Steven Furtick vs. Matt Chandler | Elephant Room | Pastor Reacts

To both of you, evaluate this statement, I'm primarily speaking to Christians when I preach.

Stephen? I would say that I am primarily speaking to Christians when

I... Just do it. Here it is. When I preach. No, no, if you don't agree with that, say, no,

I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking lost people, Christians, listen in. Okay, so, finally, we've gotten down to brass tacks.

We are speaking plainly now, after I don't know how many minutes, but this is what I've been waiting for, because my opinion is, which is based in the scriptural mandate for pastors.

Welcome back to another episode of Pastor Reacts. My name is Nate, and I'm the president of this here organization.

We call ourselves Wise Disciple, and we're helping you become the effective Christians that you were meant to be.

There are a lot of things going on with me at the moment. Soon, I'll be traveling again, hanging out with my friends at Stand to Reason, so I'm looking forward to that.

Also, I'm heading up to see family for Thanksgiving in Southern California, so I say all of this to say,

I'm going to try really hard to keep up with my schedule of dropping a new video each Monday, so stay with me.

Also, at some point, I'm going to step back and prep to film some exclusive content that will specifically be available for members only on this channel.

So again, just stay tuned to what's going on here, because things are about to get interesting. Well, today, based on your suggestions,

I'm looking at a discussion between Pastor Stephen Furtick and Matt Chandler on preaching. What is the role of preaching?

What is the role of the preacher? Is it to build attendance or build the attendees? And what

I take that to mean is, you know, are we preaching to gain more converts, or are we preaching to grow up the congregation?

This is a fascinating discussion, so thank you for suggesting it. I absolutely have my own position on this, but will

I side with Stephen Furtick or Matt Chandler? I don't even know yet. Join me as we look at the elephant room discussion.

Stephen, we're going to have you go first, and you've got a heart for lost people. You're passionate about sharing the gospel and winning people.

Make the case for that's the purpose of the weekend service, we're going to reach people far from God. Let's hear it. Well, in general, before I make the case that that's the purpose of the weekend service,

I mean, we're talking in a larger way about what the mission of Jesus was, to seek and save that which is lost,

Luke 19 10. And then also that Jesus came not for the healthy, but for the sick. And so we take something broad like that, and then we narrow it down to say, what is the weekend worship experience for?

But I can't isolate that out, because I teach my church that our mission is to not only to reach lost people, but to exist for the world, right?

Our church exists so that we can accomplish the mission of Jesus in the earth. And I take a statement like that, that everyone agrees on, and then

I say our weekend worship experience is going to, in large part, and really primarily, have a hyper focus for that purpose.

And then people start bringing this paradigm to bear that now

I'm not preaching the word. I'm not feeding the flock. You hear that? So, there is a clear answer to this, all right?

In my opinion, there's not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to answering this issue. Should we preach to build attendance or to build the attendees?

Should we preach sermons primarily to engage lost people or to engage saved people?

Now, I'll hold off on my thoughts until a little bit later, but Fertick has just explained why he says pastors should preach to engage lost people.

Oh, yeah. But you know what? The thing is, I listen to Chandler preach every chance

I get, and I hear a guy who's trying to teach his church that we should be about mission, we should be about others, we don't exist for ourselves as individuals or as a body, and we're not here to entertain you.

And that's the same thing I'm saying to my church when I say, we exist to reach people far from God, we exist to reach lost people.

And so... Yeah, but the question everyone should be asking is how, right?

We exist to reach lost people. That's great. You know? Praise God. But how, pastor, preacher, church leader, are you doing that?

Because whichever way you choose to deal with these two options, right? Build attendance or build attendees, then the answer to how changes.

In other words, are you a pastor who tells your people, you know what, go invite a bunch of people to church next

Sunday so that they're going to hear me preach the gospel? Or are you a pastor who tells your people, go bring the gospel to people so they'll come to church next

Sunday? Because there is a difference. Because right now I'm preaching through the book of Ephesians. I'm doing a walkthrough of Ephesians.

