dummitt, Incoming Pastor At Willow Creek

We don’t know each other, but my friend Tom Chilton was a classmate of yours at Wheaton College, and he holds you in high regard, and since Tom is one of the greatest people I know, I accept as my own his favorable impression. Peace and goodwill to you.

I see that in June you will be installed as Senior Pastor of Willow Creek, which has probably been the most influential church in the world over the past few decades. It is a great responsibility and burden to serve there, and my prayers are with you.

I want to help in the only way I know how, by writing out some thoughts that I will organize under three headings. I know this is presumptuous, because I have no standing by which I might assume the right to encourage or admonish you. I write not as a man of consequence but as a sheep who cannot resist the urge to bleat. Here are three things that I believe will be important in your ministry:

1. Remember that you step into the shoes of unregenerate men.

“By their fruits you shall know them,” Jesus said (Matthew 7:16). Your predecessor and founder of Willow Creek (and chief mover behind a global revolution in church practice), Bill Hybels, bore the bad fruit of sexual harassment accompanied by lies and lies and more lies. Although his predatory behavior only became known publicly in the last two years, it persisted for decades and was a characteristic of the man rather than a momentary lapse. To this day he has not acknowledged wrongdoing, or repented, or subjected himself to the discipline of supervised restoration to Christian fellowship.

Jesus said that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Luke 6:43). Bill Hybels is a bad tree. As a preacher you know all the relevant Bible verses, like the ones about impostor tares (Matthew 13:24-30) and bad fish (Matthew 13:47-50), and the warnings that sexually immoral people will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:5).

A few months ago the news got worse. The other founder of Willow Creek, its theological architect Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian, was also revealed to be a sexual harasser. Though he likewise denied wrongdoing, subsequent investigation proved him to be a lying cad, and Wheaton College rightly rescinded his title as Professor Emeritus.

As the man selected to succeed them, your role is not like that of Arthur Pierson, who followed Charles Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, or J. Glyn Owen, who followed Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster. You are Matthias, to whom the lot fell when it came time to replace Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:26).

Hybels and Bilezikian betrayed Jesus Christ. Do not regard them as brothers. Whether you say this out loud you must know it in your heart, and conduct your ministry in a way that makes plain that you have comprehended this bitter truth. Do not honor the legacy of your predecessors, but warn your flock about the way that leads to destruction. Never hint at reconciliation with unrepentant hearts of darkness. “What fellowship does Christ have with Belial?” (2 Corinthians 6:15). The apostles of Jesus did not enshrine the memory of Judas’s better days. They did not mildly suggest that it might have been nice if he had gone out on a better note.

And how will you call people to Christ in a setting like this? The spiritual terrain has thrown a great boulder in your path. You’re a preacher. You command souls to (here there are a thousand phrases for it) trust Christ, be born again, enter the kingdom, become children of God, accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, surrender to Christ as Leader and Forgiver, receive the gospel, etc. But at Willow Creek, underlying each such invitation will be the unspoken message: “This you must believe, and this you must become, unlike the founders of this church, whom you trusted but whose behavior revealed that they themselves were never truly born again.” I imagine there will be sober moments and quivering silence when you preach from texts like “Without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14); “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8); and “Your righteous must exceed that of the Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20).

You and I both know that when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, it will not matter that we have pastored a church, or founded a megachurch, or even catalyzed a globally explosive megachurch movement. All will be uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must render an account (Hebrews 4:13). Many of the last will be first, and the first last (Matthew 19:30). We also know that Jesus will say to some confident Christian leaders on that day, “I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). God alone knows to whom he will say that. God forbid it should be you or I.

2. Know that you shepherd an undiscerning congregation.

A pastor ought not insult his flock. (Except, perhaps, when he has no choice – as when St. Paul ripped into the churches at Galatia and Corinth.) We must lead gently, patiently, and, like our Lord, never break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick. But pastoral kindness must not be allowed to stifle galling truths. And it is a galling truth that the long-standing congregation at Willow Creek has been brutally compromised. I can prove that by the following.

Go to YouTube and watch the clip of Bill Hybels leading an ovation for Gilbert Bilezikian at the United Center in Chicago at Willow Creek’s 40th anniversary celebration. (I’m afraid I can’t link to the clip here, but it is very easy to find.) During that extravaganza, Hybels asked everyone to stand as he lauded what he called “our one and only true legend from Willow Creek Church.” Chicago Bulls' theme music played, shafts of light beamed across the darkened stadium, a huge banner of Bilezikian’s image unfurled from the rafters, and a spotlight picked out the man himself as raucous cheers erupted from thousands.

