My thoughts on John Piper, on Rick Warren’s message at the DGNC 2010 and the Celebrity Preacher Driven Conferences.

On the onset of this post, I will have to be honest I have never been impressed by John Piper. I have read a couple of his books on the recommendation of friends and have listened to a dozen or so of his messages from the Shepherds Conference & Together for the Gospel Conference. Though I thought he was a gifted speaker, but it never made me run to the christian bookstore to pre-order his next book or podcast his sermons or his radio program.

So for me, the downgrade of John Piper & Desiring God Ministries hasn’t been an Emperor’s New Clothes moment like for some who regularly listen to his sermons and read his books. At least for me, I started questioning Piper’s orthodoxy when he exposed his flock and the church in general to the Emerging Church’s Rock Star, Mark Driscoll. Driscoll used this association with Piper to help him reboot his image, much like a drug cartel uses a shady banker to launder their money. Mark went from the Emerging Church’s Cussing Pastor to the Emerging/Missional New Calvinist. I do partially blame Piper for helping these Emerging/Missional methodologies infect Baptist & Bible Church circles, because of Piper’s huge influence in these circles. Piper’s association & elevation of Emerging/Missional types like Driscoll and Matt Chandler gave their Acts 29 Network the in they needed. To see what I mean visit a multisite near you.

What I really don’t understand is why some of the questions about and turmoil over Warren didn’t happen last year, when Piper invited Doug Wilson to speak at this conference. I guess the broader evangelical world doesn’t understand the heretical teachings and beliefs of the Federal Visionists. John Piper is suppose to be a Calvinist and to those with lack of understanding of what means to be Reformed, they would call him reformed. It was very clear in his “Why I invited them” [Editor's Note: DGM has edited this clip and removed the all mentions of the Federal Vision after this post was posted.] webcast last year, Piper doesn’t understand the Federal Vision. Piper dismissed it as differences about the non-essentials and a Presbyterian thing. Really, so the “reformed” John Piper couldn’t take the word of the rest of the Confessional Reformed World that would classify the Federal Vision Theology as very serious error or heresy. All NAPARC churches and major Reformed Seminaries have written and adopted Reports and Resolutions in response against the Federal Vision. I guess John Piper gets the Federal Vision right and the rest of us get it wrong. The Federal Vision is a cancer within Reformed Circles. The Pacific Northwestern Presbytery of the PCA is in the battle for it’s life as we speak over the trial of Federal Visionist Peter Leithart. So, John Piper’s “whole lot to do about nothing” attitude about the Federal Vision and Doug Wilson should have sent up red flags about Piper’s orthodoxy then.

So, earlier this year when my twitter feed, my facebook livestream and my e-mail inbox filled with the rumor and later confirmation of Rick Warren speaking at the Desiring God National Conference this year, I wasn’t totally shocked. The Purpose Driven Life & The 40 Days of Purpose, well those fads have gone the way of the Pet Rock & Hula-hoop in the fad driven evangelical church. Warren’s last couple of books weren’t great sellers either. Also factor in that Warren sent out an urgent plea to his church members and followers of his ministry that Saddleback & their ministries were nine hundred thousand dollars in the red and needed their help last December. Rick Warren was in serious need of a makeover and reboot. That’s why Warren wanted to speak there, after all it worked for his buddy, Mark Driscoll.

But, what were Piper’s motives? Again, Piper explains on “Why I invited them” webcast, that we got him [Warren] wrong, then Piper goes on to try to make Warren’s theology appear sound and doctrinally right. Piper also said he wanted to sit down with him to understand pragmatism and see what makes him tick. The obvious question here is this not something that Piper could have and should have done in private with Warren and not exposing thousands to the teachings of Rick Warren? But, see that would have been a prime opportunity missed for two Celebrity Preachers to network, to sell books & DVDs and not to mention all the buzz and hype involved. Also it was announced by Warren that the 2011 West Coast Desiring God Conference was going to be hosted by Saddleback Church, Surprise!! Surprise!!

