If you haven’t been tracking the news, there’s been a dust-up in the American Evangelical world. An influential publishing outfit that produces RELEVANT magazine has been having some of its more dysfunctional efforts and people come to light. You can go read the initial posts by Mr. Andre Henry (a former Managing Editor) here, or related posts from Ms. Rebecca Marie Jo here. You can then read RELEVANT’s official response and the response from Mr. Cameron Strang, as well as a fine commentary by Ms. Ally Henny here. And you can read Mr. Henry’s reply to RELEVANT here.
It’s kind of a mess, and the temptation is just to say “no one is right here—everyone’s wrong!” Or even “I thought you Christians were about comity and grace and love, and here you are fighting in public.”
Well, yeah, I can understand the temptation to think that. It’s human nature to look at something messy and simply not want to untangle the knots and dig out the truth. We want someone to explain it to us in a 10-second soundbite: “Former Staffer Blows the Whistle” or “Struggling Leader Sabotaged by Dissent.” We want the skinny because we’re in a hurry and we got things to do and by god be quick because I don’t have time for this.
Right?
I can understand the reluctance to dig into something messy like this, but I wanted to bring it up because it is entirely predictable that it happened, and I will predict that it will happen again and again, to people and ministries that you are sure will never fail or do something so stupid that people outside the faith decide the Jesus’ promises are worthless because “see how they’re all just hypocrites.”
I don’t have a solution to that. As long as we keep birthing babies, we’re going to have broken people in the world who, in spite of all their education and upbringing, will have the temptation to sin, continuously, gladly, freely, and with great protestations that they really aren’t sinning; they’re just fixing a problem or using a shortcut or taking care of things that need to be taken care of, or…
I understand, because I’ve heard it before. And if you’ve studied any history of movements, you’ve heard it before as well.
I’ve been trying to follow Jesus since the 60s. (Yes, the 1960s. Let’s not make me a contemporary of Lincoln just yet.) In that time, I’ve experienced some wonderful Christian ministries and outreaches and programs and movements—and I’ve experienced some truly terrible efforts as well. Terrible men have used the name of Jesus and the message of the cross as a tool to gather young, trusting people together and to lead them into stupid or abusive efforts.
For myself, I found myself in my dream job at a church, and within a month I had a bottle of milk of magnesia on my desk that I drank like Gatorade after a run on a hot day. I may have had a bleeding ulcer. I was incredibly stressed trying to keep my own expectations together when I confronted the reality of a ministry that was operating under a dysfunctional leader. After about a year, I woke up one morning and told my spouse “I’m quitting this morning.”
I’ve never been involved in full-time ministry again.
I’ve been around, people, and I have the scars to prove it. I saw wonderful ministries and terrible abuses. Take the time and Google people and ministries like “Moses David,” or “Children of God/Love,” or Brent Baker & Shekinah Fellowship, or Lonnie Frisbee & Calvary Chapel/Vineyard. Look at the 700 Club or Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts or a host of men and ministries that went off the rails. I watched it happen. I winced. But I was still young and naïve and foolish, and I believed these men and these ministries were good-hearted and true.
Reader, they were not.
It was then, and still is, disheartening. I believe we Christ-followers and Christ-believers have a tremendous message, a wonderful Savior, and full and enriching life in the kin-dom. There are so many good people who want to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, who love Jesus, who are thankful to the Father for their very lives.
But they get picked up and drawn in to situations where their dreams go to die. First the people, and then the movement, implode. The wreckage is left with wounded people, often embittered, and the world says again “How can we love this Jesus when he can’t save these people from their sins?”
Well. That’s a question we have to face.
However, I wanted to offer some perspective: this always, always happens to movements that are not on solid ground and don’t transition from someone with a vision to a group with a community goal. This happens to movements that are based upon a single man (or, very rarely, a single woman) who is charismatic and confident & who can communicate wonderful, exciting goals. It’s a great start, like pulling the cord to start a gas engine.
But there’s a problem in going from a sole proprietor to a board and officers and leaders and workers. In many cases, the sole proprietor can’t let go, can’t accept help and oversight, and as the ministry grows, can’t allow anyone else to have part in the control. They operate without true guardrails and guidance. They hit their wall—they can’t do the next things, can’t keep the thing going, can’t avoid a temptation or a diversion, can’t control their own tempers or passions—and then the thing implodes.
I saw it recently with Mars Hill, a ministry that exploded in capturing young adults. The leader was dynamic and interesting and challenging, and people flocked to hear him & to be inspired. All great stuff. But the leader couldn’t accept oversight. He made some dumb, selfish, dishonest moves, tried to cover it up—and eventually the thing collapsed. We’re still cleaning up the wreckage in the lives of those who were hurt.
Ministries, God bless them, need more than a vision. They need accountability and they need controls to ensure that improper behavior is called out, especially in the leaders.
This is where, by my sights, where RELEVANT went wrong. You can read the stories, but from what I can untangle, a good man with vision got into a place where he could not handle all the responsibilities and directions. His talents which worked at a small scale didn’t work at a larger scale. It appears that he was unable to grow, and he began using dysfunctional behaviors to control events that were divisive and hurtful and dismissive to the people who had felt called to come alongside him and participate in all the good work RELEVANT was doing. He broke their hearts, wounded their souls, and dismissed their talents.
Now there’s a reckoning, and maybe the leaders involved will work this out. Maybe not.
No matter what happens, though, the brand has been damaged, and it has almost overnight become irrelevant to the lives of Christians today. An organization or ministry or operation that cannot address its weaknesses and sins is simply not a good model for Christian behaviors. We’ll see what happens.
I’ve seen ministries recover from the loss of their initial vision and enthusiasm, from their plunge into chaos and hurt. I’ve seen them repent and I’ve seen them begin again.
I’ve never seen them come back to what they were.
RELEVANT may need to re-imagine itself, re-tool, re-think. I don’t know. It’s not my place to give advice. I only know what I’ve seen and heard, which is of course never the whole story.
But my take-away is that RELEVANT existed because there was a real need that could be filled—and for the reasons that God only knows, He decided to stir up Mr. Strang to create the magazine and to lead the movement of the magazine. God is probably not finished with RELEVANT or with Mr. Strang, but it is very likely that neither will end up the same as they were before.