This gaudy elevation of a man is so alien to the spirit of Christ that it is unrecognizable as Christianity. It belongs in the realm of paganism, not Christendom. Delicate characterizations like “inappropriate” or “a bit over the top” will not do here: this was a stomach-turning monstrosity. Denounce it for what it is, a vile, putrid, demonic, idolatrous stench in the nostrils of God.

It would be uncharitable - and certainly wrong - to say that no true Christian participated in that ceremony or remained in the church afterward. But it is entirely accurate to say that no spiritually discerning Christian remained at Willow Creek after that. How could they? How could any Spirit-filled person who loves Jesus and whose mind is saturated with Holy Scripture stay in a church that produces such an abomination in public?

The congregation you inherit – at least with regard to those who have been at Willow Creek for some years – witnessed what you just saw on YouTube and did not flee in sorrow and disgust and outrage. Unless the core at Willow Creek has matured dramatically in the past few years, then (I don't know a feelings-sparing way of saying this) they are spiritually infantile. The mature in Christ all said “Enough is enough” a long time ago.

I do not envy you. Your task is humanly impossible. Infants can grow, fools can learn wisdom, sleepers can awaken, and the deceived can be enlightened. But it is a hard, hard process, and it will take time and prayer and patience and many tears to build a clear-springing fountain atop the contaminated groundwater of Willow Creek.

3. Preach the Word.

“Preach the Word” – well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? So let me be specific with a practical suggestion.

Let the very first words out of your mouth the moment you assume the pulpit at Willow Creek be “Our Scripture text is” and then read the text. When you are done reading it, say “This is the Word of God,” and then start preaching from the first verse of your text (For example: "Verse 1 introduces us to a man named Nicodemus...")

Stun the congregation by not introducing yourself. Not even your name. Do not tell us about your wife and kids, your hobbies, what sports teams you root for, how you went to college nearby, how privileged you feel to take on this ministry, how hard it was to say goodbye to your friends in Michigan, what it was like to pack up your belongings, how unprecedented it is to begin serving in the wake of a pandemic, how thankful you are to the elders for their faithful service during these challenging times. And so and so on. None of that. Bite your lip till it bleeds to keep yourself from indulging in that typically wearisome blather.

I know that what I am saying seems radical to the point of insanity. But I press the point nonetheless. Take everything that every new pastor of a big church has ever said in his opening comments, throw it in a garbage can, kick it a thousand miles away, and just start preaching the Word. Rivet in your mind the words of St. Paul when he arrived in Corinth: “I resolved to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified” (I Corinthians 2:2). Also the plea of some Greeks who said to Philip, “We want to see Jesus” (John 12:21). Not you. Jesus.

Willow Creek does not need leadership. It needs the Word of God faithfully preached and sincerely lived out in the lives of proclaimers who seek to magnify Christ while maintaining an invisibility through which he can shine.

God be with you.

Imagine the Vacuity of Celebrity Religion

Many years ago I heard a young seminarian preach a sermon where he told us how great his dad was, and as evidence of the man’s goodness he said, “I know that Dad loves me so much that he would even lay down his life for me.” He got emotional as he said that, so I figured it would have been uncharitable of me to tell him afterward, “Look, any father would give up his life for his child. How despicable would a man have to be NOT to do that? Only an evil coward would refuse to die for his son! All you really said there was that your dad is a minimally decent human being.” I also did not deliver the knockout blow (recalling the old playground taunt “My-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad”) with, “Maybe your dad would have died for you, but my dad would have died for a stranger.”

(Rest in God, Lowell David Lundquist)

The memory of that sermon came to mind a few days ago as I watched Gal Gadot’s spliced-together video of celebrities singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It’s their secular “Amazing Grace,” and I think they mean it to be comforting. I’m not a fan of the song, which is no surprise given that I’m a Christian and the song launches its attack on Christianity from the get-go with the words “Imagine there’s no heaven.” But that’s not the only problem with the song. “Imagine all the people living for today,” Lennon wrote. Actually I don’t have to imagine that – I see it all the time. In fact, a few weeks ago we all saw images of lots and lots of young people “living for today” on the beaches of Florida - spring breakers partying hard and brutally ignoring tomorrow’s potentially lethal consequences for themselves and countless others.

Let me be blunt (because nuance is dull, and, in this case, inappropriate): “Living for today” is selfish, contemptible, irresponsible and cruel. People who “live for today” are as despicable as men who won’t give their lives for their children. Wise, kind, compassionate and good individuals live for tomorrow. They consider the consequences of their actions in the moment and govern their behavior (even to the point of curbing powerful personal impulses) for the sake of future good - even the good of generations yet unborn. Living for today is Satanic.

