Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. My name is Cosby Hann, and due to popular demand, we've turned a recent video interview into a podcast episode. The video interview is Confessions of an Ex-Seeker Driven Preacher, where I interviewed my friend and longtime pastor and a contributor here at For the Gospel, Pastor Anthony Wood from Mission Bible Church in Costa Mesa, California. We got a lot of requests from people asking that we turn the video into audio and post it on the podcast so people can listen to it while they drive and share it via Apple, Spotify, and a whole bunch of other podcast platforms. For the video version, go to our YouTube channel at ForTheGospel. Now, here's my interview with Pastor Anthony Wood titled Confessions of an X-Seeker Driven Preacher.
SPEAKER_01Seeker sensitivity guaranteed will always lead to an impure church. Every time. Every time, mark my words. You'll never have a pure church if it's seeker sensitive.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Costi Hinn, and I'm here with my brother and friend, Pastor Anthony Wood. I'm going to be interviewing Pastor Anthony today about what it was like being a seeker-driven preacher. A lot of people don't know that behind the storyline of my conversion and what people have come to see today from our ministry, there was a bigger storyline, which was the conversion and transformation of a church. And he was and still is the pastor-teacher of that church. God did a mighty work. And so I want to interview you today and talk about biblical preaching and why it matters. But before that, give people an understanding of your background, where you came from, some of the tactics and strategies that you used to lean on to manipulate or to coerce conversion or to play the role of the Holy Spirit. So we'll dig in and you'll the role of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01Yikes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you can take us into really the God story and the bigger story of a converted church. And so give us a background on you, uh, where you are, and where you're well, it's good to be with you again, brother, around the kitchen table here. Yes, we have a kitchen table.
SPEAKER_01This is awesome. Our cutting block. Um, yeah, I mean, I think the idea of confessions of a seeker-sensitive pastor is a good, a good title. Yeah, I like that. We go back a long way, but you know, flyover of my life was you know, I was raised kind of a culture Christian and you know, Baptist churches, and walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, that whole thing, and then sprinted headfirst towards the world when I was able to. And uh I still remember being in uh my room after I lost everything and was living a life, you know, just fully in the world. Um, and kind of like in the movies where you're crying in your bed and grabbing the pillow and just beating on it. You know, that was me. Um, and you know, it was there in that season that the Lord gave me a new heart. I was born again. And uh everything changed for me. Uh 20, 21 years old, uh, I you know was living in the world, doing the things of the world, chasing the world, and then suddenly I wanted to be at church every night. The same story that, you know, everyone, you know, just take the book of 1 John, the epistle of 1 John, and unfold it. Uh was at communion, taking communion, would weep over my sin, repenting of my sin. Uh I, you know, the only prayer I ever had every morning at 5:30 in the morning as I got up to read my Bible was I wanted to be in ministry. Lord, just please, I don't deserve this, but let me serve you with my life. And uh I'm thankful that the church that I started attending was a church that preached discipleship. You know, actually be a disciple of Christ, follow Christ. And um, so that really was you know kind of the the changing point in my life, my conversion story, uh young man at 21. And uh then I kind of when I look at the church that I attended, I really would chalk it up to, you know, we became a bunch of on-fire Arminians. I mean, that's a good way to do it. From a theological standpoint, right? And we, it was just a college group, a bunch of guys started interning there and didn't know up from down. I and I don't even think that the seeker-sensitive church I was at, you know, had bad theology per se. It just had no theology. You know, it was we were all armed with John 3.16, the Romans Road, and we were pumped for the gospel, and so we went out and tried to change the world. And so our little Bible study began to grow, and we went off and did missions trip, mission work in the Philippines, and then uh, you know, came back. Bible study continued to grow, and that was ministry. My my initiation into ministry was in a you know a seeker-sensitive, attractional church, uh, and we were simply on fire college students with a John 3.16 message. Yeah, and uh it was exciting, you know. But now looking back, I can see that there were holes in it. Uh, and so yeah, that would be my my backstory, kind of a flyover.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so helpful. What would you say now to Tony or Anthony then if you were guiding him, showing him the holes as sort of a springboard into where you ended up? Because you obviously didn't stay there. And even though you're converted and you're serving the Lord, you're getting after it, and you're passionate, um, what were some of those holes? And then where did you take them? And because you are a great leader and a gifted leader, and you are a gifted preacher and communicator of God's word, where did you take kind of things from there with your leadership gifting and your drive in ministry?
