Andy Stanley Says We Should Stop Talking About Pastors as Shepherds

Okay, so you've got the idea in your head now that just because somebody's quoting the Bible or making an allusion to it or a reference to it doesn't mean that they're actually teaching you the Bible.

Leadership Versus Shepherding in the Seeker-Driven Model

Well, let's see how this plays out in the world of leadership, which is the new term that's been created, the focus now of being a pastor. It's not about shepherding, it's about being a leader, and take a look at how somebody like Andy Stanley handles God's Word when it comes to the leadership model described in Scripture.

And, by the way, in this discussion, we'll not only take a look at that, we're going to take a look at what the Bible says as to, you know, what have pastors been given the authority to do? I think it's a great question to be asking.

What a pastor has been given the authority to do, and it's kind of a secondary question to that is, in what are they supposed to be leading us? That would be a good way of putting it, and we're going to take a look at what the Bible says in this matter, but I'm also going to interject into here a portion of something I've written that is not published yet, but I want to read it to you because I think it comes into play in regards to the model of leadership developed and promoted by seeker-driven leaders, like, well, Andy Stanley.

So understand there's like a few moving parts to this segment, and I want you to be aware of them before we launch into them. And with that, here we go. All right, from Christianity Today, from their leadership journal, the headline reads, Leaders Insight, Get It Done Leadership, Six Questions for Pastor and Leader Andy Stanley.

Okay, so these are six questions asked to Andy Stanley and his answers, which are published at Christianity .com, and you can find it if you type in Leaders Insight, Get It Done Leadership, Andy Stanley.

Just search that and you'll find it. But here's question number one to Andy Stanley. We're going to listen to all of the questions and his answers. So here's the question. What is distinctly spiritual about the kind of leadership you do?

Okay, keep in mind, Andy Stanley is a seeker-driven leader. So here's his answer. He says, well, there's nothing distinctly spiritual. I think a big problem in the church has been the dichotomy between spirituality and leadership.

One of the criticisms I get is, quote, your church is so corporate. I read blogs all the time, bloggers complain, the pastor's like a CEO. And I say, okay, you're right. Now why is that a bad model? A principle is a principle and God created all principles.

Well here's the problem, okay? I happen to have an MBA and I got it from Pepperdine and the emphasis of my MBA was leadership and organizational change. So I know a couple of things about leadership and that is this, there's all kinds of different models out there, lots of them, okay?

So just saying, okay, so we have a corporate CEO leadership model and that's a principle is a principle and God created principles. The problem is this, is that the CEO model of leadership, especially as developed by Peter Drucker, keep this in mind, Peter Drucker really is the father of the modern corporation as we understand it.

And the leadership model that he employed, the CEO model is a vision casting model designed to organize a workforce towards achieving corporate objectives, okay? But here's the deal, the church isn't a workforce and organizing the church like a business and having the pastor as a CEO, that's not revealed in scripture.

There's a different model, well, revealed in scripture. So here he just says, well, God created principles and a principle is a principle. Well, the problem is you haven't demonstrated that your leadership model is actually consistent with what God has revealed that what pastors are to be doing.

Question number two to Andy Stanley, so what's the principle behind the CEO model? He says, here's his answer, quote, follow me, follow. We never, follow we never works, ever, it's follow me. God gives a man or a woman the gift of leadership and any organization that has a point leader with accountability and freedom to use their gift will do well.

Unfortunately, in the church world, we're afraid of that. Has it been abused? Of course, but to abandon the model is silly. Churches should quit saying, oh, that's what businesses do. That whole attitude is wrong and it hurts the church.

So notice what he's saying here. Okay, there's people out there saying, listen, we shouldn't be doing this in the church and that shouldn't be our leadership model because that's what businesses do. Yet Andy Stanley is making the claim that that attitude is hurting the church, but he hasn't demonstrated that his biblical, that his model for leadership is actually biblical.

Okay, we continue with his answer though. He says, in terms of shifting culture, I say that guys like Bill Hybels and others who have been unafraid to say we have a corporate side of our ministry, it's going to be the best corporate institution it can possibly be and we're not going to merge first century.

Okay, so they're going to have a corporate institution and they're not going to merge anything from the first century into it. Why not? Parts of the Bible were written in the first century, especially the parts that pertain to the pastoral office.

But he continues, he says, the church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.

Listen to this argument again. The church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.