And I'm tying it in with certain things from the Old Testament about the promised land. And I'm equating the spiritual promises, you know,

Ephesians 1, 3, every spiritual blessing in Christ to the promised land that God gave to his people in the

Old Testament. And so I'm preparing a sermon on eight verses from Ephesians this week. And I think you'd love it.

And I think you'd think it's a great sermon. And I think Campbell would like it, too. Yeah, but I think you just started doing that because you're coming to this conference, though. Because that's not...

No, I'm saying, I do that all the time. I'm saying, get up off me because I preach Ephesians. And that is the misnomer.

And it is a caricature. And to get up here and say, okay, Chandler represents building the attendees. Furtick represents building the attendants.

Of course you want to be on the side of that. That's about building people. My whole life, my whole ministry is about building people.

I don't know about that. Building people to do what, though? So I'm always wary of...

I hate to say it like this. I'm always wary of politicians who speak ambiguously. Politicians came to mind because we're in that season.

And it's not just politicians, by the way. It's businesses, too. You know, you ever see some of those commercials, oh, we're all about the experience.

We're building a brighter tomorrow today, right? What does that even mean? So when someone says,

I'm all about building people, they haven't said anything yet. Building people to do what?

And what kind of people are we talking about? I mean, those are the kinds of questions that get us down to the nitty -gritty of Bible preaching.

Chandler builds people. Furtick builds crowds. Which one's better? We all are in this for people.

Any of us with a good heart. Everybody you've invited here today, we're in this for people. My contention is that without a hyper -focus on reaching people far from God, staying on mission, our church turns into this feed -me -bless -me -if -you -can club, and none of us want to pastor churches like that.

Chandler is the strongest I've ever heard about rebuking that mindset in his own church. So my time's up.

So at first blush, it sounds really good, what Pastor Furtick is saying. We're all about people.

It's all about reaching the lost, and I'm doing that, and so is Pastor Chandler. But this conversation so far is off on the wrong foot, in my opinion, because every pastor needs to start with some marching orders from the

Scripture so that he understands exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it. And there's no better passage that I can think of than Ephesians chapter 4.

So let's go there. Let's read the Bible for a moment, because that's what YouTube wants. YouTube wants

Christians to read God's Word on YouTube, amen? Ephesians 4, and we'll start at verse 11.

It says, and he gave, he gave, now who's he? God. God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

But in other words, and I encourage you to take a look at this, because here's what it's saying. God gave shepherds, teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Why? So that saints—who are the saints, by the way? Christians, right?

So that Christians will build up, they will unite in faith, and they will mature in Christ. And so,

Christians won't believe false doctrines. That's why God gave shepherds, pastors, teachers.

Now, bring it back to Furtick and Chandler. What is preaching for? You see where I'm going with this here?

Is it for the attendants or the attendees? And we need the Bible as our starting point for a conversation like this.

What I've seen, and my fear with this evangelism first type of mindset is, really,

I'd go back to Jesus, and then I think we can go into some other places, but we've only got four minutes, so I don't know what we'll be able to do in all.

You've got Jesus in Matthew 13, parable of the sower, right? He throws out the seed. This is what the kingdom of God is like, and that some of that seed falls on good soil.

But some of that seed falls on rocky soil, and it sprouts up. It receives it.

It loves it. But then, as soon as it's not convenient, it's gone. And so, my fear,

I mean, I guess an illustration would be, so, okay, at least Chandler started with Jesus. Okay?

The sower and the seed, great. Where is this going? Let's find out. But at least he started with Jesus.

A baby breastfeeding is cute. A 20 -year -old breastfeeding is disturbing. One's legal and one's illegal, right?

Right. Right. Right. And so, in the end, my fear of this evangelism -first mindset is that you've got a 40 -year -old man breastfeeding, playing in the kiddie pool, who knows nothing of the ocean, nothing of the depths.