SPEAKER_01Well, I remember something Lawson used to tell us in class all the time, Steve Lawson. Yeah, he'd say, Man, I'd give me an on-fire Arminion over a cold Calvinist every day, right? You know what I mean? So, you know, I I I don't want to say that, you know, just being pumped on the gospel and going out and trying to win souls is ever wrong. Absolutely. We all start there, right? Yeah. And so, you know, I I think the the big kind of overarching theme of what I would say to young men uh who are a part of secret-sensitive churches is your passion for the gospel and your passion to save souls is not bad. But you gotta make sure you have a full orb theology. So go to seminary and study the rest of the Bible too. Yeah. You just gotta grow in your theology, right? Um, and you certainly don't want to be stepping into a pulpit with only one-tenth of your systematic theology down. Yeah. So I think that's the big overarching thing I'd put in front of young men who are coming out of those seeker-sensitive movements.
SPEAKER_00So help us understand your motives and your ministry in those days. So, because a lot of people look, even some of the terms you've already used, like seeker-sensitive, and they'll think of Furtick, or they'll think of, you know, Judith Smith and think, ah, what a phony, just manufacturing some experience, and you know, he's just a showman trying to swoon them. Was that how you viewed it? I it sounds like no. Like Steve Furtick?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and people go, well, you know, I I'm not able to analyze the the mo the internal of Steve Furtick. The external is clearly moving away from Christian Orthodoxy at this point, you know. But when when I look at the internal, and I go to the seeker-sensitive movement, um, hyperpragmatism, attractionalism, the big church's Willow Creek model, saddleback, what we were a part of in a megachurch environment. Um, the motive of it for me, coming up in that college group and starting to step into the pulpit for the first time, I think after 10 years of diagnosing it, or actually 15 years now, um you can boil leadership in a church context down to maybe one of one of two things. So one is going to be obviously biblical revelation. This church is led off of the authority of scripture, right? Yeah. And then the only other option, if you're not doing that, is some kind of personal manipulation, right? But those are the two options. And whether it's prosperity, word faith, but even secur-sensitive attractionalism, who hears from God best, it's one or the the other. Um, and then what I would say is when it comes to personal manipulation, is we actually are we can break it up into two categories. You've got an intentional manipulation, which would be your second Peter group, and we talk about that all the time. These are false teachers, but you also have an ignorant manipulation group. And that's the guys who just they they desperately want to save people. And so they're caught up in an ignorant version of doing church. And you'll you'll watch those churches like Ephesians 4 talks about. He says, you know, I want you to grow up and be mature so that you're not, that's the purpose clause there in Ephesians 4, you're not children tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine. He's talking to Christians there. You know, if you don't have a fully grounded theology, you end up having to lead people through every emotional fad, every single new movement. It turns from an emotional, sentimental gospel to a psychological gospel to a therapy gospel to uh miracles and signs of women. You're just chasing whatever movement there is to get people to follow you. Um and so that that that really would be the category that I was in, the category that a lot of my friends were in in that mega church world. Um, just just ignorant manipulation of people trying to fill the room, ultimately with the goal to end quote save souls.
unknownTotally.
SPEAKER_00Can I ask you an honest question? Fine. On camera, all right. Let's go. What were some of the tactics and strategies you used to attract young people and sort of build the bus? Literally, like the methods and the creativity.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we did everything. Can you take it? Anything, everything people read about in the books, you know, we tried it. I was a part of a church that had the circus ole stuff going on. Circus ole. Yeah, circus shakinery, people hanging from the ropes. We did uh youth pastors in their you know, fresh Prince of Bel Air wraps. Uh we had, you know, things, ropes falling from the ceiling, and I'd hang from it and preach from it, you know.
SPEAKER_00So you hung from a rope to preach.
