September 30, 2024 • 41 mins
A podcast to help believers renew their minds and reform their hearts.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to The Thinking Tree, a podcast to help believers renew their minds and reform
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their hearts.
I'm Adam Sanchez.
And I'm Jeff No.
And today we are discussing Christians in media.
All right, we're back here with another episode of The Thinking Tree, and today a very interesting
topic, one that we have not shied away from for many years.
(00:24):
It's true.
We've talked about this one going back to the underground, our old legacy TV, YouTube
TV show from COVID times.
But today we want to talk about Christians in media, and specifically we're looking
at Christians in popular culture media, not just the nature of Christians in music or
other forms of media, but really specific here.
(00:47):
So we have a question, and then we'll work it out.
The question for today is, how should Christians think about and respond to supposed Christian
leaders in media?
I like the way you said supposed.
I got to show the hand there.
I got to show it.
Right.
And the rub on this question is that we assume that if somebody has a public platform, that
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they must be a leader of some capacity, somebody to listen to, somebody to trust.
Right.
But that doesn't always equate.
Not only that, but even if they say they're a Christian, it doesn't always mean they're
Christian.
And we're going to talk about that.
Right?
We're going to talk about that.
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bit of context here in our modern era.
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It's very unique.
If we think about Christians in the past, to be popular or part of culture, you would
have to be published.
You would have to have some kind of platform to be on.
And publish is even still more of a modern thing with the printing press.
That wasn't a thing a thousand years ago.
That's a thing within the last couple hundred years to have been published.
But today there's such an immense amount of media surrounding people.
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I mean, here we are even.
We're podcasting.
We have this rig here that Alex and Laura and Glenn helped create that you can go back
in season one and listen to how that came about.
But we have this immense ability to put thoughts out there.
Right.
On the interwebs.
Right.
On the interwebs and then in the cloud and in our hands, which is insane.
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But before even podcasts were really a big thing, blogs were a big thing.
And even writing and articles.
And that's kind of really more of the genesis of, or the beginning of Christians in more
modern media.
Right.
And this even goes back to Puritan days where Christians would write in the newspapers and
the local periodicals.
They would put out thoughts there and they would put out encouraging.
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This goes back even to the day of Spurgeon.
Spurgeon would write publicly.
Yeah.
And he would write public letters.
Yep.
Even our great Martin Luther.
Yep.
Was a letter writer to the public in many ways.
So this history of Christians engaging is not abnormal, but it is super intense these
days.
It's the proliferation of so many different types of platforms.
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And so now, and like you said, anybody with a rig now has a voice.
That didn't used to be the way it was, right?
If you were preaching in a church, you'd been qualified to do that.
If you were leading a denomination, you'd be qualified to do that.
If you were writing a Christian book, usually the publisher would make sure that you're
qualified to do that.
Yeah, some kind of it.
But today, yeah, today it's just, it's a free for all.
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So that requires greater discernment on our part.
And that's the thing, right?
That's the thing we're going to keep coming back to today.
When we look at the landscape today, there are a couple of areas or a couple of places,
I would say, where we may be prone to give more leeway to people that we might rethink
that after this episode, right?
(03:46):
On some of those.
One of those, and I know I've spoken out about it, I think you have too as well on our underground
episode, we were trying to remember years ago, but we've spoken about some of these
authors on like the Gospel Coalition who may have a platform, they may have a voice, but
we might question whether we should be listening to them.
Right.
And the Gospel Coalition started off well.
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D.A. Carson was one of the founders.
He's one of the great theologians of our time.
He's very solid.
And at the time, Tim Keller was his partner in that.
And Keller, you know, towards the end of his life, he definitely sort of veered off in
a funny way.
But at the time that the Gospel Coalition was founded, I think you and I and all of
our elders were like, we love this site.
There's some great stuff here.
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And I know Moller, Moller was writing for there.
There's a whole bunch of really solid guys who've written in the past for the Gospel
Coalition.
But like so many things over time, they tend to they tend to veer more liberal.
And the Gospel Coalition started moving into what we've talked about it here on this podcast,
the winsome movement.
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Right.
Yeah.
Social justice.
They started leaning into some things that that sort of perked our ears up and we thought,
hmm, there's some changes happening over there.
Yeah.
And I think it gets watered down over time.
Little leaven, leavens the whole lump.
That's the nature of things.
They typically don't get sharper.
They get worse.
They do.
And I think that's what you're describing the Gospel Coalition.
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There were a lot of really good, helpful resources early on from articles that they were writing,
even to video series they were producing that were helpful for Christian leaders and Christians
in general.
And then over the years, it really has seemed to water down.
I'll name another outlet that probably is far more watered down in nature and has been
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over the years, but Christianity Today.
Oh, yeah.
And that was, I mean, this has its roots back like 30 years ago.
Actually, more than that.
I believe it was in the mid 1950s, Billy Graham.
1950s.
I didn't even know it was that old.
Yeah.
And get this, Carl Henry was the original editor.
Really?
So those are some.
Here's an education for me now.
Yeah, right, right.
And Billy Graham, it was the evangelical flagship, you know, periodical that.
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Again, at a time when there wasn't all these different platforms, but it's where everybody
looked for a time.
Now, I'm not that old.
Yeah.
Well, I was going to say, do you remember those days, but you don't have to.
No, right.
I just remember growing up, you know, from the 80s, basically, Christianity Today was
the place that Christians would go to for how they should think about things, how they
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should think about policies, how they should think about, you know, different world cultural
movements.
But back then, you know, the, like the LGBTQ movement wasn't even an LGBTQ movement.
It was just, how do you think about AIDS and how do you think about gay people?
And those kinds of things were the big deal back then.
How do you deal with your friend who got remarried?
And those were, I mean, really, those were the things back then.
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Right, divorce, right, right.
Now it's very, very different, but very watered down.
Oh, so it's so liberal now.
There are now today, there are some authors that are sound trying to give an influence
to Christianity Today.
I'll name one of them, Ernie Baker has written some articles for them, but that does not
mean that the bulk of their articles are sound.
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It just means that every once in a while, you know, a broken clock can be right twice
a day kind of thing.
It's like that where there is some.
And so we can be thankful that there's a little bit of influence there, but by and large,
that is just not a helpful one.
What about, you know, Christians who are writing for secular news outlets?
I know you mentioned Tim Keller.
Yeah, Tim Keller has written for, I think, like the Atlantic and the New Yorker.
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He's written for secular news outlets many times, you know, kind of giving some reasoning
to that secular mind.
Yeah, David French is another big name.
Russell Moore, these guys have been, here's the thing.
If a periodical like the Atlantic reaches out and wants a, I'm doing air quotes now,
a Christian voice, you can guarantee that that Christian voice is not going to be anything
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that would line up with our brand of what we would call Christian.
Otherwise they wouldn't call them.
Right.
Because look, you and I are never going to get a call.
Anybody who thinks as we do, who teaches as we do, who believes in scripture the way we
do is never going to get a call from the Atlantic.
So when you see somebody, this is a Christian perspective in a magazine periodical that
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you know is anti-Christian.
You know that that piece that you're reading is going to be filled with error.
So that's interesting, right?
To be invited by such an outlet.
Because the questions that come to my mind is, well, what kind of fellowship are you
keeping?
Right.
To be in that kind of a circle, to be welcomed into that dynamic.
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And then you know you have to play by some unspoken number of rules.
Sure.
You know, don't cross this boundary, don't cross this line.
You just mentioned about the kind of the welcoming nature of Gospel Coalition.
For those outlets, there's an unwritten code that you can't be overly offended.
You have to fit the bill.
Right.
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You have to play the part.
You know the word we use?
That's called compromise.
You will have to compromise to write for our...
So if the LA Times called you or I for a comment on something, we would immediately go, hold
on a second.
Wait, what?
You know, what's going on here?
There's an angle, there's a spin.
We would be immediately skeptical.
But these guys, you know again, that's for them, it's a job.
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They're going to get paid for it.
They're going to increase their platform, their power, their influence.
So what's a little compromise, right?
Why do I need to speak the whole truth?
Right.
Can I give just a sprinkling of it instead of dousing them?
Because look, the business model for the Atlantic or any of these magazines, it's to draw eyeballs.
So they're not going to hire somebody who's going to write something that's going to turn
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people away.
So there you have it.
Maybe enough to be intriguing, right?
Enough to be a spectacle.
Right.
Like, oh, you know, what kind of, like when you have a zoo and you want to get a bunch
of people in, you get the animal that's exciting.
Yeah.
You know?
And so you build enough spectacle, get them in the door, but not dangerous.
You don't want to bring the whole truth because that might actually impact people.
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Isn't it funny how too, we as Christians, we get excited like, oh, there's a Christian
article in this magazine, in Time Magazine.
We get excited, we almost get amped up like, oh, finally we're going to-
Validation, right?
Yeah.
Somebody is going to represent us well.
And then we read it and go, oh, shoot.
Nope.
They didn't do it again.
That wasn't, let's go back to the Bible, right?
That's right.
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Exactly.
Yeah.
