Is LifeWay's Ed Stetzer Clueless Or Conniving?
Pastor Tim Rogers has a new blog article about a recent LifeWay survey he received in the mail. His comment was "
it doesn’t take rocket scientists observing questions to realize the desired outcome of the Research team at Lifeway." Another pastor commented, "This survey is completely misleading, and it really makes me wonder if
someone is
trying to make every Southern Baptist think that they are
Calvinists." Take the time and read it carefully.
My only comment is that either Ed Stetzer is extremely clueless or exceptionally conniving. Of course with Thom "
Nepotism" Rainer at the helm it's no wonder.
For more on Ed read our blockbuster story on
LifeWay's misuse of statistics and our later
apology.
Ed has an agenda. No doubt about it.
Charles
Labels: Calvinist, Ed Stetzer, LifeWay, Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists, Thom Rainer
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:
(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
LifeWay Statistics: An Apology From The Flyswatter
Dear readers,
The Flyswatter let you down. For that, we apologize.
Last month when we published our blockbuster story on
LifeWay's misuse of statistics we failed to do our homework. This is so embarrassing. Please forgive us.
We told you in the story about how churches are failing to report their ACPs, even big churches such as David Platt's. We asked how Ed Stetzer at LifeWay could say with a straight face that baptisms were down in the SBC when he didn't have the numbers from the churches. How could he give interviews to secular media trashing the denomination which pays his salary when he didn't have the data to back it up? Does one plus one still equal two or is it different for LifeWay?
We apologize because we completely missed a May 11, 2011 story in the Tennessee Baptist Convention's
Baptist and Reflector entitled "
Analyzing trends difficult when fewer churches report stats." The article says,
[H]istorically the Southern Baptist Convention data has been the envy of all other denominations. In recent years, however, participation in the Annual Church Profile by churches has declined, thus making it hard to evaluate accurately what type of progress, if any, is being made to reach our state and nation for Christ.
Another article in the
B & R says that "
LifeWay is charged with the task of gathering data from churches all across the country."
A month after the May 11th
B & R article came out, LifeWay's Ed Stezer was quoted in
USA Today on the "decline" in SBC baptisms. Ed said, "This is a trend. And the trend is one of decline." Ed said nothing about the
decline of reporting baptisms among SBC churches.
Sorry, readers. We were too easy on Ed in our first article. We cut him far too much slack.
His culpability is way beyond what we first imagined.
Why Ed? Why report data that you do not have and act like you have it?
Charles
Labels: Ed Stetzer, LifeWay
Who Is NAMB's Aaron Coe?
Who is Aaron Coe?
He's the Vice President of Mobilization at the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board. He reports directly to NAMB's President Kevin "
The Annie Armstrong offering is not important" Ezell. An April 2011 report in SBC Life listed him as having reached the
ripe old age of 34.
Based on our sources at NAMB,
The Calvinist Flyswatter can now report that Coe is the
point man for distributing millions of dollars of SBC money to NAMB's church plants throughout the USA.
What is Coe's qualifications that Ezell would task him to distribute millions of dollars from SBC churches?
Media outlets have described Cole as an "
innovative leader with a vision" who planted
The Gallery Church in New York City. The church was launched in 2006 "
by a team ... at the North American Mission Board, in partnership with NAMB's 'New Hope New York' strategic focus initiative." In other words, NAMB pumped a lot of money into starting this church with Coe as the founding pastor.
In 2006, the Baptist Press reported on Coe's efforts to recruit "
college students from across the nation to spend a year in New York taking Christian leadership classes and doing ministry in churches across the metro New York area. The program originally was an initiative of Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board under its New Hope New York emphasis before moving to The Gallery Church." Coe appeared to be successful in mobilizing college students to come to the Gallery Church and help them in their work.
In addition to college students, various churches sent workers to New York to help Coe and his NAMB-funded church (see, for example,
here). In one instance, "Gallery members were scattered among more than 40 ministry sites... Among the most grateful were the health clinics that strive to test residents for HIV/AIDS. Coe said
he and other members determined the clinics were ideal places for the volunteers to offer their services."