SPEAKER_01Sure. It was a bunch of immature nonsense. The church that I was at, you know, we would they would come in and do the the you know secular songs before to start everything and try to try to graft people into the environment. Yeah, you know, and and anybody who's ever watching this can look at their own life and they can assess where they were at. I mean, you go back to what are all the movements? You go back to Rob Bell and Emergent Church, and after that, a little bit of Hillsong, a little bit of Bethel. After that, you got Kanye supposedly getting saved, and then maybe now everyone was woke for a little while. The point is, people are always getting caught up in whatever the next thing is. Unless it's biblical revelation. And everything is built off the authority of God's word. And that's what happens, and that's why churches erode, right? They erode one way or the other. Or they they erode because if they're not grounded on God's word, they're naturally going to chase ever greater means of entertainment and of manipulation. And so, yeah, I think it was an ignorant manipulation, and it is for a lot of seeker-sensitive guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. With as far as like series topics, what was the cycle for you? What were the kind of things you preached and needed to keep preaching in order to keep hitting that sort of seeker button? And again, not that all these are terrible things to preach on. We should preach on some of them, all of them maybe in different ways, but your approach needed to be a certain way to keep them coming back. Because if you would have got up there and been like, hey, we're gonna go through the letter of first John and we're gonna understand why you're what it means to be truly saved, they'd look at you like you're crazy, some of them. We did when you said, you know, we're gonna go through John. Remember that? It was like, oh, that's so just like through the book of the Bible at John? Like what's the name of the series and what's the hook? And verse by verse. You're like, oh, keep doing it. Word by word. Yes, we are. Yeah, what were some of the topics you knew? Keep hitting these and that keeps that cracking.
SPEAKER_01You're always hitting a a certain level layer of topics that are felt needs for a massive group, right? So you got loneliness and depression. The terminology that we want to use is we used to use as wounds and scars as opposed to sin and the wrath of God and the atoning lamb of God, right? You're a sinner, you need a savior. So it's just broad, so there's even terminology adjustments. Absolutely, 100%.
SPEAKER_00That's really helpful to hear and understand. Um, how fast did your ministry grow in those days? When you took over that role, your young adults, college pastor, what did it start with? And then what was it, what did it end at when you planted the church?
SPEAKER_01It it grew fast. I mean, it was exceedingly fast. Um I mean it was zero when we got there. Uh the church was hurting, um, and it was multiple thousands when we left. I mean, it grew it grew fast.
SPEAKER_00And you planted the church out of that, the church that my wife was, I wasn't married to her, but she went to the Vision Breakfast and was a part of, and then we eventually joined. Um in that era, and again, knowing that you the motives are we gotta save people, we gotta it's just, you know, what did you call it? A flame in Arminian, you know, on fire Arminian. Uh what were the coercions or the the manipulative tactics that you utilized? Was it emotionalism, was it through music, or what were the means that you would look to and say, we gotta have these elements, guys, in order to get that going?
SPEAKER_01Oh, a hundred percent. Um the the tactics that we we would use that I would use, even when preaching, is it's it's it's not hard to get people to walk forward. If you can't get people to walk forward, you're just a bad communicator. I mean, being honest. Totally. You know, you can't get people saved. God saves people. Yeah. But it's easy to get people to walk forward, right? And the bigger the crowd, the easier it is. Wow. You know, you know, you be you talk about your uncle and all that, right? Go to a baseball game. You you know, it doesn't matter whether you're into the game or not, when they start getting people clapping, you start clapping. People are naturally born followers, the bigger the group, right? So, yeah, 100%. You know, you do you do a sob story. Number one, you set up a big problem or a big need when you talk, and then you make sure by the end of your talk you tell a sad story, and then you you satisfy that need. And you know, certainly there may be some drops or hints of the true gospel in there. Sin might be mentioned a little bit, but by and large, all you do is shift your terms a little bit, add scars, wounds, any kind of victimology, and then add purpose, destiny, and some other broad terms in there. And that's what we hear all over the country. Totally. Crank up the pad, get the piano player. You used to we used to have a piano player, wherever I would go, he'd just go with me because he was so good. He could flow. He could flow, and he knew how to drop a seventh and a minor at the right time, and you pause and tell the story. And then all you need is to be bold enough to give a clarion call to where the person who's hurting the most and is the leader in the crowd walks, and then all the followers come just because they want to have their pain salved as well.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And so a hundred percent. I mean, you just in fact, I was at a church where it was so seeker sensitive that you know there was a big board, and they would keep a running tally of you know how many salvation and quote decisions were made in each service. And that's how you know your paychecks were kind of given out and your success in the church was measured. Yeah, was based off that running tally of people who came forward and quote saved, filled out a decision card, and got a little pat on the back and went home. Um and you can imagine the the infighting that creates on a staff environment. Oh, for sure. The competitive if you're better at manipulating people to come forward and have more check marks, uh, you're secure.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Whereas if you're not, so there's a theological issue there, there's a methodological issue there. And it's not to say, again, back to the motives that you're not trying to save people, it's just that you don't have a full orb theology and you don't understand who actually saves people.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And so once you go there, you end up eroding.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And um, you know, there's a good pragmatism, programs in the church that are there for the right reasons to disciple people, to get them praying, to get them growing in fellowship, to get them out evangelizing. And then there's an unhealthy pragmatism, which is getting them there simply because you have a number in the bag. And so that's where it ends up.
