My name is probably already flagged

Recently I was offered the opportunity to go to Catalyst West Coast as part of leadership development.  I thought it would be nice to go get spiritually fed and stretched, attend a great conference, bring my spouse and visit family, tan.

Then I decided to look at the speaker list and realized I had mentioned FOUR of the pastors/speakers in less-than-favorable blog posts here on this blog.

1. Andy Stanley: Church building a $5million dollar bridge which looks at where “convenience” is found in the cost of discipleship.
2. Erwin McManus: Don’t Vote for Casket [consumerism+church] which critiques the message and the involvement of a church in a consumerism-driven contest.
3. Kay Warren: Purpose-Driven Genocide. I know it’s an error to conflate spouse’s actions with each other (Rick’s featured on Saddleback’s Gated Church Community, Warren is not Bonhoeffer too), but at least Kay’s involvement in Uganda is indisputable.
4. Mark Driscoll: Cool Kid Calvinism which looks at the false.hack that Driscoll appears to be for Christianity.

Hacking Christianity means to engage the ways in which Christian leadership, approaches, and decisions impact the way how we engage culture.  I focus inside the ballpark often so it is little surprise that I focus on errant Christian ministries and decisions like these above.  This may seem hurtful to criticize Christian leadership, but calls to accountability are both needed and biblical.

Individual decisions and controversies don’t deter from these people’s obvious hearts for the Gospel, of course, and by all accounts Catalyst is a great conference.  But if this is the segment of Christian leaders who are being featured, all of whom I have serious theological disagreements with, then maybe it’s just not my thing.  Oh well!