Three months after Christian author Dave Hollis unexpectedly passed away, the Travis County, Texas, Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that the 47-year-old’s cause of death was due to the “toxic effects of cocaine, ethanol, and fentanyl.”
Hollis was the ex-husband of self-help influencer and professing Christian (but actually not) Rachel Hollis, author of “Girl, Wash Your Face.” They were married for 16 years and had 4 children together.
A former Disney executive, he was also the author of Built Through Courage, a self-help book of sorts that stressed: “There is, for every single one of us, a very intentional purpose that our Creator has placed us on this planet for, and our work in this life we have is to do everything we can, every single day, to honor the intention “of that Creator.”
In an interview two years ago with the Christian Post, Hollis was reflective of a year of hardship following his divorce but said he was hopeful for the future.
2020 was the hardest year of my life, outpacing any other year by a factor of 100, but it was also the best. As I look back, 18 months removed from the hardest things that I’ve ever been through — I don’t want to relive them, but I can sit here today with a wild amount of gratitude for having gone through them because of the way that it brought me to my knees and drew me closer to God.
…Telling people that you have faith is something that is easy until you go through really, really hard things,” he said. “I realized how much stronger my faith could be because it had been tested.”
He cited James 4:8, which reads, in part: “Come near to God, and He will come near to you.”
“I found myself, because of the conditions around me, closer to God than I’d ever been. And in that, I developed faith that the things that I would need in this journey would show up when I needed them. When you do that, you find God in unexpected places.
Steven Furtick is the Lead Pastor of Elevation Church. As head of a Southern Baptist-associated, 25,000-member multisite campus with 17 locations, he is known for having the term “narcegesis” (narcissistic exegesis) named after him based on his inability to exegete scripture in a way that doesn’t make every story revolve around him, as well as his penchant to wear outfits that cost more than most mortgages and buddying up to Trinity-Denier T.D Jakes.
Two years ago he replaced Kenneth Copeland at the always-heretical TBN, filling the role of the Innkeeper Monsieur Thénardier from the musical Les Miserables (TBN being the Inn), with these “Masters of the house” doing whatever is the theological equivalent of “Charge ’em for the lice/Extra for the mice/Two percent for looking in the mirror twice” in his efforts to promote his brand of prosperity preaching.
In a recent Facebook post, Furtick made the following claim:
Far from merely suggesting that we share some attributes of our creator, Futrtick is engaging at best in some ‘little-god’ theology, at worst, directly comparing himself to God and seeking to co-opt all his attrbutes for himself.
“You are made in the image of God, so what He is; you are.”
God is perfect. God is sinless. God is omnipresent. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God is omnibenevolent. God is a million other things that we are not. God is ‘capable’ in a million other ways that we are not, and any suggestion to the contrary is rank heresy.
While Furtick is receiving a barrage of criticism for saying this, it doesn’t matter, as he famously tunes out his critics and repeatedly insists that he doesn’t listen to all the ‘haters.’ Besides, Furtick taught similar theology before. In his 2019 ‘My Maker is My Mirror’ sermon, he repeatedly referred to himself as I AM.
Bethel Church in Redding, California, led by Bill Johnson, is a hodgepodge of false teaching and bizarre charismatic shenanigans. From ‘Little God Theology’, teaching that Adam created the animals in Eden, that Michael the Archangel wears tights, and that angels sit around in heaven farting contents, it’s a bizarro world with significant influence. (see endnotes)
They also have a free-for-all mentality for their baptism process. Two months ago, they had a spontaneous baptism for Joshua Bassett, an openly gay Disney star, despite his murky reasons for doing so. Recently, they had another baptism service where they asked a young woman why she was being baptized tonight. She responded.
Hi, my name is Krystal, I just know that God is calling me to be a warrior for his animal kingdom and that I’m to lead an army of angels to protect animals across the world, and I just know I can’t do it without God.
That’s a crazy theology all by itself, less being a motivation for wanting to be baptized. If Bethel had even an ounce of discernment or sense of biblical propriety, they would have declined the baptism at that point and pulled her aside. They would have offered her correction and sought clarity on what was happening with her, why she was seeking to be baptized again, and whether or not she had a biblical reason for doing so.
But because there’s nothing too weird or spiritually suspect that Bethelites haven’t been exposed to, the crowd cheered at her declarations rather than growing quiet and concerned.
— Candace Owens Podcast (@CandaceOwensPod) April 27, 2023
Conservative political commentator and professing Christian Steven Crowder has announced that his marriage has ended, and he and his wife of over a decade are getting a divorce. Crowder made the announcement during yesterday’s episode of Louder with Crowder.
Clarifying that the end of his marriage was not the result of infidelity or allegations of abuse, he revealed that it had been ongoing for two years, describing it as his “deepest personal failure.” He and his wife, Hilary, have two children, born in 2021.
“I have been living with a proverbial boot on my neck for going on years now….Since 2021, I’ve been living through what has increasingly been a horrendous divorce….And no, this was not my choice. My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted. It’s been the most heartbreaking experience of my life.
He addded that his opinions on parenthood and family have not changed, that parents need a mom and a dad and that divorce is horrible.
In all this, one thing I wanna be really clear about is certain. True north here is that my children are blameless, completely without fault, and so we decided to resolve these issues privately as it’s in their best interest both emotionally and physically to do so.