Not that being Satanic was much of an issue for the Lennonists on the beaches of Florida. They don’t believe in Satan, nor in a “hell below us” where the consequences of wickedness might follow them past the grave.

I won’t bother contending with Lennon’s dream of a future where there’s “no religion, too.” Atheists Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins think that religion is very bad for humanity while atheists Jonathan Haidt and Matthew Parris think it is very good. I’ll sit on the sidelines and let atheists go at each other with that in-house debate. For me the issue is simpler: if the Christian religion is true then I’ll hold on to it even if it’s bad for me; if it’s false, then I’ll discard it even if it is more useful than sliced bread and more pleasant than conjugal embrace.

But I would like to aim my guns at a line in the song that is easily passed over – in fact I hadn’t given it any thought myself until alerted to it by some preacher:

Nothing to kill or die for

Nothing to kill for? Sounds good to me. Sign me up for that future. I never want to kill anybody or feel that I have to. But nothing to die for? That’s another story. That’s completely different.

Imagine being so devoid of love that there was no one for whom you would lay down your life. Not even your own son or daughter! Imagine a life so empty of purpose that there was no cause for which you would put your life in jeopardy. Heroes through the ages have put their lives in play, and sometimes lost them, because they were courageously (and even joyously!) devoted to something greater than themselves. From Nathan Hale, who before his execution was reported to have said, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” to the firemen who rushed toward the inferno of the World Trade Center, to present-day health care workers who battle Covid-19, we rightly celebrate those who “love not their lives unto death” but who offer them up for the sake of a good beyond their own.

Of course one might say, “But Paul, you yourself would say that in heaven there’s nothing to die for!” Right – but remember, John Lennon didn’t believe in heaven. His song starts off with the premise that there is no such place. This world - however enlightened and woke - is the sum-total best of what a Lennonite could ever hope for. And in this world, there is death.

As long as we live in a world with death, there will be things (and people) that good and worthy individuals will die for. They will volunteer to lose their lives so that others won't. They will say, for example, “As the respirators run short, please give mine to somebody else.”

Lennon’s dream of having nothing to die for places oneself at the center of the universe - makes of oneself a king whose life is of absolute value and must not be sacrificed for anything or anyone. This elevation of self and consequent devaluation of everything else is cold, loveless, selfish and sad. Do yourself a favor, and do not imagine into existence a hellish future where you seat yourself on a throne of your own contrivance and would not descend from it to sacrifice yourself even to save the world. On this Good Friday, take instead, into your deepest mind and soul, the humbling truth that the only real King of the universe did in fact step down from his throne in order to die on behalf of selfish sinners who were doing their best to imagine him away.

For Penn Jillette, Who Rapes And Kills Everyone He Wants To

Magician Penn Jillette tells the story of taking a date to hear a lecture by a fellow atheist. When the speaker finished his talk and opened the floor to questions, the person next to Jillette’s date asked, “Well if there’s no God, what’s to stop me from raping and killing everyone around me?” Jillette’s friend raised her hand and quipped, “May I change my seat?”

Jillette says he gets the “What’s-to-keep-you-from-raping-and-killing” question all the time from religious people. It is a ham-fisted challenge to atheism, and Jillette has no trouble crushing it with rhetorical roundhouses. For example: “My answer is: I do rape all I want,” he told an interviewer. “And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to…rape you. You know what I mean?”

Yes, I do know what you mean, Mr. Jillette. You and I share a peaceful disposition. Neither of us wants, or has ever wanted, to rape or kill anybody. And we both find it disturbing that there are people who want to do those things. I suspect we also share a delight in stomping on ill-thought challenges to our philosophical positions with rhetoric that provokes laughter and applause from people who already agree with us. I heard that laughter from another interviewer to whom you made the same point, and I have seen the chorus of glad approvals in various forums from people who feel you have effectively dismantled a challenge that is silly, unconvincing, and self-indicting.

I would like to take your answer seriously though, because even if it was only intended as a shoot-from-the-hip “gotcha” it still merits thoughtful consideration. Your rape-and-murder rant (I don’t mean “rant” pejoratively – I love a good rant, and I do it all I want) gets to the heart of some things I hold dear about theism and moral reasoning.

I wish that rape and murder did not exist and that nobody wanted to do them. But they do exist, and the urges to commit them are more widespread than the acts themselves. This is a horrible fact, and no wishing or preaching can make it go away. Given that there are people out there who would rape and kill if they could, don’t you want them to believe there is a righteous God who would punish them (whether now or in the afterlife) for doing such things? I sure do. I want all potential murderer/rapists to become Christian theists - and heaven help us if they deconvert. You may not need a guardrail God to keep you on the narrow path of nonviolence and sexual benevolence. But some people do. They just do. The last thing they need to absorb into their twisted minds is a contempt for quivering faith in a holy God.