SPEAKER_00You've alluded to this a little bit already, but take us through the different layers, even just the big eschatological layer. But what's the danger of doing ministry that way? Again, not certain about everyone's motives. I know that a lot of them are just trying to save people, but again, with the fully orbed theology, a lot of them will go, yeah, oh, theology, all some of them balk at doctrine, even in the best sense, because they've heard their hero or their leader say that doctrine, all that just stuffy, rigid Pharisees, we just gotta save people, we're about the gospel. So you have all sorts of nuances. But overall, if you're trying to reach the heart and the mind of someone right now who's in this or leading it or confused and on the fence, what are the dangers, what are the greater dangers of doing ministry with that approach?
SPEAKER_01Well, look biblically, let me answer just the doctrinal one off to the side. I mean, that that's easy, right? Paul was clear, Jude was clear that, in fact, Paul was clear in Ephesians 4 that we're actually unifying around the faith, the body of content. So you don't want ecumenical unification that's despite the body of doctrine, that you're you want to actually unify around doctrine. So that's what Paul was saying. A real true local church is unifying around good doctrine, not despite it. So let's just put that one off to the side. The issue of a seeker-sensitive group and a and a pastor who's doing ministry that way, it the biggest issue is you got a bunch of false professions. You know, and and and again, I'll go back to Lawson, one of my professors, is he always would talk about that with the guys in the SBC and some of the churches he was at. That's where he couldn't wrap his mind around what was happening. People would flood forward, and he was told to pray with them and do a decision counseling moment, pat them on the back, and then send them on their way and say, Don't ever question this moment because you you walk the aisle. And what he experienced is what I was experiencing. You got a hundred people come forward, but then the next week you got 70 of them are the same people who came forward last week. Because they go into a decision counseling room, they're, they're they're checked off, they're given a pamphlet, and they're told that they're saved, and the decision counselor is taking the position of the Holy Spirit to assure salvation, whereas the Holy Spirit is the one who's supposed to assure salvation. They weren't, they never had first John pulled out and went through the marks of a convert. So when they fall back into their sin, they get baptized four more times, trying to wash it all off again, you you've got a a false, a false church, an unconverted church. And the problem is if all your people are unconverted down here, because everything you've been doing is selling them to come in. And let me pause there for a second, too. This actually is a signature of a bad ecclesiology. See, true ecclesiology says we gather to worship, then we scatter to witness. So we come here to learn the word of God, to sing songs of worship to God, under the glory of God, then to go out and evangelize with the truth of God. Um, when we flip that around to a seeker model, we say we're we're actually gathering to witness. This is a crusade. So then we everything we do here is evangelism. Problem with that now is now you've got a bunch of people who are unconverted, they're unholy, they lack righteousness. Well, then who do you lect your leaders from? A group of unholy pagans. And then where's your pastor come from? He ends up and that's why all around the country we've got moral blowouts. Carl Lentz, you know, Bill Hybels, all these guys, they're blowing out because they set the the very the common denominator, the baseline, is not a church of holiness that exists for the glory of God. It's a it's a church of impurity that's just there desperately trying to save people, and one out of ten of them are actually converted.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01And what we're seeing in in across the country is an evangelical mishmash because of that issue. Seeker sensitivity guaranteed will always lead to an impure church. Every time.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01Every time, mark my words. You'll never have a pure church if it's seeker sensitive, if it's seeker driven, if it's attractional by nature. We got to gather to worship, then we go out and we knock on doors and we do our evangelism. And then the new 1 Corinthians 14, then the people who are from the outside come in and they're astounded. They're going, man, surely God is in this place because of how holy it is, because of how pure it is. Does that kind of make sense? Absolutely. So it's an upside-down system. Yeah. Um, and that's why we perpetuate this weak need, weak sauce Christianity across the country.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00So when did you start feeling conviction about your approach with seeker-sensitive methods? What did that moment look like and some of the aftermath? Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_01Right away when we planted what what is now Mission Bible Church.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was when you're in a machinery, a circus machinery, you've got all the support mechanisms to perpetuate whatever you're doing. So that's the people you know, that's the friends. You show me your friends, I'll show you your future. Wow. You're hanging out at the catalyst, you're hanging out in the backstage with Ferdick and those guys. That's all you know.
