Calvinist Flyswatter

Is LifeWay's Ed Stetzer As "Creepy" As Obama?

In the March 29th Wall Street Journal, columnist and former speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote the following about President Barack Obama:

Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

Indeed it was. Here was a President who got caught and then tried to diminish the impact by making a joke of it. Creepy indeed.

Southern Baptists, however, do not have to look to Washington in order to see creepy. We've got it in spades at LifeWay HQ in Nashville.

Unless you're been under a rock for the past ten years, you're no doubt aware of the Deformed Reformed Calvinist movement known as the Founders who have as their stated goal the takeover of Southern Baptist churches to hybrid/hyper/extreme/Reformed Calvinism. They even have a "how-to" manual on their web site telling their pastor friends how to convert our churches.

LifeWay's Ed Stetzer knows all this. He knows that concerned Southern Baptist leaders such as past SBC presidents Adrian Rogers, Frank Page, Bobby Welch, Jack Graham, Paige Patterson, and others have spoken out and warned Southern Baptists about the Reformed movement.

Like Obama, Eddie got caught with his pants down. When LifeWay wanted new curriculum, Ed put together an advisory board, not a broad spectrum of SBC pastors, but a closed group that was overwhelmingly Reformed in theology, many of whom were not even Southern Baptists!

Then he got caught. The Calvinist Flyswatter first broke the story and the rest is history.

Now comes the creepy part. Did Ed attempt to make amends to those concerned about the new curriculum? Did he offer to create a more balanced advisory board? Did LifeWay offer to rewrite the curriculum after an advisory board was in place which reflected the views and theology of the vast majority of Southern Baptists? No. Instead, like Obama, Ed decided to dismiss concerns by joking about it.

At 1:03 PM on March 15, 2012, Ed tweeted the following:

@shawnbergen I only meet with @tomascol & @timmybrister in secret cabal
gatherings while we plan our takeover. #conspiracy

— Ed Stetzer (@edstetzer) March 15, 2012

(In case you don't know, Tom Ascol is the head of Founders Ministries, and Timmy Brister is an assistance pastor at Tom's church.)

Funny? Maybe to Ed. Maybe to Obama. But to me?

Creepy.

Charles

Labels: Ed Stetzer, LifeWay

posted by Charles @ 2:24 PM