I agree with you that the implication that one might go on a killing raping rampage without a God to hold one in check is “the most self-damning thing I can imagine.” I would go further and say that self-damnation is an ancient and hallowed practice in Christian thought, and you are not the first to find it alienating and repulsive. We Christians are instructed to be cynical of human nature and deeply distrustful of ourselves. The natural self is “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9) and in need of daily crucifixion (Luke 9:23). St. Paul said “I know that nothing good dwells in me" (Romans 7:18). St. Peter said to Jesus, “Depart from me, I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Isaiah said, “Woe is me, for I am condemned” (Isaiah 6:5). King David said, “I have been a sinner since my conception” (Psalm 51:5). Job said, “I despise myself" (Job 42:6). And so on and so on. Jesus even told a parable where the hero is not the man who congratulated himself on how good he was but the self-damning humble penitent who stared at his shoes and said, “God be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

In the Christian tradition we are even taught to recoil from seemingly innocent statements like, “I’m glad I am not as twisted as that violent pervert.” Instead, we fear the possibility - however remote - that under different circumstances we might find ourselves in the shoes and uniform of a Nazi prison guard, and so we tremble, and plead God’s mercy. “There but for the grace of God go I.” “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” We learn sober lessons from countless fallen comrades, and some of us pray earnestly, as instructed by Jesus, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

When you tell a devout Christian that he has let slip an uncomfortably revealing and self-damning implication, I’m pretty sure he has already beaten you to that point.

But somehow everybody, Christian or not, manages, at times, not to do bad things. Why do we refrain from them? In the extreme case of rape and murder, you say you don’t do them because you don’t want to. I am sure that is true. I am also sure that that cannot be your only reason. You must have a back-up motivation. If you didn’t, then your date at the atheist lecture would have wanted to change her seat not because of the perversely oriented Christian on her right but because of the “I-do-whatever-I-want” atheist on her left.

Our desires change. They do not remain consistent over the course of a lifetime. Again, neither you nor I have ever wanted to kill or rape anybody. But what if – horror of horrors! God forbid! Perish the thought! – that were to change tomorrow? What then is our back-up motivation for doing good and not evil? Do we have one? Must the safety and well-being of our neighbors remain forever dependent upon the current state of our desires – amiable and innocuous though they have been till now?

Life experience has taught me the scorpion sting of that question. Because I have known people who broke bad - people who behaved well in their 20s and 30s but horribly in their 40s and 50s. In probing the mystery of middle-aged moral disintegration, one suggestion that I have heard deserves attention. There exist people who simply do what they want, and desire is their true moral lodestone. That is not a problem as long as the things that they desire are good. But what if their desires turn bad? Well, then they do bad things – and they do them with a transition that is shocking to us but seamless to them because their internal motivation remained constant throughout. I think for example of a couple physicians who served in far-off lands in the developing world, and were heroes to the needy. And then both coldly dumped their faithful wives when a younger prettier version came along - and neither man could understand why people made such a big deal about it. One way of understanding their behavior is to say that when they wanted to do something heroic and benevolent, they did; and when they wanted to do something dastardly and cruel, well, they did that too. Their moral compass never budged an inch from “I do what I want.”

It is a feature of Christian morality - and, I would argue, of universal ethical behavior – that sometimes we must do what we don’t want to do, and sometimes we must not do what we want to do. Put starkly, our desires are a moral irrelevance. Sometimes they correspond to the good and sometimes they don’t. When they do, all is happy and sweet. When they don’t, it becomes a duty to adjust them, to make them fit, to exercise our will to see if we can desire differently. But whether we succeed in that effort of the will or not, the good remains just as it was before, and does not give a hoot about our desires.

This fixed, immutable nature of good – sometimes affirming us, sometimes condemning us, sometimes standing with our desires and sometimes against them, always in relation to physical nature but never reducible to it – is an unavoidable Fact that has led many a reluctant soul to conclude that a righteous Creator is the author of it. Some even give in and allow that truth to change their hearts and govern their thoughts - like former atheist C. S. Lewis, who came to theistic faith “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape.” That is, they come to believe in God not because they want to believe in him, but despite the fact that they would rather not.

Why Is My Atheist Son More Honest Than Ravi Zacharias?

My son ordered and ate a shawarma wrap, and when he went to pay for it with his debit card the card reader was down. The proprietor asked if he had cash, and he didn’t. So Peter said he would pay for it the next time he came in.

