In American Gospel: Christ Alone, one of the interviewees offers this comment on Todd White’ messaging, “This method of evangelism by blessing, it’s changing the Gospel from you are dead in your sins and this is what you need by God’s grace, repentance, and faith…it’s changing that message to God loves you, he accepts you, here’s some free stuff. As black Christians have long understood, the New Testament has a strong theology of law enforcement. She considers Bethel Church’s teachings to fall into the latter category.She said, too, that she felt it was an important distinction that she wasn’t speaking at a Bethel conference but merely at a conference in which Bethel Music led worship.Both the original post and her later clarifications sit atop what feels like a precipice in the church and the larger society. She also brought to light what Bethel is doing in their own city. The resident’s comment came across as bigoted. Image: Jackie Hill Perry / Instagram Because I believe that God’s church is big and multi-faceted, and it’s made up of people that are complicated and nuanced.These days, leaders are often measured not just by their own actions, but by the company they keep—which is becoming easier for followers to spot and scrutinize on social media.Our approaches to evangelism, the local church, preaching, spiritual gifts, worship style, etc vary but when there is a unified commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the inerrancy + authority of Scripture, and love for God and neighbor, the unity for which Christ prayed is made possible.I don’t agree with everybody I do ministry with (including the folk people might call “theologically sound.” Some of them, being blindly complicit when it comes to white supremacy, who are faithfully inspired by the theological musings of slave masters but that’s a whole other conversation), but I love them still. Get the most recent headlines and stories from Christianity Today delivered to your inbox daily.A daily newsletter featuring the most important and significant events on each day in Christian History.CTWeekly delivers the best content from ChristianityToday.com to your inbox each week.Get the most recent headlines and stories from Christianity Today delivered to your inbox daily.A daily newsletter featuring the most important and significant events on each day in Christian History.CTWeekly delivers the best content from ChristianityToday.com to your inbox each week. Amid calls for unity, bridge-building, and dialogue between people with disparate beliefs, there is a mounting pressure for leaders to be transparent about their own—to self-identify and make affiliations clear—even in short social media posts and soundbytes.“It’s as if people are placed into categories and treated according to how they’ve been classified without any opportunity to actually be more than what they’ve been labeled,” Perry said in the email she shared.Despite the backlash, other Christian leaders have come to Perry’s defense.While critics may feel she drew a line in the sand, Perry seems to have moved past it. The article only barely touches on such questions, much less gives answers.The reporting is straight-forward and the writing balanced enough that you could fall to either side of the opinions about Bethel: you might think they’re a nuisance, or you might see them as harmless, even helpful. They’ve given money to civic government, invested in the town’s infrastructure, and even paid handsomely to save the jobs of four police officers. It doesn’t even matter where you fall in the cessationism-vs-continuationism debate, whether you believe miracles are still common or not. As I pointed out in another recent article, the Bible does not say or even elude to the idea that the good news of Jesus Christ will miraculously heal you from any of your physical diseases. A year ago this week, Jackie Hill Perry released her first book, But a different kind of controversy arose when she participated in a recent conference for Propel Women, a ministry As a result, Perry has been forced to defend, explain, and clarify her position on working with those from other theological traditions, including some who ascribe to “false teachings.” Her affiliation with the women at the Propel event also lost her an upcoming speaking slot.In late August, Perry was on the lineup for Propel’s Perry and Johnson were laughing, heads together, as Perry praised Johnson as a friend and a woman with “all the Holy Spirit.” That was enough for her to start hearing from followers.Others on the lineup come out of the Word of Faith or prosperity gospel movement, which many Christians, including Perry herself, have decried as a harmful distortion of the gospel.You might see me on platforms with Reformed folk one day and non-Reformed folk the next day. There’s another about a young man who died after an asthma attack. Is it really all that bad if they are lying about their miracles and glory clouds? But it is he who is preaching a message that can neither save the human soul, nor can it deliver what Johnson says it will. Why? In a recent blog post, Pastor Gabriel Hughes dealt with an exposé on Bethel Church written by journalist Molly Hensley-Clancy. What Bethel Church is doing is deeply and deceptively demonic. Her Instagram lately is filled with photos and videos from her This week, she’s celebrating the one-year anniversary of her book while she prepares to release Browse 60+ years of magazine archives and web exclusives. American Gospel does not merely “destroy arguments” of the prosperity kind in keeping with apostolic aims (2 Cor. Bear with me as I explain.Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church, preaches a different gospel. Business dean Linda Livingstone takes over in wake of the Texas university’s rape scandal. Perhaps you’ve heard the story about a man who fell down a cliff and some students of Bethel attempted to heal him before they finally got help. 10:4–5). Who wouldn’t want to see the kind of unity promoted by Bethel Church? We never hear about the failures.Hensley-Clancy also pulled back the veil on the dark side of Bethel’s reckless charismaticism, from being a disruption in the community to the point that it has cost people their lives. Sure, there are those students who were so charismatic that their detachment from reality resulted in someone’s death (IHOP has those stories, too, and attempts to cover them up).