SPEAKER_00You were in all that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And one thing that people don't understand about all these guys is every one of them goes home and deep inside the back of their mind, they wonder, is this God or is this me? Because if you're doing an Oprah Winfrey corporate model and you're telling everyone to keep coming back for the next show, you're not sure if it's supernatural or not. And that's something they don't talk about. But I'll I'll make sure everyone knows now they they think about it. Yeah. So here, here now you plan a church, you don't got all the machinery, and basically the questions come up pretty quick. Uh, I can't, I can't sustain this. Is this God? Is this me? How many times do I want to go back and try to sell people to come back to the church?
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01And I remember one afternoon, I went home after church, and I just cried out, I said, Lord, if this is what church is, end quote, um, I I you know, I I want, I don't want to keep doing it. This isn't this doesn't feel right to me. Um, and uh that next morning I got up, went to the gym, did my Bible time, went to the gym, and I'll never forget there was an old guy barking on the radio, KKLA here in in Southern California. Um and he was talking about the glory of God and the sovereignty of God. Now I didn't know up from down at that point. I'd been to a real poor Bible college and come out of some real questionable theology, and all I knew was my soul chimed with. What he was saying. I mean, it was like, that's the thing. Whatever that is, that's what I want. And so, long story short, you know, I that's you know, I think the first book I got was Piper's We Are Not Professionals. I think after that it was Ashamed of the Gospel by MacArthur. It was then Religious Affections by Edwards. It was then Thomas Watson's Body of Divinity. I began, I realized there's an entire lineage of people with this Puritanistic reformational orthodoxy. There's this whole lineage of people that understand who's in charge. And it ain't us. And he's gonna build his church. And my job is to do obedience, he does the outcomes, right? And that was the most freeing moment of my life when I realized who's in charge of this whole thing. So incredible.
SPEAKER_00So commentary snapshot is I'm on staff under your leadership at that moment. Sorry. No, it's thank the Lord. I'm there, we're all there, there's a team, we've got a structure. I remember I was the part-time youth pastor, then family life pastor, we're in the mix all together, and we're doing ministry. You're going through that all in the background, and then I remember the fallouts, those little moments where you come in the office and it was like, you know, one of the things, complementarianism. We're going to clarify leadership. And then there was music, all these touch points. Can you take us through four or five of those? Um, talk about the band, talk about the music, and then talk about how many people left and what some of them even told you. You remember like the well, we're here for the take us into sort of the the aftermath. It wasn't all pretty.
