The Good Shepherd is Worthy of Honor
In early 2021 I was invited to lunch by two of my pastors. I had recently published an article detailing a multitude of reasons then ERLC president and current Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore was an enemy of evangelicalism. My conclusion had evidently reached near consensus level among conservatives by 2021, as SAGE Cons (Barna research’s Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians) had just finished voting for Trump by a staggering 32:1 ratio in 2020, unimpressed by Moore’s public crusade against them launched after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 (who famously ripped Moore by name during his first campaign). I had, complete with reams of cited evidence for my claims, determined Moore was a modern-day Pharisee.
Confident my pastors agreed with my take on Moore, I expected to sit down with them and discuss what our church might do about the downgrade demonstrated by the SBC’s continued tolerance of him as president of their ethics and lobbying arm. Yet, instead the conversation focusing on the indefensible conduct of Moore, it quickly became about their fear that a member of our church would be found out as the guy who lit an SBC entity head on fire in front of hundreds of thousands of readers. They were particularly concerned with what less SBC-informed members of the congregation might think. It didn’t matter how right I was, nor how much both pastors agreed with my underlying positions. They simply weren’t ready for this fight.
Fast-forward a few years, and one of these same pastors, on the verge of tears, tells me that people are telling him they are leaving our church because “the SBC is full of abusers,” a direct result not only of Moore’s personal actions, but of the leftism-infused SBC Moore had helped create. Whether or not he was ready for the fight, the fight had come for his flock.Similar stories like this have been recounted to me by more church members around the country than I can count. They tell me that, despite their concerned reporting to their pastors about the guy in their Sunday School class making every Bible discussion about race-based social justice, the church member promoting Jesus and John Wayne on Facebook, or unbiblical #metoo “justice” becoming consensus in the women’s ministry, their pastor only seems to see these things as distractions from “gospel ministry.”
You were predictably shocked while trying to drink from Shepherds for Sale’s polemical fire hose, but you’re okay. Okay, actually you’re pretty mad. And you’re anxious to get your pastor’s support in standing up to the godless ideologies the book has exposed. I know the feeling. But before you go cage-staging into your church with a hard cover edition of the book ready to smack anyone who doesn’t immediately get it, allow me to offer some helpful advice for how to approach your pastor with love for the truth and him.
Reassure Him You Aren’t Going Anywhere
We may not like it, but we also don’t really understand or appreciate it: pastors in today’s evangelical churches are burdened with the simmering fear – based on experiencing it more times than they can count – that their pews are filled with people one disagreement or complaint away from leaving the church. Today’s consumer-driven church ethos has normalized this (usually selfish and always hurtful) behavior, and your pastor may understandably see you walking into his office with a book exposing baddies in ministry as yet another malcontent. Even worse, his realization that yours is not merely a personal concern may conjure up images of you leading an exodus from the church. Reassure him before you even recommend the book that, you are coming to him as your trusted under shepherd, seeking his counsel and feedback on the concerns presented in the book, and that his response (particularly if he disagrees with you on some things) is not going to send you huffing and puffing to the church down the street. You are there to engage with a trusted elder and brother, not interrogate him.
Remind Him the Book Has Motivated You to Have His Back
The purpose of Shepherds for Sale is to equip Christians in the pews and in the pulpits with knowledge and pointed discussion of the leftist ideology they may be unaware is affecting evangelicalism, and by what means it is infiltrating its churches. At no point does the book even hint at the idea that ordinary pastors are somehow to blame for failing to be aware of every aspect of leftism or bad actor threatening to infiltrate their flock. Instead, it frames its information in defense of pastors and churches who have been harmed – made particularly evident in chapter six’s retelling of the SBC establishment’s attempted woke takeover of FBC Naples and chapter seven’s chronicling of how the SBC’s abuse misadventure ended up with causing good churches and pastors to be tarred and feathered as complicit in sex abuse. Remind your pastor that awareness of these issues and the bad actors perpetrating them is important to keeping your church from suffering similar harm done to so many others.
