When Should Christian Bookstores Pull Authors from Shelves and Online Listings?

Some of you know that when I’m not writing this blog and editing Christianity 201; when I’m not leading or assisting in weekend worship at a local church; when I’m not occasionally speaking at a church; during the rest of the time I am making decisions for our local Christian bookstore.

One of the hardest decisions I made in 2018 was to remove books by Bill Hybels from our shelves. It isn’t that those books don’t contain much truth and that many of them have been personally beneficial to me. It was just that — with shelf space at a premium in our small town store — we didn’t need the distraction.

I didn’t just make the decision, but personally removed the books, title by title, and put them in a box where they remain today. There were more than a dozen titles. Bill was a big influence on me and I have to say doing this really, really hurt, but as long as there were new ongoing developments in the story, I felt we needed to do this.

Christian bookstores have pulled product many times in the past. I got into this business through the Christian music industry first as a broadcaster and then as a performer and later as a vendor of records and cassettes. I once sat in a restaurant in Newport Beach, California and was interviewed for the job of assistant editor of Contemporary Christian Music magazine. My friends called me a ‘walking encyclopedia’ on CCM, and I given about seven seconds of audio, could name just about any song and artist, including that obscure cut at the end of side two.

When Amy Grant and Sandy Patti went through divorce, many stores pulled product. Oddly enough, those divorces are still in their past, but their music is back on the shelves. Divorce became more widely accepted among Evangelicals. I would argue that the whole LGBT thing in the church is where divorce was a couple of generations back. And I expect that, as in the case of Ray Boltz or Jennifer Knapp, stores still actively pull product when an artist comes out.

Why all this today? Because I’m staring at the shelves under “M” for James MacDonald. Christian radio stations are rapidly dropping his program (see Wednesday’s column) and James is trying to control the situation by announcing the shutdown of Walk in the Word’s broadcast division. There are calls for him to resign. Unlike those who were divorced, or Hybels’ flirtatiousness, the issue with MacDonald seems to be money and the control of money. It’s definitely his Achilles Heel.

Once again, those books contain much truth. James MacDonald is a great communicator and his writing includes a constant, unabashed call to repentance. He has served many people well in that area of his life. But at this point, I wonder if those books are also going to prove to be a distraction.

This isn’t about judgment. It’s about a shortage of shelf space, and a host of new, upcoming, younger authors who deserve to be heard. Some of those will prove themselves as the leading Christian voices to their generation. The cream rises to the top. By their fruit they will be known. Some will disappear off the scene within five years. Again, it’s not about judgment.

It’s also too easy for stores just to keep ordering key names; somewhat akin to living in a county — as I do — where every time there’s an election, people simply vote for the incumbents. So Max Lucado, Tim Keller, Mark Batterson, Lee Strobel, Stormie Omartian, John Bevere, Joyce Meyer, Neil Anderson, etc.; are always assured their latest title will get picked up at the local store level.

And honestly, if the sales reps came around with new titles by Hybels and MacDonald there are store owners who simply aren’t investing time keeping up online and would simply order those titles unwittingly.

The best analogy I ever heard was when a local pastor called my wife and I “gatekeepers.” I never thought of our role that way, but it’s a responsibility that needs to be taken very seriously. Conversely, pastors need to guard who they quote in sermons. They can easily grant authority and credibility to an author whose life doesn’t line up with their teachings.

Chances are, at the end of today, James MacDonald will still be on our shelves, but we’ll monitor the situation closely before making a knee-jerk reaction. Prayer helps as well!

The Stories are Real When It’s Someone You Know

Three stories.

First, I have been a longtime reader of Julie Anne and Warren and also of Dee and Deb. When I read the stories of spiritual abuse (not to mention mental, physical or sexual abuse) about which they (especially Julie Anne) are continually reporting, it’s easy to minimize the impact of those stories because they happened somewhere else to someone else.

But then this week I saw a “letter of dismissal” that some friends received.

I’m sure there are two sides to every story, but holding the letter in my own hands and reading it twice it occurred to me that (a) these types of stories are quite real, and (b) there are 100 better ways to phrase things than the way it was said in this letter.

The church in question didn’t use the term “letter of dismissal” but it was extremely dismissive. There was nothing redemptive in it at all. No, “We wish you God’s best in the next stage of your journey.”

What my brain was also processing as I read was, “Don’t get too concerned. These things happen all the time. You’re just seeing it close up right now.”

And then, perhaps God himself saying, “How would you like to be in my position? I have to see this sort of thing constantly.”