SPEAKER_01No, it changes everything. Um, it changes everything. It was real simple. If it's not in the Bible, we don't do it. I'd say it's like regulative principle on steroids, you have an overreaction, right? And yeah, it was just as simple as that. If it's not in the Bible, we don't do it. You know, we fired the worship team. Uh they were all contracted people. I know now, you know, obviously most of them weren't saved. Unconverted church. Unconverted church, which is oxymoronic. You can't have it, but you know. And uh, you know, corporately speaking, in an unconverted church, and the Lord now says, You're mine. And so the you know, the unconverted are gonna, you know, those who don't want to be saved are gonna have to go. And, you know, yeah, it was hard, but it wasn't hard. You do obedience, I'll do the outcomes. Yeah. So it was actually pretty simple. And yeah, 200 people or so left, I think. I'm surprised. There's no way the church should have worked. It was miraculous, it was totally God made it stay alive. All the pastors got pastor and training titles. We all went off to seminary, uh, many of our wives got saved, um, some of our guys got saved, and on and on, you know, the story goes. Women went home as opposed to you know being in in in ministry. Yeah. And you know, you remember all that. I do. I I think one of the most amazing stories was when one of our elders went home. I was teaching a Saturday morning on the doctrines of grace. He goes home, he takes the folder, you know, thick folder. You remember those white papers, just here's what we believe. Yeah, we started dishing them out everywhere. Make sure you believe it or you're out, right? And and it was real simple. You know, he he went home and he showed it to his wife and he said, This is the gospel. Are you born again? She got so mad at him, she took that folder and she threw it at him kind of by his feet, and it went under the couch. Wow. So he walks into the bedroom and he begins just you know praying and going about his day. And then two hours later he hears sobbing, and he comes out the door, comes around the corner, and there she is sitting on the couch with this folder open, and she looks up at him through tears and she says, This is what the Bible says. Unbelievable. This is what it says. And so it was just a converted church. Uh and I think we all look back on that and go, Oh my gosh, Lord, why would you take a group of knuckleheads who had, you know, laid waste to the glory of your bride and choose to do that for us?
SPEAKER_00Specifically with the men like that, like the elder and his wife and some of those situations, what was the ripple effect through the congregation with those who stayed? Um, men who are now in ministry and people who have said, you know, we got saved in that era. What did that look like? And what was the joy for you in the midst of the thing?
SPEAKER_01There was a lot that left. You know, it's kind of like I felt like I was walking the plank, you know, and see who'd come with me. I I think there was there were a few people that left. There was quite a group, a neat group that came in and sat down. And if I were to go back now, I would have been a lot more patient. I mean, it's just that's who I I tend to be dogmatic by my nature. You know that. I also was young, I was 30 or whatever it was. So I think if I could go back, I would have been more patient. And I would have tried to take people on the journey with me. And that's one thing everyone needs to understand. If you're in a seeker-sensitive church and you've been caught up in whatever movement about the Bible as opposed to the Bible, just slow down, get right with the Lord, get right with the word, you know, go do go train a little bit, and then take your people with you on the journey. Uh beating them over the head with it, and you know, every single sermon, you know, on total depravity isn't, you know, you can be patient. I would have been more patient. But the beautiful thing is in all of that, it was like the Lord said, you know, I'm I want to build something new, I want to do something with this. And, you know, a lot of these guys are all in ministry now. Um we, you know, the Lord raised up men, released men. You know, you and I are still close as ever. You're doing pastoring in Arizona. Uh, Pastor Albert's pastoring in Arizona, Pastor Brett's pastoring in Arizona. I mean, everyone went to the promised land of creative.
SPEAKER_00Left you for Arizona after several years.
