If you've never seen Creflo Dollar preach, watch him on TV sometime, and just sit back and be amazed at how cunningly he perverts scripture. If there was ever a good modern example of the danger of ordained clergy, and its potential for corrupting theology, this is it.

The worst types of deceit are the types that sound extremely close to the truth, but pervert a portion of it, making the new "truth" sound more welcoming. People are flocking to the "prosperity gospel," and why not? It promises wealth and comfort to those who are faithful to God. The only problem is, there's really no Biblical support for it. Not unless you're as crafty as the guys who can read whatever they want into scripture, so it supports their lifestyles.

From the AJC:

Christians gather around the world each Christmas to sing about "poor baby Jesus" asleep in the manger with no crib for his bed.

But the Rev. Creflo Dollar looks inside that manger, and he doesn't see a poor baby at all.

He sees a baby born into wealth because the kings visiting him gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. He sees a messiah with so much money that he needed an accountant to track it. He sees a savior who wore clothes so expensive that the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for them.

Dollar sees a rich Jesus.

"He was rich, he was whole, and I use those words interchangeably," says Dollar, senior pastor of World Changers Church International, a 23,000-member College Park church, which broadcasts its services on six continents.

Dollar is part of a growing number of preachers who say that the traditional image of Jesus as a poor, itinerant preacher who "had no place to lay his head" is wrong.

"Did Jesus have money? Well, the Bible was clear. Kings brought him gold," Dollar says. "Did Jesus have money? It's clear. He had a treasurer to keep up with it."

Yet many academic scholars say pastors like Dollar are inventing a rich Jesus for selfish reasons.

"You're giving people divine sanctification to be greedy," says Sondra Ely Wheeler, an ethicist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. "You tell them what they want to hear: The reason you have a Mercedes is because God loves you."

People have argued over their perception of Jesus for centuries. They've debated his politics, his race and more recently, his relationship with Mary Magdalene.

The new battleground: his economic status, because of the popularity of pastors like Dollar.

Dollar preaches the Prosperity Gospel, where the basic tenet is God rewards the faithful with wealth, spiritual power and debt-free living. And he is joined by a host of other nationally known preachers:

•Bishop T.D. Jakes, one of the most popular televangelist in the United States, a best-selling author and star of MegaFest, one of the largest annual revivals in the country.

•Televangelist Oral Roberts, founder of Oral Roberts University.

•And Atlanta's own Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of the city's largest church, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, 25,000 strong.

Their teaching, once seen as a fringe theology championed by flamboyant characters like "Rev. Ike," a prosperity televangelist with a pompadour who once boasted during his heyday in the 1970s that his "garages runneth over," has now moved mainstream. In the 1970s and 1980s, the flamboyant Rev. Ike made millions by promising wealth to those who followed his unabashed emphasis on materialism.

Millions of people across the world watch prosperity preachers' broadcasts and attend their crusades.

But preaching the Prosperity Gospel presents a snag in logic to its proponents: If God wants people to be prosperous, why was Jesus poor?

Well, he wasn't, say many prosperity pastors. And although their claims appear to contradict 2,000 years of traditional Christianity, they say they can prove it through Scripture and history. They also invoke common sense: Jakes reportedly told a Dallas Observer reporter that Jesus had to be rich in order to support his disciples for three years.

'Supernatural provision'

Those who preach against a poor Jesus say they aren't trying to justify personal greed. Prosperity preachers like Dollar say their teaching isn't solely centered on money, but extends to other areas such as health and relationships. They say God will provide for the faithful in all areas of their life — just as he did for Jesus.

"When we are following God's will with all of our hearts, if it takes us to a place where we need God's supernatural provision to keep going, he will always provide it," says the Rev. Dennis Rouse of Victory World Church, a 5,000-member church in Gwinnett County.

And when it comes to Jesus, that's evident throughout his life, prosperity preachers say. How, for example, could Jesus have supported his mother when his father died early — unless he had ample money?

"It's historically inaccurate to say that Jesus was poor," says Bishop Johnathan Alvarado, senior pastor of Total Grace Christian Center in Decatur. Alvarado's church has 4,000 members who worship at two locations.

Alvarado also disputes the notion that Jesus was homeless — traditionally believed because of the passage in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke where Jesus tells a would-be follower that he has "no place to lay his head."

But Alvarado says Jesus was speaking metaphorically — the world was not his home. "How many carpenters do you know who haven't built themselves a house?" he says.

And Jesus and his followers lived "sacrificially" by helping the poor and not trusting in their riches, Alvarado said. "Sacrifice is contextual," he says. " I can afford a BMW or a Bentley, but I drive a Nissan. ... It's OK to have stuff so long as stuff doesn't have you."