Weird argument. Yeah, the church didn't have cell phones back then either. Notice this isn't a biblical argument. He's basically saying because the world has changed, we have to change our leadership.

Now I'm going to show you from scripture, from scripture itself, this is absolutely flat out contradicted by what scripture says. We continue. Question number three. So why do pastors resist using business terms for leadership?

Oh, let me pick me. Let me answer. I know because they're not in the Bible. Well, that's not what he says. Here's what he says. And he writes, he says, because there are people in our congregations who have red flags go up.

Maybe they have red flags go up because the Bible doesn't teach this model of leadership. If you're a preacher's kid, you see the church differently. Having seen church from the inside out, it was very easy for me to abandon all that because I did not confer spirituality on congregational decision making.

To me, that system was just chaotic. It works against the gifts of the Holy Spirit in my mind, and it works against godly leadership principles. So here's an incredibly important principle. You cannot communicate complicated information to large groups of people.

As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information. Congregational rule, when you're trying to make a complicated decision, works against the principles. So consequently, the guy with the microphone and the clearest message always wins.

The most persuasive person in the room is going to win whether right or wrong. Notice again, this is not an argument from the Bible. It's this is weird. Okay, well, so you had a bad experience with the church having a congregational model.

So does that mean we just chuck what the Bible says regarding the role of pastor? So now here comes the important questions, at least the ones I think are really important. Okay, question number four.

The question is this to Andy Stanley. Should we stop talking about pastors as shepherds? Now, I said it like that because it's in air quotes. So should we stop talking about pastors as shepherds? Here's his answer.

Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pastor he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, pastor, you're the shepherd of the flock.

No, I've never seen a flock. I've never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant at the time of Jesus, but it's not culturally relevant anymore. Nothing works in our culture with that model, except the sense of the gentle pastoral care.

Obviously, that's the face of the church and ministry, but that's not leadership. So he dismisses what Scripture says by making a fallacious argument. I'm going to point this out here in a minute, and I'll reference this again.

His argument is that, oh, well, the only reason why Jesus said shepherd is because at the time there were shepherds. Yeah, I don't think so. Now he's going to make another point. Here's the next question.

Isn't shepherd the biblical word for pastor? Okay, great question. Here's his answer. It's the first century word. Notice he doesn't say it's the biblical word. He says, oh, that's just the first century word.

He continues. If Jesus were here today, would he talk about shepherds? No. He would point to something that we all know and we'd say, oh, yeah, I know what that is. Jesus told Peter the fisherman to feed my sheep, but he didn't say to the rest of them, go ye therefore into all the world and be shepherds and feed my sheep.

By the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone. Listen to the statement again. By the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone. It's about establishing elders and deacons in their qualifications.

Shepherding doesn't seem to be the emphasis even when it was. It was cultural and an illustration of something. What we have to do is identify the principle, which is that the leader is responsible for the care of the people he's been given, that I'm to care for and equip people in the organization to follow Jesus.

But when we take the literal illustration and bring it into our culture, then people can make it anything they want because nobody knows much about it. Weird argument. And by the way, he's flat out wrong.

And what I mean by that is, is that the Bible contradicts him straight up, absolutely straight up. You see, according to Andy Stanley, the shepherd thing, it's just a cultural metaphor. And of course, if Jesus were around today, he wouldn't use that word.

Strangely, he would say that because Jesus wasn't incarnate this century. He was incarnate, you know, two centuries ago. And he didn't, he could have talked about leadership at that time, by the way, a leadership that was more akin to the type of leader that Caesar is.

There was different leadership models that existed at the time of Jesus and Jesus being God could have used any kind of reference. Okay. But he didn't use just any kind. He particularly chose the shepherd model.

And the weird thing is, is that we all know what a shepherd is and what a shepherd does. I mean, there is Pastor Charmley pointed out on my Facebook wall today, there are children's books that have pictures and illustrations of shepherds.

Okay. So his argument is, is that if Jesus were here, he would have used a different term. That's not a biblical argument, by the way. That's him basically trying to sneak into the biblical text stuff that isn't there.

It's an allusion to the Bible while rejecting what the Bible says, and then coming up with a culturally plausible sounding argument that, well, in order to teach something that the Bible doesn't teach.

Weird, isn't it? Uh-huh. And then this, and then this statement, by the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone. That is flat out, historically, a bald faced lie. Absolutely 100 contradicted and contrary to what scripture actually says.