In American Gospel: Christ Alone, one of the interviewees offers this comment on Todd White’ messaging, “This method of evangelism by blessing, it’s changing the Gospel from you are dead in your sins and this is what you need by God’s grace, repentance, and faith…it’s changing that message to God loves you, he accepts you, here’s some free stuff. As black Christians have long understood, the New Testament has a strong theology of law enforcement. She considers Bethel Church’s teachings to fall into the latter category.She said, too, that she felt it was an important distinction that she wasn’t speaking at a Bethel conference but merely at a conference in which Bethel Music led worship.Both the original post and her later clarifications sit atop what feels like a precipice in the church and the larger society. She also brought to light what Bethel is doing in their own city. The resident’s comment came across as bigoted. Image: Jackie Hill Perry / Instagram Because I believe that God’s church is big and multi-faceted, and it’s made up of people that are complicated and nuanced.These days, leaders are often measured not just by their own actions, but by the company they keep—which is becoming easier for followers to spot and scrutinize on social media.Our approaches to evangelism, the local church, preaching, spiritual gifts, worship style, etc vary but when there is a unified commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the inerrancy + authority of Scripture, and love for God and neighbor, the unity for which Christ prayed is made possible.I don’t agree with everybody I do ministry with (including the folk people might call “theologically sound.” Some of them, being blindly complicit when it comes to white supremacy, who are faithfully inspired by the theological musings of slave masters but that’s a whole other conversation), but I love them still. Get the most recent headlines and stories from Christianity Today delivered to your inbox daily.A daily newsletter featuring the most important and significant events on each day in Christian History.CTWeekly delivers the best content from ChristianityToday.com to your inbox each week.Get the most recent headlines and stories from Christianity Today delivered to your inbox daily.A daily newsletter featuring the most important and significant events on each day in Christian History.CTWeekly delivers the best content from ChristianityToday.com to your inbox each week. Amid calls for unity, bridge-building, and dialogue between people with disparate beliefs, there is a mounting pressure for leaders to be transparent about their own—to self-identify and make affiliations clear—even in short social media posts and soundbytes.“It’s as if people are placed into categories and treated according to how they’ve been classified without any opportunity to actually be more than what they’ve been labeled,” Perry said in the email she shared.Despite the backlash, other Christian leaders have come to Perry’s defense.While critics may feel she drew a line in the sand, Perry seems to have moved past it. The article only barely touches on such questions, much less gives answers.The reporting is straight-forward and the writing balanced enough that you could fall to either side of the opinions about Bethel: you might think they’re a nuisance, or you might see them as harmless, even helpful. They’ve given money to civic government, invested in the town’s infrastructure, and even paid handsomely to save the jobs of four police officers. It doesn’t even matter where you fall in the cessationism-vs-continuationism debate, whether you believe miracles are still common or not. As I pointed out in another recent article, the Bible does not say or even elude to the idea that the good news of Jesus Christ will miraculously heal you from any of your physical diseases. A year ago this week, Jackie Hill Perry released her first book, But a different kind of controversy arose when she participated in a recent conference for Propel Women, a ministry As a result, Perry has been forced to defend, explain, and clarify her position on working with those from other theological traditions, including some who ascribe to “false teachings.” Her affiliation with the women at the Propel event also lost her an upcoming speaking slot.In late August, Perry was on the lineup for Propel’s Perry and Johnson were laughing, heads together, as Perry praised Johnson as a friend and a woman with “all the Holy Spirit.” That was enough for her to start hearing from followers.Others on the lineup come out of the Word of Faith or prosperity gospel movement, which many Christians, including Perry herself, have decried as a harmful distortion of the gospel.You might see me on platforms with Reformed folk one day and non-Reformed folk the next day. There’s another about a young man who died after an asthma attack. Is it really all that bad if they are lying about their miracles and glory clouds? But it is he who is preaching a message that can neither save the human soul, nor can it deliver what Johnson says it will. Why? In a recent blog post, Pastor Gabriel Hughes dealt with an exposé on Bethel Church written by journalist Molly Hensley-Clancy. What Bethel Church is doing is deeply and deceptively demonic. Her Instagram lately is filled with photos and videos from her This week, she’s celebrating the one-year anniversary of her book while she prepares to release Browse 60+ years of magazine archives and web exclusives. American Gospel does not merely “destroy arguments” of the prosperity kind in keeping with apostolic aims (2 Cor. Bear with me as I explain.Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church, preaches a different gospel. Business dean Linda Livingstone takes over in wake of the Texas university’s rape scandal. Perhaps you’ve heard the story about a man who fell down a cliff and some students of Bethel attempted to heal him before they finally got help. 10:4–5). Who wouldn’t want to see the kind of unity promoted by Bethel Church? We never hear about the failures.Hensley-Clancy also pulled back the veil on the dark side of Bethel’s reckless charismaticism, from being a disruption in the community to the point that it has cost people their lives. Sure, there are those students who were so charismatic that their detachment from reality resulted in someone’s death (IHOP has those stories, too, and attempts to cover them up).