And I've seen life just kick people in the soul who haven't developed, really, the depth of knowledge in regards to the character of God and who

God is. And so, my fear is, when it's evangelism only, our goal here, our job here is evangelism only, is that you're, in the end, if you're four people, you're not doing them a service.

It's going to go bad. And that if you, to further the caricature, it almost becomes, do you want to reach people or do you want to be doctrinal?

Yeah, yeah. You know, which do you want to be? Like, you have to choose one of those. And so, what's interesting about this is, Chandler is beginning with the starting point that preaching is for the building up of the saint, for the equipping of the

Christian for the work of ministry, and to mature in Christ. That's what he's presupposing in order to say everything he's saying now.

I wish he would be a little bit more clear about that, but that's his starting point.

That's why he's saying the things that he's saying. So, let's see what happens. You're in Ephesians.

I mean, Ephesus is the church to look at. Ephesus is founded in Acts 20, booms. Nobody's seen anything like Ephesus, right?

A riot starts. Paul says, after two years, no one in Asia had not heard the gospel.

Megan Church, day one. Blew it up. Now, in that, he comes back after this riot, because people who were making money off of sinful gain couldn't make money anymore.

He comes back and he tells the Ephesian elders, look, you're not going to see me again. I've got to go die. But just know this.

Fierce wolves are coming. Ferocious wolves are coming, and some of you are those wolves. And then if you go to the book of Ephesus, I mean, you're preaching through Ephesians right now,

Ephesians 1 through 3, who the believer is in Christ. You know, Ephesians 3 through 6, the behavior of the believer in Christ.

All right, very Pauline, you know, gospel first, then how that gospel flexes itself out. Yeah, the way

I've characterized it is, this is who you are, and now this is what you do. And that is the

Apostle Paul style with a lot of his writings. And it's very effective. Why? Because a lot of us

Christians, we don't appreciate the balance required to live every day as Christ followers.

The reality is, we walk a balance between being with God and doing for God. And let's face it, a lot of us in today's kind of culture, we lean way more into doing for God and forget about being with Him.

A wonderful illustration of this is Mary and Martha, right? A lot of us are more Marthas than we are

Marys. And what follows from this? Burnout, anxiety, feeling far from God.

All of that. Why? Because everything that we do must come out of a recognition that we can't do anything without God.

That everything we do must come out of the overflow of our relationship with Him. And Paul is very good about first identifying those things that remind us of who we are in Christ before he reminds us of what we should do as we live our lives for the

Lord. Because that order is important. That's where some of my problem lies with this evangelism first, is it tends to isolate depth and view depth as the enemy of conversion.

And it's simply not true. So you end up with, like I said, a 40 -year -old breastfeeding and playing in the kiddie pool.

And that's just sad. I think very seriously about what to feed the church. However, when

I'm presenting to our church why we exist and why we do this, if I don't constantly stand up there and say, this is not about us, this is not about simply collecting more knowledge, this isn't simply about looking in a mirror, going away, forgetting what we look like.

Jesus said, you know, Matthew 7. What does it say in Matthew 7? Oh, everyone who comes to me and hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, okay?

So I'm trying to create a church that doesn't just hear the word. I'm trying to create a church that does the word.

And in that focus on reaching people far from God, the content of everything that I preach is going to grow a believer.

That's the whole purpose. But the greatest growth of a believer is when they get outside of themselves and they realize this isn't about me.

The most spiritually mature churches are the ones where the people aren't coming in asking what 47 Bible studies do you have for me?

But what can we give to the world? How can we offer ourselves as living sacrifices? That's the kind of culture

I'm trying to create, a culture where people are so mature that it's not about them, a culture where it's so mature that they have grown and developed in their knowledge of God's mission,

God's character, and the word. Everything that Fertig just said, I say yes and amen.

Every pastor wants their congregation to live out their faith in real ways in their daily lives.