So the Gallery Church was started by Coe with NAMB's money. Under Coe's leadership, it received free college student labor and free church volunteer labor for years. With all those resources, one would think The Gallery Church would be a model of NAMB's church planting efforts, right? For Kevin Ezell to give him such a high position at NAMB, Aaron Coe must be the next Rick Warren, right?
You be the judge.
SBC Tomorrow recently provided some information on Coe and the profile of him as an "
innovative leader with a vision" is not good.
A commenter on
SBC Tomorrow writes the following:
Likewise, Aaron Coe, NAMB’s new VP for mobilization, was hailed as "a gifted strategist [who] has demonstrated his mobilization effectiveness through his work in New York City" http://bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=34629, and identified as “a leader among young Southern Baptists for many years,” http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=34606, despite leading a declining Acts 29 church plant. Here are the ACP numbers for Gallery Church in Manhattan while under Coe’s leadership:
2007
Worship attendance 190
Baptisms 14
2008
Worship attendance 125
Baptisms 3
2009
Worship attendance 120
Baptisms 8
2010
Worship attendance 100
Baptisms 6
In other words, Coe is a
Deformed Reformed, Acts 29, born-again-before-faith young Calvinist who was good at taking the money and labor from godly SBC churches and then squandered it by planting a Calvinist church which
greatly declined under his leadership. Look at the numbers. All that money. All that volunteer labor. All in the most populated city in America.
Amazing, isn't it?
Oh, one other thing. When Kevin Ezell was pastor of Highview Baptist Church, it "
partnered" with the planting of The Gallery Church.
Now we have more proof of the type of churches that Kevin Ezell wants to plant and the leader he has selected to give millions of dollars of our money to plant them.
Aaron Coe. Get to know him. Get to know Kevin Ezell. Then pray hard for NAMB. Really hard.
Charles
Labels: Aaron Coe, Calvinist, Ed Stetzer, Gallery Church, Kevin Ezell, LifeWay, NAMB, North American Mission Board, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Is Ed Stetzer Mathematically Challenged Or What?
I won’t bore you with the details of my reaction the day I heard that Ed Stetzer was made head of statistics at LifeWay. The Eddie I knew, head of statistics?
Let me give you one example which explains my reaction of that news-worthy day. Last summer, Eddie looked at the annual church profile (ACP) reports from our Southern Baptist churches and proclaimed that
baptisms were down to the extent that we were in trouble. In fact, Ed said, it was “a trend. And the trend is one of decline.”
Naturally, since he is the top dog of statistics at LifeWay, Ed’s report was picked up by the secular media. USA Today ran a headline, “
Nation's largest Protestant group faces 'decline’.”
The problem with Eddie’s numbers is this: There is a growing movement among some churches not to report baptisms! This is especially true with
Deformed Reformed-Flounder-friendly churches. Tom Ascol hates the ACP and encourages his followers not to report. Also, my sources at NAMB have told me that many of their new church plants do not report.
Question #1 to Eddie: How does this affect the numbers?
Question #2 to Eddie: Why didn’t you mention it?
My
#1 challenge to Eddie: Give us the complete data! We not only need to know the number of baptisms, but a year-by-year report on the percentage and number of churches that do not turn in their ACPs. How does the decline in baptisms correspond to the increased number of churches not reporting their ACPs? Ed, your failure to address this does not inspire faith in your statistical abilities.
My
#2 challenge to Eddie: Give us the data on the number and percentage of new church plants that are not reporting. These churches should be experiencing the most growth, right? At least that’s what we’re told when NAMB takes our money and gives it to them. So what are the numbers, Ed? (Note to self: Write Kevin Ezell and demand that complete and proper ACP reporting become a mandatory requirement for any receipt of NAMB money).
My
#3 challenge to Eddie: Start “outing” the churches that do not report. I want to see a list. I want names of pastors and churches on LifeWay’s website. Ed, you shame us as a denomination in the secular media when you release this data
knowing you don’t have all the numbers. Turn it around and shame the non-reporting churches instead.
You can start with our mutual friend, “Secret Church” seminar speaker David Platt. Davy has
not reported baptisms for years now (see also
here). Maybe his lack of ACP reporting is part of his “secret” thing but the fact is he pastors a very large church. There has got to be some baptizing going on there, Ed! How many more churches are like David Platt’s? And what does their lack of reporting do for our overall numbers?
