Jon Reacts to “Mega-Churchianity”

The Rise of the Evangelical Industrial Complex and Mega-Church Consolidation

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for this cell phone travel edition. I have a request, actually two requests, to talk about a video called Mega Churchianity.

So I really quickly wanna give you my reaction to this video. It's about, I don't know, over 200 ,000 views on YouTube. And the premise seems to be that there's this insider group of elites who really form a guild.

They try to benefit themselves, and membership in the guild confers monetary rewards as well as just perks and status. And so this all came about as a result of the rise of the mega church model. And that's a consolidation model where the church is now run more like a business than a church.

And I think there's so much to say about this that is in support of that particular narrative, because we all know something exists that some call Big Eva. I call it the evangelical industrial complex.

You can call it a guild. But it's really an interconnected, often interwoven and interdependent group of organizations and individuals and missions organizations and denominations and publishing houses and conferences.

And they all kind of form a web in which they support one another. They aren't allowed to criticize one another. And if they do criticize, that criticism has to have a limit. It can't be too much. It must be mild.

And that's why I think there's been reluctance even among organizations that many of you would consider to be very conservative against social justice. I mean, they're fighting the good fight. But if you really think about it, how much have they actually said about false teaching in organizations that perhaps members of their church have been impacted by or listen to even now or read?

They're very reluctant to say anything too harsh sounding. That's where the tone issue comes in and the winsomeness and all this. It's not so much, I mean, it is about the world, but it's not just about the world and what the world thinks of us and the world is watching.

That's certainly an aspect of this. But there's also this sense of, we need to play nice together in these organizations in order to keep providing the services and the goods that evangelicals want and consume and gain their allegiance and their money and everything else that comes with that.

So there's a business aspect to this too. So let me give you an example. So if you are, and in fact, this is a real example, I'll give you a real example from the wild out there. So I'm thinking right now of a seminary, probably 99 of you listening think is one of the better options, a conservative seminary.

And I would say it's probably one of the better options as well. However, this particular seminary is very sensitive about saying critical things about other institutions of higher learning and evangelicalism, including seminaries.

In fact, this particular seminary has not even, it's really been recent, it wasn't that long ago, made it mandatory for professors there to, I believe it was get written approval before criticizing or saying anything negative about professors at other seminaries.

And this is a recent thing, didn't used to be like that. In fact, academics used to be able to, this sounds like ancient history, but used to be able to criticize each other all the time. They had public debates all the time.

Even people working at the same institution would often have debates with one another. And this was part of the learning process. Well, not anymore, those days are gone. Now it's gotta be just support.

And if you don't support, kind of shut up. And if you aren't gonna shut up, at least soft pedal your criticisms. And so I know that this has been happening all over the place. I know personally, I bet you 95 or more of the organizations in evangelicalism, ones that you even consider to be conservative against social justice would have nothing to do with someone like myself or A .D. Robles or anyone who's really gone hard after the social justice movement, who's used the term false teachers, who has the scars to prove how hard that they've gone after this.

They would be reluctant to ever, ever, ever partner with someone like that or allow them to have a booth at their conference or allow them to even invite them to come in and maybe talk about it or write something for their journal.

And that's because there is a guild that exists. And even conservatives are part of it. Now, I think you see kind of like two guilds-ish forming, but there's still a lot of connections between both. And so in the case of the seminary I just mentioned, if they were to criticize or allow their professors to criticize members of other seminaries, what would happen is those seminaries or those Bible schools would be reluctant perhaps to send or recommend students go to their particular seminary.

So if you got a bachelor's in Bible and you wanna go to seminary, or if you got a seminary degree and you wanna go on to THD work or get a DMIN or you wanna take it higher, then let's say you graduated from Southern Seminary and then a professor criticizes a professor at Southern Seminary, or you go after Southern Seminary, and this is coming from a conservative seminary does this, then they're not gonna recommend students to go to your seminary.

And you're also gonna have, you're gonna put into jeopardy perhaps contracts that might exist in cooperation between each other and conferences that could possibly be held in pooling each other's resources.

And so there has to be consolidation. There has to be a pooling of resources. There has to be just working together and you scratch your back, my back, I'll scratch yours in order to allow this kind of thing to happen.

Celebrity Christianity, Megachurch Optics, and the Front Door to the Institution

And so I think that the documentary gets some of this stuff right, because it does parallel, I think, the rise of megachurches in some ways. I mean, it's the same kind of, it's this celebrity Christianity, this guild that's formed as a result of celebrity Christianity.

And all the things that are provided, the optics really, and that's really what I'm thinking of, the optics that exist at many of these churches. Those are the front door for people when they are looking at places to go to school or books to read or missions organizations to partner with, all of that.

