Bishop Eddie makes nearly a cool million a year.  Bishop Eddie drives a $350K Bentley, and lives in a mansion with nine bathrooms on twenty acres.  Defending this (indefensible) lifestyle, Bishop Eddie told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2005 that,

“I pastor a multimillion dollar congregation. You’ve got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that’s supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.”

Uh-huh.

What makes this interesting is what the billboard said.  It read,

“Love Like Him, Live Like Him, Lead Like Him”

I assume Bishop Eddie means that we ought to love, live, and lead like Jesus.

And so I find myself wondering if anyone in his mega-congregation sees the irony…

And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” – Luke 9:58

There is a “controversy” of sorts that has brewed in the evangelical world over the course of the last few weeks, ever since John Piper, darling of the conservative and Reformed branch of evangelicalism, invited Rick Warren to appear at his Desiring God conference this fall.  Warren is viewed with downright scorn by at least a certain vocal segment of this movement, and predictably, many were up in arms, reacting with horror to Piper’s invitation extended to this man they view as a pragmatist who waters down the gospel, who represents so much of what they abhor about the contemporary evangelical movement.

An aside: though I have benefited from some of Warren’s writing, I have increasingly viewed a lot of what he says and does with skepticism myself.  I understand a lot of where these folks are coming from, and I sympathize with it.  Some of the positions Warren takes have a level of, I believe, danger inherent in them.

But one of the things that has been thrown around is the word “heretic” to describe Rick Warren.  Seriously.  Folks, say what you will about Mr. Warren, and there are some things to say, to be sure, but Rick Warren is no “heretic”.  And I wrote all this to make a point that Trevin Wax makes in this article about the controversy:

When you use the word “heretic” to refer to anyone who disagrees with you, you don’t have a good word to use to refer to someone who actually fits the bill.

Couldn’t said that better myself.  Wax references Jerry Falwell, who a few years back used the “H word” to refer to folks who believe in the Calvinist doctrine of “limited atonement”.  Do I disagree with “limited atonement”?  Absolutely.  Are people who hold to it “heretics”?  Please.  Spare me.

We’d all do well to remember—particularly if we “c0mmunicate for a living”—that words mean things, and we do no service to anyone when we cheapen those words by over-speaking.

More disheartening is that the pastors of a Baptist church would tolerate this instead of (lovingly) offering the family the kind of counsel they need to put away the works of darkness as they embrace the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.  What fellowship does the light of Christ have with the darkness of voodoo?  None.  And the most loving thing that Revs. Thompson and Haak could possibly do would be to disabuse this misguided family of any notion to the contrary–rather than affirm their idolatry.

Measuring Oral Roberts’ Influence

One certainly hopes that Oral Roberts is now rejoicing with Jesus in Heaven, and there is little doubt in my mind that some very good things happened as a result of Mr. Roberts’ influence. At the same time, there is little doubt in my mind that much harm was done through his spurious Prosperity Theology teaching (I always had associated such with the Kenneths–Hagin and Copeland–as well as Benny Hinn, Smilin’ Joey, and a few others, but MacArthur points out the difference between Prosperity “Theology” and Word-Faith “theology”, and it’s clear that Mr. Roberts must assume a lot of responsibility for this awful movement). The gospel of Jesus doesn’t square with Prosperity teaching, and we must never, ever be fooled by the size of one’s ministry as an indicator of the blessing of God or of the rightness of one’s theology.

I won’t.

In a nutshell, this document glosses over the gospel. And the gospel cannot be compromised for anything. Not for anything. Because if we don’t have the gospel, we got nothing. Zero. Bupkus. At several points, the document lumps together all of the above group under the name “Christians”. Granted, in one sense of the word, that is true–just as in some sense of the word, we could use that term to refer to pseudo-Christian cults like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. At other points, it uses terminology such as “proclaim(ing) the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season”, and suggests that this is our common mission.

The problem ought to be obvious: while I am certainly sympathetic with the overall gist of the document (apart from the issue of the gospel), I cannot agree that I share a common mission with Rome, for instance. I’m not “doing the same thing”. My goals, my mission, my preaching, my teaching, my life is not devoted to a “gospel” which is no gospel, which glosses over the fundamental differences that divide these branches of “Christendom”. The gospel is the issue–and rather than linking arms with Roman Catholics as brothers/sisters in Christ (though on a different basis, we could stand together); rather than smoothing over the unsmoothable differences in our beliefs, it is incumbent upon me to stand first and foremost for the gospel.

Now, when it comes to the particular social actions advocated by this document, I would find myself in substantial, if not total, agreement with its aims. But I refuse to act as if the Reformation didn’t matter; I refuse to compromise sola fide; I refuse to embrace any “greater good” than the specifics of the gospel–because without its specifics, we have no good. And I thus refuse to sign the Manhattan Declaration.

Just to give you a little more food for thought, here are two respected Christian bloggers who have written on the subject:

Tim Challies on The Manhattan Declaration

Pyromaniac’s Dan Phillips on Nineteen Questions for Signers of “The Manhattan Declaration”

And here, further, are the responses of John MacArthur and Alistair Begg.