It wasn’t an establishment that he normally visited. But he came back later anyway, and when he did he told the proprietor to add 10 bucks onto his bill for the shawarma he had been unable to pay for previously. The man had forgotten about it, and did not seem to register what Peter was saying. So Peter explained it to him again, and my modestly-resourced, school-debt-laden son payed what he owed and walked away clean.

My son does not share my faith in God. But I rejoice in his honesty.

Peter’s shawarma incident came to mind as I contemplated the disquieting news of blatant lies perpetrated and maintained as policy on the part of evangelical organizations Focus on the Family (FOTF) Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, (RZIM), and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA). It has recently come to light that FOTF represents itself to the IRS as a church, and RZIM and BGEA represent themselves as “associations of churches” (commonly known as denominations). These are lies. FOTF is not a church, and RZIM and BGEA are not denominations.

The motive for the lie is contested. A cynical possibility suggests itself: churches and denominations are not required, like other non-profits, to submit 990 forms that reveal the salaries of their pastors and executives. As a “church” or “denomination”, RZIM, BGEA and FOTF need not reveal how much they pay their respective presidents Ravi Zacharias, Franklin Graham, and Jim Daley. It is known to be a lot of money though. These men have gotten very rich off of Christian ministry.

Of course, none of these organizations has come out and said, “You got us. We decided to call ourselves churches so as to have the cover of IRS law that would keep donors from discovering how wealthy their gifts were making our executives.” Instead, they have presented less sinister-sounding motives. FOTF said it filed as a church to protect the anonymity of its donors, and to avoid having to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s mandate on coverage for contraception and other regulations. The BGEA said it wanted to avoid costs associated with filing 990s. RZIM said they were doing it because the BGEA and other organizations were doing it.

Let’s assume for the moment that these self-reported motivations are accurate (Gosh, it never occurred to us that now we wouldn’t have to report executive salaries! Why, that’s just an unintended consequence!). Fine. Let us say that we accept that. But the point stands. They are all still lying about their organizational status. Whatever their motive, it’s wrong to lie. Didn’t their parents teach them that? I haven’t (yet) gotten my atheist son to believe in God, but I am thankful to the God he refuses to acknowledge that a standard of integrity has filtered into him, and remains, and shows signs of its presence in a matter as simple as paying for fast food.

Christians must abide by the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and plain dealing. Those who do not do so must be held accountable by those who do. We Christians who value honesty must never broaden the platforms or amplify the voices of men and women who lie.

As I did a little digging in preparation for this essay I came across publically available evidence of the long history of lying on the part of noted Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. His lies have been constant, deliberate, repeated, self-aggrandizing, well-documented, and utterly ministry-disqualifying. I maintain that any honest soul will agree with me wholeheartedly less than 20 minutes from now after simply watching the YouTube video “Lying For Lord Or Self? Hard Questions For Ravi Zacharias.” That video will lead you to others with even more damning evidence, but it is sufficient by itself to prove that Zacharias - like Bill Hybels and James MacDonald - is not a man of God. If you want to persuade an atheist of God’s reality, the worst thing you can do is give her a book by Ravi Zacharias. She will Google his name, discover his patterns of deceit, and have yet another excuse for being confirmed in her belief that God does not exist.

Zacharias is currently scheduled to speak in September at the Sing! 2020 conference in Nashville hosted by Keith and Kristyn Getty. I don’t know the Gettys, but I love them and their music and have no reason to doubt the authenticity of their Christian experience and testimony. My wife and I had the Getty/Townsend hymn “In Christ Alone” sung at our wedding. Are the Gettys uninformed about Zacharias’ disqualifying character issues? Can someone tell them? If the Gettys could spend just half an hour surveying the easily accessible information about Zacharias’ dishonesty and not in horror disinvite him to their conference, then with the deepest sadness of heart I will have to conclude, “I thought we were on the same page. I thought we were kindred spirits. I guess not.” Please, please, please, Gettys – not you too?

I have no definitive answer as to why my unbelieving son is more honest than celebrated apologist Ravi Zacharias. The question I pose in the title of this essay is rhetorical. But it is worth noting in passing that when a Christian is exposed as a habitual self-serving liar, there are people like me who speak up and say, “He’s not a real Christian.” But when an atheist lies, do his fellow atheists ever say, “There’s our proof – he’s not a real atheist”? I believe it would be wise to contemplate reasons for that disparity.

Meanwhile, fellow Christians, take a moment also to contemplate, in reverence and holy fear, this quote I read years ago in a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon:

If God has not made you honest, he has not saved your soul.

