Some phrases I recently heard when watching Joel Osteen preach a sermon.
1. "It's not enough to just pray...you've gotta' put actions behind those prayers."
2. "You've got to make preparation to succeed."
3. "If you'll do what you can, God will do what you can't."
I don't watch this dude very often, but everytime I see him, I think, "Oh, I've seen this sermon before."
But I haven't. It's the same stinkin' sermon every time.
But I haven't. It's the same stinkin' sermon every time.
19 comments:
I feel that way about your blog sometimes
Joel Osteen™:
Rubbin' the heresy on it.
It's all context man. I tend to agree with those statements but only in certain contexts.
1) "It's not enough to just pray..." I agree if he's talking about how we are to not just talk but we are to "practice righteousness" (1 John 2; James 2; etc.), However he could be saying that the success of my life depends on how bad I want it to happen. I'll only live big if I dream big and crap like that.
2) "You got to prepare to succeed…" I agree if he's talking about trust and faith and all how we are push in close to God knowing that He holds the future. However Osteen could be referring to the ever-popular heresy of “if I can dream it… I can achieve it” It’s just a little too “motivational” for me.
3) “If I do what I can do, God will do what I can’t…” I agree if he is referring to the fact that certain things are beyond my power, scope, and ability and with the power of the Spirit behind me (Acts 1:8) I will do numerous and wonderful things for Christ. However Osteen is probably talking about calling God out and asking him to bless my decisions. Testing God like that didn’t work when I failed to study for a test… I failed. God didn’t bail me out then and he won’t bail me out now simply because I call upon his name. The problem with this philosophy is that “What I can do” may be more or less than what my neighbor can do. Does God love me more if he does more for me? Does God love him less? Maybe it has to do with my attitude and how He will be glorified (anyone remember that silly story about the talents)?
Have I mentioned before that I dislike Joel Osteen....very much.
And Robert, I hate to burst your bubble...but Mr. Osteen doesn't put biblical thought or scripture behind what he says....that's just absurd.
he smiles too much for me...i need an unhappy preacher. hahaha.
Listen guys... I want to bash Osteen as much as anyone but come on most of us live hours and hours away from Houston. I've never been to his chuch before. Disciple making is NOT done from the pulpit, therefore I should not expect to be discipled from the pulpit. If the church has a way of making disciples then Osteen may be guilty of only loosly preaching the Word of God. If however his church is all about the looks and no disciple making is going on, then he'll probably get zapped by a lightning bolt or crushed under a HWY 59 Log truck!
robert, you know i got love for you, with your crazy djembe playing and your kooky youth videos, but what Bible did you pull this emphatic statement from?
"Disciple making is NOT done from the pulpit, therefore I should not expect to be discipled from the pulpit."
I might get killed for this one, but that's just modernism belching out of your gut. You act like that's a given, and it just ain't. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying you don't have anything closely resembling a biblical case for that.
Having siad that, I basically agree with most of your points here (in both of your comments), but the fact is that this guy is spending millions of dollars (yes, millions) to buy up time slots to plaster his smiling mug on TV's everywhere. He gives us pre-edited sermons in 30-minute chunks. He's voluntarily forfeited the right to context. He doesn't care about context. He cares about exposure. And you can't serve both of those masters.
Though I will continue to extend grace to him in every way I can, I ain't going to worry over context. As long as he's taking great pains to give me billboards of his face and 30 minute snippets (that he personally edits, by the way) of his teaching, I'm going to judge him by those things. He's getting rich off of those things, so I get to make my decisions based on them. You may disagree, and i'm okay with that. Just my opinion of course. You know I love you.
I'm off to write an angry song about this...
I'm off to watch some nephews play some serious baseball. But when I get back I will try to explain what I meant by that statement! After I wrote it I thought, "oops, I'm going to hear about that one."
Till Later'
Ross, don’t you know that I read a special translation of the Bible? God wrote the KJV Bu$ine$$ men wrote the others. (Ask Todd about that one)
I am not under the impression that disciple making is not best performed through the pulpit. I am under the assumption that today’s church tries to make disciples by using the pulpit. However, if we look at biblical discipleship examples, a Master-Teacher approach is a malnourished method at best.
It is a far cry from modernism! Proximity builds disciples. My investment into other’s lives and their investment in mine. I do not believe pulpit commentary is how to invite another person to come along side of you and grow. Jesus chose the twelve to be “with him”, to experience life with him. The Pastor of a church spends countless hours preparing a sermon. The crowd comes as passive recipients of his hard work and preparation. Preaching is of utmost importance; however it alone is not adequate for producing disciples. If preaching was sufficient then the task of making disciples would be done. The preached word needs (demands) the context of community where meaning can be discussed, argued, and implied. A friend of mine once wrote these words… [Teach us to be community]. Jesus preached to thousands and people grew spiritually, however Jesus’ method of disciple making would have failed if he never drew close a few guys who grew to maturity and duplicated what they had been taught.
I guess it would also help to know that I do not equate “convert” with “disciple”.
Preaching in the worship service is proclaiming the Word to the edification of the faithful. It's not supposed to be geared towards unbelievers. That's evangelism. Osteen's™ public preaching does next to nothing to aid the faithful in continuing in the Apostolic teaching. He deliberately avoids huge chunks of it and teaches autonomous human effort instead.
Jesus chose twelve disciples to keep close to Him, but He had a much larger number of people around whom He also sent out. What are we to make of them? How were they "discipled" in order to be able to do the task He commissioned them with? By listening to Him preach.
I think its interesting how these things come full circle, isn't it.
I think most of us would agree that "pulpit discipleship" can occur, but probably in more successful and healthy way inside smaller churches.
I think most us would also agree that big churches don't do much in the way of even ATTEMPTING to do discipleship from the pulpit. (Maybe because it only works in smaller churches? I don't know...)
Gosh, weren't we just having a gigantic discussion about church size a few days ago?
Let's be honest - it does come down to preacher vs. pastor, doesn't it?
My bet is Johnny is not too "Seeker Sensitive" and also that he's on some form of medication.
Is Tito's medicine?
I think Johnny's talking about vodka, gang.
Robert, Todd, Johnny--
As usual, all of you are saying things that i agree with. Great thoughts, all. thanks for making this a place where people can disagree a little without being idiots.
Robert, from the beginning, I pretty much agreed with your point about big-broup preaching and it's relationship to personal discipleship. I should've been clearer about that. My issue really wasn't with the truth behind the statement. It was with the emphatic nature of it, especially if you're going to throw in words like "pulpit." That's the modernism i'm talking about. Jesus didn't have a pulpit, nor did Peter or Paul or John. Their "preaching" was of a different variety. More "grassroots," more organic, more spontaneous. Less rehearsed. Less slick. Certainly less broadcasted-via-satellite-to-multiple-campuses. "Pulpit" is a term we've been throwing around for maybe a couple hundred years, at the very most (at least in this context). And when people assert things emphatically, using terms/phrases that were created in the modern area of churching, I always get a little itchy in my brain. Make sense?
I go to a church of 120-150 people that has a huge emphasis on small group discipleship, formal and informal. I'm suspicious of multi-campus, multi-service, same-preacher-on-a-video-screen churches, and i've got plenty of bible to back up my suspicions. You and me agree on all this Robert. Again, sorry I wasn't clear about that. Like John, I know that some disipleship happens in preaching and, like you, I know that the smaller, intimate settings are the places of real honesty, vulnerability, and soul ministry.
(There's a larger question looming here, like an elephant in the room. It has to do with the major, idolatrous problem of "if our preacher doesn't preach, the people won't come anymore..." And i'm tempted to ask it. But this isn't my blog, so i won't.)
I think our main point of disagreement was your emphasis on context. And again, I'm okay if we don't settle that one any time soon. It's a tough call.
Anyway, thanks again for the dialogue.
"big-broup" obviously was meant to be "big- group"
one more thing:
when i said, "you and me agree on all this, Robert," i wasn't implying that Robert was as suspicous as I am, only that we feel the same way about most of this preaching/discipleship stuff.
the last thing i want to do is drag Robert, against his will, into my sick little world.
If a post about Osteen becomes the highest commented post in the history of the blog, have I just contributed to the probelm? Yikes!
It's cool, though - you guys make good points. I like it when my friends are smarter than me.
I'm just glad you don't think I'm a moron Ross. I can't have my best friend's friend thinking his friend's best friend is a moron.
Now grab a bag of chips and decipher that one.
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