Acts 29 and the Big Sort
Written by J. Chase Davis and Matt Patrick |
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Today if you visit an Acts 29 church, you can’t be sure what you will experience. You might experience the promotion of trans ideology, a woman preaching in the pulpit during worship services, the teaching of critical race theory…that America was founded on lies and racism which has set up a system of white dominance. Or, you may experience a faithful pastor trying to do the best he can with little support or oversight from his primary church affiliation.
For this is what it means to be a king: to be the first in every desperate attack, and last in every desperate retreat, and when there is hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.
“The Horse and His Boy,” C. S. Lewis, 240.
Leading a Christian organization for the past few years has been difficult. The church is in desperate need of courageous men to lead in such times of tribulation. Sadly, this has not been the posture of many evangelical leaders.
The American evangelical landscape has lately experienced the pains of the Big Sort. Christians are self-sorting according to various religious and political convictions that reflect broader national trends. Regardless of the reasons for such a sorting, whether it be the idolization of politics as some might claim, or simply the natural result of broader cultural trends, the evangelical Big Sort is in full swing.
An example of these trends is the Acts 29 Network, a network of approximately 700 churches, which projects a niche expertise in church planting. Founded in 1999 by David Nichols, of Spanish River (Presbyterian) Church alongside Mark Driscoll, who eventually became the primary leader, Acts 29 discovered its market position in the midst of the nascent and now fractured Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR) movement.
Acts 29 was always committed to gospel-centered ministry, complementarian theology, missional innovation, Spirit-led pneumatology, and Calvinist soteriology. However, the scandal-plagued organization has failed to meet the needs of the hour with grace and truth. Churning through leaders and tolerating trans ideology in pulpits, this once strong church network has outkicked its coverage, losing the moral clarity our times of disorder and particular depravity demand and the courageous conviction it once possessed. Constant board turnover, network realignment, and bloated bureaucracy speak to an organization building the plane as it flies rather than instilling confidence and stability in its member churches.
Our church joined Acts 29 in 2011. At the time we were already on the ground in Boulder holding worship services for our church plant.
For young church planters, joining Acts 29 was attractive because of the access to influential voices within the YRR movement such as Darrin Patrick, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Sam Storms, Steve Timmis, and Ray Ortlund. The benefit of joining Acts 29 wasn’t monetary as they did not give money to church planters at the time. The benefit was found in the trusted relationships based on theological alignment and the credibility the brand provided. It was like joining a trade organization or guild so that you could put the logo of the network alongside your brand ensuring credibility and gain access to people and conferences which could help you plant a church. Not to mention, the network was the “it girl” of church planting. Mark Driscoll was being discussed in the New York Times, Darrin Patrick was going on Fox and Friends. These guys seemed to have two things that don’t normally go together, a commitment to biblical fidelity and an attractiveness to a wide audience. What church planter wouldn’t want to join their network?
Over time the focus of the network shifted. Rather than lauding the glorification of God in all things through a rich commitment to the historic Christian faith and church planting, Acts 29 began to talk less about theological convictions and more about cultural diversity. As busy church planters, much of this didn’t catch our eye. We were glad to be part of the club and assumed the best of the talented leaders directing the network.
That changed in 2020. There were four events which led to a slow erosion of trust.
First, the sudden firing of Steve Timmis under the claim of “abusive leadership” based on a hit piece from Christianity Today seemed suspect. Whether there were biblically justifiable reasons to dismiss Timmis is unknown, since to this day, the network has not shared any investigation which would justify arriving at such a conclusion. When one network leader was asked what abusive leadership is, his reply was simply “Anytime a leader misuses power.”
Second, COVID created a confusing and at times contentious environment amongst churches in the network. Some stayed closed and others stayed open. Acts 29 provided pragmatic opinions on the best practices for churches but offered little theological instruction surrounding the importance of churches remaining open.
Third, our friend Darrin Patrick took his own life. Darrin was a recent friend to our church and a former board member of Acts 29. His own life unraveled as he had a moral failing and falling out at his own church plant. Darrin’s experience was emblematic of broader problems in evangelicalism in dealing with once-famous pastors who were voted off the island.
Fourth and most significantly, with the death of George Floyd, churches in the network became deeply divided and did not receive clear leadership from Acts 29 central staff and regional directors regarding biblically sound approaches to this matter. Acts 29 executive chairman, and former president, Matt Chandler, blamed the church for making BLM necessary. Vice president of church planting, Tyler Jones, proclaimed that those who have been silent regarding racism are walking in unrepentant sin. Acts 29 itself parroted worldly talking points about systemic racism. On a network call for pastors, the Director of Pastoral Care stated that “America has designed a system where white folk always win…This system sprung up from the church…My prayer is that God would use our generation of pastors…to dismantle it with the gospel truth.” One former board member, and current Acts 29 pastor, Leonce Crump, referred to the revolutionary war as an insurrection. He went on to say, “God is always standing on the side of the disenfranchised, marginalized and the oppressed” all while claiming to be neither left nor right. Furthermore, claiming that if we don’t participate in BLM, we will dishonor the heart of God and that we must be anti-racist. In an interview with Acts 29 pastor Guy Mason, pastor Crump said “Blood, violence, and hypocrisy are the soul of this nation.”