Followership

On a spring day during my junior year of high school my father dropped dead at work while fixing a radio. His last words reflected his cheerful stoicism: “Oh, it must have been something I ate.”

That was a Thursday. On Sunday the pastor of our church lauded Dad in the sermon, and revealed something that surprised me. “Whenever we took nominations for elder,” said Pastor Hutt, “Lowell Lundquist was at the top of everyone’s list.” But when he asked Dad to serve as elder, Dad would demur, saying, “I’m not a leader.”

Dad never told us that everybody wanted him to be an elder. That’s not the kind of thing he would have placarded. But I think he was wise to decline the honor of eldership. He wasn’t a natural leader. Control, influence, and power did not appeal to him, and he had little instinct for wielding authority. He could take orders but fumbled at giving them. He kept busy working and serving and lending support with diligence and goodwill and an easy smile. To lead effectively you may need to be a jerk sometimes, and Dad didn’t know how to be a jerk.

If you were a humble pastor trying to shepherd a church in good faith, you would kill to have Lowell Lundquist in your congregation.

Dad is my personal answer to the Leadership epidemic that has so enthralled the heart of evangelicalism in the last 30 years. I must step lightly here, because some of my best friends are leaders. And several colleagues whom I hold in high regard actually found value in those Willow Creek leadership extravaganzas that always made me want to barf. So, with a respectful nod to leadership-haunted friends, I just want to say, look, enough is enough. “Leadership” in the evangelical world has so exceeded its rightful bounds of emphasis and value relative to other Christian themes that it’s high time to rein it in. Boo leadership. Hooray followership.

We can’t all lead. Many of us are either morally or temperamentally unfit for it. It’s no shame to be temperamentally unfit for leadership. It is a shame to be morally unfit for anything.

Among the things that Willow Creek did wrong over the last few decades was to make an idol out of leadership. By 2000 the idolatry was so blatant that disgraced sexual predator Bill Clinton was invited to address leaders and wannabe leaders at the annual summit in Barrington. (Well, he’s a lying cad, but the important thing is, Oh, what a leader!) Founding Pastor (and similarly disgraced sexual predator) Bill Hybels caught flack for inviting Clinton then, and many godly people left. One who didn’t leave was co-founder (and, yes, again, disgraced sexual predator) Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian - the Steve Wozniak to Hybels’ Steve Jobs – whom Hybels elevated to sainthood status by unfurling a huge Bilezikian banner and leading a thunderous standing ovation for the scholar/pervert at the United Center in 2015 at the church’s 40th anniversary celebration.

Clinton, Hybels and Bilezikian are all despicable men who, for decades, thrust their middle fingers in the face of God and despised the call to holiness. But they were leaders, you see. You have to give them that, right? They sure could lead! And I respond with a paraphrase of St. Peter’s words to Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8:20, “To hell with you and your leadership.”

At the "No More Silence" Conference in September 2019, former Willow Creek staff member Scott Dyer outlined in painful detail the strategy by which Hybels sought to pry Scott’s wife Vonda away from him. “He called me a B player and told her that she was an A player,” Scott said. Hybels suggested “She was a leader and I wasn’t, which at Willow Creek was about the worst thing that you could say about someone.”

Exactly. Scott Dyer understood all too well the culture of that place. The great sin was that of being perceived as having failed to lead. The disordered love and thirst for leadership poisoned the spiritual air of Willow Creek like mustard gas. I imagine that in such a setting a humble man like Lowell Lundquist would have been regarded as potential cuckold fodder.

After telling us on that Sunday of mourning in March of 1980 that Dad didn’t regard himself as a leader, Pastor Hutt continued, “Actually, Lowell knew what real leadership was all about. Jesus said, 'Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.' Lowell was everyone’s servant. So he was greatest leader of all.”

There it is. Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. Blessed are those who, like my father, quietly follow, and follow, and follow, and never have the faintest clue that they are leading all the way.

Open Letter To Julie Roys

I thank God for you.

Your work exposing evangelical corruption is a godsend. May God prosper your ministry. I want all Christians to read your blog and follow your updates and listen with rapt attention to the talk you gave at Restore Chicago.

I know you have paid a heavy price investigating sin in churches like Harvest Bible Chapel and Willow Creek and in institutions like Moody Bible institute, Liberty University, and the Evangelical Counsel for Financial Accountability. And I know that this work came to you unbidden, that it is endless till Christ comes, and that you will need a special measure of grace to endure in tasks that, by the mercy of God, will lead to reform.

So thank you, I thank God for you, and I pray for you.