Now for the conference, I only watched the webcast of Rick Warren’s message and the Round table discussion following Warren’s message and to be fair I will only give my two cents on those sessions.

Rick Warren’s Message:

I have only heard a few messages by Rick Warren, I thought  Warren’s Christmas message of 2007 was perhaps the worse message I’ve ever heard. In that message, Warren called God’s redemptive plan for mankind, God’s Mulligan. This message was perhaps worse than the Christmas Message. This was a hour of Bible verse twisting and isogeting texts. Not mention the pelagian overtones, repeated use of paraphrase versions of the Bible and yet another reduction of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross. Warren doesn’t believe in Total Depravity and I am not sure if he believes in Original Sin either. To Warren sin is something that man can fix or overcome by adopting the right system or some kind of “How to” list. In this particular message, Warren reduces Christ’s death on the cross only to an act of love. Nothing about Christ’s blood covering our sin or imputed righteousness. Instead, what we heard was about Christ’s out stretched arms on the cross with every drop of blood saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you”.

Warren also lacks any knowledge of the distinction between Law & Gospel, this message was pure Law and the one time he goes to the cross, he gets it wrong. It’s no wonder why Warren can have ecumenical fellowship with practitioners of false religions, because like Warren their religions are all law and works based too.

Also Warren doesn’t understand the Biblical role of the Pastor. In this message, Warren lauded the Pastors in the audience, saying that Pastors feed their members too much and that they should be teaching their members to be Self-Feeders. This Self-Feeder idea comes from a methodology where from their own studies and surveys show that somewhere in the 40% range of their members even understand and can define basic tenants of the faith. These Purpose Driven & Seeker Driven gurus answer to this problem wasn’t to quit feeding their members spiritual junk food, but to teach their members to be Self-Feeders. The Scriptures doesn’t support this Self-Feeder idea, all through the scriptures it defines the Pastor as a Shepherd. Someone that knows & feeds his sheep. But, if you look at the non-biblical Pastor – CEO model at your local Mega Church, this would never work. Because these men would have to train up men for ministry and split up their empires into much smaller churches where they could possibly know and feed their sheep.

I guess the theme of these messages at the conference were suppose to be on Think, Thinking or Thought to coincide with Piper’s new book, “Think” and the conference’s theme. The central theme of Rick Warren’s message was Rick Warren, because he gets it right. Though Warren danced around the topic but the trail seemed to always lead right back to Rick Warren or Saddleback Church or some “How to” list of his own creation.

Also Warren is a master of the bait and switch. We saw two prime examples of that in this message:

1. We heard Warren actually give some good advice using Proverbs of the need of Pastors to teach their members how to learn and think Biblically, then later he lauds the same Pastors for feeding their members too much ????
2. We heard Warren say, “if it’s new, it’s not true”, Warren then stressed the importance of Church History and how the Church viewed and taught Scripture, but then he later spun Proverbs 29:8 & Acts 2:17 out of context into some unbiblical concept on how to use the imagination and vision casting; Something new huh?

For even more in depth look of this message, I suggest you also listen to Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith’s critique of this message.

Folks this wasn’t Biblical Christianity heard here.

I several questions for the Desiring God Folks:

1. Did anyone prescreen this message?
2. If so, why was this aired?
3. If it was prescreened, does this person still have a job with the ministry?

Round table discussion afterwards:

Originally, this session was suppose to be the One on One Q&A with Piper and Warren, where Piper was suppose to get his answers on pragmatism and to see what makes Warren tick. The session was changed after a series of family emergencies that made Warren appear only by recorded video, The Session was changed into a Round Table Discussion featuring: John Piper, Burk Parsons [Ligonier Ministries], Tullian Tchividjian [Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church] and Kevin DeYoung [Pastor, author, blogger].

Perhaps this was the most troubling part for me. I kinda expected a message like that from Warren.

Warren teed them up, on what should been an hour long discussion of what was wrong with that message and with the Purpose/Seeker Driven movement in general. What we got was about 5 minutes of praise of the message from Piper and Burk Parsons before they moved on to the next topic. Tullian Tchividjian & Kevin DeYoung were apparently late getting there and didn’t hear Warren’s message, so they didn’t comment on the message.