So I mean, this whole idea of even celebrity Christians beyond that of, you know, Christians
who make a platform on YouTube and maybe it started out well-meaning enough with just,
I don't know, filming their service or something, but then turns into having a name and a platform
for themselves.
Yep.
I think there's a danger in making the platform the goal versus what we would say in the context
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of local church, it's really souls, it's people.
Right.
Right?
When we think about how Paul ministered, we think about the example of Christ, the ultimate
example.
It was person by person.
It's a personal sacrifice for a person.
And yes, it's corporate in overall nature, but it is person by person.
That's how Paul ministered as an example of following Christ.
So we follow in those same footsteps which were the local churchmen, not big picture
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platform guys.
Not that there's anything wrong if God were to give a platform, but we're not chasing
it.
I think that's the big thing.
When we're talking about Christians in media, there's a danger of just chasing the platform
and chasing the name.
And again, I would just caution everybody listening, have a skeptical eye at this.
When you see somebody that, and oftentimes you get the immediate sense like, ah, there's
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something going on here.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this person with this mega platform.
And maybe he's a pastor, maybe he's a conference speaker guy.
Maybe he's part of a worship conglomerate.
That's a newer thing too.
Hillsong and Bethel and Elevation, all these worship conglomerates.
These guys become celebrities and they love the attention.
Right?
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So just be really careful.
When somebody has a big platform, make sure you have scrutinizing eyes.
Don't just swallow everything that's coming out of it because it's big and it's popular.
Just be really careful.
Well, let's keep on that theme about the dangers.
The dangers here, because we've discussed a little bit about how Christian leaders may
compromise to be in a secular news source, periodical article, something like that.
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There is the danger that power and influence have always been corrupting.
You mentioned it, wanting to have a voice and wanting to have a platform.
Those things, they bring compromise because we're seeking something other than the truth.
Something other than truth and love, if we're going to quote Paul out of Ephesians 4.
You mentioned as well that it can be monetarily beneficial.
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Money can come along with promoting even unbiblical views at times, potentially.
One of the things that came forward in the book, and we mentioned this book from the
beginning as helpful and just giving us some talking points for this leading up to this
election season, but from that book, Shepherds for Sale, one of the concepts that came forward
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was that there were many Christian leaders who were funded in some way.
Maybe not necessarily their direct pocket book of, I'm going to give you this to say
this.
Maybe not always so bold as that, but sometimes they were given money for their research initiatives,
for a book or for a conference that they wanted to hold.
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There was money exchange to be had to promote certain things.
I think that's one of the dangerous components there is when there's money behind anything.
And there always is.
And there always is.
Then people don't focus on what is true and right and commendable and honorable.
Now they trade, because you can't serve God and money is what God's word says.
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They trade what is true and what is honorable for something that's going to meet their own
agenda, which at times can be as simple as, and we're going to talk about this in the
next episode, but as promoting a COVID-19 vaccine.
It could be something like that where it's, hey, you have this influence, you have this
platform, we'll help you out to get the conference that you want.
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But can you just give this statement?
Can you just encourage people in this way?
For their good anyways.
So to always be wrapped up, kind of like the serpent did in the garden.
You'll be all knowing like God is, right?
It sounds good for a second.
Well, I mean, why did Satan fall?
What did Satan want?
He wanted power and influence, right?
He wanted it to be like the most high God.
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And so it's sort of the original sin.
It's the original problem that, and it's built into human nature.
We know it's our fallen nature.
And if I just look around, you see it.
It's actually, if you look into your own heart, you'll see it there too.
We love power.
We love influence.
And we love the applause of men.
We just do.
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And it's something that we talk about a lot at Oak Hill about fighting against that temptation.
You say it's about the approval of God, not the approval of others.
But you know, there's the old, the old, the famous saying power corrupts and absolute
power corrupts.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's just, it's who we are.
Right?
And it's funny when you dig into it, and this is true historically.
I think it's probably mostly true of Christian leaders, although I don't want to, I don't
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want to paint that brush too broadly.
When you look into the lives of great men, if you dig below the surface, beyond what
they just did that made them famous, you find they're not good men.
They're just not.
Most of them very abusive of others, tyrannical, use their power, lorded their power over others,
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just not kind people.
And I think that's probably true in some Christian circles as well.
These guys that get this power, that get this influence, if you dig deep, you'll find out
that there are issues.
Because if you're willing to compromise in what you'll say for that power and influence,
what else are you willing to compromise on in your life?
It's just a lack of integrity.
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So it wouldn't surprise me if you dig deeper, you're going to find those things.
Because that's just human nature.
It's who we are.
There's an interesting part of that where when you seek popularity, when you seek power
and influence, it has to be very lonely because you're sacrificing a lot to get there.
And you create structures around you that shield you from people.
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The questions that I would ask about celebrity, maybe celebrity is a bad word here, but popular
Christian leaders.
So Christian leaders that have a platform of some kind.
My question is always, who's surrounding them that's going to help them live out the one
another?
Who's surrounding them that's going to hold them accountable for how they live?
And the same things that you're talking about, who's going to hold them accountable for being
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tyrannical?
Who's going to help put them in check when they're being a jerk?
Who's going to love them enough to give them hard words at the right time to help them
go the right way?
We need that, that God has instituted the one another, he's instituted us within the
body to that end.
That's a good thing and it's a grace in the local church that we get to live that way
so that we don't go off the rails.
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There's stories after stories of Christian leaders, pastors, preachers, celebrities that
literally they go through life.
Everything's handed to them by staff, by assistants.
They're limousined all around.
Here's your talking points, they read it and they call themselves pastors.
And yet they don't know anyone.
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There's nobody to hold them in check.
Like you said, they're like the celebrity that is constantly being catered to.
And so they bounce around on the speaker circuit and they get paid big money to write books.
Then they don't write the books, they get other people to write chapters and they put
their name on the book.
For those of you listening out there, I hate to be this cynical, but you have to have your
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eyes open to what's really going on out there with this type of culture.
And that's why we're big, we are just massive fans of small local church.
Yes, yes.
Right?
Yeah, it is, you bring up those points and it's crazy how, I didn't know any of that
when I was younger.
It's just like, oh, they're an author and they're a pastor.
That's so great.
Right.
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And then you start, you go to some conferences and you see the game and then they start promoting
more conferences and you start seeing, oh, when are they at their church?
Right, right.
They're writing a lot and they're speaking a lot.
When are they shepherding?
When are they involved with their people?
What does that look like?
And then when are their people involved with them?
And so the rough party is even with a lot of these Christian leaders and it's unfortunate.
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We're not trying to talk about them just to defame people or to slander anyone, but they're
in the public and because of that and having a public platform, it opens them up to put
public scrutiny.
Yes.
It opens them up to public observation.
So they're no longer in the realm of, hey, you don't know him, don't say anything.
Now they put themselves at that place and said things publicly to the ether, just wide
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open, not to a targeted group of people.
Paul wrote to a targeted group of people in time and space and yes, we're beneficial.
We benefit of that today and we know that he's writing to the universal church as well,
but he still wrote to specific people.
These popular Christians in media, they often just blah and they just want it to go out
and hit whoever it hits and there's no concept of them speaking specifically to people, which
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is really anti-God.
God is very specific in his direction.
These Christian leaders often don't do that and this is what makes it difficult.
So now we're naming some names, we've named some already.
We'll name more by this episode, we'll name more next episode.
It's just going to happen, not because we're trying to be mean, but the nature is public
ministry gets public rebuke at times.
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And so in this, this is a rub where they've let it out and they're speaking and we're
not just saying, oh, this pastor said this at his church.
We're saying, oh, they put it out there in public.
They wrote an article to anyone and now it might need to be corrected.
Yeah, and they can often wrap the way they do things in biblical terms.
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That's the kind of scary thing too, because I mean, I'll put another name out there, Carl
Lentz is a cautionary tale for anybody who wants to grow, wants to go into ministry and
wants to build a big platform.
This is a guy that Hillsong, New York city, one of the fastest growing churches in America,
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absolute train wreck.
He's exactly the guy that I just described where everything is handed to him and he gets
up there on Sunday and uses his charisma and his looks to draw a massive audience.
And it just pumps up his ego, right?
And anybody that looked at that guy and watched the way he operated, every one of us looked
at and said, he's going for a fall.
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It's coming.
And I still see these guys.
I still see clips on social media and I look at it and go, it's just a matter of time.
You know, I watched a guy this last week and you know, I'm looking at him, super good looking
guy, must spend six days a week in the gym wearing a shirt that's too small.
He's up there bouncing around the stage doing like a Ted talk, but applying the Bible to
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it.
And I'm looking at it going, it's just a matter of time.
There's something going on there, right?
But boy, he's a celebrity.
People just flock to him.
Well, of course.
Yeah, because he's building his image.
It's a show at that point.
It is.
Yeah.
It's not for what he's saying.
It's how he's saying it.
Absolutely.
It's how people feel when they receive it.
It's not the truth.
It's not the actual message.
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Yeah, I think so if we were to look at two kind of extremes on this popularity spectrum,
there's that one that you just described.
The guys who are working out all the time, practicing MMA, which you're like as a pastor,
do you really?
Anyways, you can't even win a headlock, but at least as far as I've seen, maybe some good
benefit from that.