You have better things to do with your time than read the musings of a pastor-turned-manual-laborer on the evils besetting local expressions of Evangelicalism. But even if this essay never reaches your eyes and is only skimmed by a few friends of mine, it still seemed right to address it to you.

After missionary work in Colombia with Wycliffe I pastored two Chicago-area dying churches that ultimately failed. Many pastors here can tell you that, broadly speaking, when people left our churches in the 1990s they went to Willow Creek, and when they left in the 2000s they went to Harvest Bible Chapel (or to one of those churches’ satellites.) In smaller churches these people taught Sunday School or played the piano or served as deacons, but at Willow Creek and Harvest they typically sat in the audience and watched the show. While that sounds harsh, I’m afraid I know whereof I speak and can cite examples.

Willow Creek and Harvest imploded over the last year or so as the appalling behavior of their celebrity pastors Bill Hybels and James MacDonald became known. But these megachurches had been undermining other churches too for decades. As recently as two years ago a former elder at the small church I attended openly criticized the pastor and left for Willow Creek, and an influential deacon advised the pastor to listen to a message by James MacDonald to know what a good sermon sounded like. That deacon left too. The pastor is a friend of mine, and he is godly, humble, soft-spoken, wise, and theologically astute and orthodox. But as numbers dwindled and offerings declined the church let him go, and now he struggles to find a career. I offered to get him in at the chemical factory where I work, but he said he will need to make more money than that to support his wife and three young children, and I’m sure he’s right.

Church death and ministerial failure (I don’t mean moral failure but just the mundane failure to make a living) are complex phenomena with multiple causes that are all subject to the will of a sovereign God. That said, it can still be fairly observed that anyone who tried to pastor a church in the Chicago area in the past 30 years felt the influence of Willow Creek and Harvest like the manager of a Mom-and-Pop store feels the influence of Walmart and Amazon. Two near-orbiting energy-draining black holes.

I don’t mind the collapse of some churches and the growth of others as long as the gospel is faithfully preached and the spirit of Christ is earnestly manifested in the lives of its proclaimers. But such was not the case at Willow Creek and Harvest. I heard enough of Hybel’s teaching to perceive that the center of it was not Christ crucified but “Leadership” (or, more cynically, “Power and Influence”). With MacDonald it was simple greed and self-promotion.

But even where the preaching of these two men sometimes got it right, their personal lives were hopelessly corrupt. Both men lied, constantly, for years. Hybels seduced or tried to seduce multiple women – even to the point of deliberately alienating them from their husbands, and MacDonald’s hostile aggression makes the word “bullying” seem too mild a term for it. While allegations that MacDonald tried to hire an assassin on two separate occasions have yet to be confirmed by police, the character of MacDonald as revealed by intimate acquaintances renders these charges disturbingly credible. When confronted and exposed, both men denied everything, sought to discredit and destroy their accusers, and to this day have refused to repent, submit to discipline, or even acknowledge wrongdoing in any substantial way.

So let us think the unthinkable. The two largest and most influential churches in the Chicago area were led, for decades, by unregenerate men - damned souls, enemies of the cross of Christ who masqueraded as Christian brothers and in so doing sucked dry legitimate ministries and gave despisers of the faith a reason to scoff.

It may be objected that I dare not judge the hearts of men, and that I cannot set myself up as the arbiter of their eternal destinies. Fair enough. Hybels and MacDonald do not answer to me. To their own Master they stand or fall. Someday they and all other fallen preachers like Ted Haggard and Mark Driscoll and Perry Noble and Tullian Tchividjian – along with the rest of us - will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and render an account of deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. The prospect of standing before Jesus fills me with hope because of his mercy but also with dread because of my sin. Outraged righteously indignant accusers like you and me must ever look first to ourselves.

But Scriptural warnings not to judge lest we be judged (Matthew 7:1), to consider ourselves lest we also be tempted (Galatians 6:1), and to take heed lest we fall (1 Corinthians 10:12) must be weighed against companion Scriptures that say we will know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16), that we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God (1 John 4:1), and that we must hand wicked professing Christians over to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:20) and refuse to sit at the same table with them (1 Corinthians 5:11). Among the reasons why “reconciliation” with Hybels or MacDonald is wrongheaded is that until these men acknowledge that they are not Christians (as Joshua Harris did), or repent, then fellowship with them is forbidden in the strongest terms. A couple months ago James MacDonald was welcomed into fellowship and allowed to teach at a retreat of New Life Covenant Church. By welcoming MacDonald, New Life Covenant revealed itself to be a fake church, and true Christians must flee it.

New Life Covenant says that it has 17,000 attendees.