So what we're going to do right now, real quick, we're going to take a look at a few passages, okay? And we're going to be asking the question, what have pastors been given the authority to do? Okay. Because what they've been given to do is going to tell us which model best fits the pastoral office, okay?

It's really that simple, okay? So let's look at some passages. Now we're going to begin with one of these passages that contradicts Andy Stanley straight up. First Peter, chapter five, verses one through four.

First Peter, chapter five, verses one through four. Which, by the way, was written, written during the period of the book of Acts, right? Here's what he says. So, I exhort the elders among you. Notice what he said there.

Notice he says, I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. In other words, let me point out a couple of things along the way here. I'm going to go back to Andy Stanley's article, okay?

Here's what he said. He says, by the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone. It's about establishing elders and deacons and their qualifications. Shepherding doesn't seem to be the emphasis.

Even when it was, it was cultural in an illustration of something. Okay? And in this verse, this passage, 1 Peter 5 verses 1 through 4, Peter is admonishing the elders to shepherd the flock. Okay? And how long are they to continue shepherding the flock until the chief shepherd appears?

Okay? This is an important piece, by the way, of the pastoral office. And that's this, that a pastor is an under shepherd of the great shepherd, Jesus. That's what this passage is really teaching. Okay?

But when the chief shepherd appears, that's Jesus, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. So think of it this way. Jesus is the chief shepherd, right? Right. Your pastor is there literally standing in for the chief shepherd, Jesus.

In the future, when Christ returns and comes for his church, we won't need pastors because we won't need people standing in for Jesus. We'll have a face-to-face relationship with him. Nobody's going to need to stand in for Jesus as an under shepherd of the chief shepherd.

And yet here, 1 Peter 5, Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit during the time of the book of Acts, by the way, tells the elders of the church that he's writing to to shepherd the flock of God.

Okay? That means they exercise oversight. Okay? They don't do what they do for shameful gain. They don't domineer over the people in their charge, but they are examples to the flock. And then when the chief shepherd appears, how long is the shepherding stuff supposed to go on?

It's supposed to go on until Christ returns, who is the chief shepherd. Ephesians 4, verses 8 through 13, read, Paul writing, he says, Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

And saying that he ascended, what does it mean, but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? This is talking about Christ. He who descended is the one who will also ascend far above the heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he, Jesus, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints of the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. Notice this, okay, in this list, watch this.

Apostles, is that a cultural metaphor? Nope. Prophet, is that a cultural metaphor? Nope. Evangelist, is that a cultural metaphor? Nope. Teacher, is that a cultural metaphor? Nope. So apparently only the word shepherd is a cultural metaphor that we need to get rid of.

But see, notice here, these are all titles now. He gave apostles, in fact, you can actually say offices, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers. So here, Ephesians chapter 4, which by the way, was written well into the period known as the period of the book of Acts, right?

It says that Christ, the one who ascended, he's the one who gave the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. Weird, huh? I mean, and he gave them to us for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature and the fullness of Christ.

Contradicts straight up what Andy Stanley said there. Acts chapter 20 verses 28 through 31. This is the apostle Paul, his farewell speech to the church of Ephesus. Here's what he says. Pay careful attention to yourselves and all of the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.

Huh. Interesting. So, there we have the apostle Paul, again, referring to those in the church as part of a flock, giving them the charge of doing shepherdy work. And yet, let me read the quote again from Andy Stanley, by the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone.

Not, it wasn't gone at all. It was utterly emphasized and reiterated by both the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter, the two primary apostles at the time of the book of Acts, right? Now, real quick, I want to answer this question.

What have pastors been given the authority to do? The verses and the passages that we've been looking at actually kind of give us an outline of the things that pastors are to do. Now, this is not a comprehensive list, but let's talk about some of these things.

Pastors are given the authority to preach the word, okay? I would, again, point you to 2 Timothy chapter 4, okay? Preach the word, okay? They are also given the authority to administer the Lord's Supper and to baptize.

Clearly, these are within the purview of the responsibilities of a pastor. Pastors are also given the authority and responsibility to pray for and intercede for the flock that is entrusted to them. We've already read this in these passages, okay?

They are also charged with basically living an honorable and moral way of life as an example to the flock, okay? They are also given the authority to administer church discipline to impenitent Christians who, when confronted with their sins, refuse to repent and be forgiven, right?