But they're working out, they're focused on the fancy clothes, you know, they're wearing
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Gucci and all these other things.
The sneakers this guy had on were amazing.
Yeah, he's designers, you know, $500 sneakers.
Yeah, preachers and sneakers was the thing we talked about a couple years ago.
So there's that, I think there's that extreme on one side.
I think the other extreme or another extreme for this popularity is that intellectual focus.
Yeah.
So if we have the kind of the looks and the appearances side, then there's this intellectualism,
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this excitement to engage with people just purely on an intellect basis.
Not a matter of what's in God's word, but it's how you can come across and how you can
posit thoughts, how you can just offer, how have you thought about this?
Kind of that armchair theologian, but not really a theologian, more of just an armchair
thinker.
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And I think that's been, you mentioned Tim Keller, I'm not going to try to pick on him
and to be a mean way, but I think he really had that niche, especially in a lot of his
articles.
He had that respect of the secular unbeliever and they loved him or respected him because
of that intellect, because of the ability to reason and other kinds of things, but not
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necessarily because he was biblical.
Right, right, exactly.
And I don't say that he mean.
Yeah, I mean, again, I'll defend him for a second.
He's written some good stuff in the past.
I mean, really biblical, solid stuff.
I've used his stuff, yeah.
The Meaning of Marriage is a book that I've used in premarital counseling.
It's a great book.
And so, yeah, but after a while, again, here's a guy who planted a church in New York City
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and an urban ministry, and he just began to see that the most important thing for him
was this winsome technique of drawing people in, but once you draw them in, what do you
do with them?
Right?
And it became more about the cultural sensation than it became about biblical teaching.
Yeah.
Right?
Because look, we can be honest.
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If you're going to dig in and do expository preaching like we do at Oak, it's not going
to draw everybody.
No, no.
It's just not.
It's not the popular message.
Exactly.
Right.
But you're right.
There's a lot of guys and they'll write books and books and books about new church practices,
new techniques, new methods, all these things to try to grow a church and attract attention
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and all that.
And people, again, every young pastor out there is like, I want to grow a big church.
I want to grow a big church.
So they'll read all the books, read all the books, try all the techniques.
And after a while, you're just like, you could just preach the Bible.
You could try that.
So anyway, look, we can go on and on about this, right?
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Yeah.
There's so much that could be said about it.
And I don't want this to be self-serving like, oh, we've got it all figured out.
That's the thing.
Because we made a lot of mistakes in the 17 years we've been around.
And we'll keep making them as a thing.
We will not be perfect.
But we're going to keep coming back to that idea that the word is at the center of everything.
Amen.
So let's give some principles then for the Christian listeners out there who are wondering,
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how do I think then about these popular Christian leaders?
Because we don't want to do, you just gave, I think, a fair defense of Tim Keller.
We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And we can still choose, like we can still choose whether we do want to read something
for them or not.
Like there's freedom there.
But we don't need to just say, oh, anything they ever wrote, we're going to throw it away.
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And if you read it, then somehow, you're not sound anymore because you appreciate it.
So we don't want to go down that trail.
I think you should pause there.
That is, we see that in our tribe, if you want to call how we see church life in our
tribe, that's probably one of the bigger negative trends that I see.
Guys that are like, okay, and this happened to Alistair Begg just recently.
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And that's a ministry that I've loved and benefited from personally.
And he said something controversial about a year and a half ago.
And it was like half of our tribe decided he was a heretic.
He is persona non grata.
And I'm like, whoa, hold on a second.
First of all, what he said, I thought he defended it well.
If you do a final degree, he thought he defended it well.
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But how are we throwing out a guy with a 50 year ministry because he made that one comment.
So we just, we got to be careful.
We got to be objective.
And yes, it is true that men go through seasons of life.
And at one point you may say, you know what?
I loved everything he did.
I can think of a ton of guys like this early on.
I love what he did later on, not so much, but I can be objective and say that book he
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wrote 20 years ago.
That's a really solid book.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I think, I think that's helpful and a good distinction.
We do tend in, at least in our theological circle and our bubble, as we often call it,
we tend to be very judgmental.
And sometimes it stems from, from a heart of wanting to limit unhelpful voices.
And so I can appreciate the desire to not let a little leaven.
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Like we were just talking about leaven the whole lump.
So I can appreciate that.
And to that end, I would say then for the weaker brother, for somebody who doesn't have
that level of discernment, we were talking earlier about the need for discernment, then
yeah, maybe, maybe just stick to the word.
Maybe don't even make it about an author or any author, not just which author do you listen
to.
Focus on the word first.
For the person who is exercising discernment, working on it, these are the principles we're
(27:03):
going to talk about in a second that are going to help in this process of saying, okay, how
do I tell between something that I just got to say, you know what?
Eh, I'll pass on that versus, hey, that challenged me.
I don't agree with everything, but this can be helpful and can help push me towards Christ.
Right.
Can help me go in the right direction.
And I think if we were to really broad brush stroke Christian authors across history, I
(27:26):
would say there's probably a lot that are completely unhelpful.
There's a lot of books that are out there on like spirituality, essentially, and mysticism.
So we can't even say that all the authors are amazing.
I mean, in today's day and age, you can go on Amazon and make your own book.
So I mean, there's a lot of garbage out there.
So big picture.
If you go to Barnes and Noble.
(27:46):
Oh, it's going to be a train wreck.
I mean, it's going to be one out of a hundred books in there.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
And they're in the Christianity section.
Yeah.
It's hilarious.
Yeah.
And you'll find Hinduism and Buddhism.
You'll find all kinds of things in there.
So there's a lot of garbage that's out there.
Now, if we narrow in the scope to say, okay, what about evangelical Christian authors, things
that you might find in like a, I don't know, cross way, life way, which I don't agree with
(28:10):
all their products that are there, but something like that, that kind of Christian bookstore
kind of dynamic.
Again, in there, you're still going to find a portion of those books that are going to
be somewhat unhelpful, where maybe even downright dangerous at times, depending if it hasn't
been vetted and who wrote it.
But there's going to be this section of books that, whether it's you and I or another, we'll
(28:33):
say another popular Christian leader, just to throw that out there for funsies, may recommend
and say, hey, go, that book can be helpful.
That book can be a blessing.
Even giving that endorsement doesn't mean that everything that they wrote was 100% great,
nor does it mean that their life was perfect and awesome.
Because as Christians, I think it's important for Christians to hear this, we trust God's
(28:56):
Word number one.
God's Word without flaw, God's Word without error, that's what we trust.
People can mess up.
People aren't going to get it right.
You and I know when we're teaching publicly, not every word is going to come out.
We joke sometimes.
If something comes out on a Sunday, you're like, oh man, I didn't mean to say that.
I can't believe I said that.
Alex, scrub the tape.
(29:17):
Something like that, it happens.
Not everything's going to be 100%.
Alistair Begg, great example.
You don't throw out everything he's ever said just because you may disagree on one component
with him.
You're allowed to disagree.
Does that mean that he's wrong in everything else?
If he's right on something, he's right on something.
If Tim Keller's right on something, he's right on something.
And if he's wrong on something, he's wrong on something.
(29:38):
We need to grow in our ability to discern the difference.
I think that's the big issue.
Be a Berean.
Right.
The big issue even for loving popular teachers, I think, is we want people to spoon feed us
baby food instead of wanting to grow up and eat mature food.
I think right now in the age we live in, I think you almost have to start with your guard
(30:00):
up before you listen or read anything right now.
You don't take everything in.
You start very restricted.
You start with your guard up and say, I'm going to be really careful here because, yeah,
because so much of it is watered down or liberal.
Some of it is even you see things called Christian and it's tinned with strange things, a little
Catholicism thrown in.
The Christian label has gotten broadened out so much that you're not even really sure.
(30:24):
So yeah, just have your guard up and weigh it carefully.
And if something, if a red flag goes up in your mind, you're like, that doesn't sound
right, then it may not be right.
So check it out.
Do you know, this is a good opportunity to dive into the word.
Be a Berean and if you have questions, reach out to an elder or somebody and say, Hey,
I read this.
Is this right or wrong?
Yeah.
And I think that point right there about going to local church leaders is probably the number
(30:48):
one encouragement we could give to any listener.
That's not just because we're focused on no kill, but if you are at a local church and
you have real leaders there, they're not virtual leaders, they're not site leaders, the real
church leaders as God has instituted, that you would go to them, that you would know
their lives and that they would know you.
That's the goal.
(31:08):
That's the way that God has orchestrated all of this to work.
That's when things are working in order.
They're out of order when the person who doesn't know the leader listens to a leader that they
don't know and that doesn't know them.
That's when things get dangerous because now it's not personal.
That relationship, there's no intention there.
So there's a huge grace of being able to know your leaders.
That's why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11, one, imitate me as I imitate Christ.
(31:32):
You have to know Paul to imitate him.
You can't just say, oh, well, I heard about Paul.
I think I should do this.
Think about how hard it is to really know people.
It's to some extent you can know Adam Sanchez or Jeff No.
People in our local church definitely do.
I show up in people's homes and I'm just Jeff.