Dollar doesn't drive a Nissan. He drives a Rolls-Royce.

But he also believes that stories about Jesus being prejudiced against the rich have been misinterpreted. For example, he views the tale of the wealthy young ruler that Jesus confronts in the Gospel of Luke through different eyes.

In that encounter, the Gospels say Jesus told the man that it is "harder for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Dollar says, however, Jesus wasn't saying wealth was a barrier to being accepted by God.

He says the "eye of the needle" was an ancient passageway entering Jerusalem that was so small that a camel had to drop to its knees to squeeze through. Jesus meant that a man who trusted in his riches would have similar difficulties adjusting to God's way of handling riches, Dollar says.

"This guy had an opportunity to love God with his possessions, but he couldn't do it because his possessions had him," Dollar says.

That same passage also proves that Jesus' disciples "were absolutely not poor," Dollar says. (The Gospels report that the disciples were astonished when Jesus told them about the perils of riches.) "If the disciples were poor, why would they get astonished?" Dollar says. "If they were poor, they should have jumped up and said, 'Whoopee, we're on our way.' "

'A lack of understanding'

However, if Jesus and his disciples weren't poor — because God had blessed them — what does that say about the millions of faithful Christians who live throughout the world in brutal poverty?

Is that due to a failure of their character?

When asked this, Dollar says: "Part of it may be, first of all, a lack of understanding. You cannot do better until you know better. I used to be broke and poor just like all of those other people. I had to first change the way I think."

Rick Hayes, a 14-year member of Dollar's church, agrees.

He says he was "homeless and hopeless" until he attended World Changers. He learned there that Jesus preached to the poor so they wouldn't be poor anymore. Today he is a medical supply salesman.

Hayes says he believes Jesus was rich because some biblical translations suggest Jesus — as a baby — was visited by a caravan of about 200 kings bearing gold, not three wise men. Jesus also needed wealth to pay travel expenses for his 12 disciples as they took the Gospel from city to city.

Hayes, quoting the ninth chapter of Ecclesiastes ("The words of a poor man are soon forgotten"), also says Jesus could not have attracted a devoted following if he was poor.

"Nobody is going to follow a broke man," Hayes says.

'By any means necessary'

Wheeler, the ethicist from Wesley seminary, sighs when she hears the arguments for Jesus being rich. She and other New Testament scholars say these pastors are distorting history and words and have no understanding of the socio-economic conditions of Jesus' time.

Wheeler, author of "Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, $20), says most biblical scholars don't even want to dignify the debate with a response.

She says that Dollar's argument that Jesus started off wealthy because of the gold he received at birth is nonsense. Only one out of the four Gospels even mentions the gold he received from a king and that passage never gives the value of the gift.

"The notion that you would go from that to the assertion Jesus is wealthy passes credulity," she says. "You have to want to get there by any means necessary."

She also disputes Dollar's interpretation of Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler. Jesus was being literal when he said it was hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

"What Jesus says is that it is rarer than teeth in chickens to find a person who can own many things and not be owned by them," she says.

Similarly, Obery M. Hendricks Jr., author of "The Politics of Jesus" (Doubleday, $26), scoffs at the contention that Jesus had enough money to support himself and his disciples for three years. Hendricks says the eighth chapter in the Gospel of Luke paints a different picture: Women, using their own meager means, covered the bills for Jesus and his disciples.

"If Jesus was rich, why would he need women to support him?" Hendricks asks.

Eric Meyers, a professor of archaeology at Duke University, says he has never heard a single reputable scholar argue for a rich Jesus.

"It's new to me," he says at the beginning of the conversation. But as he listens to a litany of arguments on why Jesus was rich, he breaks in: "Now you're getting me mad."

Meyers, who personally excavated the village of Nazareth where Jesus lived during a 19-year-period, says there is absolutely no evidence of an "eye of the needle" gate in Jerusalem.

And Meyers, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaelogy in the Near East, says simply put, Jesus was poor — like virtually all the people around him.

"He didn't even have his own tomb," Meyers says. "He had to get it from a friend."

But Dollar says his interpretation of Jesus' ministry is just as valid as any scholar. His own prosperity is proof that God wants to bless his followers with financial and spiritual blessings — just as he did for baby Jesus.

"God didn't give the Bible just to theologians and scholars, he gave it to poor people," Dollar says. "He gave it to farmers, sheep-herders — we don't need somebody to help us misunderstand the Bible. If we just read the Book, things will begin to happen, and you'll see."

Labels: church

I've been reading Mark Batterson's blog for awhile now (I've linked to several of his posts in the past), and following his progress as he was writing and preparing In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. Mark is the lead pastor at National Community Church in DC, which meets for worship in movie theaters around the DC area.