And they also have the authority, I would point you to the epistle of James, to care for the poor, to visit and pray for the sick, right? Okay, if you look at what it is that pastors are supposed to be leading us in, right-handling of God's word, proclaiming the truth, rightly handling it, teaching what's in accord with sound doctrine, right?

Okay, they are given the task of presiding at the Lord's Supper, baptizing, praying for the flock, being an honorable, moral example of Christianity, administering church discipline, caring for the poor, visiting the sick.

That's not duties that fit a CEO. Nope, okay? CEOs are all about organizing a workforce to get a task done or to profitably get tasks done and to keep the organization moving forward. The pastoral office is not about organizing a workforce.

It's about feeding Christ's sheep. The reason why Christ used the shepherding metaphor is because that's exactly the model that is called for here, okay? Different organizations have different models.

And when you look at what it is biblically that the pastor is supposed to be doing, it explains perfectly why the shepherding model is being used because that model fits what it is that Christ wants to have done.

Shepherds are to feed and protect Christ's sheep, to raise them up in the faith, to disciple them, to discipline them, to feed them the Lord's supper, to baptize them, to pray for them to be a model of good works and to care for the poor, visit the sick, things like that, right?

When you look at what it is they're supposed to be leading us in, it makes perfect sense. That's the model that fits. But the seeker-driven model, leadership model, is not a shepherding model. They bristle under it.

And what this article by Andy Stanley and the answers to these questions demonstrate very clearly is that they hate the shepherding model and will engage in any kind of obfuscation necessary to wipe it from our minds so that they aren't called on the carpet and shown for what they are, people who are rejecting what Christ has commanded pastors to be doing.

That's exactly what he's doing, okay? Now, I'm going to read to you a portion from an unpublished work that I currently have been working, actually, I've been working on for years now, it seems like, okay?

And this is talking about vision-casting leaders. And I'm going to translate the word leader into German, vision-casting fuhrer, because what we're dealing with in the seeker-driven church is a model, a leadership model developed by Peter Drucker, okay?

And it is the same model that was used by the fascists. And there's a reason for that, okay? So, let me read. Here's what it says. Not all human organizations employ the same leadership model. Oftentimes, the leadership model employed by an organization depends on which one is best suited for the type of work that a company does.

The military utilizes a top-down chain-of-command model. Many law firms employ a partnership model. Advertising agencies and media production companies thrive in a collaborative team environment. But if we're to make sense of the ecclesiastical leadership model which was developed and deployed by church growth consultants and seeker-driven church networks who've bought into the fascistic counter-enlightenment worldview of Peter Drucker, we must understand that their ideology is what drives their model.

They philosophically deny the existence of the individual in time. They believe that communities are organic. They deny the existence of transcendent truth and are not only irrational but are experiential enthusiasts down to their core.

They eschew the transcendent and focus their attention on the imminent and have redefined the mission of the church from making disciples by baptizing teaching to, quote, making a difference in the world.

How do you organize and run a church if you hold to a fascistic, anti-enlightenment worldview? The answer is the Fuhrer Principle or the Leadership Principle. In this chapter, I will explain the origins and historical core tenets of the Fuhrer Principle.

In the next chapter, I will demonstrate the parallels between the ecclesiastical leadership model employed by the seeker-driven church movement and the Fuhrer Principle as well as highlight an important variation of the Fuhrer Principle developed by the Druckerites.

This section is entitled, The Fuhrer Principle, Ideological Roots and Tenets. Here's what I wrote. As stated in the last chapter, Peter Drucker, who was the ideological mind behind the seeker-driven church movement along with the fascists of the 20th century, bought into Rousseau's philosophical worldview which denied the existence of the individual in time.

Said Drucker, quote, It was Rousseau who formulated the idea that whatever human existence there is, whatever freedom, rights, and duties the individual has, whatever meaning there is in the individual life, it is determined by society according to society's objective need for survival.

The individual, in other words, is not autonomous. He is determined by society. He is free only in matters that do not matter. He has rights only because society concedes them. He has a will only if he wills what society needs.

His life has meaning only insofar as it relates to the social meaning and as it fulfills itself in fulfilling the objective goal of society. There is, in short, no human existence. There is only social existence.

There is no individual. There is only the citizen. It was also Rousseau who laid the foundation for the leadership model that was to be employed by those who subscribed to his ideological worldview. Rousseau provides the details of this model in his work entitled The Social Contract.