The megachurch model has served sort of as a front door. Now, I don't know for how much longer that's gonna be happening, but I think that megachurchianity has a point with this, that there is something to that.

Why the Megachurch Model Is Part of a Broader Social Transformation

Now, what I wanna say is that I don't think this is unique. In other words, I don't think that a nefarious group of people got together in a smoke-filled room. Of course, the Baptist wasn't smoking in that room, but all the Presbyterians smoking, I don't know.

But they're sitting there thinking, what are we gonna do to fleece the flock more? Man, what can we do? Let's do megachurches. I don't think that's what's happening. I think what's happening is something way bigger than that.

It's a social transformation that has happened on every level of our society. It's not just in our government either. We see consolidation with our government. We see consolidation with our voluntary associations.

We see consolidation with things like even the restaurants that we frequent and the gyms we go to. We're looking for Walmart. We're looking for fast food. We're looking for what can provide my needs in the quickest way possible and give me the most stuff that I could possibly want in the shortest time period.

It's convenience. It's modernity. It's industrialization. It's efficiency. All of these things have happened all around us. And of course, in the case of government, it's really not efficiency, but there's kind of a merger between government and big business and the local is becoming, there's less control on the local level, more on the national level.

And we just see this kind of thing happening everywhere. And the thing is people choose it. It's not just that it's a bunch of tyrants getting together, although that does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't, but it's that people actually want the Walmart of churches.

They wanna go to church and they don't wanna see a cemetery there. I mean, that could make them think about death. Who wants that? They wanna just think happy things. They wanna see smiling people. I mean, it's a product.

They wanna see, they want their coffee when they get there. So the coffee shop's gotta be there. And they want, and I'm not saying any of these things are bad in and of themselves, but you can definitely see that the strip mall kind of church model, which many of you might go to one, and I'm not saying that's bad either, but just realize that this is a new thing for the most part.

And you just gotta be careful of it because you can end up being, you get your logo, you get your brand, and you're just like a corporate restaurant in town. And you're providing services. And the more services you provide for the wives and the kids and the husbands and the retreat and this and that, and it becomes like almost a social club that you join.

And Mega Church has really offered this. It's a product that they're selling. And people have bought it. A lot of people have. Now, I don't know for how much longer that can last because there's a projection of an image and it's artificial to some extent.

And people, I think, are looking for more authentic now. They know that you can go on TikTok and project any kind of image you want about yourself. But what's real? What's really real? What kind of people have skin in the game and actually want to sacrifice?

Those are the kind of people that I think are gonna be more the ones that attract a following, the people who are willing to sacrifice, who have principles. And I think we're in a transitory phase because we're not out of the big evil land yet at all.

But I think that there's a crack in that foundation. So that's one of the points I wanna make. Number one, this kind of thing, this consolidation tendency, this big business model, this industrialization of the church, this has happened not just with the church.

John MacArthur, Loyalty, and the Limits of the Guild

This has happened in just about every segment of society you can think of. Now, the other thing that I wanted to mention is not all the individuals, I think, involved in a big megachurch or an evangelical organization that's large are necessarily part, consciously part, of propagating the big Eva brand or model or whatever.

They're not just beholden to the guild, receiving benefits from the guild, and therefore must support the guild and can't say anything negative about the guild. And I wanna use as an example, John MacArthur here, because the video goes after John MacArthur to some extent, and it uses some hit piece stuff about the price of his watch and the properties that he, or the house that he has.

And then it shows him at the Shepherds Conference Q &A from, I think it was 2018, where he says that he doesn't wanna go after his friends. And he'll just be left with him and Phil Johnson if he goes after his friends.

He doesn't wanna oppose them. Now, the ironic part is he is kinda left with just himself and Phil Johnson at this point, even though he chose not to go after his friends because his friends chose to go after him, many of them.

And I mean, I'm just now coming up with examples in my head. After the Beth Moore go home thing, Lincoln Duncan decided to tweet a veiled rejection of what MacArthur said, a condemnation of what he said.

You have Mark Dever and Jonathan Lehman with the whole being critical of Grace Community Church for opening up their church during COVID too early. You have Al Mohler choosing to defend all the seminaries in his denomination where they're on the ropes, but he won't defend John MacArthur when John MacArthur's on the ropes.

And in fact, well, I could go on, but you have the people that were sitting on that stage. They haven't been a friend to John MacArthur really. And so it's sad to me that MacArthur wanted to have loyalty to these guys, and yet these guys really don't have loyalty to him.

And what I've thought, I'm just giving you, this is John Harris's view on this whole thing, or my suspicions and my, I don't have necessarily a primary source for what I'm about to tell you, all of it at least, but I do have suspicions based on the way humans behave and then some observations that I've made about the way that some of these guys have behaved since that Q &A.