So it's not just about hearing the word of God, it's about living by it as well. And I wonder if Matt Chandler would say the same thing verbatim about his goal for his congregation, right?

So if they're all doing the same thing, then why are they disagreeing?

Probably because the devil's in the details, right? Probably poor choice of words there.

In other words, how Fertig puts this statement into practice is very different than how

Chandler puts it into practice. At least that's where it seems like these differences are, and so that's where the conversation needs to go.

If this were a real debate, then what I'm looking for right now is clash. How does

Fertig clash with Chandler and vice versa? Because that's how we as an audience are going to think through this issue well.

So I'm Googling you. I just want to know what you're about. The Reformed community is not a big fan, to be straight with you.

Not a big fan of you. Of anything. Yeah, that's true. They love

Calvin. Wow. You know, there is a contingent of people that, when they see

Mark Driscoll, get immediately triggered. And I just want to say, on camera,

I get that. I totally understand that. So I come across this video of you, and granted,

I know, I don't want to be judged by things I've said 10 years ago or whatever, but of you rebuking your crowd for wanting depth, and your defense of that was that we've seen 1 ,000 people saved here.

So from your own mouth, and the pulpit drives the church. I mean, people can say whatever they want, but the pulpit drives the church.

You're in front of your congregation saying, you know, you guys want to talk about reform. You guys want to talk about this doctrine, this doctrine, this doctrine.

Well, I want you to know we baptize 1 ,000 people. You can go somewhere else for that. And everybody cheers, and I'm heartbroken going, you just did it, bro.

You literally just said evangelism and doctrine are exclusive.

And so that's the kind of thing, for me, that I look at that, I'm going, oh, Stephen. You watched the whole sermon? No, that's what

I'm saying. And that's what I'm saying. It's unfair, because you judge by sound bites, right? So that's what I saw. Well, the whole sermon was online.

You should watch the whole thing. It's pretty excellent. Because in that context, you're in Dallas, I'm in Charlotte.

Our cities are very similar. We have a lot of people that have a form of godliness, deny the power thereof, dead, dry religion,

Ezekiel 37, valley of dry bones. We're dealing with a lot of that. And so to be, and you know this very well, sometimes

I have to be hyperbolic. And I've watched that clip too. And man, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that was,

I remember it was actually the third service of the day, and the tone was off, and it was very angry.

However, I like angry. It does make me angry to think about how many people are cycling through my church as one out of four churches that they attend.

You know, they go to this one because they like the children's ministry. This one because their friends go there. This one because the worship's hot.

And so sometimes, yes, there is a hyperbolic sense in which I will say, if all you want to do is go deeper, and what you mean by deeper is give me abstract theoretical truth that is so lofty and so disconnected that I don't have to do anything about it.

Just confuse the heck out of me so that I won't have to go home and treat my wife any better, or so that I won't have to step across the street and reach my neighbors.

Yes, I'm going to exaggerate my point to say, get out of here if that's what you want. I don't understand what

Furtick is talking about. Does anyone understand the point that Pastor Furtick is making right now? If you do, throw a comment down below on this, because I don't get it.

I mean, I hear what he's saying. His gripe is the way that he originally characterized it is that, you know, we have consumers, right?

And we bounce around, and we try to fashion church into what we want. That makes sense. You know, there are people in churches that come in with that consumerist mindset.

You know, if you cater to my needs the way I like it, right? Kids' ministry is the way I like it. Youth ministries get all the icebreakers and things that I like.

And you have a coffee bar, you know, right where I want it to be. Then I will continue to come to this church. Here's my problem.

What does that have to do with depth? See, this is where it's fallen apart for me.

If a Christian is doing what they're supposed to be doing according to the Bible, shouldn't depth be what they're after?

Shouldn't they want to switch from milk to solid food? Solid food is for the mature, right?

Bible teaches this. I mean, again, Ephesians chapter 4. What is our goal? To mature to the measure and stature and fullness of Christ.

