Steven Furtick, Elevation Church, and Why "Spontaneous" Baptisms make Us Feel Weird?

It has been in my Facebook and Twitter feed a dozen times over the last two days. Steven Furtick, the

lead pastor of Elevation church in Charlotte, NC, has been criticized in news for a document called. “Spontaneous Baptisms How-To Guide.” To give you an idea of how successful Furtick has been at convincing people who didn’t expect to come home wet from church into doing so, in the summer of 2011 his church baptized 2158 people in two weekends.

Praise Jesus! Right?  

It’s hard to get excited when you read the document. Here is the news story that is covering the controversy. But this isn’t the first time he has been in the news for controversy. In November he came under attack because the Elevation’s lack of transparency concerning their financials. In the Spring of 2013 he was in the news, because he bought a 1.7 Million dollar home on 18 acres.

When it comes to what makes me uneasy about this guy it is hard to find a place to start. I would like to air on the side of grace, but there are red flags everywhere that make it difficult. Here are three for starters.

1. The church’s “Code” screams narcissism.  Check out #4 on the list

2. If there is any truth to these coloring pages that have appeared online yesterday from the church’s children’s program we have to be worried. Propaganda anybody?

3. The baptism guide goes way beyond the traditional Southern Baptist invitation, which itself is worthy of critique. Many would call Furtick’s approach emotional manipulation.

I want to be clear that I don't think Furtick is all bad. If you hear him preach he really does seem to love Jesus. But a friend of mine, referring to Furtick’s methods, nailed it on the head when he said, “Nothing like trying to give the Holy Spirit a little help. It’d be a travesty to leave things completely up to him.“

He is right. Furtick has created a pipeline to make “getting saved” so easy that there seems to be little need for prompting by God.

But Aubrey is it really that bad? People are professing to be believers in Jesus. Truth is I can’t argue one way or the other. I don’t know if peoples’ lives are being changed, but I do know that the decision to follow Jesus is nothing to be made on a whim.

I think the problem is bigger than Steven Furtick, but he does provide a great example of how an unhealthy cultural ideology can be adopted by the church. Elevation Church has adopted what I would call extreme pragmatism as their approach to the gospel.

Pragmatism is not the enemy. I identify myself somewhat with pragmatic philosophy. In fact, it is America’s greatest contribution to Western philosophical thought.  But it is built on an Ends-justify-the-means approach to logic. This can be very unhealthy if taken to an extreme.

Yes the “ends” matter.  We want people to find a genuine faith. We need to let God use us to do whatever it takes to help people get there.

But the “means” matter too. Our journey back to Jesus is important. Journeys aren’t spontaneous. God softens hearts. Sometimes he moves quick. Sometimes he moves slow. 

Extreme pragmatism has led us to believe that we should do things simply because we can. Sometimes this leads to great accomplishments. For example, when Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed Mount Everest he said, “Because it’s there.”

But is that a reason to step into a baptism pool or take the sacraments…because some guy with a big grin made it easy for you?

#9 on the Elevation Code list says they “unapologetically set goals and measure progress.” I’m all for goals and progress, but how we get there matters. If our worldview is not reflective of the character of Christ we may need to apologize to Him for imposing our ideals onto his plans.