[Mins] Grumpy Carl strikes again

Tue Apr 30 22:56:08 UTC 2013

What if Life Was Complex?
<http://www.reformation21.org/articles/what-if-life-was-complex.php> 

Article by Carl Trueman <http://72.47.212.95/carl-trueman/>   April 2013

http://72.47.212.95/media/carl.jpg

This month, I thought I would use this column to indulge in a little thought
experiment. What, I wonder, if the conservative evangelical church world
came to be dominated by a symbiotic network of high profile and charismatic
leaders (think more Weber than Wimber), media organisations, and big
conferences? What if leadership, doctrine, and policy were no longer rooted
in the primacy of biblical polity and the local church? What if, in other
words, all of this became a function of an Evangelical Industrial Complex?

It is an important question. It is probably a year or so since I raised the
question of the impact of celebrity on evangelicalism. As I was told then,
celebrity either does not exist in the evangelical subculture or is of no
real importance there. Thus, I suspect the Evangelical Industrial Complex
either does not exist or exerts no influence; but it is entertaining to
imagine what would the signs be that it was a real issue (which, I am sure
you will agree, it is not).

The aesthetics of success would subtly and imperceptibly supplant the
principles of faithfulness or would indeed come to be identified with the
same. The rhetoric of faithfulness would be retained, but the substance
would be less and less important. Thus, the key leaders would be the men at
the big churches or with the ability to pack a stadium or to handle media
with slick sophistication. Fruitfulness and faithfulness would be
rhetorically opposed in a way that would be ridiculous if we were talking
marriage, but which somehow seems plausible in a church context.  

The key books on pastoral ministry would be written by men who either have
no real experience of anything approaching normal pastoral ministry or have
not had such for decades. Students at seminaries would rarely, if ever, name
their own pastors as the most influential preachers in their lives.
Multi-site video churches would spring up, as the desire to be connected to
success and to the Top Men, rather than to serve as part a local body, would
become a significant factor in church life. The pastors held up as models of
ministry would have little personal contact with most people in their
churches. Of course, the Complex may make space for criticism of this type
of church and churchmanship; but it will not do anything about it, thus
making the matter yet one more area where we can - must -- all agree to
differ.

Leaders would gradually and sometimes self-consciously become brands. The
instruments of fostering that intimacy of strangers which is such a part of
celebrity culture - for example, the faux-chumminess of all those tweeted
exchanges and retweets, lives lived as soap operas mediated by the internet
- would feed smoothly, humbly, and imperceptibly into the building of one's
brand. Another sign of this branding would be that publishers and
conferences would recruit writers and speakers not on the basis of
competence but of market appeal. Some writers would thus write the same book
over and over again (using different titles, of course). Some topics would
not be considered sufficiently or definitively addressed until the Complex's
own brand names had had their say. Few, if any, thoughts or sermons of the
brand names would pass unpublished.

Overall control of the evangelical world would in practice lie in the hands
of select groups of unelected  leaders, captains of industry, answerable to
nobody but themselves and with no transparent accountability beyond the
constituency's ability to give or withhold funds.    

As a corollary of this, ordained office would be of little significance in
the world of the Evangelical Industrial Complex. Character, personal
orthodoxy, a transparent, stable, loving family life embedded in a
particular congregation, prioritisation of hard work in the local church
setting (evidenced by far more Sundays serving in your home church than
anywhere else), ability to teach the local church, accountability to a local
session, elder board or presbytery - these things would be at a discount.
One might even come across key leaders who had left their local calling
precisely to further their 'ministries.' Paul's list of elder qualifications
in the Pastorals would be of secondary interest compared to the ability to
handle communications media, to attend board meetings, to attract a crowd,
to sell a title, and to network. And the average age of the key movers and
shakers would slowly but surely decrease.

Criticism would be effectively stymied. Most critics would lack the stature
to present a threat and could thus be safely ignored. Those who carried
influence could be internalized by being offered a cool speaking gig or a
place at the table or inside the tent; they might even be allowed to voice
their criticisms there - but only as members of the club, in which role they
would demonstrate the Complex's openness to discussion. The fear of missing
a true movement of God would ultimately keep them from actually doing
anything to upset the PR strategy. Finally, those who could not be ignored
or internalized could be rendered irrelevant through linguistic
demonization: they would be decried as 'haters', 'ivory tower academicians',
'ranters' and 'envious.'

Along with this, a more positive rhetoric would also be developed to
pre-empt criticism. A term like 'gospel centered,' for example, could easily
be turned from a helpful description of a ministry into a kind of mantric
shibboleth, implicitly ruling as imbalanced, malicious, or unbiblical any
criticism of those who own its copyright. 'Confessional orthodoxy' would be
wrested from its historic ecclesiastical context, with its connotations of
elaborate theological formulation connected to clear polity built upon a
Pauline view of the church and her officers. Instead, it would come to be
whatever the careful negotiation between the captains of the industry, the
media moguls, and the marketplace would determine it to be.  

Grand visions always create large overhead costs. Money would therefore play
a larger and larger role in who is in and who is out, who gets to speak and
to write and, indeed, what therefore comes to be spoken and to be written.
Further, production of commodities is never simply a response to market need
but is often creative of the same. After all, nobody needed a smartphone or
an iPod until someone invented one. Thus, the captains of the industry, the
big conferences, and the key media outlets would come increasingly to set
the churches' agenda.  Supply would shape demand.

Creation of new markets would therefore play a large part in determining
what issues are addressed and which are ignored. For example, everyday
problems would be subject to mystification so as to place them beyond the
competence of the minister and elders and deacons (and thus beyond the
church as Paul envisaged it) and therefore to require specialized training
and help. And guess who is there to provide the quasi-Gnostic knowledge
necessary? It can be purchased, of course, from the members of the
Evangelical Industrial Complex. And this would in turn feed into further
marginalization of biblical polity and ordained office.   

It is a bleak and disturbing scenario. One can only be glad that it is not
really happening.

Dr. Carl Trueman is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at
Westminster Theological Seminary and the pastor of Cornerstone Orthodox
Presbyterian Church in Ambler, PA.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://crca.org.au/pipermail/mins_crca.org.au/attachments/20130501/b99250b9/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 2051 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://crca.org.au/pipermail/mins_crca.org.au/attachments/20130501/b99250b9/attachment.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 25128 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://crca.org.au/pipermail/mins_crca.org.au/attachments/20130501/b99250b9/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2250 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://crca.org.au/pipermail/mins_crca.org.au/attachments/20130501/b99250b9/attachment-0001.jpg>