Isn't the Bible talking about depth as the goal for the saint? So when a Christian comes to you, the preaching pastor, and asks you for depth, why link that to consumerism?

That's where this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Now, maybe Furtick has a point here. I'm just not seeing it.

The context of that clip in the sermon, but you don't see the rest of that in the five -minute clip. Also to that, let me say one more thing.

There is, for me, there's something I heard you say one time, I think maybe at Desiring God.

And this was right before I called you, the last time that I called you, and you were so kind to listen to my feedback. Furtick's rebuked me several times.

Well, I called him because I was listening to this thing, and you were talking about the nightmare that is

Dallas. And you said, here's what I'm dealing with. And the crowd went nuts. This was total red meat for that particular crowd.

So you go, in Dallas, I've got pastors who say, I'm going to preach on debt for four weeks.

Hey, worship guy, write me a song. And so the worship guy writes a song, Debt is Dumb. And then the pastor gets up and says,

Debt is Dumb. And the crowd's rolling, and it's hysterical. And at the end of it, you say, why not better?

And then you deliver some zinger line that just communicates the essence of the gospel in two sentences.

And the crowd goes nuts. And of course, your way is better. You know, I've never been in a creative meeting that had anything in common with what you described.

And what that does to guys who are trying to preach in practical ways and reach people far from God is it makes us look like we're sitting around with no brains.

And we're not. We're praying. We're seeking God. We're fasting. I led my church through the New Testament in 30 days.

New through 30. We just finished a fast to begin our sixth year of ministry.

And we fasted for 11 days together. And we seek God. And we seek God deeply. And I just don't appreciate the kind of rhetoric that's easy to get a crowd fired up about any more than you would for me to separate evangelism and doctrine when we're just sitting around in a creative room thinking of ridiculous stuff and nothing is taken into account.

We really do care about God's word and reaching people. It's both ways. You know, there's elements of what

Furtick says where I suspect that what he's doing is he's finding points of affirmation with Chandler, right?

And in regular conversations, you absolutely need that as long as it's appropriate, you know?

Because there's a bit of a conflict going on here with some of the things that Furtick is saying and then the other things that he's saying.

Here's a perfect example. I keep hearing this phrase, I'm preaching to reach people far from God, okay?

When those words come out that way, it sounds like that's the priority.

And if that's the priority for you, then you need to really wrestle with what the Bible teaches about this.

Should pastors evangelize in their sermons? Absolutely they should, right? So that's where some of the things that Furtick is saying

I actually agree with in the sort of the criticisms that he makes in certain areas about church and consumers,

I yes and amen all of those things, right? We never outgrow the gospel as Christians.

We continue to grow into the gospel. And so the gospel serves a purpose, not merely for the lost, but also for the believer who needs to keep hearing the gospel preached on a regular basis.

So yes and amen to all that stuff. But when you talk like this as a pastor, which

Furtick just did, right? Well, you know what? Those of us who are preaching to reach people far from God, we look bad because you say that, you know, we all need to go deeper.

The thing is, we all do need to go deeper though. Why? So we can distinguish good from evil.

So we will not be carried around by every wind of doctrine, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. I mean, this is literally why the

Bible teaches us to grow up, get mature. And by the way, this is the diagnosis for why there are a lot of issues in the

Christian community, precisely because we are largely biblically and doctrinally illiterate.

We know the great story of our salvation, like the back of our hand, but we hardly know anything about the nature and character of the one who saved us.

And so when false ideologies and worldviews, they start floating around us, we take a huge beating.

Why? Because the church in the West is so theologically shallow. And I say that with love and care and sadness for my brothers and sisters.

Now, Furtick does have a point here, right? Where he criticizes those who just want to know a bunch of things, but not do much about it.

You know, there is a danger there because the Bible says knowledge puffs up. And so I've seen these churches, maybe you've seen these churches too.

They are so hyper -focused on themselves that they don't serve their community. They don't feed the hungry and widowed around them.