SPEAKER_01Come back to the woke little priesting, y'all are gonna be sending missionaries back to California. And um, you know, Pastor Outlaw is on staff with us, Jesse Randolph is with us, Brett Skinner is with us. He's also, of course, with For the Gospel. So literally, God just allowed us all to grow in the faith together and then allowed us to be brothers forever. I think that rhymed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it did. It's a pretty good rhyme. I I do, I'll I'll speak into that as well or echo it. I remember as much as you you'd kind of hard on yourself saying, yeah, I'd been easier on people as you know the I remember though, specifically sitting in the front row there on the right side week after week. And as much as you were hardlined, you were preaching through books of the Bible all of a sudden. So even the theological leanings, while membership class, I would say took a serious turn. I mean, it was there I remember one guy made a comment. Maybe you remember this, he said, uh, there's a lot of JC in here. It's not Jesus Christ, just John Calvin, because you had mentioned, you know, total depravity or some element of the doctrines of grace. And it was, I mean, they just saw one element of the sovereignty of God and salvation, and it was like, we're out of here. But a lot of us, I personally remember getting taken through the Gospel of John, getting saved, preaching the Gospel of John, becoming P.I.T from the Gospel of John, and you giving me the MacArthur commentary. But I also remember the book of Ephesians, and I remember our marriage and our home and our parenting over and over and over. You know, these are emotional topics for us, transforming our home and then watching that transform the church. So, yeah, it was hard-lined, but a lot of that was ecclesiological in membership. Hey, listen, we're not playing games. Here's what it is, here's what the church believes. You know, no, you're not gonna become a pastor and get a paycheck and be on staff here if you don't hold to these. No, if you don't do training. I'm sorry, we're not just gonna give you a mic. That was unapologetically hardlined. Um, but I remember getting walked through books of the Bible and then reading time and time again. You mentioned Ashamed of the Gospel. I remember being on staff, and you came in, and it was the book with Ashamed of the Gospel was the book that you had us read as a staff, and it was game set match. It floored us. And remember, one gal in the church came up with that term, and she wasn't talking about being slain in the spirit. You remember floored by the Lord. And we just kept being, quote, floored by the Lord as we were laid flat on our faces, if you will, metaphorically, and maybe literally for some people in prayer with repentance, transformed minds, all because of God's word, which really is the segue point for me. I want to ask you this why does biblical preaching matter? The answer may be so obvious, but lay it out for us. And then, you know, how do you encourage someone at this point to lean into biblical preaching? And what should people loaded question here? What should people be looking for? And is this enough of a reason to leave a church? So walk us through biblical preaching in any facet in any way that you'd want. Yes, it it is everything.
SPEAKER_01The pulpit is the church, it drives everything in the church, right? And what we have right now with all the topical nonsense, and I'm not against topical preaching if it's topical textual, yeah. But it's gotta be word for word, phrase by phrase, verse by verse, and and it's gotta be correlated well.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01What I'm talking about is all the topical nonsense. Here's the seven topics that we're gonna do every year, and it's it's basically homiletics by consensus. What are the what's all the young regenerate people want? And then that's what I'm gonna preach on, that topic. And it's not really even a sermon, it's a nod to God, open the Bible, read partially Old Testament narrative, and then I'm gonna just talk about whatever I want to talk about with little silly stories, and I'm gonna Andy Stanley it with a big problem at the beginning and try to give you four button-down solutions at the end. All right, that's that topical nonsense will destroy your church. It is not church because it de-establishes God, it usurps the lordship of Jesus. See, if you're teaching that way, you're you're de-establishing God, you're usurping the lordship of Jesus, you're hindering the work of the Holy Spirit, you're severing the preacher from his own sanctification week by week, and you're not giving the church true worship. Because the entire thing is about man. That's man-centered theology. It's homiletic by consensus. True biblical preaching is verse by verse because it's all about God. What does he say? We come into this room not concerned with, well, how did the worship service meet my needs? Well, it was a it was a home run today, Pastor. We go into the worship service saying, what does God think about what's happening here? What does he have to say? So it's everything. Yes, you leave a church if it's not a biblical pulpit. Yes, you leave a church if God is not sovereign in that church, yes, you leave a church if they're not preaching exposition, yes, you leave a church if they are not giving honor to the lordship of Christ through the teaching of his word. If they're removing the Holy Spirit from the way that he wants to work in the church age, if they're if the pastor is severed from his daily devotion, working through the scripture and being humbled by it before he goes and speaks to you, yes, you leave a church that doesn't preach that way. It all rises and falls upon the pulpit.