All of this led us to begin asking earnest questions to restore trust and build unity within the network and our own church. We have had over a dozen phone calls over the last three years with vice presidents, former board members, and other leaders in the network to seek clarity on doctrinal and financial matters. As part of their membership in the network, churches agree to give 2% of their annual budget to the network to further their mission of planting churches (think of them as member dues). If our church was going to support church planting in this way, we wanted to ensure that the churches that were being planted were not worldly.
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How Should Christians Respond to the Transgender Phenomenon?
Written by Robert A. J. Gagnon |
Friday, August 26, 2022
Although Yarhouse refers obliquely to wise counsel from church leaders, he allows the offender to call the shots. Paul rather recommends temporary remedial discipline for the persistently impenitent in order to minimize the harm done both to the offender and to the church (vv. 4-5, 9-13). The church’s complicity in sexual delusion benefits no one, least of all the offender. How far should Christians following Yarhouse’s suggestions go?In June, Christianity Today published an article by Mark Yarhouse, a professor of psychology at Regent University in Virginia, on “gender dysphoria.” Gender dysphoria is the APA’s current description of the condition whereby someone perceives one’s “gender” to be other than one’s birth or biological sex. The previous designation in the APA’s diagnostic manual (and in my view still preferable) is “gender identity disorder” (GID).
Yarhouse contends:
1. Church members should address a man who thinks he is a woman by her chosen female name and use feminine pronouns, and a woman who thinks she is a man by her chosen male name and use masculine pronouns.
2. The church should not “treat as synonymous management of gender dysphoria and faithfulness” to Christ. The church should allow those with transgender desires “to identify with aspects of the opposite sex, as a way to manage extreme discomfort.”
3. For the most part, the church should give up on the “culture war” battle on this and other issues. “The church is called to rise above [culture] wars and present a witness to redemption.”
Yarhouse refers to three different lenses for interpreting the issue: Integrity (Yarhouse cites me as a proponent; go here for an online discussion), Disability, and Diversity (full affirmation of transgenderism). Although Yarhouse states that he believes “there are strengths in all three lenses,” he clearly operates with a descending scale with Disability at the top and Diversity at the bottom: “Because I am a psychologist…, I see value in a disability lens.”
Yarhouse doesn’t dump the Integrity lens entirely. “Even as Christians affirm the disability lens, we should also let the integrity lens inform our pastoral care.” He rather sees the disability lens as embracing the Integrity lens but going beyond it and even correcting it, at least at two points. First, “the disability lens also makes room for supportive care and interventions that allow for cross-gender identification in a way the integrity lens does not” (it is this allowance that is the main problem in my view). Second, it “rejects the teaching that gender identity conflicts are the result of willful disobedience or sinful choice.”
This last claim is curious. I for one do not view the mere experience of gender dysphoria as necessarily resulting from active efforts to rebel against God. My approach is not far from Yarhouse on this score: “A person may have choices to make in response to the condition, and those choices have moral and ethical dimensions. But the person is not culpable for having the condition as such.” Where I would qualify Yarhouse is in noting a more complex interplay of nature, nurture, environment, and choices. Incremental choices made in response to impulses may strengthen the same impulses.
Another problem with his “Disability” view is that for the most part people don’t associate a disability with sinful conduct. When people think of disabilities they typically think of such things as physical impairments of mobility, hearing, or sight; intellectual disability or other learning impairments; or health impairments like asthma, epilepsy, or attention deficit disorder. Such non-moral disabilities can be accommodated in all sorts of ways without violating any divine standards.
Even depression and anxiety (cited as parallels to gender dysphoria by Yarhouse) are not as directly or severely related to the desire to sin as a desire to pursue a gender identity at odds with one’s biological sex.
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Godly Intimacy
Wisdom does declare to us certain important truth regarding marital intimacy. It declares to us that we must rejoice in our spouse alone, watch over our lives and remember our God. Yet, should you have failed to hearken to the voice of wisdom, hear now the good news of Christ’s redemption. Perhaps, you have fallen to the forbidden life. Perhaps as a believer you have allowed sexual perversion a foothold in some way. Perhaps, you are not a believer and are engulfed in sexual perversion. The good news of the gospel is that in Christ Jesus there is remedy for your sins, even sexual sins.