In any institution or assembly there are always a few people whose behavior cries out for judgment, and recalcitrant transgressors must be fired, excommunicated, exiled, impeached, imprisoned or what-have-you. No community has ever been free of lethal contaminants. Even Jesus had Judas among his 12 disciples. But it seems that there is a certain point, a critical mass of corruption, beyond which you can no longer pick the few bad apples out of the barrel but have to start over with a new barrel. In 1900 engineers reversed the course of a Chicago River that had made a sewer of Lake Michigan and filled the city with stench and disease – but in 1986 no one could decontaminate Chernobyl. That city had to be abandoned in haste. I wonder: Is the state of evangelicalism today, in the form practiced by its biggest churches, more like Chicago of the 19th century or Chernobyl of the 20th?

I myself am as much a product of Chicago-area evangelicalism as anybody. My parents met and married at Moody Church, and I studied Bible at Wheaton College and ministry at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Though I’m no expert in anything and have never gravitated toward the center of any circle of influence, perhaps I’ve been around long enough to gain some sense of the spiritual landscape in the sector of Christendom with which I have been most closely associated. There is no escaping the conclusion that it’s just bad around here, really really bad, catastrophically bad, and the need for reform is critical. Though Hybels and MacDonald are gone, for example, their infection remains and their stench lingers. Anyone with biblical discernment who reads the Pastoral Search document that Willow Creek put out to find Hybels’ replacement can only shudder and say, “Oh for goodness’ sake, Willow Creekans, didn’t you learn anything?” And though MacDonald has rightly been fired and declared unfit for ministry, we still have not been entirely relieved - as you well know - of greedy belligerents who flourished in his shadow. Reform efforts remain compromised, and we’re still slouching toward Chernobyl.

I conclude my cup-half-empty lament with four items of input. For what they’re worth.

1) Keep slamming corruption. The work seems endless and hopeless, the bailing of a vast sea with one little bucket. But it must be done. For the love of God and for the sake of faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, it must be done. Every variety of ministry has its soul-wearying elements, its temptations to forebear - but it seems that the ministry of prophetic whistle-blowing is especially prone to them. You succeed in cutting out a tumor only to find that it has metastasized. You uncover so much wickedness that you teeter on the edge of cynicism and blanket distrust. You come to doubt yourself and your own worthiness to critique (which is a good thing, but still unsettling to experience and a potential silencer of righteous rebuke.) Your mind becomes so occupied with the muck of corruption that you find yourself gasping for spiritual air – as C. S. Lewis did when he wrote The Screwtape Letters and observed, “It almost smothered me before I was done.” But we’re all glad Lewis persevered through that dark cloud and finished the work. As God so calls you, do likewise. Do not grow weary in well doing.

2) Pray for cleansing and revival and reformation, and push for it in public prayers. Of course, this should go without saying. But I have been to enough evangelical prayer meetings and read through enough evangelical prayer lists to note with despair that they typically contain little more than references to physical ailments (“So-and-so is getting a hip replacement on Thursday”). So the prayers for renewal must be made deliberately. Urge them. By God’s grace I’ll do so myself tomorrow when my Sunday School teacher asks for prayer requests.

3) Do your part to dump the megachurch multisite model. I do not believe that evangelicalism per se is irredeemable. I am, and will remain, an evangelical Christian because I believe that the traditional evangelical understanding of reality is true, and evangelicalism’s interpretation of Scripture is best among the varying traditions of Christendom. I respect but dissent from the decisions of friends who got fed up with evangelicalism as they experienced it and fled to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

To me the crisis of Western evangelicalism lies not in its traditional theology but in its de facto ecclesiology. A church is a gathering of God’s people in Christ, not a stadium with a star celebrity whose gifts and charisma attract a crowd. Megachurches of this model are seedbeds of spiritual corruption. Flee them. Never attend a church where the pastor lives lavishly, publishes (that is, has ghostwritten for him) bestsellers, leads cruises, gets interviewed by Oprah, has the ear of a president, or projects his image onto a screen so casual attendees in the attached coffee shop can catch the wave of his spiritual energy. How many of these celebrity shepherds have to be unmasked as frauds before evangelical sheep will realize that the system is unbiblical and corrupt? I will state the matter with unapologetic boldness: All multisite megachurches are spiritual Chernobyls. Evangelicalism is redeemable but megachurches are not. Run away. Attend a church where some humble, unassuming servant of God preaches verse-by-verse through the pages of Holy Scripture.

4) This last one is oddly specific. Go to YouTube and listen to D. A. Carson’s message “Leaning Forward In The Dark: A Failed Reformation. Nehemiah 13.” I do not know any better guide to the perils involved in seeking renewal and reformation among the people of God.