(31:58):
And you can see my marriage.
You know my kids.
You see how I receive.
So somebody incompliments me.
You see how I respond to that.
You see hopefully how I treat my fellow believers or treat my fellow staff.
That makes a huge difference.
You watch even a guy that you might trust.
You're like, I just read this thing from John Piper.
(32:20):
Great.
You actually don't know John Piper.
You have no idea really what his marriage is like.
I'm sure it's fine.
We pray.
We pray it is.
Right.
You don't know.
And so yes, that's why at the end of the day, your local church leaders, you're rubbing
elbows with and you're living life together with them.
(32:42):
That's going to be your best source.
And you know what?
You can come up and ask us questions.
That's one of the things that we are really, we really value that at Oak Hill to say, come
talk to me.
I had a member recently right after the end of service ran up to me and he said, I have
a question.
We sang this particular worship song and there was this one lyric in there and I wanted your
(33:04):
opinion on it.
I was like, that's a great question.
And so we dialogued about that and I think we both walked away edified by that conversation.
You can't do that with John Piper when you read his book.
That's right.
Yeah.
Which doesn't mean the book might not be helpful, but you can't know him in that way.
I think that's the key principle here is as believers, we really should weigh the voices
(33:26):
of our local church leaders.
We should weigh those heavier than we weigh the voices of the authors and the popular
Christian leaders.
It doesn't mean that they're evil.
Doesn't mean that the popular Christian leaders are bad, but we should weigh the lives of
those who we've seen, the lives of those that we've witnessed them, we've seen their testimony,
(33:47):
we see their character.
Those voices should be weighted heavier in our hearts and minds than the voice, the more
impersonal voices that can occur through, I mean, podcasts and audio sermons and other
kinds of things.
That's one of the key reasons why we, when people say, I can be a Christian and just,
(34:07):
I can just listen online from home.
No, you need to know your shepherd.
You need that person who's speaking truth in your life.
You should know that person.
And it's again, one of the weaknesses I think of the big churches, you have thousands of
people, you as a congregant will never know that guy who's preaching every week.
Just numbers wise, you're not going to be able to do that.
(34:29):
And I think that's a weakness in the model.
Not that it's bad or wicked, but it's just a weakness in the model that you're not going
to be able to look at his life.
He goes into the green room on Sunday, he slides out onto the big stage, he preaches
a message.
It might be really solid.
You can learn from it.
That's great, but you will never know his life.
So that matters.
Definitely, definitely weigh that heavily.
(34:51):
That's a dynamic and that's in our day and age, a real thing.
It is.
I mean, you have, because even in you look at the big churches that occurred 100, 200
years ago, the pastor didn't have a green room.
So he may have had, like Spurgeon may have had thousands of people that met Tabernacle,
but he would walk to the back and when people would leave, he would greet every person that
(35:12):
left.
And so that is a very different dynamic where there's that FaceTime, he remembers people,
he knows people that are in his community.
And I'm not saying that that's perfect and that that's the model that we should follow,
but it is quite different than what you're describing today when we have these kind of
real big popular churches where the pastors whisked in with security and whisked out and
(35:35):
got handlers and all of that, which it's rough.
It's a rough dynamic.
So as we're thinking about this, a couple of principles come to my mind and then anything
you want to throw in here.
When I'm thinking about how the world receives people, so popularity in general, I'm always
wary because I think about how Jesus taught so often that the world's not going to love
(35:56):
you because the world didn't love me.
That's what he says.
John 15.
Yeah.
And you heard a guy preach about that.
I know.
I think I did, yeah.
A little while ago.
Right.
And so we have that reality of if you're loved by the world, red flag, there's a caution
that goes up there, more than a caution, I think.
If the world really wants to hear from a believer, there's, I'm already nervous there.
(36:17):
If the world didn't love our master, why would it love us?
Right.
And you've been chosen out of the world, so the world's not going to love you.
That's going to be pretty normal for us.
And we're called to be light in the darkness.
Darkness doesn't love light.
Men love darkness rather than light, so they hid.
So many passages come to my mind about not being loved by the world.
So whenever somebody's popular in the world, it just makes my antenna go up and say, whoa,
(36:42):
let's take it easy here.
Let's not just buy hook, line and sinker everything that they're saying.
I think the second thing I would encourage, and we've talked about this, but the encouragement
to cultivate relationships in the local church.
It's so important.
We just got back from men's retreat, emphasized this dynamic of practicing the one another's.
But it's really, as we mentioned, 1 Corinthians 11.1, the reason Paul can say imitate me is
(37:02):
because he's lived life with the Corinthians.
He's lived with them.
He's spent time with them.
He could say the same thing to the Ephesians.
He spent years with them in their church.
And so when he says things like watch my life, imitate me, follow me, he's not saying pridefully
I'm doing everything right.
He's saying I'm trying to follow Christ and I'm trying to model that.
(37:23):
So as I'm modeling that for the sake of faithfulness, model me as I model him.
And we're going to create a generation after generation after generation of followers that
are following the King.
That's the pattern that we're in.
And so when we think about Christian leaders in the local church, we do want to cultivate
those relationships.
It's not that you can only build friends with leaders in the church, but definitely try.
(37:47):
Definitely try.
That's a good encouragement.
And even if you don't get to be great friends with a leader because of your schedules don't
line up or different opportunities, but there's other believers too.
And there's other believers in the church that are also seeking to imitate Christ.
So you need those one another's.
That's really the main means of life on life sanctification that God provides in practicing
(38:08):
the one another's.
And you're going to learn from his word when you hear the word proclaimed on Sundays.
You're going to grow from hearing the word proclaimed and hearing it applied.
You're going to be part of groups that are occurring, small groups, community groups,
that kind of thing.
And then you can still read on the side and that's a grace.
You should read on the side.
It'd be great.
Focus on the word first, but if you get other things too, amen.
All those things will kind of work together.
(38:30):
But I think as Christians, we really should be guarded.
I like the word you used.
We should be guarded when it comes to the media.
When media is promoting something, even if it's something like Gospel Coalition, which
I don't want to say is wicked and throw the baby out with the bath water, though there
are things that I disagree wholeheartedly and some specific things you might end up talking
about here on one of these upcoming episodes.
(38:51):
But there are some good things in the archives.
There are some beneficial articles that have been there, but we shouldn't be misled just
because something's promoted.
Right.
Nor should we run to say, well, what did so and so say about this?
Well, what did God say about it?
Can we start there?
Maybe we can say, well, does so and so line up with God?
Right.
Do they line up with what he said?
(39:11):
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, I was thinking about this.
This is going to sound funny to people.
It's actually easier to go back to a guy who's dead than a guy who's living in this regard,
right?
Because I was thinking as you're talking, I quote Spurgeon.
Yeah.
I mean, you may have noticed I'm quoting him more in the Psalm series because he wrote
this amazing Treasury of David and he's brilliant, but we know his life.
(39:35):
There's a whole history to his life to where we can go back and say what he said here has
weight to it because of his integrity in his life.
So that helps because the story's sort of been written on him, but that's not always
true of living theologians, living pastors.
But yeah, just be guarded because not everything that says Christian is Christian.
(39:57):
Manage your expectations in the world when somebody...
Sometimes we get carried away.
Again, we're so looking for validation.
So some athlete hits a home run and points to the sky and we get super excited.
Oh, he's a Christian.
Just manage your expectations on that.
So don't start following the guy because he pointed to the sky as he crossed home plate.
You don't know him.
(40:18):
So just be careful not to get carried away.
Also, you don't want to be too cynical, right?
Yeah.
You don't want to delegitimize somebody who's just trying and maybe growing.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
That athlete, for example, who's pointing and they may be a baby Christian.
But at that point, had he come to be a Christian through Carl Lentz, which again, oh boy.
(40:39):
But then I hear another thing like he's doing a worship album.
So that's an interesting example.
So we can get super excited that a celebrity is a Christian now.
Well, okay, we can hope for that.
We can pray for that.
But let's just say it comes out, then let's do the hard work of looking at it and listening
to it.
Does it line up with scripture?
Be objective.
Don't get carried away because he's a celebrity.
(41:00):
Don't get so cynical that you go, he couldn't be a Christian.
Right.
Right.
Find that balance.
Just take a deep breath and be a Berean on things.
And I think that points, that statement right there points to the emphasis.
We test everything by God's word.
We're not testing it by how we feel about it.
We're not testing it by what's popular in the moment.
We're saying, hey, does this map on with what's true?
(41:21):
And if so, I can say amen.
And if not, hey, I'm moving on to the next thing.
We don't need to deal with that.
All right.
Do we hit that one hard enough?
Jeff has been great taking on this subject with you.
We pray this has helped you to renew your minds and reform your hearts.
We'll see you next time on The Thinking Tree.
Welcome to The Thinking Tree, a podcast to help believers renew their minds and reform
(00:03):
their hearts.
I'm Adam Sanchez.
And I'm Jeff No.
And today we are discussing Christians in media.
All right, we're back here with another episode of The Thinking Tree, and today a very interesting
topic, one that we have not shied away from for many years.
(00:24):
It's true.