And last, a sense of, “Don’t be in a hurry to open your mail. You could be next.”

Second, I was throwing out old newspapers and found a story from April of this year in The Toronto Star about a Catholic Church whose current membership is being asked to contribute $500,000 as punitive damages that are part of a $2.6M settlement concerning a priest who abused one particular man when he was a student.

Imagine you’ve just started attending the Congregation of St. Basil and you’re told your church now faces this financial burden. The priest in question is deceased, but the jury felt that the church had participated in covering up the abuse. Perhaps it’s because I’ve driven by this church that it all seems to hit closer to home.

Cover up. That should sound familiar to readers here who follow the broader Evangelical scene. Time after time we’ve seen instances where it’s not the abuse that’s the big factor (as serious as that is) but the subsequent cover-ups that land churches in hot water. Which leads us to our next item.

Finally, Scot McKnight affirms this in a detailed analysis of this Spring’s soap opera involving Willow Creek. He maintains that the go-to response in cases like this is denial.

I have to say in all honesty, that would be me. I didn’t want to believe the charges in the Willow case were true, and I found myself angry with the accusers for instigating the accusations. Then, slowly, day after day after day, I found myself changing my position as more facts in the case came to light. (Truly, I’m still carrying a measure of disbelief.) He calls it “undoing forty years of trust.”

As McKnight points out, in so doing, the church only made it harder on themselves.

So what do these three stories tell us:

1. There is a lot more going on behind-the-scenes in a local church office than any of us realize, and some of it quite unpleasant, and some of it is badly handled.
2. Innocent people in church congregations bear the heartache when someone — perhaps someone not even living — has crossed a moral boundary. Covering things up only makes it worse.
3. People like myself can find themselves in a place of denial when a respected leader has messed up. Such minds aren’t changed overnight; it can be an incremental process undoing preconceptions in the face of evidence.

 

When Christian Authors and Artists Lives Get Messy, Should Retailers Pull Their Product?

As someone who has spent time leading worship in several different churches, I still get excited when I hear a new song. If the song really captures me — as one did recently — I’ll tell everyone I meet about it.

About a month ago I found such a song. It was a beautiful worship song that also contained teaching and exhortation — the best of all possible worlds worlds — and reminded me of some classic Andrae Crouch, or at least what he might write in 2015.

And then everything crashed. I was telling a group of people about the song and they proceeded to tell me a whole load of details about the artist, an affair, a marriage breakup and more. Hours later I went online only to discover everything they said was true, not that I should have doubted.

While I should have grieved over the artist’s sin (and my own), at that point my thoughts were entirely selfish. “Darn;” I thought; “I really liked that song.”

Two weeks later I decided to play the song on YouTube one more time. Still resonates. Then my wife and I had a discussion about whether or not the composition is in any way invalidated by the fact that the writer, like all of us, is flawed.

On Sunday night the discussion came up again in reference to an author. (See yesterday’s blog post.) Should Christian bookstores and online vendors simply pull his product off the shelves? If they do so, should this be permanent or just for a season? Is the truth contained in those books in any way invalidated by the author’s moral failure, or does the transgression disqualify it somehow?

Back in the day, Christian booksellers went through this when Amy Grant and Sandi Patti each were divorced. When Jennifer Knapp and Ray Boltz came out as gay. More recently, when Mark Driscoll admitted he plagiarized large sections of his books.

Of course, sometimes, the truth just isn’t there. The boy in The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven now admits he was never there in the first place. That’s a different type of situation. But last time I checked, those classic Amy and Sandi albums are back on the shelves, and this time around, some stores didn’t bother pulling Driscoll product at all.

I really like the song with which I began this discussion. I don’t wanna go all Charismatic on you and say it’s anointed, but it’s certainly special, at least to me. Does it not remain valid despite all the back-story? Didn’t God use a donkey once?

Wednesday Link List

With lots of people doing summer things this week, I thought we’d tinker with the format while nobody’s looking. ANYTHING YOU CLICK will take you to PARSE, the blog of Leadership Journal, the Link List’s owner.  But first, we take you to Monday’s edition of the comic Pearls Before Swine (click image to link).

• This could be a model for other cities: You’ve heard of business incubators, now a ministry incubator and network hub is opening in an iconic location in Canada’s capital.
• He’s a Christian comedian with an Evangelical focus, and yes, Nazareth is his real name.

I usually bury the video links near the bottom, but this week uncovered two clips I wanted to give more prominence.