They are hyper -focused on each other. And that is also anti -biblical. But what is

Furtick's solution? His solution sounds like, well, then I should evangelize more so I could reach people far from God.

No, the solution is train your people to live out what they're learning. Equip them to put feet to their faith, to step outside their comfort zone and fulfill the great commission and serve the people

God has placed in their lives. This is why I said in a previous Pastor Reacts video, it is so vitally important that sermons have, well, first of all, deep theology, okay, right?

But then second of all, they have this practical application at the end. Practical, real, concrete ways that the congregation can live out what they just learned.

And unfortunately, a lot of pastors think they're doing that and they're not. They're putting together poetic, alliterative statements because for some reason, every pastor that I've ever met is enamored with alliteration and all of these abstractions that are called application go right over the church's head and they're not equipping their people in the way that they could be.

To both of you, evaluate this statement. I'm primarily speaking to Christians when I preach.

Matt? I would say that I am primarily speaking to Christians when I preach with a view that there are lost people there.

Okay, Stephen? I would say that I am primarily speaking to Christians when

I... Just do it. Here it is. No, no, if you don't agree with that, say, no,

I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking lost people, Christians, listen in. If I preach for 45 minutes,

I am going to describe in that 45 minutes the character of a Christian or the action that this is calling for, what

God's trying to do in our lives, but I'm going to do it in a context that is primarily geared toward the person who is outside and trying to bring them inside and I am going to give preference to them in the way

I present my message. Okay, so finally we've gotten down to brass tacks.

We are speaking plainly now after I don't know how many minutes, okay? And is that the problem with pastors, right?

It's concision, okay? But this is what I've been waiting for because my opinion is, which is based in the scriptural mandate for pastors,

Fertick's off. He's off. The primary goal of the congregation in the world around them,

Monday through Saturday, should be reaching people far from God. The preaching pastor's primary goal should be to mature the congregation so that they can fulfill the

Great Commission more effectively each and every week. The moment that you mess with that paradigm, something strange happens.

You get humongous growth in attendance, which looks really great, right? Because a lot of churches count the number of seats that are filled on a

Sunday morning. But on the other hand, the pastor becomes the primary person who saves the lost, not the church member.

And that's my problem with a lot of churches today. Opposite in how we prepare because I'm preparing, okay, this is what the

Word of God says for the saints. Here are going to be the objections and issues that a lost man or woman has with this.

Let me address these things while I teach this. That's what I do. Okay, it sounded like you were saying you kind of start with what are the objections and then go to...

No, no, I got this. I got this. Preaching to Christians with, in the back of my mind all the time is non -believers.

Yeah. And I'm gonna get the gospel in there. And preaching to lost people, but remembering that I love and care for the people that are in my church,

I'm gonna have something to say to them too while I'm doing it. Those are two very different ways of doing it. That's not the same thing.

Thank you. That's what I've been saying all along. These are two different things altogether. And they create two different types of sermons.

And they create two different types of outcomes for the church. And I'm totally on the side of Chandler on this.

That's what I would do when I preached. And that's the way that is most biblically supported, in my opinion. I think this is a good place to stop.

I think this is a fascinating conversation. I think that you should watch the entire episode fully.

And so I'll leave the link for that in the notes below. This is a conversation that is absolutely needed in the church.

So I'm grateful to those folks who posted this online for us to listen and think through. But hopefully now you have some ways to think through this as a wise

Christian. Because we all need to be growing up and maturing in our faith so that we can remain rooted in our knowledge and relationship with Christ and obey what he told us to do in this world.

Now you know what I think. What do you think? What is the primary role of the preaching pastor?

Let me know in the comments below. Thank you to those of you who suggested this video for me. That really wasn't on my radar.

But I thought this was a really good exercise. I am taking more of your suggestions. Let me know what videos you would like to see from this channel.

Throw those in the comments as well. In a previous video, I reacted to Stephen Furtick's most viewed sermon.

So if you like this particular interaction with Stephen Furtick, check out the next one.