We've talked about this one going back to the underground, our old legacy TV, YouTube
TV show from COVID times.
But today we want to talk about Christians in media, and specifically we're looking
at Christians in popular culture media, not just the nature of Christians in music or
other forms of media, but really specific here.
(00:47):
So we have a question, and then we'll work it out.
The question for today is, how should Christians think about and respond to supposed Christian
leaders in media?
I like the way you said supposed.
I got to show the hand there.
I got to show it.
Right.
And the rub on this question is that we assume that if somebody has a public platform, that
(01:09):
they must be a leader of some capacity, somebody to listen to, somebody to trust.
Right.
But that doesn't always equate.
Not only that, but even if they say they're a Christian, it doesn't always mean they're
Christian.
And we're going to talk about that.
Right?
We're going to talk about that.
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bit of context here in our modern era.
(01:31):
It's very unique.
If we think about Christians in the past, to be popular or part of culture, you would
have to be published.
You would have to have some kind of platform to be on.
And publish is even still more of a modern thing with the printing press.
That wasn't a thing a thousand years ago.
That's a thing within the last couple hundred years to have been published.
But today there's such an immense amount of media surrounding people.
(01:57):
I mean, here we are even.
We're podcasting.
We have this rig here that Alex and Laura and Glenn helped create that you can go back
in season one and listen to how that came about.
But we have this immense ability to put thoughts out there.
Right.
On the interwebs.
Right.
On the interwebs and then in the cloud and in our hands, which is insane.
(02:20):
But before even podcasts were really a big thing, blogs were a big thing.
And even writing and articles.
And that's kind of really more of the genesis of, or the beginning of Christians in more
modern media.
Right.
And this even goes back to Puritan days where Christians would write in the newspapers and
the local periodicals.
They would put out thoughts there and they would put out encouraging.
(02:42):
This goes back even to the day of Spurgeon.
Spurgeon would write publicly.
Yeah.
And he would write public letters.
Yep.
Even our great Martin Luther.
Yep.
Was a letter writer to the public in many ways.
So this history of Christians engaging is not abnormal, but it is super intense these
days.
It's the proliferation of so many different types of platforms.
(03:04):
And so now, and like you said, anybody with a rig now has a voice.
That didn't used to be the way it was, right?
If you were preaching in a church, you'd been qualified to do that.
If you were leading a denomination, you'd be qualified to do that.
If you were writing a Christian book, usually the publisher would make sure that you're
qualified to do that.
Yeah, some kind of it.
But today, yeah, today it's just, it's a free for all.
(03:25):
So that requires greater discernment on our part.
And that's the thing, right?
That's the thing we're going to keep coming back to today.
When we look at the landscape today, there are a couple of areas or a couple of places,
I would say, where we may be prone to give more leeway to people that we might rethink
that after this episode, right?
(03:46):
On some of those.
One of those, and I know I've spoken out about it, I think you have too as well on our underground
episode, we were trying to remember years ago, but we've spoken about some of these
authors on like the Gospel Coalition who may have a platform, they may have a voice, but
we might question whether we should be listening to them.
Right.
And the Gospel Coalition started off well.
(04:07):
D.A. Carson was one of the founders.
He's one of the great theologians of our time.
He's very solid.
And at the time, Tim Keller was his partner in that.
And Keller, you know, towards the end of his life, he definitely sort of veered off in
a funny way.
But at the time that the Gospel Coalition was founded, I think you and I and all of
our elders were like, we love this site.
There's some great stuff here.
(04:27):
And I know Moller, Moller was writing for there.
There's a whole bunch of really solid guys who've written in the past for the Gospel
Coalition.
But like so many things over time, they tend to they tend to veer more liberal.
And the Gospel Coalition started moving into what we've talked about it here on this podcast,
the winsome movement.
(04:49):
Right.
Yeah.
Social justice.
They started leaning into some things that that sort of perked our ears up and we thought,
hmm, there's some changes happening over there.
Yeah.
And I think it gets watered down over time.
Little leaven, leavens the whole lump.
That's the nature of things.
They typically don't get sharper.
They get worse.
They do.
And I think that's what you're describing the Gospel Coalition.
(05:10):
There were a lot of really good, helpful resources early on from articles that they were writing,
even to video series they were producing that were helpful for Christian leaders and Christians
in general.
And then over the years, it really has seemed to water down.
I'll name another outlet that probably is far more watered down in nature and has been
(05:30):
over the years, but Christianity Today.
Oh, yeah.
And that was, I mean, this has its roots back like 30 years ago.
Actually, more than that.
I believe it was in the mid 1950s, Billy Graham.
1950s.
I didn't even know it was that old.
Yeah.
And get this, Carl Henry was the original editor.
Really?
So those are some.
Here's an education for me now.
Yeah, right, right.
And Billy Graham, it was the evangelical flagship, you know, periodical that.
(05:55):
Again, at a time when there wasn't all these different platforms, but it's where everybody
looked for a time.
Now, I'm not that old.
Yeah.
Well, I was going to say, do you remember those days, but you don't have to.
No, right.
I just remember growing up, you know, from the 80s, basically, Christianity Today was
the place that Christians would go to for how they should think about things, how they
(06:16):
should think about policies, how they should think about, you know, different world cultural
movements.
But back then, you know, the, like the LGBTQ movement wasn't even an LGBTQ movement.
It was just, how do you think about AIDS and how do you think about gay people?
And those kinds of things were the big deal back then.
How do you deal with your friend who got remarried?
And those were, I mean, really, those were the things back then.
(06:39):
Right, divorce, right, right.
Now it's very, very different, but very watered down.
Oh, so it's so liberal now.
There are now today, there are some authors that are sound trying to give an influence
to Christianity Today.
I'll name one of them, Ernie Baker has written some articles for them, but that does not
mean that the bulk of their articles are sound.
(07:01):
It just means that every once in a while, you know, a broken clock can be right twice
a day kind of thing.
It's like that where there is some.
And so we can be thankful that there's a little bit of influence there, but by and large,
that is just not a helpful one.
What about, you know, Christians who are writing for secular news outlets?
I know you mentioned Tim Keller.
Yeah, Tim Keller has written for, I think, like the Atlantic and the New Yorker.
(07:22):
He's written for secular news outlets many times, you know, kind of giving some reasoning
to that secular mind.
Yeah, David French is another big name.
Russell Moore, these guys have been, here's the thing.
If a periodical like the Atlantic reaches out and wants a, I'm doing air quotes now,
a Christian voice, you can guarantee that that Christian voice is not going to be anything
(07:47):
that would line up with our brand of what we would call Christian.
Otherwise they wouldn't call them.
Right.
Because look, you and I are never going to get a call.
Anybody who thinks as we do, who teaches as we do, who believes in scripture the way we
do is never going to get a call from the Atlantic.
So when you see somebody, this is a Christian perspective in a magazine periodical that
(08:08):
you know is anti-Christian.
You know that that piece that you're reading is going to be filled with error.
So that's interesting, right?
To be invited by such an outlet.
Because the questions that come to my mind is, well, what kind of fellowship are you
keeping?
Right.
To be in that kind of a circle, to be welcomed into that dynamic.
(08:29):
And then you know you have to play by some unspoken number of rules.
Sure.
You know, don't cross this boundary, don't cross this line.
You just mentioned about the kind of the welcoming nature of Gospel Coalition.
For those outlets, there's an unwritten code that you can't be overly offended.
You have to fit the bill.
Right.
(08:50):
You have to play the part.
You know the word we use?
That's called compromise.
You will have to compromise to write for our...
So if the LA Times called you or I for a comment on something, we would immediately go, hold
on a second.
Wait, what?
You know, what's going on here?
There's an angle, there's a spin.
We would be immediately skeptical.
But these guys, you know again, that's for them, it's a job.
(09:13):
They're going to get paid for it.
They're going to increase their platform, their power, their influence.
So what's a little compromise, right?
Why do I need to speak the whole truth?
Right.
Can I give just a sprinkling of it instead of dousing them?
Because look, the business model for the Atlantic or any of these magazines, it's to draw eyeballs.
So they're not going to hire somebody who's going to write something that's going to turn
(09:36):
people away.
So there you have it.
Maybe enough to be intriguing, right?
Enough to be a spectacle.
Right.
Like, oh, you know, what kind of, like when you have a zoo and you want to get a bunch
of people in, you get the animal that's exciting.
Yeah.
You know?
And so you build enough spectacle, get them in the door, but not dangerous.
You don't want to bring the whole truth because that might actually impact people.
(09:58):
Isn't it funny how too, we as Christians, we get excited like, oh, there's a Christian
article in this magazine, in Time Magazine.
We get excited, we almost get amped up like, oh, finally we're going to-
Validation, right?
Yeah.
Somebody is going to represent us well.
And then we read it and go, oh, shoot.
Nope.
They didn't do it again.
That wasn't, let's go back to the Bible, right?
That's right.
(10:19):
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I mean, this whole idea of even celebrity Christians beyond that of, you know, Christians
who make a platform on YouTube and maybe it started out well-meaning enough with just,
I don't know, filming their service or something, but then turns into having a name and a platform
for themselves.
Yep.