• I have a pet peeve about so much American Christian music being guitar-based and Nashville-rooted, so this synth-based piece, You Brought Me Back to Life put a smile on my face. (Read why Citizens and Zach Bolen landed on my radar.)
• On YouTube he goes by DavidWesley, and relatively speaking, we’re practically next door neighbors. This original song, performed acapella is titled Real Life Offering, and is one of many…
• …of course if your tastes run to something more like rap, watch for Tedashii.

Church leadership stuff:

• This one takes you to an 11-minute video that suggests that the moral failure of pastors is linked to relaxing our standards as we grow accustomed to the darkness of the dominant culture.
• If it was just a matter of expository or topical preaching it would be easy. Unfortunately, there are at least eighteen other variants.
• Conference crashing: In a 4-minute video, Aubrey Malphurs offers eight reasons why lay people aren’t getting involved.
• Pulpit Plagiarism: At least one reporter has been taking notes.
• A UK church has been forced to remove signage telling non-believers they will burn in hell, after a complaint that the wording constitutes hate speech.

Essay(s)-of-the-Week:

• No, it’s not about translations: Four Modern Versions of the Bible that are Ruining The Bible.
• An economist looks at psychology. No specific link here, you’ll have to jump into this ongoing series at the New Zealand blog Blessed Economist, called What is a Person? It began May 26th and grows more complex and more interesting with each new post.
• While reading some updated stats on the Korean church in North America, I discovered a link to a three-part series on the unique challenges when doing pre-marital counseling with Asian-American Christians.
• A Christian response to a New York Times article advocating that cohabitation is better marriage preparation than courtship.
• If we’re going to teach our daughters modesty, let’s be doing it for all the right reasons.
• It’s not really essay-length, but David Murray has a blog post just for your kids.

The wider religious world:

• The Vatican’s rules aren’t stopping a number of women priests from having themselves ordained anyway.
• The founder may be gone, but the spirit of Westboro Baptist Church is alive and well…
• …However, Phelps’ grandson does a radio interview reflecting on leaving the church and thereby somewhat leaving the family. (Click audio link for May 31st)
• The U.S. Navy says the phrase “Atheist Chaplain” is an oxymoron and rejected a Humanist Association-backed candidate for the second time.
• Like every other human on the planet, Pope Francis needs to take a summer break.
• Mormonism isn’t getting in the way of the guys in Red Yeti pursuing rock ‘n roll success.
• A colonel in a Russian security service is sentenced to 3.5 years for stealing a priceless Gutenberg bible.
• Quick read: Many of the journalists who cover family issues have no children.
• Infographic: The rise of secularism in U.S. religion.
• You might not recognize some names in the Wild Goose Festival lineup of musicians and speakers.

Worth reading:

• I often wonder how it is that people will write things not knowing their lives are going to be suddenly taken, such as this blog post by a Virginia teen a few weeks before his death.
• It’s one of those “Ten Things” articles about VBS, but this checklist includes VBS things you never considered.
• There’s not a lot of substance to this first post, but veteran Christian blogger Andrew Jones aka Tall Skinny Kiwi is back online after a year’s absence.
• In the markets where they have survived, Christian bookstores are offering a surrogate church experience for millennials.
• “Everyone should see a counselor from time to time.” Even your kids.

Be afraid; be very afraid:

• Online and in Christian bookstores, October marks Thomas Nelson’s release of The Duck Commander Bible.
• I’m not sure that a large outdoor billboard promoting your church’s children’s ministry should include a quotation from Adoph Hitler.
• This 2011 video turned up on a few Twitter accounts over the weekend: Al Mohler affirming that “New Calvinism” is the only way.
• Scalpers were asking $850 for tickets to Joel Osteen at Yankee Stadium.
• A hip-hop church in North Carolina has a Saturday service at 5:30, but “Happy Hour” starts at 5:00. (See image below!)
• I see a blood moon rising. I see trouble on the way.
• Finally, if you collect classic obscure and crazy laws, here are ten church related statutes.

So how do you like your links? Categorized or free-range? Leave a comment!

 

Wednesday Link List

So, if I go to see one of the many faith-focused movies currently running, can I skip church that weekend? While you ponder that, here’s this week’s link-o-rama:  Clicking anything below will take you to PARSE, the link list’s benefactor.