Eddie, I know you’re busy. Pastoring, writing books, blogging, tweeting, traveling, seminar speaking, etc. Not sure when you find the time but you do still work at LifeWay, don’t you? You still get paid to count numbers, right?
THEN DO YOUR JOB AND GET THE NUMBERS! Then get back to me.
Charles
Labels: David Platt, Ed Stetzer, LifeWay
LifeWay's Calvinist Deception Gets Noticed
Never fear dear readers.
The Calvinist Flyswatter is still on the job. On January 11, we
alerted Southern Baptists to LifeWay's new Calvinist-influenced literature. Not that it was a secret. Eddie Stetzer openly wrote about it on his blog weeks before. The Baptist Press also reported on it.
But leave it to
The Flyswatter to tell
the rest of the story, namely that nearly ever person on Eddie's "Advisory Board" was an extreme born-again-before-faith Calvinist.
A little over a week after our
Flyswatter article the blog
SBC Issues suggested that the literature "
needs to be marked as a Reformed, Calvinist Project." Then yesterday Peter Lumpkins released a blockbuster new article, "
Lifeway Resources pushes Calvinism in latest Bible study curriculum." Peter has extensive information on exactly who is overseeing this fiasco.
LifeWay has to be aware of the deceptive tactics that SBC extreme Calvinists use to push their radical born-again-before-faith heresy. Tom Ascol's Founder's Ministries, for example, has long
advised Calvinist pastors to take over non-Calvinist churches. As part of the "take over plan," the pastors are advised to "avoid terms such as Calvinism, reformed, doctrines of grace, particular redemption, etc." I wonder if the same tactics apply to LifeWay's new literature?
I won't rehash in this article the churches that have been split because of the influence of Tom Ascol and Founders Ministries (yes, they actually call it a ministry). It's time for Southern Baptists to call LifeWay to account. Shame on you, LifeWay!
Charles
Labels: Calvinist, Ed Stetzer, LifeWay
Calvinism At LifeWay - New Curriculum Alert!
Eddie Stetzer
recently wrote about a "new gospel-centered,
Calvinist-driven theologically-driven curriculum I am helping develop here at LifeWay."
Eddie's "Advisory Council" on the project includes "D.A. Carson, Matt Chandler, James MacDonald, J.D. Greear, Eric Mason, Juan Sanchez, Collin Hansen, Kimberly Thornbury, Joe Thorn, Danny Akin, and Jay Noh."
What a motley "regeneration before faith" crew!
D.A. Carson? Give me a break, the guy is not even Southern Baptist!
Joe "Preach The Gospel To Myself 'Cause I Sure Ain't Preaching It To The Lost"
Thorn? What? Next time you see Joe, ask him what he knows about church
splitting planting. Would love to write more about Joey. Maybe in a later blog.
Collin "Timmey Brister is the next Martin Luther"
Hansen, author of the infamous
Young, Restless, Reformed screed. Collin is advising LifeWay? Now I've seen it all.
Kimberly Thornbury? Had to Google this one. Turns out she's the wife of Calvinist Professor Greg Thornbury at the Tennessee Baptist Convention's Union University. Greg was Union's "
first dean of the School of Christian Studies" at the ripe old age of 35. Most recently, Greg gave
his wholehearted endorsement to The Flounders Calvinist-only church planting network. Next time you run into Greg, ask him about what happened over his inviting so many Presbyterian and Calvinist speakers at Union's chapel. Then duck.
Then there's
Danny Akin. After reading his theology text, I don't believe Danny is quite all the way regeneration-before-faith like some others on Eddie's advisory board. Danny, however, does know the way the SBC wind is blowing. He doesn't mind at all cozying up to Tom Ascol or sprinkling compliments on Mark Driscoll.
The only thing that surprises me is that
Jared "Exodus 22:18 is a lie!"
Moore is not on the list. Isn't Jared a big time author now? I guess the Calvinist pro-witchcraft position sorta cuts you out of some opportunities. For now at least.
First Southern Seminary. Then Southeastern. Then NAMB. Now LifeWay.
God help us.
Charles
Labels: Danny Akin, Ed Stetzer, Extreme Calvinism, Founders Ministries, Greg Thornbury, LifeWay, SBC, Timmy Brister