I think there's a danger in making the platform the goal versus what we would say in the context
(10:44):
of local church, it's really souls, it's people.
Right.
Right?
When we think about how Paul ministered, we think about the example of Christ, the ultimate
example.
It was person by person.
It's a personal sacrifice for a person.
And yes, it's corporate in overall nature, but it is person by person.
That's how Paul ministered as an example of following Christ.
So we follow in those same footsteps which were the local churchmen, not big picture
(11:08):
platform guys.
Not that there's anything wrong if God were to give a platform, but we're not chasing
it.
I think that's the big thing.
When we're talking about Christians in media, there's a danger of just chasing the platform
and chasing the name.
And again, I would just caution everybody listening, have a skeptical eye at this.
When you see somebody that, and oftentimes you get the immediate sense like, ah, there's
(11:32):
something going on here.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this person with this mega platform.
And maybe he's a pastor, maybe he's a conference speaker guy.
Maybe he's part of a worship conglomerate.
That's a newer thing too.
Hillsong and Bethel and Elevation, all these worship conglomerates.
These guys become celebrities and they love the attention.
Right?
(11:53):
So just be really careful.
When somebody has a big platform, make sure you have scrutinizing eyes.
Don't just swallow everything that's coming out of it because it's big and it's popular.
Just be really careful.
Well, let's keep on that theme about the dangers.
The dangers here, because we've discussed a little bit about how Christian leaders may
compromise to be in a secular news source, periodical article, something like that.
(12:18):
There is the danger that power and influence have always been corrupting.
You mentioned it, wanting to have a voice and wanting to have a platform.
Those things, they bring compromise because we're seeking something other than the truth.
Something other than truth and love, if we're going to quote Paul out of Ephesians 4.
You mentioned as well that it can be monetarily beneficial.
(12:43):
Money can come along with promoting even unbiblical views at times, potentially.
One of the things that came forward in the book, and we mentioned this book from the
beginning as helpful and just giving us some talking points for this leading up to this
election season, but from that book, Shepherds for Sale, one of the concepts that came forward
(13:04):
was that there were many Christian leaders who were funded in some way.
Maybe not necessarily their direct pocket book of, I'm going to give you this to say
this.
Maybe not always so bold as that, but sometimes they were given money for their research initiatives,
for a book or for a conference that they wanted to hold.
(13:26):
There was money exchange to be had to promote certain things.
I think that's one of the dangerous components there is when there's money behind anything.
And there always is.
And there always is.
Then people don't focus on what is true and right and commendable and honorable.
Now they trade, because you can't serve God and money is what God's word says.
(13:49):
They trade what is true and what is honorable for something that's going to meet their own
agenda, which at times can be as simple as, and we're going to talk about this in the
next episode, but as promoting a COVID-19 vaccine.
It could be something like that where it's, hey, you have this influence, you have this
platform, we'll help you out to get the conference that you want.
(14:11):
But can you just give this statement?
Can you just encourage people in this way?
For their good anyways.
So to always be wrapped up, kind of like the serpent did in the garden.
You'll be all knowing like God is, right?
It sounds good for a second.
Well, I mean, why did Satan fall?
What did Satan want?
He wanted power and influence, right?
He wanted it to be like the most high God.
(14:33):
And so it's sort of the original sin.
It's the original problem that, and it's built into human nature.
We know it's our fallen nature.
And if I just look around, you see it.
It's actually, if you look into your own heart, you'll see it there too.
We love power.
We love influence.
And we love the applause of men.
We just do.
(14:54):
And it's something that we talk about a lot at Oak Hill about fighting against that temptation.
You say it's about the approval of God, not the approval of others.
But you know, there's the old, the old, the famous saying power corrupts and absolute
power corrupts.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's just, it's who we are.
Right?
And it's funny when you dig into it, and this is true historically.
I think it's probably mostly true of Christian leaders, although I don't want to, I don't
(15:18):
want to paint that brush too broadly.
When you look into the lives of great men, if you dig below the surface, beyond what
they just did that made them famous, you find they're not good men.
They're just not.
Most of them very abusive of others, tyrannical, use their power, lorded their power over others,
(15:40):
just not kind people.
And I think that's probably true in some Christian circles as well.
These guys that get this power, that get this influence, if you dig deep, you'll find out
that there are issues.
Because if you're willing to compromise in what you'll say for that power and influence,
what else are you willing to compromise on in your life?
It's just a lack of integrity.
(16:01):
So it wouldn't surprise me if you dig deeper, you're going to find those things.
Because that's just human nature.
It's who we are.
There's an interesting part of that where when you seek popularity, when you seek power
and influence, it has to be very lonely because you're sacrificing a lot to get there.
And you create structures around you that shield you from people.
(16:22):
The questions that I would ask about celebrity, maybe celebrity is a bad word here, but popular
Christian leaders.
So Christian leaders that have a platform of some kind.
My question is always, who's surrounding them that's going to help them live out the one
another?
Who's surrounding them that's going to hold them accountable for how they live?
And the same things that you're talking about, who's going to hold them accountable for being
(16:44):
tyrannical?
Who's going to help put them in check when they're being a jerk?
Who's going to love them enough to give them hard words at the right time to help them
go the right way?
We need that, that God has instituted the one another, he's instituted us within the
body to that end.
That's a good thing and it's a grace in the local church that we get to live that way
so that we don't go off the rails.
(17:06):
There's stories after stories of Christian leaders, pastors, preachers, celebrities that
literally they go through life.
Everything's handed to them by staff, by assistants.
They're limousined all around.
Here's your talking points, they read it and they call themselves pastors.
And yet they don't know anyone.
(17:28):
There's nobody to hold them in check.
Like you said, they're like the celebrity that is constantly being catered to.
And so they bounce around on the speaker circuit and they get paid big money to write books.
Then they don't write the books, they get other people to write chapters and they put
their name on the book.
For those of you listening out there, I hate to be this cynical, but you have to have your
(17:49):
eyes open to what's really going on out there with this type of culture.
And that's why we're big, we are just massive fans of small local church.
Yes, yes.
Right?
Yeah, it is, you bring up those points and it's crazy how, I didn't know any of that
when I was younger.
It's just like, oh, they're an author and they're a pastor.
That's so great.
Right.
(18:10):
And then you start, you go to some conferences and you see the game and then they start promoting
more conferences and you start seeing, oh, when are they at their church?
Right, right.
They're writing a lot and they're speaking a lot.
When are they shepherding?
When are they involved with their people?
What does that look like?
And then when are their people involved with them?
And so the rough party is even with a lot of these Christian leaders and it's unfortunate.
(18:33):
We're not trying to talk about them just to defame people or to slander anyone, but they're
in the public and because of that and having a public platform, it opens them up to put
public scrutiny.
Yes.
It opens them up to public observation.
So they're no longer in the realm of, hey, you don't know him, don't say anything.
Now they put themselves at that place and said things publicly to the ether, just wide
(18:56):
open, not to a targeted group of people.
Paul wrote to a targeted group of people in time and space and yes, we're beneficial.
We benefit of that today and we know that he's writing to the universal church as well,
but he still wrote to specific people.
These popular Christians in media, they often just blah and they just want it to go out
and hit whoever it hits and there's no concept of them speaking specifically to people, which
(19:21):
is really anti-God.
God is very specific in his direction.
These Christian leaders often don't do that and this is what makes it difficult.
So now we're naming some names, we've named some already.
We'll name more by this episode, we'll name more next episode.
It's just going to happen, not because we're trying to be mean, but the nature is public
ministry gets public rebuke at times.
(19:41):
And so in this, this is a rub where they've let it out and they're speaking and we're
not just saying, oh, this pastor said this at his church.
We're saying, oh, they put it out there in public.
They wrote an article to anyone and now it might need to be corrected.
Yeah, and they can often wrap the way they do things in biblical terms.
(20:03):
That's the kind of scary thing too, because I mean, I'll put another name out there, Carl
Lentz is a cautionary tale for anybody who wants to grow, wants to go into ministry and
wants to build a big platform.
This is a guy that Hillsong, New York city, one of the fastest growing churches in America,
(20:24):
absolute train wreck.
He's exactly the guy that I just described where everything is handed to him and he gets
up there on Sunday and uses his charisma and his looks to draw a massive audience.
And it just pumps up his ego, right?
And anybody that looked at that guy and watched the way he operated, every one of us looked
at and said, he's going for a fall.
(20:45):
It's coming.
And I still see these guys.
I still see clips on social media and I look at it and go, it's just a matter of time.
You know, I watched a guy this last week and you know, I'm looking at him, super good looking
guy, must spend six days a week in the gym wearing a shirt that's too small.
He's up there bouncing around the stage doing like a Ted talk, but applying the Bible to
(21:09):
it.
And I'm looking at it going, it's just a matter of time.
There's something going on there, right?
But boy, he's a celebrity.
People just flock to him.
Well, of course.
Yeah, because he's building his image.
It's a show at that point.
It is.
Yeah.
It's not for what he's saying.
It's how he's saying it.
Absolutely.
It's how people feel when they receive it.
It's not the truth.
It's not the actual message.
