Bob didn't like my tone recently: "Come on Greg, get back from the edge."
It's in response to my calling the themed orgies, I mean worship services, at Saddleback entertainment geared toward crackers. I'll grant that I often resort to hyperbole, but Bob says the kind of language I use in response to Saddleback "has no place in the kingdom." Wow. Seems someone needs to pay closer attention to his Bible. Hyperbole is all through Scripture. I was also accused of "blanket condemnation." I don't think I condemned anyone by saying Saddleback's themed carnivals, I mean worship services, were based not on theological conviction but on a desire to entertain crackers. If calling someone a cracker is condemnation, it's news to me. I consider myself one. Painfully white. Living in the suburbs. Out of touch with urban blight. Attending an almost exclusively white church. White friends. Little to no diversity in my life. Cracker.
The real story to me is that no one in legitimate Christian publishing is willing to criticize Saddleback or Willow Creek or any other megachurch that is "doing well." Sure, there are the occasional screeds from fundamentalists who lament the liberal ethos of the churches, but no one outside of fundyville takes them seriously. Then you have academic treatments like Kenneson and Street's Selling Out the Church, but again, outside academic circles, who reads that? Just once, in a magazine like CT or the one Bob works for, I'd like to see two or three or four sides of the story concerning the ecclesiology of megachurches. I'd like to see honest criticism from a theological perspective. I'd like to see Warren answer for his Southern Baptist roots in a way that doesn't dismiss questions. I'd like to see Hybels challenged for his thirty-year embrace of homogeneous church growth and not be allowed to kiss it off with an "oops" like he did in CT earlier this year. I'd like to see genuine engagement with ideas that don't bow before the collective wisdom of the Hybels/Warren pastor factory. And for the love of all that's holy, can someone please answer for the damn luau service. Just once. Give me less evangelical ass-kissing and more honest assessment and maybe I'll sound less strident. Grace and peace.