Be Clear That the Book Has Helped You
Chances are, if I found a few nuggets of new information and/or context in Shepherds for Sale, you’ve found even more (just saying). Give a copy of the book to your pastor with a note in the front cover telling him how much you’ve been challenged by the book’s material, and how you much you would be blessed to know what he thinks about it. In your time with him, reiterate, if possible, the scriptural support brought to bear in each chapter. A pastor faithfully laboring in the Word will respond much more naturally to what God has to say on these issues than polemical argumentation or even endorsements from ministers he respects. He will especially appreciate that his church members are applying scripture to the big issues of the day.
Encourage Him to Discern the Issues, Not the Personalities
The wailing and gnashing of teeth over Shepherds for Sale across the “public theologian” spectrum – from online influencers to self-proclaimed ministerial watchdogs to evangelical-adjacent secular media – has produced on social media a predictable swarm of personality-based non-discernment. Fans of the book’s named figures rushed to their keyboards to condemn it for daring to implicate their favorite pastor, author, or professional YouTuber and, by extension, call into question their own taste and/or discernment. It’s a natural reaction, as many of the pastors, authors, and other figures named in the book are people they have no doubt benefitted from. This is no different with your pastor, whose bookshelf may be full of books from guys like Keller, Greear, or (God forbid) a dogeared copy of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. His potential personality-based pushback must be gently responded to with, “Can you help me understand what Shepherds for Sale got wrong about that guy?” You and I may be intimately familiar with (for instance) Keller’s major issues and deficiencies, but once upon a time, Keller probably had some less questionable material. Assume that your pastor was too busy to keep tabs on Keller, and remind him that it is the leftist issues versus scripture that concern you the most. Once you and your pastor determine how biblical principles apply to each issue the book addresses (insisting, of course, on a biblical framework for discernment itself), you’ll be able to look clearly at the particular people involved.
Be Patient and Longsuffering
If, as is likely, your pastor is uninformed about the particular people, institutions and history related to one or more chapters of Shepherds for Sale, he will almost certainly need some time to digest, process, and wrestle with the new information he’s been given. It takes time for everyone to formulate their views in response to controversial information, especially when that information is intimately related to their identity as a person. Pastors are no different. Despite their position as scriptural teachers and examples for the flock, pastors war against the flesh just as much as (and in some ways more than) any other child of God. Every Christian takes time to grow, and both pastors and their flocks must strive to exercise the unifying principles of Ephesians 4 – bearing with one another (v. 2) while putting away falsehood and speaking truth to one another (v. 25). If hesitant, remind your pastor gently that the church needs him to engage with the issues addressed in the book with a spirit and desire to equip the saints for the work of ministry (v. 12).
Courageously Test the Book
Lastly, even though you and I are supporters of Megan’s book, which, as one X poster so aptly put, is likely more about Big Eva waking up to their lost credibility than waking up regular evangelicals, we are commanded to test everything like the Bereans who set the example for us. This means studying to see if Megan Basham’s application of scripture is appropriate in context of the issues her book addresses, determining if she has characterized the evangelical events and people in a manner consistent with the (almost entirely public) cited evidence, and finally deciding the validity of her conclusions for yourself.
Much to the chagrin of the book’s squealing detractors, this does not involve disqualifying her conclusions by forbidding paraphrase as a literary device, nor does it include inventing some journalistic requirement for authors to contact their subjects for “clarification” prior to publishing commentary on their public behavior. Lastly (and most seriously), it does not involve circular reasoning – presupposing as true things the book explicitly challenges to “prove” the book false. You or your pastor(s) may find things in the book you disagree with. That’s fine. But do so while encouraging one another to figure out if you disagree based on people, pride, or principle, and be brave enough to admit that only one of these reasons is an acceptable reason.
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The issue I take with this article is that it represents a complete inversion of the relationship between pastor and church member. The pastor is the spiritual shepherd for the congregation. That’s the literal root of the word. The church member should not have to hand-hold a pastor in this way, it’s almost a form of disrespect. If the pastor really requires this, then their qualification for being pastor must be called into question.
Yeah I get what you’re saying. It’s unintentionally condescending. Even the “I’m not going to leave your church, but…” conveys that they hold the power in the relationship. It reminds me of the old parental line we’ve often heard… “I’m not mad at you, but…” Sure they may not actually be mad you, but make no mistake, they could be mad at you… It’s a way of framing things that reminds your kids that you hold the power. Yes, you may not leave their church now, but you sure could… and you’ve just reminded your pastor of that. It’s the wrong move.