I was already planning on buying a copy, but he mentioned several weeks ago that his publisher, Multinomah, would be giving some copies away at Catalyst. I managed to score a free copy early the first day of Catalyst.

The title of the book, and much of the contents, are centered around a relatively obscure character in the Bible. While not quite as obscure as Jabez, Benaiah doesn't get much "screen time" in the Bible. But the mentions he does get are pretty impressive:

There was also Benaiah son of Jehoiada, a valiant warrior from Kabzeel. He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two of Moab's mightiest warriors. Another time he chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it. Another time, armed only with a club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiah wrenched the spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with it. (2 Samuel 23:20-21)

Benaiah was eventually in charge of David's bodyguards, then a commander in the army, then eventually the command in chief of the army of Israel. But his success began when he chased a lion into a pit.

Mark argues that we miss too many of God's opportunities for us, according to what we focus on:

I think the church has fixated on sins of commission for far too long. We have long list of don'ts. Think of it as holiness by subtraction. We think holiness is the byproduct of subtracting something from our lives that shouldn't be there. And holiness certainly involves subtraction. But I think God is more concerned about sins of omission - those things we could have and should have done. It's holiness by multiplication. Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Those who simply run away from sin are half-Christians. Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what's wrong. We're called to chase lions.

What I love about this book is that it captures what I've loved about Mark's blog so well. It's full of challenges to the church at large to think very differently.

There are basically two approaches to life: playing to win and playing not to lose. Can you guess which camp lion chasers fall into? Too many of us are tentatively playing the game of life as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. We need to take our cues from the early believers who competed for the Kingdom.

"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."

There is nothing remotely passive about following Christ. Some of us approach our relationship with Christ like we're called to play a "prevent defense" when we ought to be in a "two-minute offense." Some of us act like faithfulness is making no turnovers when faithfulness is scoring touchdowns. Faithfulness has nothing to do with maintaining the status quo or holding the fort. It has everything to do with competing for the Kingdom and storming the gates of Hell...

Jesus commissioned the church in Matthew 16:18: "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it."

Gates are defenseive devices. Storming those gates requires offensive measures. Think of the church as a battering ram.

This book is a great challenge to move forward, and pursue the opportunities that God places before us.

Labels: books, church

Check out the post from Dan Kimball (author of The Emerging Church and Emerging Worship, my reviews of which you can read here and here). The post is titled Pews, Pulpits, Pastors, Preaching and other things that can get in the way of the church "being" the church. I really don't need to add much to what he said.

Labels: church, emerging

Day 2 of Catalyst was, despite the lack of Jeff Foxworthy, overall better than the first day.

The first session was Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) interviewing his pastor, Rick McKinley. I've read McKinley's book Jesus in the Margins, and he was every bit as inspiring and challenging at Catalyst as he was in his book. At his church in Portland, Imago Dei Community, he talked about how he made a choice to move into being missional in the community. He said it wasn't working until he was willing to risk the complete failure of the church - but he had decided he didn't want to "play church" anymore. McKinley's perspective is interesting, because he had almost no connection to church before he received Christ as an adult, so his approach is refreshing. If I was going to get involved in a "conventional" church again, it'd probably be as unconventional as Imago Dei sounds like.

The second session was Louie Giglio. Louie is the founder of Passion (a college-age worship movement), speaks at 7:22, and also heads up sixstepsrecords (home of most of the Passion artists such as Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, etc.). Louie is always one of my favorite speakers. He said that ministry is "not about being great businessmen," but about "empowering normal people to do supernatural things."

In the third session, Kevin Carroll talked about the value of "play," and the value of understanding the way children view the world, full of imagination and possibilities. Kevin Carroll calls himself a "Katalyst," helping other companies turn creative ideas into reality.

To end the day, Donald Miller talked about where the church has come from and where it's going. The thought that stuck with me the most was this: the problems come when the church tries to be like the world. Pre-enlightenment, the church asserted its authority via grand buildings (that looked similar to the royal castles), and holy rituals. Post-enlightenment, the church took on the position as the conveyor of truth. Today, the church takes the position of entertainment and marketing. Miller said that if you look at the metaphors used in the New Testament, though, you'll see the metaphor of fathers and sons being reunited. Of finding things that were once lost. Rather than viewing Christianity as a product to be marketed, he said that we need to view our ministry as reuniting people with their Creator. Awesome stuff.

Overall, day two didn't feel as oriented to "church staff" in the same way that day one felt. We were being challenged to view ministry as a spiritual phenomenon, not a business phenomenon.