(21:29):
Yeah, I think so if we were to look at two kind of extremes on this popularity spectrum,
there's that one that you just described.
The guys who are working out all the time, practicing MMA, which you're like as a pastor,
do you really?
Anyways, you can't even win a headlock, but at least as far as I've seen, maybe some good
benefit from that.
But they're working out, they're focused on the fancy clothes, you know, they're wearing
(21:51):
Gucci and all these other things.
The sneakers this guy had on were amazing.
Yeah, he's designers, you know, $500 sneakers.
Yeah, preachers and sneakers was the thing we talked about a couple years ago.
So there's that, I think there's that extreme on one side.
I think the other extreme or another extreme for this popularity is that intellectual focus.
Yeah.
So if we have the kind of the looks and the appearances side, then there's this intellectualism,
(22:16):
this excitement to engage with people just purely on an intellect basis.
Not a matter of what's in God's word, but it's how you can come across and how you can
posit thoughts, how you can just offer, how have you thought about this?
Kind of that armchair theologian, but not really a theologian, more of just an armchair
thinker.
(22:36):
And I think that's been, you mentioned Tim Keller, I'm not going to try to pick on him
and to be a mean way, but I think he really had that niche, especially in a lot of his
articles.
He had that respect of the secular unbeliever and they loved him or respected him because
of that intellect, because of the ability to reason and other kinds of things, but not
(22:58):
necessarily because he was biblical.
Right, right, exactly.
And I don't say that he mean.
Yeah, I mean, again, I'll defend him for a second.
He's written some good stuff in the past.
I mean, really biblical, solid stuff.
I've used his stuff, yeah.
The Meaning of Marriage is a book that I've used in premarital counseling.
It's a great book.
And so, yeah, but after a while, again, here's a guy who planted a church in New York City
(23:22):
and an urban ministry, and he just began to see that the most important thing for him
was this winsome technique of drawing people in, but once you draw them in, what do you
do with them?
Right?
And it became more about the cultural sensation than it became about biblical teaching.
Yeah.
Right?
Because look, we can be honest.
(23:42):
If you're going to dig in and do expository preaching like we do at Oak, it's not going
to draw everybody.
No, no.
It's just not.
It's not the popular message.
Exactly.
Right.
But you're right.
There's a lot of guys and they'll write books and books and books about new church practices,
new techniques, new methods, all these things to try to grow a church and attract attention
(24:04):
and all that.
And people, again, every young pastor out there is like, I want to grow a big church.
I want to grow a big church.
So they'll read all the books, read all the books, try all the techniques.
And after a while, you're just like, you could just preach the Bible.
You could try that.
So anyway, look, we can go on and on about this, right?
(24:25):
Yeah.
There's so much that could be said about it.
And I don't want this to be self-serving like, oh, we've got it all figured out.
That's the thing.
Because we made a lot of mistakes in the 17 years we've been around.
And we'll keep making them as a thing.
We will not be perfect.
But we're going to keep coming back to that idea that the word is at the center of everything.
Amen.
So let's give some principles then for the Christian listeners out there who are wondering,
(24:47):
how do I think then about these popular Christian leaders?
Because we don't want to do, you just gave, I think, a fair defense of Tim Keller.
We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And we can still choose, like we can still choose whether we do want to read something
for them or not.
Like there's freedom there.
But we don't need to just say, oh, anything they ever wrote, we're going to throw it away.
(25:08):
And if you read it, then somehow, you're not sound anymore because you appreciate it.
So we don't want to go down that trail.
I think you should pause there.
That is, we see that in our tribe, if you want to call how we see church life in our
tribe, that's probably one of the bigger negative trends that I see.
Guys that are like, okay, and this happened to Alistair Begg just recently.
(25:31):
And that's a ministry that I've loved and benefited from personally.
And he said something controversial about a year and a half ago.
And it was like half of our tribe decided he was a heretic.
He is persona non grata.
And I'm like, whoa, hold on a second.
First of all, what he said, I thought he defended it well.
If you do a final degree, he thought he defended it well.
(25:52):
But how are we throwing out a guy with a 50 year ministry because he made that one comment.
So we just, we got to be careful.
We got to be objective.
And yes, it is true that men go through seasons of life.
And at one point you may say, you know what?
I loved everything he did.
I can think of a ton of guys like this early on.
I love what he did later on, not so much, but I can be objective and say that book he
(26:16):
wrote 20 years ago.
That's a really solid book.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I think, I think that's helpful and a good distinction.
We do tend in, at least in our theological circle and our bubble, as we often call it,
we tend to be very judgmental.
And sometimes it stems from, from a heart of wanting to limit unhelpful voices.
And so I can appreciate the desire to not let a little leaven.
(26:39):
Like we were just talking about leaven the whole lump.
So I can appreciate that.
And to that end, I would say then for the weaker brother, for somebody who doesn't have
that level of discernment, we were talking earlier about the need for discernment, then
yeah, maybe, maybe just stick to the word.
Maybe don't even make it about an author or any author, not just which author do you listen
to.
Focus on the word first.
For the person who is exercising discernment, working on it, these are the principles we're
(27:03):
going to talk about in a second that are going to help in this process of saying, okay, how
do I tell between something that I just got to say, you know what?
Eh, I'll pass on that versus, hey, that challenged me.
I don't agree with everything, but this can be helpful and can help push me towards Christ.
Right.
Can help me go in the right direction.
And I think if we were to really broad brush stroke Christian authors across history, I
(27:26):
would say there's probably a lot that are completely unhelpful.
There's a lot of books that are out there on like spirituality, essentially, and mysticism.
So we can't even say that all the authors are amazing.
I mean, in today's day and age, you can go on Amazon and make your own book.
So I mean, there's a lot of garbage out there.
So big picture.
If you go to Barnes and Noble.
(27:46):
Oh, it's going to be a train wreck.
I mean, it's going to be one out of a hundred books in there.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
And they're in the Christianity section.
Yeah.
It's hilarious.
Yeah.
And you'll find Hinduism and Buddhism.
You'll find all kinds of things in there.
So there's a lot of garbage that's out there.
Now, if we narrow in the scope to say, okay, what about evangelical Christian authors, things
that you might find in like a, I don't know, cross way, life way, which I don't agree with
(28:10):
all their products that are there, but something like that, that kind of Christian bookstore
kind of dynamic.
Again, in there, you're still going to find a portion of those books that are going to
be somewhat unhelpful, where maybe even downright dangerous at times, depending if it hasn't
been vetted and who wrote it.
But there's going to be this section of books that, whether it's you and I or another, we'll
(28:33):
say another popular Christian leader, just to throw that out there for funsies, may recommend
and say, hey, go, that book can be helpful.
That book can be a blessing.
Even giving that endorsement doesn't mean that everything that they wrote was 100% great,
nor does it mean that their life was perfect and awesome.
Because as Christians, I think it's important for Christians to hear this, we trust God's
(28:56):
Word number one.
God's Word without flaw, God's Word without error, that's what we trust.
People can mess up.
People aren't going to get it right.
You and I know when we're teaching publicly, not every word is going to come out.
We joke sometimes.
If something comes out on a Sunday, you're like, oh man, I didn't mean to say that.
I can't believe I said that.
Alex, scrub the tape.
(29:17):
Something like that, it happens.
Not everything's going to be 100%.
Alistair Begg, great example.
You don't throw out everything he's ever said just because you may disagree on one component
with him.
You're allowed to disagree.
Does that mean that he's wrong in everything else?
If he's right on something, he's right on something.
If Tim Keller's right on something, he's right on something.
And if he's wrong on something, he's wrong on something.
(29:38):
We need to grow in our ability to discern the difference.
I think that's the big issue.
Be a Berean.
Right.
The big issue even for loving popular teachers, I think, is we want people to spoon feed us
baby food instead of wanting to grow up and eat mature food.
I think right now in the age we live in, I think you almost have to start with your guard
(30:00):
up before you listen or read anything right now.
You don't take everything in.
You start very restricted.
You start with your guard up and say, I'm going to be really careful here because, yeah,
because so much of it is watered down or liberal.
Some of it is even you see things called Christian and it's tinned with strange things, a little
Catholicism thrown in.
The Christian label has gotten broadened out so much that you're not even really sure.
(30:24):
So yeah, just have your guard up and weigh it carefully.
And if something, if a red flag goes up in your mind, you're like, that doesn't sound
right, then it may not be right.
So check it out.
Do you know, this is a good opportunity to dive into the word.
Be a Berean and if you have questions, reach out to an elder or somebody and say, Hey,
I read this.
Is this right or wrong?
Yeah.
And I think that point right there about going to local church leaders is probably the number
(30:48):
one encouragement we could give to any listener.
That's not just because we're focused on no kill, but if you are at a local church and
you have real leaders there, they're not virtual leaders, they're not site leaders, the real
church leaders as God has instituted, that you would go to them, that you would know
their lives and that they would know you.
That's the goal.
(31:08):
That's the way that God has orchestrated all of this to work.
That's when things are working in order.
They're out of order when the person who doesn't know the leader listens to a leader that they
don't know and that doesn't know them.
That's when things get dangerous because now it's not personal.
That relationship, there's no intention there.