It was the winter of 1986 when I first laid eyes on my future wife. Now, when I first spotted this radiant beauty, great confusion followed. For it was like I was seeing double, because I was seeing double. My wife is an identical twin. A little counsel for any young fella considering dating a twin: make sure you know which twin you want to go out with before asking one of them out. Otherwise, you might end up asking both of them out, as I did. Trust me, your beautiful bride will never let you forget the “mistake” of going out with her twin sister, as long as you both shall live. Well, all that took place in 1987, the same year that lovely girl became my bride, the wife of my youth. Thirty-five years later, I can affirm that a man finds a good thing when he finds a wife and has obtained favor from the Lord. I can likewise affirm the wisdom of Proverbs 5:18-19:
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.Wisdom here instructs men to delight in the wife of their youth. Lest we misunderstand the meaning, the author is not speaking generically about the joys of marriage, but specifically about the delight one finds in marital intimacy. As one honors the marital bed (Heb. 13:4), one discovers the joy and delight of sacred union. So wisdom says to us to delight in the wife of our youth, and in her alone. So the ladies will not feel left out, wisdom declares the same message to you as well. Delight in that man of yours all the days of your life, and in him alone.
Indeed, we must keep utilizing that word “alone,” for vv. 18-19 are set in a broader context, which warns against adultery. The author in vv. 1-14 and 20-23 warns men about the “forbidden woman.” That is the woman willing to engage in an adulterous relationship, a seductress who desires to use her sexuality, not as a gift to delight a husband, but as a tool to trap a victim. The author acknowledges the allurement of her seduction, but also warns against such an illicit relationship:
“Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray” (Proverbs 5:20–23).
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Why Harvard’s Atheist Chaplain Matters Less, and More, than You Think
The wide attention recently given to Epstein’s role is an important reminder to American Christians that whatever we may want to argue about the supposedly “good old days,” biblical Christian faith is a lot more marginal in American culture today than we sometimes want to admit.
National and even international news has been all in a tizzy over outspoken atheist Greg Epstein becoming the new president of Harvard University’s chaplains.
Does this mean that Epstein has just been hired for a new job as Harvard’s atheist chaplain? Has he become Harvard’s “chief chaplain”? Does this mean that he now “leads” and is “in charge of” Harvard’s other chaplains? Did these other chaplains decide that they “couldn’t think of anyone better” for spiritual chaplaincy at the university? Is this a big, new change for campus ministry at Harvard?
Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, the answer to all of these questions is “No.”
Christians who seek to follow the One who said He IS the truth should be a lot more careful to be accurate than several rushing to comment have been.
As someone who was very involved in Harvard campus ministry while earning my three-year master’s degree there not that long ago, I’d like to clarify some realities that some headlines and hot takes, from Christians as well as others, miss.
First of all, Harvard is not a Christian school.
We at IRD have raised concerns about one United Methodist university hiring a Muslim chaplain, and another United Methodist university hiring a Unitarian Universalist to be its dean of spiritual and religious life.
This is categorically different. Harvard makes no claim to be a Christian institution.
Yes, many commenting on this announcement correctly note the university’s founding by devout Puritans in the 1600s. But such commentaries too often jump right from there to the present day, skipping over such major developments as Harvard’s deep ties with the Unitarian movement, beginning even before the university started its graduate-level Divinity School in 1816. Denying the divinity of Jesus Christ is obviously a huge break from biblical Christianity.
Epstein’s election, by the consensus of his fellow chaplains, does not represent a dramatic new shift and is unlikely to be terribly consequential for Harvard.
Secondly, the overall campus ministry environment at Harvard is multi-faith. This certainly does not mean that Christian and other chaplains there affirm the truth claims of each other’s religions. But as a secular university, if the administration is going to let evangelical Christian ministries operate on campus, it will offer the same level of access to various non-Christian religious ministries.
I would much rather see my alma mater continue its “open” stance of letting us minister on campus alongside everyone else, in a free marketplace of ideas, rather than take a “closed” stance of kicking out all campus ministries.
Harvard’s 43 currently listed chaplains include many evangelical Protestants, but these are less than one third of the total. Other traditions represented include everything from Baha’i to Zoroastrianism.
Thirdly, Harvard having an atheist chaplain is not a remotely new thing. I realize “atheist chaplain” may sound as oxymoronic as “vegetarian butcher” or “pacifist soldier.”
But the reality is that there are a number of essentially humanist congregations in America where atheists have sought to approximate functions religious congregations provide in terms of social community, support through life crises, regular gatherings for interesting lectures and lively discussions, and community-service volunteering—all while trying to keep God out of it. A number of humanist campus ministries seek to similarly offer godless alternatives to traditional student ministries.
I personally do not think that this can ultimately work as well without God. But that does not change the fact that such communities exist.
Epstein has already been a chaplain of the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics (HCHAA) Harvard for years. In 2005 he was ordained “as a Humanist Rabbi from the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism.” And Harvard’s humanist chaplaincy began decades before that, way back in 1974.
Epstein is not the first non-Christian to hold the largely honorary title of president of the chaplains. He is unlikely to be the last. After a humanist student ministry has been established for nearly half a century, is it really that big a deal for the humanist chaplain, rather than the chaplain of another non-Christian campus ministry, to take a brief turn with the title “president”?
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