As a pastor, I would hope I would be able to hear a member share these things. The book rightly reveals things that we in the church must be aware of. We are to have no King but Jesus and we cannot let our favorite Christian thinkers blind us to critique.
However, as helpful and needed as the book was, and I don’t fault Megan for writing it, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been more productive had it been written by a pastor to pastors. Pastors, probably to a fault, desire unity within their churches. They desperately want “everyone to get along.” This thinking is certainly abused, but it has it’s Scriptural roots and certainly the many church divisions here in the U.S. only foster this desire.
I would wager the pushback Meghan is getting is over the fact that many pastors view her as needlessly bringing about division in the church and anxiousness in their congregations. (Her online personality doesn’t do her any favors here). And what she misses (as she’s not a pastor) is that it is not spiritually healthy for most lay-people to read a book like this. It does not lead to a healthier body, it leads to a more skeptical and anxious church who has yet another reason to distrust their pastor and seek out another church.
For one, most Christians don’t know who any of these names are. They are not privy to these evangelical squabbles. and the Lord is not calling most of us to spend our days online discussing niche “personality-driven” issues over people we’ll never interact with. The great danger of social media is that it makes us privy to things we have no control or agency over and instead of stewarding the talents we’ve been given and building the Kingdom, we spend our time wallowing in frustrations that we cannot change. I have seen many good and thoughtful Christians forgo the peace Jesus promises by entering the social-media cesspool.
Now He is probably calling most pastors to consider these things and that’s where this book is helpful. We need to have discerning eyes and relay truth to our congregations accordingly…. But what these sorts of polemics forget — in true Protestant, evangelical fashion — is that is not always helpful to bring about change from the grassroots up. While some shepherds might be for sell, the vast majority of us would love to be entrusted with leading this change from above.
I do think that corruption and grift within the Church should be called out, and if no one else is speaking up, Meghan should and she did.
I think most pastors are being faithful shepherds to their congregation, and that is the primary focus of their ministry. However, that means that it leaves the SBC open to wolves. I think the decentralized nature of the SBC is to its strength, but it also means that less attention is paid to who is running the SBC and what exactly they spend money and time doing.
I don’t think its wrong for a lay person to mention the book to their pastor and try to get their thoughts on it, but I view the approach of the article as highly condescending. I could never imagine myself speaking that way to my pastor. Spiritual guidance should flow from the pastor to the flock, not the other way around.
Agreed. Good thoughts.
This is why people don’t trust pastors anymore.
Great article, David.
Thanks.
It’s hard to take you seriously with your last paragraph. Not only is contacting the subject of your writing a standard journalistic practice (why else would they write “the mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment?) but it’s a biblical mandate.
Megan sinned by failing to do this. Pure and simple. Read the Bible and apply it before you write this junk.
I have yet to read the book, but understand that her references are already in the public domain and are easily confirmed. Are you saying she should have gotten confirmation by the subjects regarding her interpretation of these citations?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Particularly because she’s accusing fellow Christians.
Anyone in the public domain is going to say a lot of things in public, and taking one snippet is not necessarily a true reflection of their publicly shared views on the matter. Particularly when you’re talking about a few lines from a 45-minute sermon.
That’s bogus. First, people and ministries who have taken dark money from organizations without telling their followers deserve to have that reported. That’s what the book is about. Second, any person is free to write about public statements made by ministry leaders, pastors, and other public figures. Any person, including you, is free to make a comment on social media, make a YouTube video, write a book, without picking up the phone and speaking to the person who’s statement or message they are going to critique. We can all disagree with an author’s analysis or take, and that’s our right. You, for example, aren’t required to call Megan Basham and get clarifications about her book before you post your feelings here. This “Megan sinned” angle is all the Big Eva crowd and their supporters have. And it’s not worth anything. Meanwhile, “Shepherds for Sale” keeps soaring in sales. Next time, before these guys take dark money, or pop off and say something manifestly ridiculous, maybe they’ll think twice.
You totally ignored Matthew 18.
I don’t know Megan. I can’t contact her.
She knew many (most?) of the subjects of her book. As a known journalist, she had the ability to contact them. They would have responded. Read the Bible.
Lastly – I’m responding to people supporting Megan. Her name has already been invoked positively. She started the attacks. Matthew 18 applies. Read the Bible.