In that work, Rousseau claims that the state is a collective organism in which all individual liberties are assimilated or synthesized. What emerges from this communal collective organism is what he calls the general will, which then can mystically or spiritually be embodied in a single leader or fuhrer or sovereign.

Dr. Edward Yunkins of Wheeling Jesuit University summarized Rousseau's ideas in his 2005 article entitled Rousseau's General Will and Well-Ordered Society. Said Yunkins,. The idea of the general will is at the heart of Rousseau's philosophy.

The general will is not the will of the majority. Rather, it is the will of the political organism that he sees as an entity with a life of its own. The general will is an additional will somehow distinct from and other than any individual will or group of individual wills.

The general will is by some means endowed with goodness and wisdom surpassing the beneficence and wisdom of any person or collection of persons. Society is coordinated and unified by the general will.

Rousseau believed that this general will actually exists and that it demands the unqualified obedience of every individual. He held that there is only one general will and consequently only one supreme good, and a single overriding goal toward which a community must aim.

The general will is always a force of the good and the just. It is independent, totally sovereign, infallible, and inviolable. The result is that all powers, persons, and their rights are under the control and direction of the entire community.

All power is transferred to a central authority or sovereign that is the total community. Major decisions are made by a vote by all in what Rousseau calls a plebeiusite, that is, something like a town meeting without the benefit of debate.

A legislator proposes laws but does not decide on them. The legislator is a person or an intellectual elite, body that works out carefully worded alternatives, brings people together, and has people vote with the results binding on all.

The authority of the legislator derives from his superior insight, charisma, virtue, and mysticism. The legislator words the propositions of the plebeiusite so that the right decision will result. The right decisions are those that change human nature.

The unlimited power of the state is made to appear legitimate by the apparent consent of the majority. Rousseau's ideas regarding a single leader mystically embodying the collective general will of the community were adopted by and further developed by fascist theorists and then later put into practice by the fascist governments of the 20th century.

One of the most succinct explanations of the Führerprinzip was given by Hermann Goering during the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg. On March 18, 1946, U .S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson cross-examined Goering specifically in reference to the Führerprinzip.

A partial transcript of that cross-examination is reproduced below. I've added emphasis in order to highlight some of the core concepts of this leadership model. So the president of the trial asked Justice Jackson's question, do the chief prosecutors wish to cross-examine?

So this is from the actual Nuremberg trials. Justice Jackson says, he's asking a question to Goering, you are perhaps aware that you are the only living man who can expound to us the true purpose of the Nazi party and the inner workings of its leadership?

Goering, I am perfectly aware of that. Jackson, you from the very beginning together with those who were associated with you intended to overthrow and then later did overthrow the Weimar Republic? Goering, that was as far as I'm concerned, my first intention.

Jackson, and upon coming to power, you immediately abolished parliamentary government in Germany? Goering, we found it to be no longer necessary. Also, I should like to emphasize the fact that we were moreover the strongest parliamentary party and had the majority.

But you are correct when you say that parliamentary procedure was done away with because the various parties were disbanded and they were forbidden. Jackson, you established the leadership principle, Führerprinzip, which you have described as a system under which authority existed only at the top and is passed downwards and is imposed on the people below, is that correct?

Goering, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I should like once more to explain the idea briefly as I understand it. In German parliamentary procedure, in the past, responsibility rested with the highest officials, who were responsible for carrying out the anonymous wishes of the majorities, and it was they who exercised the authority.

In the leadership principle, we sought to reverse the direction, that is, the authority existed at the top and then passed downwards while the responsibility began at the bottom and passed upwards. Let me re-read that sentence, okay?

You kind of have to get what's going on here. In the United States of America, think of it this way, we elect government officials who serve us and represent us in Washington, D .C. So in the congressional district in which I live, we have a congressman and we have a senator and people like that.

Our elected officials, they serve us. We send them to Washington and then, you know, for instance, in the presidential election, oftentimes, you know, if a president, a presidential candidate runs on a particular platform, if he receives a really strong majority, like 56, 57 percent of the vote, then he's said to have a mandate to enact his platform, okay?

The idea being this, in that the government officials serve their constituents. In the leadership principle, the Fuhrer principle, everything is reversed, okay? Remember, this is coming off of Rousseau's concept here.

The Fuhrer, the leader at the top, has a mystical, he uses mysticism for this, a mystical vision of what's necessary to move the community forward together, okay? Not only for their survival but for their thriving and for their success.