So there's a huge grace of being able to know your leaders.
That's why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11, one, imitate me as I imitate Christ.
(31:32):
You have to know Paul to imitate him.
You can't just say, oh, well, I heard about Paul.
I think I should do this.
Think about how hard it is to really know people.
It's to some extent you can know Adam Sanchez or Jeff No.
People in our local church definitely do.
I show up in people's homes and I'm just Jeff.
(31:58):
And you can see my marriage.
You know my kids.
You see how I receive.
So somebody incompliments me.
You see how I respond to that.
You see hopefully how I treat my fellow believers or treat my fellow staff.
That makes a huge difference.
You watch even a guy that you might trust.
You're like, I just read this thing from John Piper.
(32:20):
Great.
You actually don't know John Piper.
You have no idea really what his marriage is like.
I'm sure it's fine.
We pray.
We pray it is.
Right.
You don't know.
And so yes, that's why at the end of the day, your local church leaders, you're rubbing
elbows with and you're living life together with them.
(32:42):
That's going to be your best source.
And you know what?
You can come up and ask us questions.
That's one of the things that we are really, we really value that at Oak Hill to say, come
talk to me.
I had a member recently right after the end of service ran up to me and he said, I have
a question.
We sang this particular worship song and there was this one lyric in there and I wanted your
(33:04):
opinion on it.
I was like, that's a great question.
And so we dialogued about that and I think we both walked away edified by that conversation.
You can't do that with John Piper when you read his book.
That's right.
Yeah.
Which doesn't mean the book might not be helpful, but you can't know him in that way.
I think that's the key principle here is as believers, we really should weigh the voices
(33:26):
of our local church leaders.
We should weigh those heavier than we weigh the voices of the authors and the popular
Christian leaders.
It doesn't mean that they're evil.
Doesn't mean that the popular Christian leaders are bad, but we should weigh the lives of
those who we've seen, the lives of those that we've witnessed them, we've seen their testimony,
(33:47):
we see their character.
Those voices should be weighted heavier in our hearts and minds than the voice, the more
impersonal voices that can occur through, I mean, podcasts and audio sermons and other
kinds of things.
That's one of the key reasons why we, when people say, I can be a Christian and just,
(34:07):
I can just listen online from home.
No, you need to know your shepherd.
You need that person who's speaking truth in your life.
You should know that person.
And it's again, one of the weaknesses I think of the big churches, you have thousands of
people, you as a congregant will never know that guy who's preaching every week.
Just numbers wise, you're not going to be able to do that.
(34:29):
And I think that's a weakness in the model.
Not that it's bad or wicked, but it's just a weakness in the model that you're not going
to be able to look at his life.
He goes into the green room on Sunday, he slides out onto the big stage, he preaches
a message.
It might be really solid.
You can learn from it.
That's great, but you will never know his life.
So that matters.
Definitely, definitely weigh that heavily.
(34:51):
That's a dynamic and that's in our day and age, a real thing.
It is.
I mean, you have, because even in you look at the big churches that occurred 100, 200
years ago, the pastor didn't have a green room.
So he may have had, like Spurgeon may have had thousands of people that met Tabernacle,
but he would walk to the back and when people would leave, he would greet every person that
(35:12):
left.
And so that is a very different dynamic where there's that FaceTime, he remembers people,
he knows people that are in his community.
And I'm not saying that that's perfect and that that's the model that we should follow,
but it is quite different than what you're describing today when we have these kind of
real big popular churches where the pastors whisked in with security and whisked out and
(35:35):
got handlers and all of that, which it's rough.
It's a rough dynamic.
So as we're thinking about this, a couple of principles come to my mind and then anything
you want to throw in here.
When I'm thinking about how the world receives people, so popularity in general, I'm always
wary because I think about how Jesus taught so often that the world's not going to love
(35:56):
you because the world didn't love me.
That's what he says.
John 15.
Yeah.
And you heard a guy preach about that.
I know.
I think I did, yeah.
A little while ago.
Right.
And so we have that reality of if you're loved by the world, red flag, there's a caution
that goes up there, more than a caution, I think.
If the world really wants to hear from a believer, there's, I'm already nervous there.
(36:17):
If the world didn't love our master, why would it love us?
Right.
And you've been chosen out of the world, so the world's not going to love you.
That's going to be pretty normal for us.
And we're called to be light in the darkness.
Darkness doesn't love light.
Men love darkness rather than light, so they hid.
So many passages come to my mind about not being loved by the world.
So whenever somebody's popular in the world, it just makes my antenna go up and say, whoa,
(36:42):
let's take it easy here.
Let's not just buy hook, line and sinker everything that they're saying.
I think the second thing I would encourage, and we've talked about this, but the encouragement
to cultivate relationships in the local church.
It's so important.
We just got back from men's retreat, emphasized this dynamic of practicing the one another's.
But it's really, as we mentioned, 1 Corinthians 11.1, the reason Paul can say imitate me is
(37:02):
because he's lived life with the Corinthians.
He's lived with them.
He's spent time with them.
He could say the same thing to the Ephesians.
He spent years with them in their church.
And so when he says things like watch my life, imitate me, follow me, he's not saying pridefully
I'm doing everything right.
He's saying I'm trying to follow Christ and I'm trying to model that.
(37:23):
So as I'm modeling that for the sake of faithfulness, model me as I model him.
And we're going to create a generation after generation after generation of followers that
are following the King.
That's the pattern that we're in.
And so when we think about Christian leaders in the local church, we do want to cultivate
those relationships.
It's not that you can only build friends with leaders in the church, but definitely try.
(37:47):
Definitely try.
That's a good encouragement.
And even if you don't get to be great friends with a leader because of your schedules don't
line up or different opportunities, but there's other believers too.
And there's other believers in the church that are also seeking to imitate Christ.
So you need those one another's.
That's really the main means of life on life sanctification that God provides in practicing
(38:08):
the one another's.
And you're going to learn from his word when you hear the word proclaimed on Sundays.
You're going to grow from hearing the word proclaimed and hearing it applied.
You're going to be part of groups that are occurring, small groups, community groups,
that kind of thing.
And then you can still read on the side and that's a grace.
You should read on the side.
It'd be great.
Focus on the word first, but if you get other things too, amen.
All those things will kind of work together.
(38:30):
But I think as Christians, we really should be guarded.
I like the word you used.
We should be guarded when it comes to the media.
When media is promoting something, even if it's something like Gospel Coalition, which
I don't want to say is wicked and throw the baby out with the bath water, though there
are things that I disagree wholeheartedly and some specific things you might end up talking
about here on one of these upcoming episodes.
(38:51):
But there are some good things in the archives.
There are some beneficial articles that have been there, but we shouldn't be misled just
because something's promoted.
Right.
Nor should we run to say, well, what did so and so say about this?
Well, what did God say about it?
Can we start there?
Maybe we can say, well, does so and so line up with God?
Right.
Do they line up with what he said?
(39:11):
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, I was thinking about this.
This is going to sound funny to people.
It's actually easier to go back to a guy who's dead than a guy who's living in this regard,
right?
Because I was thinking as you're talking, I quote Spurgeon.
Yeah.
I mean, you may have noticed I'm quoting him more in the Psalm series because he wrote
this amazing Treasury of David and he's brilliant, but we know his life.
(39:35):
There's a whole history to his life to where we can go back and say what he said here has
weight to it because of his integrity in his life.
So that helps because the story's sort of been written on him, but that's not always
true of living theologians, living pastors.
But yeah, just be guarded because not everything that says Christian is Christian.
(39:57):
Manage your expectations in the world when somebody...
Sometimes we get carried away.
Again, we're so looking for validation.
So some athlete hits a home run and points to the sky and we get super excited.
Oh, he's a Christian.
Just manage your expectations on that.
So don't start following the guy because he pointed to the sky as he crossed home plate.
You don't know him.
(40:18):
So just be careful not to get carried away.
Also, you don't want to be too cynical, right?
Yeah.
You don't want to delegitimize somebody who's just trying and maybe growing.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
That athlete, for example, who's pointing and they may be a baby Christian.
But at that point, had he come to be a Christian through Carl Lentz, which again, oh boy.
(40:39):
But then I hear another thing like he's doing a worship album.
So that's an interesting example.
So we can get super excited that a celebrity is a Christian now.
Well, okay, we can hope for that.
We can pray for that.
But let's just say it comes out, then let's do the hard work of looking at it and listening
to it.
Does it line up with scripture?
Be objective.
Don't get carried away because he's a celebrity.
(41:00):
Don't get so cynical that you go, he couldn't be a Christian.
Right.
Right.
Find that balance.
Just take a deep breath and be a Berean on things.
And I think that points, that statement right there points to the emphasis.
We test everything by God's word.
We're not testing it by how we feel about it.
We're not testing it by what's popular in the moment.
We're saying, hey, does this map on with what's true?
(41:21):
And if so, I can say amen.
And if not, hey, I'm moving on to the next thing.
We don't need to deal with that.
All right.
Do we hit that one hard enough?
Jeff has been great taking on this subject with you.
We pray this has helped you to renew your minds and reform your hearts.
We'll see you next time on The Thinking Tree.
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