• A pastor reflects on being the one succeeding David Platt, even though Platt was never there. The downside of video preaching.
• The most interesting thing about Thom Rainer’s late March list of Twenty of the Most Influential Evangelicals in America was the ongoing suggestions and amendments that appear in the comments.
• So…did Noah actually preach (as in the movie) or did his actions speak louder than words?
• Right now, John Hagee’s Four Blood Moons is a huge bestseller in the Christian book market. But author Mark Hitchcock does not think the coming eclipses are prophetic markers.
• Last Thursday a New York Appeals Court overturned a 2012 ruling which now leaves schools unable to rent space to religious groups in NYC.
• Imagine having access to everything Billy Graham ever preached, from 1941 to 2006, typed, underlined and marked with his handwritten notes, for reading, printing, downloading and keyword searching. Now everyone can have free access.
• Essay of the Week (1): A university English teacher — who also happens to be the daughter of Christian singer Ray Boltz — wrestles with the phrase, “the agony of mothers.”
• Joni and Friends has released a new book for the fathers of children diagnosed with a disability. Read a free sample “Courage When There Are No Answers” the first chapter of Another Kind of Courage.
• For Rachel Held Evans, the World Vision thing was the last straw. Her article, questioning her future commitment to Evangelicalism got nearly 900 comments. On the weekend, she moderated her extreme response…
• …and perhaps World Vision Canada wasn’t more tolerant, at least according to one former employee’s story from six years ago…
• …Meanwhile, the blog Stuff Fundies Like goes a bit off-topic in order to send a goodbye letter to a formerly sponsored child.
• Unless you’re prepared to spend big bucks, moving forward, you might not get as much mileage out of your church Facebook page.  (For UK readers, would that be big pounds and kilometerage?)
• In addition to all the other changes he is making, Pope Francis is reforming the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank aka “The Institute of the Works of Religion.” (The name of the place that has my savings account pales in comparison.)
• First, the Bishop of Bling, then there was the Archbishop of Atlanta. (Alliteration always adds a little.)
• Are you reading this in the popular Firefox browser? If so, you might want to read this.
• Finding our way out of a trap we all fall into: Moving from Churchianity to Christianity. (Our first link to a writer in Ecuador!)
• Remember that line in The Jerk where Steve Martin screams, “The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!” Well, the new Top 300 Ministry Blogs list is here. (Wait, I’m number what? That can’t be right.)
• It’s getting to be a rarity to read an album review, but this one thoroughly covers the worship ministry of Paul Baloche and his new live recording.
• A different perspective on the issue of praying before everything from municipal to federal government meetings. What if it was this prayer that was in question?
• Analogy Avenue Archive: Ten things your spiritual life and woodworking have in common.  (Be sure to read part two.)
• Oh my! A church-based mixed martial arts club? Teaching cage fighting to youth group kids? A pastor-vs.-pastor fight club? Check out this forthcoming film.
• I couldn’t figure out why the Easter Sunrise service was at 6:15 this year, but I guess if Easter is later, the sun rises earlier. Check out the time where you live.
• So you’re a young student in hermeneutics class, and the prof says, “…and whatever you do, don’t ever go to the Bible to find a text for Sunday’s sermon.” Wait! What?
• An Oregon mother was found guilty on all seven counts for the beating death of her four-year old son she thought was gay.
• A few books have noted that the average church reflects feminine tastes. Here are seven ways to get the men in the church more on board.
• Billy Graham soloist George Beverly Shea once sang, “Someone slipped and fell/Was that someone you?” I think of that line whenever I hear of another high-profile pastor brought down by moral failure. On Monday, one writer offered ten responses.
• Internet tracking organization Technorati’s fastest rising religion blog this month is deCompose by novelist Mike Duran.
• Most readers here know what happened to Growing Pains child star Kirk Cameron, but for kid actor Jeremy Miller, life went a different direction.
• Essay of the Week (2): Zondervan author Tyler Blanski guests at a Catholic website on the topic, Why Did God Make Eve? (Glad He did, though.) (God, not Tyler.)
• A nominal church attender might either lean in to faith, or lean away. How do we keep them from joining “the nones?”
• Religious identity and national identity blur, creating problems for over a quarter of a million former Soviet refugees in Israel.
• In another ‘Holy relics’ analysis, a look at the Christian flag. (A teaser for this piece suggested letting your eyes cross in church and seeing the Christian flag blend into the U.S. flag.)
• Here’s another list of misused Bible verses, this one coming with the observation that a Twittered verse “often leads us down the wrong path because it reinforces an artificial structure on the text.”
• Guest Speaker Sunday: Here’s eight things the guest speaker would like from the host church. Dress code, yes. Internal politics, no.
• Artist/Video of the Week: The JJ Weeks Band featured recently on this K-LOVE video.
• Back to the Noah movie, one reviewer wrote: “As frustrating as anything on display is the script’s complete abandonment of the animals as a dramatic element.”
• I think I left this one off a few weeks ago: A theory on the reasons behind the increased divorce rate among Southern Baptist couples.
• From the mind of Jon Acuff: Three things that are okay to do in church, and not okay to do elsewhere.
• Tim Challies imagines the type of Bible he would create if it were left up to him. There would be a Q&A section at the back.
• I had a great time on Saturday morning watching a time-shifted simulcast conference of Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend speaking on the principles of the Boundaries series of books.
• Want more links? This week on my own blog I looked at the top Canadian Christian blogs.  Also there, my recurring rant about interdenominational Good Friday services, and our own April Fool’s news story.