It seems to me that it's very possible at least that some of these guys saw John MacArthur as someone to be friendly with, potentially or in part because of the size of his ministry and because of there's benefits to that.

I mean, he has long coattails, people, John MacArthur, here's the thing, John MacArthur doesn't need the guild. John MacArthur, if he moved and went to a small church in the middle of nowhere would have a following instantly because he's John MacArthur.

And I think guys like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul and I think Bode Bauckham and perhaps to some extent even guys like Doug Wilson, and I could probably go on. There are guys out there who I think they don't have the same motivations as some of the others.

And we have to make a separation here because there are people who are beholden to the guild who are always, they're obsessed with their image. They're obsessed with the image of their institution. They're institutionalists.

They wanna make sure that their mega church or their institution is somehow free of the kinds of attacks that come from the media. And they wanna make sure that they're protected and that they still have students coming to their seminary and people coming to their church and the offering cups are filled and they're interested in this kind of thing.

I think though there's also guys and I think John MacArthur is probably part of this who aren't interested in that kind of thing. I really think that there's guys who are in it for primarily good reasons.

They're looking at, they wanna help people. They wanna explain the word of God. They want to, even if they have theological ideas that I would say I disagree with, they have a motive at least that's wanting to help people, wanting to do the right thing.

And you know what? Platform's not part of it for them. Getting a lot of money and accolades, that's not part of it for them. But what happens is because people see the genuineness and see those helpful tools, they flock around them.

And so there ends up being an incentive. There's a benefit to cozying up to someone like that. So if someone's a really good preacher, then in a you go and you sell yourself to them and say, look, I can make sure that I'll run your social media, or I'll do this, I'll do some service for you.

That job only exists because that person is a preacher who's attracting a lot of listeners, right? And so there's an incentive to kind of cozy up to that. You become a brand whether you realize it or not.

So in the case of John MacArthur, there's a master's college and seminary and all the rest, grace to you. And I think that there are people, in fact, I know there are some people, not all, who are in some of these ministries, because look, they're riding the coattails of John MacArthur and they're proud of being part of that MacArthur brand.

And I think it is difficult for someone like a John MacArthur to see that. And the reason is, is because he's not really like that. So if you're not someone who is motivated and fueled by your desire for greater platform and power and pleasure and all of that, when other people are motivated by those things, it's hard sometimes, because you can project negative things onto people, but you can also project positive things.

You can think, well, they're just like me. They just want the ministry to grow, when in reality, they want their own pockets to grow. They want their own influence to grow. And so I think that can sometimes be hard to determine if you're not someone who thinks like that, or you're not, if you're not, you don't have a healthy dose of suspicion.

And because John MacArthur, when he was starting out, there were people around him that ended up recording his sermons, giving them to radio shows. There was an industry that kind of built up around him.

It wasn't like he had the plan of like, we're gonna build up an industry. It just kind of happened. And so that's not with everyone at a megachurch or an institution. They're not all doing that, but some people are.

And so this is where I think a separation must be made. And I don't think the documentary megachurchianity does that well. They just kind of assume, like when John MacArthur says that he doesn't wanna fight with his friends, that he's saying he wants his watch and his big house, because he's somehow, I guess, relying on them for his income.

That's ridiculous. John MacArthur doesn't need any of them for his own money or aggrandizement or anything. He's his own industry. They need him, really. He doesn't need them. But I think he really viewed them as friends.

I think that's an honest take on this, that John MacArthur looked at them and said, man, you're friends. I don't wanna fight you. And however ill-conceived maybe that quote has been and how it's been now looking back at it, it might even seem foolish to some people.

I think that's an honest, an honest desire that we can all relate to. I don't wanna fight with people that I've had so much partner, I've partnered in ministry with that I love. And it's, sometimes you have to fight, unfortunately.

You can't let that get in the way of speaking the truth. But I think we can all understand where that might come from. It's not because he needed, his megachurch is gonna somehow fall apart without them.

His megachurch is fine, whether he partners with them or not. They've proven themselves not to be great friends of his. When he's gone through trials, especially during the COVID stuff, where were they?

So these are the kinds of things that I think, I think that this particular little, if you wanna call it documentary or pot, whatever it is, I think churchianity just goes way too far with just really trying to categorize everyone who is part of a megachurch or has been involved with Big Eva, quote unquote, as they're all just in this kind of same boat.

And I think overall, there's a good point to be made here that this is a system or it's a model that lends itself to a corruption, but it doesn't mean that every person enmeshed in this model is necessarily corrupt.

And that's what we, I think I have to be careful of. So that's my reaction. That's what I think of that particular documentary. I hope that was helpful for you. And I just wanna say whoever put it together, I mean, I'm in large part appreciative of what they're doing.

Those are just the things that I would probably differ with to some extent. Anyway, hey, God bless and more coming by now.