SPEAKER_00So the last question that I want to cover with you is about numerics. Speak to the idea that the numbers are there, so God must be blessing it. And clearly he's approving of what we're doing. Look at the numbers. Look at my church growing. I use these methods and it's uh it's working, you know. So what? Speak to that idea of numbers and pragmatism and how that somehow equates to our faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01What I would say is that unless we are clear with our ecclesiology, there can be confusion surrounding marketing and evangelism. We we tend to bring the two together, right? So from a marketing standpoint, let's let's just make sure we we tear down the straw man that people will build against the neo-reformed guys, right? That we just want our church to be small. The reason it's small is because you know God wanted it small. Let's tear that down a little bit, okay? We we it's okay to have a nice building. It's okay to um to have music that that sounds somewhat contemporary. We don't need to, you know, to plaster our walls gray and not put color on them, right? It's okay to have a church that cares about people and being able to enjoy it under the glory of God. That's that's a good thing, right? But we call that marketing. Yeah, yeah. Don't call that evangelism. What happens in the secret-sensitive church is because it's flipped upside down and the worship service is a crusade. Remember, instead of gathering to worship, we we gather to witness, is everything is called evangelism. Understand clearly, friends, it is not. Marketing is one thing, right? But don't call that evangelism every time you put up a new circus trick. That's not evangelism, okay? So, but that being said, there's nothing wrong with good, healthy marketing. Here's our church. It's a great church. We've got great programs. They want to glorify the Lord, we want to bless you. It's for the good of God's people. So come on out. Let's enjoy it, right? Yeah. But that's marketing. Totally. Okay. Then on the other side is there's evangelism. If we have proper soteriology, then we understand that salvation is something that happens by God, not through parlor tricks, but through sharing the truth, Romans chapter 10, by which people confess their sin, they believe, they repent, and they believe, and they are saved. So, very simple. Do not ever build your church's litmus for success based off how many people darken the doors. Make sure you build your church's litmus of success based on how holy the people who are inside those doors. And if you do that, you'll properly have a perspective of what's marketing and what's evangelism, and the church will have a proper ecclesiology. Does that kind of make sense?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Basically, what you've described is you can tell people we've got a great children's space for your kids and great family ministry, and it's safe, and we do background checks, and the floors don't have, you know, rusted nails on them. We all, you know, and not swinging into this idea that, you know, we haven't changed the carpet in 28 years, and there's probably mold underneath, and that's why you're sneezing in the second row of the pew. But ah, God's sovereign, He'll save you. They come or don't, you know, we're not here for all that, you know, aesthetics jazz. You're going, hey brother, you know, put some new carpet on the floor. Make the children's space attractive and welcoming. Put some guest parking spots in the parking lot if you'd like, so that when we invite our unsaved loved ones, you know, they don't get lost in the back of the parking lot because we want them to hear the gospel. But then when they enter the doors, the word is preached, evangelism is is clear. None of that stuff is the driver even is going to save or help anything. And if they keep coming back, whoopdy do. If they don't get saved, what are we doing? That's just social club, marketing, all that. So I think you lay out that balance so well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think it's important to understand what we do on Sunday is vertical, right? And then what we're doing the rest of the week in our evangelism and our outreach and even our events, it's okay to have events at church. Totally. That's horizontal, right? But never, never, ever turn your Sunday morning into something that is about the person instead of the worship.
SPEAKER_00Man, what a blessing. Such great wisdom. Um, thank you. Honestly, you know I love you like crazy. Our family loves you like crazy. Thankful for God's work through you in our life. Thanks for all you do for the gospel and at Mission Bible Church in Costa Mesa. Um, glad we get to still do a lot of this together. If you're watching this and uh you've been wondering about biblical preaching and pragmatism and seeker-driven methods, I hope and pray. I would imagine this video has just answered a lot of your questions. Um, if you've ever not known the storyline behind my storyline, this is the bigger story that God converted and transformed a church. And then shocker, um, real pastor discipling real people, walking with them as they grow in godliness. And then the whole point of discipleship then is to deploy. So that's really all any of us are the deployed soldiers and faithful workers because somebody poured into us. Now we do it for others. And so I hope that encourages you. Um, if you're looking for a great church in the Orange County, Southern California area, I know of a good one. I used to work there. I only left it so I could come and pastor and start a church over here in Arizona. But if I didn't have a call to go plant and lead another church, I'd still be with you. So look up missionbible.org and go to Mission Bible Church in Costa Mesa. I know you guys are gonna keep plowing and we'll keep doing great work together. Any final thoughts?
SPEAKER_01Just love you. Excited for what God's doing through the for the gospel ministry. All glory goes to him.
SPEAKER_00Amen and amen. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for watching. For articles, more podcast episodes, videos, and a give, or check out our team at for the gospel. Go to www.forthegospel.org. If you'd like, you can subscribe for videos on YouTube, or hit us up on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok. We'll be back with another episode next Monday. For now, keep on living for the gospel.