Paul Wilkinson’s writing the rest of the week is made possible by readers at Thinking Out Loud and at C201, and by viewers like you.

Above: After a forever away from posting something new, Sacred Sandwich awoke as from a giant sleep.

Below: This is from the Abandoned Pics Twitter feed: @AbandonedPics and is a wooden church somewhere in Russia. 

Click the respective images to link. (Or the irreverent ones.)

So Why Exactly Does Scandal Hit Pastors and Religious Leaders?

Mark Barger Elliott tries to deal with this question — “How can we clergy explain such egregious transgressions?”  this week on the CNN Belief Blog.   He feels there are two culprits, “the work and the person.”

Take the first one:

As a pastor I identify with the pitfalls of “the work.” Fifteen years ago I took vows “to love God, my neighbor, and to serve the people of God with energy, intelligence and imagination.”

Today, however, my job description reads like the director of a mid-size non-profit. A million dollar budget needs to be raised and a monthly payroll of 12 employees met. To tread the churning waters of shrinking resources and demands for excellent programs, I take classes on strategic planning as often as classes on the Bible.

As to the second issue:

How do we explain the moral transgressions of a profession charged to teach morality?

In my years as a pastor I have witnessed marriage vows made and betrayed. I have visited those in prison and those trapped in a prison they have made for themselves. I’ve prayed with the lost and the found, watched fortunes flow and ebb.

“Broken” is a word that describes many of the people I have been privileged to walk alongside as a pastor.

I have also spent a great deal of time with other clergy; from preaching stars who soak up acclaim for their oratory gifts to pastors in inner-city churches barely making ends meet.

The solution to the first problem seems more simple:

One option is to intentionally separate the clergy from the church’s financial matters. Teaching people about God’s love while shaking a fundraiser’s tin cup seems to ultimately undermine one’s credibility. People suspect a bait and switch.

I wish he had been given more space to flesh this out.    He identifies a tension here, but it’s just one, and pastors are stretched physically and emotionally in so many different directions.  Is the point financial responsibility specifically, or the inconsistencies of the job?

The second solution is not so easily dealt with:

Clergy typically fall into one of two camps.

Those who, in the face of the brokenness that surrounds them, come to identify their own brokenness and in humility choose to “live with the questions,” to borrow the poet Rilke’s phrase. This person is reluctant to offer quick answers to the hard questions of life.

The other camp is clergy who choose instead to offer confident solutions to life’s struggles. The clergy I have watched transgress their ordination vows typically fall into the second camp. The temptation is to shift from speaking about God to speaking for God. When that line blurs in a pastor’s mind, all bets are off.

On this point, I wish he’d had space to discuss the “personality” as well as the “person.”   I’ve heard it said that the very personality traits which cause someone to want to be in the pulpit are the very personality traits that leave them vulnerable to temptation.   (My personal belief is that anyone in business leadership, or in a position where they are “upfront” before a crowd of people is equally prone to the same conditions.)   The second paragraph above is certainly an interesting insight into how that might play out.

To me, this is the question all of us — laity and church staff — need to be asking each time we hear a story about another fallen leader.   And “hearing” is key, because we tend to focus here in North American on Canadian and American stories, but Elliott points out there are similar stories in Europe that we’re not always being told.

I also wish he’d had time to broaden out the ending.  While pastors have made vows to serve God vocationally, each one of us has promised to honor God’s name and serve Him with devotion.   The moral collapse of a Christian leader may make headlines, but when it happens to any one of us, it is not any less significant to God.

To read the full piece, in context, which I encourage you to do, click here.

Mark Barger Elliott is Senior Pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and author of Creative Styles of Preaching.

Comments left at the original article come from the widest possible readership at CNN and should be read with discernment.

“Collapse in the Christian life is rarely caused by a blowout, but is usually the result of a slow leak. ” ~source unknown