I’ve already commented on the direction I think John Piper & Desiring God Ministries are going, but I was surprised that he didn’t least criticized some of the message. You can tell he wanted to criticize the “feeding your members less and teaching them to be Self-Feeders” aspect of the message but instead he spun it into what he thought Warren was trying to say there.

What was embarrassing was to see was Burk Parsons of Ligonier Ministries. What we needed was a Reformed Churchman to step up and represent here. What we got was someone who appeared to be awe struck and looked like a giddy school girl crushing on her hunky Math Teacher. You would think that the influence of Dr. R. C. Sproul would have gave Parsons enough spiritual discernment to recognize a bad message, but apparently not.

Skipping Rick Warren’s message doesn’t take Tullian Tchividjian & Kevin DeYoung off the hook here. We need them to listen to the message and post a response to the message on their blogs. They chose to be at the conference and to be on that roundtable. We need them to represent the Reformed World.

We also need a response from The White Horse Inn guys too. The White Horse Inn was at this conference taping future shows. Dr. Horton, Dr. Riddlebarger, and Dr. Rosenbladt: We need to hear from you.

Maybe the real question here is have these Celebrity Preacher Driven Conferences ran their coarse ?

When these conferences started they seemed like a good idea. A gathering of the best teachers teaching sound doctrine and best theological minds lecturing about the pressing issues and concerns that the church was facing. I know I have learned a lot and have been extremely blessed by the Shepherds Conference over the years.

Saying that, it seems that most of these conferences have devolved into little more than a vehicle for Celebrity Preachers to network and promote their new books. Orthodoxy and Sound Doctrine has taken a backseat. The main criteria for a seat at the table at these conferences seems to be; how big is your Mega Church ?? or how many Multisites do you have?? or How many books they sold??

With the technology of Podcasting and Live streaming, we really don’t need these Celebrity Driven Conferences anymore. You can listen to John MacArthur or Mark Dever or whoever on a weekly basis now. You can have your own Together for the Gospel every week via the Podcast. Let spiritual discernment and sound doctrine be your guide and not some conference organizer who’s only motives may be putting butts in seats, selling merchandise and networking.

And if you really want to feast on some spiritual meat, RTS and Westminster Theological Seminary both offer entire courses free to download via iTunes U. I know since I found these courses on-line, these type of conferences have become less of a player in my life. I only listened to these two sessions of the 2010 DGNC for the blog.

Let’s see, do I want to listen to Theologian Derek Thomas lecturing on John Owens or do I want to listen to some Emerging/Missional dude lecturing on “How he had to dechurch the churched to build his church”. Give me Derek Thomas & John Owen every time.

2010 Desiring God Ministries Conference, 2011 West Coast Desiring God Ministries Conference, Acts 29 Network, Biblical role of the Pastor, Burk Parsons, Celebrity Preacher Driven Conferences, Celebrity Preachers, Chris Rosebrough, Christless Christianity, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Cult of Personality Preacher, culture wars, Desiring God Ministries, Doug Wilson, Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, Dr. Michael Horton, Dr. R.C. Sproul, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, Emerging Church, Evangelical, Evangelicalism, fad driven evangelical church, Federal Vision, Federal Vision Theology, Fighting for the Faith, iTunes U, John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, Law and Gospel, Leadership Network, Ligonier Ministries, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Mega Church, Missional, Multi Site Church, NAPARC churches, New Calvinism, Pacific Northwestern Presbytery of the PCA, Pastor - CEO model, Pastor CEO VS Pastor Shepherd, PCA, Pelagianism, Peter Leithart, Pirate Christian Radio, Pragmatism, Purpose Driven, Reformed Theological Seminary, Rick Warren, RTS, Saddleback Church, SBC, Seeker Driven, Self-Feeders, social gospel, Southern Baptist, The Gospel Coalition, The White Horse Inn, Together for the Gospel, Tullian Tchividjian, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia