Remember the large kerfuffle that started last year involving Lifeway, the media retail branch of the Southern Baptist Convention, and their peddling of heretical materials for profit? It all began when Pulpit & Pen confronted Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of Lifeway Research about Lifeway’s promotion of Heaven Tourism books and other heretical materials in their retail outlets. Stetzer’s response was to brush off the complaints and counter attack with ad-hominems while ignoring the issue. This sparked a widespread movement, known as #the15 on Twitter, which after much investigation and uncovering of evidence of wrongdoing by Lifeway’s leadership, eventually led to Lifeway removing Heaven tourism books for good.
However, Stetzer and Lifeway refused to acknowledge those who confronted him, even after major news media outlets covered the issue. They brushed it off as though they had already planned to do so anyways. In fact, after pulling the Heaven tourism books, Lifeway came out with the following statement,
Too often in the past we have focused on what we should not have carried in the store. We will focus on what we should carry.
And you can bet they’ve stuck to their promise.
Brian Houston is the senior pastor of Hillsong Church, a worldwide multisite Pentecostal megachurch based out of Sydney Australia that has locations in several countries around the world, including New York City, Los Angeles California, and London, England. Brian Houston has recently been shown to be a gay-affirming pastor who is more than willing to compromise the Gospel to make homosexuals feel comfortable in his churches. In fact, he even came up with a list of rules for his preaching pastors that included “leaving people feeling better about themselves than when they came in,” and “transitioning easily into altar calls.”
Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said about Hillsong,
[Hillsong is] a prosperity movement for the millennials, in which the polyester and middle-class associations of Oral Roberts have given way to ripped jeans and sophisticated rock music…What has made Hillsong distinctive is a minimization of the actual content of the Gospel, and a far more diffuse presentation of spirituality.
But that doesn’t stop Lifeway from selling Brian Houston’s books. So what could Southern Baptists possibly have to gain by promoting books by a known gay-affirming, prosperity preaching pastor?
Money.
Lifeway has been all about the money for quite some time. They aren’t interested in making sure their customers are receiving materials that will promote sound doctrine and a healthy Christian walk. If they were, they wouldn’t be peddling Brian Houston, Christine Caine, T.D. Jakes, Sara Young, Beth Moore, and many others, including Roman Catholic mystics.
Brian Houston’s book, Live Love Lead, subtitled Your Best is Yet to Come (sound familiar), is his most popular book being pushed at Lifeway. Remember, Brian Houston is the pastor that said he was “surprised” that the two sodomites, Reed Kelly, and Josh Canfield announced they were getting married even though they had been living open, homosexual lifestyles for quite some time (also see here). This is the pastor who doesn’t have a sound theological definition of the Trinity. This the pastor that invites people like Joseph Prince and Rick Warren to promote mysticism and extrabiblical revelation at his Conference in Sydney. And don’t forget, this is the pastor that has an ordained female associate pastor, one who practices pagan impartation at that, that regularly preaches to his congregations.
And Lifeway promotes and sells his books.
How many more people are going to have to be led astray through the promotion of this gay-affirming prosperity pastor at Lifeway before Southern Baptists get fed up enough about it to do something?