The real question was this: when it came time to order tickets at a really low cost for next year, would I do it? I decided that yes, I would do it. This was a good opportunity for me to test a lot of what I have been experiencing against a lot of thought-provoking speakers, and challenge some of my thinking. I'm also very encouraged that there were a higher number of speakers this year that questioned the "status quo" in terms of simply applying sound business principles to church ministry as an avenue for success. Given that they even bothered to invite George Barna to speak in front of a lot of these pastors, church staff, and lay leaders of conventional churches, I really want to see how Catalyst continues to grow - not just in size, but in scope.

Labels: Catalyst, church

So I went to my first Catalyst Conference as a house-church participant, as opposed to a conventional church worship leader. I gotta say, the changes in my life in the last year has changed my perspective on this quite a bit.

Andy Stanley started things off with a good start, talking out of Daniel 4-5. The discussion cenetered on this line, repeated several times in Daniel: "the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." If found it ironic that he applied this to church ministry. Funny, I thought churches were supposed to be a part of the kingdom of God, not mini kingdoms of men.

Next up was Marcus Buckingham, who talked about playing to your strengths rather than always trying to improve your weaknesses. Good stuff, even if they've been talking about that kind of stuff at Catalyst for years. Still, he put it in more of a workplace/career context, rather than just trying to focus on church, which is good. Sometimes I think some of the speakers forget that a lot of the people at Catalyst aren't employed in ministry. Marcus certainly didn't ignore that.

First up, after lunch, was George Barna. I honestly felt like people just didn't understand Barna. He would say things, and people would just be completely silent. Here is a guy that has been hugely respected in the ministry world for years, but now that he's written a book basically predicting that conventional churches will lose about half of their market share over the next twenty years, and that it's not entirely a bad thing, people just tune him out. One thing he said, that should have gotten a response, and didn't: "Jesus didn't call us to go to church, he called us to BE the church." There were several more. I was annoyed.

Then John Maxwell took the stage. They did this as a Q&A session with Andy Stanley asking the questions. I've seen Maxwell speak numerous times, mostly at Catalyst, but also at other leadership seminars. Something clicked with me this time, though. Maxwell's ideas and leadership principles completely make sense in a business world. But in the kingdom of God, they completely rule out spiritual possibilities. For instance, he always says that you can only increase a skill a notch or two - so if you're a 3 on a scale from 1 to 10, with a lot of hard work and discipline, you can increase to a 4 or a 5, but never higher.

This starts to bug me though - because it rules out spiritual gifts. I don't believe that Jesus' disciples were 10's on a leadership scale when he picked them. I don't even believe that they were a 7. They were probably more like a 2. He picked the least capable to prove that with the inflow of the Holy Spirit, the least talented of us can become the greatest servants in the kingdom. People who have never shown any leadership potential can, with the direciton of the Spirit, become great leaders in the kingdom of God. I've never heard Maxwell acknowledge that there's a difference, and many (if not most) conventional churches are run more like a business than as a part of God's kingdom, so this makes sense.

Then there was a special guest - Jeff Foxworthy had the chance to share. He started with a definition of what a redneck is: "a complete and utter lack of sophistication." He then talked a little bit about his background, told a few redneck jokes (and even managed to make fun of West Virginia in the process), but then started talking about examples of rednecks in the Bible.

The thing is, he was challenging as Barna, but because of his delivery style, I suppose (and probably the fact that he hadn't written a book predicting the decline of the influence of the conventional church), his reception was much warmer.

But he basically gave every indication that he is a revolutionary. He can't stand churches that are stuffy and require everyone to dress up (where rednecks would NOT fit in). He said he specifically won't join a church that requires membership, because he's a member of the kingdom of God. And that when it comes to church leadership, we're all sheep leading sheep, and there is only ONE shepherd.

Overall, Jeff Foxworthy gave the most challenging and thought-provoking talk up that that point. It's pretty interesting that he beat out Andy Stanley and John Maxwell in that regard.

The last speaker of the day was Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, which is a group of lawyers that works around the world to provide law enforcement the evidence they need to break up forced child prostitution and illegal slavery rings. Pretty awesome stuff. His talk really centered on the command for Christians to be God's agents of justice in the world. He was quite challenging on the need to get out of the "visitor's center" (implication: going to church) and go "out there" where Jesus is, where it is dangerous, and show people that God is good by bringing justice where there is oppression. Awesome stuff.

All in all a good day. I was actually expecting to feel more on the outside of things looking in - but I think this year, with the inclusion of Barna, Catalyst is at least trying to throw a bone to people like me: formerly disillusioned Christians who are finding a deeper call to the kingdom of God outside of conventional church.

Looking forward to day two.

Labels: Catalyst, church