So the visionary leader is the one who receives the vision mystically and then the idea then is that he's not there to serve the people below him, no, okay? The people below him, they have the responsibility to make the vision come to pass.

This is what's called the Fuhrer principle. Let me read the statement again. In the leadership principle, this is Gehring again, you know, being cross-examined, in the leadership principle, the Fuhrer principle, we sought to reverse the direction, that is, authority existed at the top and passed downwards while the responsibility began at the bottom and passed upwards, okay?

Now, if this sounds familiar to you, it should sound familiar because of the vision-casting quotes that we've played before here at Fighting for the Faith. Let me remind you of one of them. Listen to this one.

This is Creflo Dollar. You know, you hear people say,.

Well, why do you go to that church? So I can be fed. You don't come here so you can be fed. You come here to help men tap and fulfill his vision. That is, if God called you here, you hadn't been called so you can be fed the word.

Now, if you get fed in the midst of it, that's good, but you've been called to find your part in bringing this vision to pass in the earth. That's why you've been called to the church. You haven't been called here before.

I came here so I can get fed the word. Isn't it so interesting how we come to church out of all of a sudden? You didn't come here so you can get fed the word. Now, if you can get some word while you're here, that's a good thing too, but you came here because each of you have a piece and a part that you play in bringing this vision to pass.

So if you're just kind of sitting around being fed, but not understanding that you have a part to play in this vision coming to pass, that's why God called you. When God calls a person to a church, you're called to that church to help.

That pastor fulfill that vision. Okay, let me remind you of another very disturbing statement made by one of Eric Dykstra's, you know, underlings. Listen to this. Yeah. Number two,.

We are united under the visionary. Now, the visionary here is Eric. The crossing is built on the vision that God gave Pastor Eric, and we will aggressively defend that vision. Now, what does that mean?

You're aggressively defend that. That means that we do church the way he wants us to do it. And me as a campus pastor, I can't go up to Zimmerman and decide that I'm going to preach on Sunday because that's not the vision that we have for this church that God gave to Eric.

And we defend that when people go, well, maybe we should do it this way. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. God gave Eric this vision. We do it this way because we don't want to argue with God.

Basically, we don't want to be like, you know, Eric's not God. We're not saying Eric's God. He's not God. He's got a vision from God, and we have decided with our lives that we're going to follow that vision, and we're going to stick to that.

And if we ever just decide that we don't want to be a part of that vision, then we can go find a church and serve somewhere else. And that's okay. We're not telling anybody that they have to unite under this vision that Eric got from God.

You can do whatever you want, but we think that it's a really cool vision. We're on board with it, and we're going to defend it,.

And we're going to stick to it. Okay. One more quote from Elevation Church. This is some really creepy lady reading from Elevation Church's vision statement.

We are united under one vision. Elevation is built on the vision God gave Pastor Stephen. We will aggressively defend our unity and that vision.

Okay. So what are we dealing with here? And Andy Stanley, you got to understand this. Andy Stanley is one of the major leaders in this whole movement. Okay. What we're dealing with is an ecclesiastical version of the Fuhrer Principle, which was developed by Peter Drucker.

Okay. Let me read Goering's quote again, and then I'll continue with the transcript. In the Leadership Principle, or the Fuhrer Principle, we sought to reverse the direction. That is, authority exists at the top and is passed downwards while the responsibility began at the bottom and is passed upwards.

Jackson. In other words, you did not believe in and did not permit government as we call it by consent of the governed, in which the people through their representatives were the source of power and authority.

Goering. That is not entirely correct. We repeatedly called on the people to express unequivocally and clearly what they thought of our system, only it was in a different way from what was previously adopted and from the system in practice in other countries.

We chose the way of the so-called plebiscite. I've been pronouncing it wrong. The plebiscite. This is Rousseau's concept. We took the point of view that even a government founded on the Leadership Principle could maintain itself only if it was based in some way on the confidence of the people.

If it no longer had such confidence, then we would have to rule it with bayonets, and the Fuhrer was always of the opinion that that was impossible in the long run to rule against the will of the people.

Jackson. But you did not permit the election of those who should act with the authority by the people, but they were designated from the top downward continuously, were they not? Goering. Quite right.

The people were merely to acknowledge the authority of the Fuhrer or the leader, or, let us say, to declare themselves in agreement with the Fuhrer. If they gave the Fuhrer their confidence, then it was their concern to exercise the other functions.