Lastly:
I loved a woman so much that I married her. A woman who, despite all of this, I still love as the mother of my children and she wanted something else for her life….That’s not my choice, she simply wanted out and the law says that that’s how it works.”
Though Crowder has frequently professed to be a Christian and even touted that when he and his wife got married they were both virgins who had kept the marriage bed pure, describing it as a recipe for success to ensure the long-term survival of his relationship, the last decade has left many questioning his salvation. Though we can’t locate the video, Todd Friel of Wretched Radio had an interaction with Crowder over a decade ago about his profession of faith, asking him questions about the gospel that Crowder simply could not answer, and then later became upset at the suggestion that he may only be a cultural Christian and false convert.
As Samuel Sey says: “Pray that he would repent and sincerely believe in Christ. Pray for his wife, that she would also repent and reconcile with him. And pray for their children. Divorce is destructive.”
First Baptist Church Orlando is a 14,000-member Southern Baptist megachurch led by David Uth that continues its quest to brazenly and flagrantly violate scripture. Last year they knowingly baptized Joe Mills, an out-and-out gay, unrepentant gay man, who is ‘married’ to his ‘husband’ and has been leading a small group of FBCO congregants in a bible study for the past few years, with the knowledge of Pastor Danny De Armas, who himself has led the study. Then, as an unrepentant gay man who is in good standing in the church, he was allowed to baptize others at the church.
FBC Orlando is the same church that infamously offered a full-blown ecumenical statement devoid of any Gospel truth and antithetical to the teachings of scripture by highlighting how many illegal immigrants, pro-choice democrats, and LGBTQ folk were ‘serving’ in his church.
In a recent sermon, Uth clearly references Justin Peters in a sermon snippet on 1 Corinthians 5. Peters has been the most prominent critic that has categorized the church’s many acts of malfeasance for years, which has caused Uth and FBCO much consternation and resentment at being exposed.
“You know what ‘reviler’ means? ‘Reviler’ means stirring up trouble. Like people that make videos that lie…You don’t need to get all wrapped up with them. They’re giving the church a bad name, and they’re giving Jesus a bad name.”
In an obvious reference to @JustinPetersMin, David Uth preaches sermon on purging the sexually immoral from the church, and then says "revilers" are those who "make videos that are lies."
Uth's church, an SBC church, has several baptized, practicing homosexuals as members. pic.twitter.com/wWUjRBNgJS
Peters has responded to the video and rightly pointed out the the impunity in which the SBC lets this church operate under is the height of hypocrisy and is breathtaking to behold.
Former megachurch pastor and current church-growth guru Tim Ross has claimed the belief in the Trinity is a non-essential issue and that Trinity-deniers have a “fidelity to Jesus Christ.”
Despite Ross gaining fame as the pastor of Embassy City Church from 2015 to 2022 (and who we recently covered after he claimed it shouldn’t be considered “cheating” on one’s spouse to engage in sexual dancing and being twerked on by a stranger), he got his start at T.D. Jakes’ The Potter’s House, where he claims he was led to attend by the Holy Spirit many years ago.
Ross spent nearly 14 years alongside Jakes, first as a youth evangelist, then the last four years as the young adult pastor, before leaving in 2010.
Because he later went on to grow his church to megachurch status in just a few short years, Ross has been working on building his church consultant ministry. He now works full-time as a Global Christian Advisor, where he “partners with key influential ministries to help them through speaking, staff development, and direct pastoral consulting to create a safe haven and provide support for pastors and church leaders.” Some of his clients include Embassy City Church; Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Shoreline City Church in Dallas, Texas; Seeds of Greatness Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas.
In a conversation with Ruslan, Ross explains that Modalism may not be his preference, but that he’ll still “rock” with those who feel differenty.
Ross: So Julie (his wife) and I met at Potter’s House in a youth ministry. We were there for 13 and a half years, I learned a lot, grew a lot over that time. Like, I would not be me if it wasn’t for those 13 years there. I started the last four years as a Young Adult Pastor, after being like a youth evangelist would probably be the best term for it for about three years….the first pastoral role I ever had was at the Potter’s House.
…Like when Bishop Jake’s first got to Dallas, his Wednesday night bible studies have 5,000 people. And he was teaching Oneness Doctrine, like blatantly. Like it was like, you know, ‘if ice is frozen its water. If it’s steam, its water, if its water…’
Ruslan: which is kind of like a Modalist illustration….
Ross: Yeah yeah yeah, right? And so I’m sitting in the back, going ‘you (unintelliegabe) on that.’ I don’t agree. I’ve always been Trinitarian, right? So, but it wasn’t like, ‘I have to leave this church! This dude’s a heretic.’
It was like, it was ‘no, this community was poppin’. Like, I was learning. I was growing. And there was some stuff, even in my 20 year old mind-I wasn’t 20 years old, but in my 20- that I was like ‘Ehhhh no. I’m not amen-ing that, but I still rock with you.” You know what I mean? People be leaving over crazy stuff right now.
Ruslan: Do you think that is an essential?…Would you say the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential doctrine for like Orthodox Christianity?
Ross: I would say I feel better with the Trinitarian perspective and doctrine. And I’ll also say I can hold the tension of somebody that doesn’t hold that doctrine, and still be able to appreciate their fidelity to Jesus Christ.”
Former megachurch pastor and current church-growth guru Tim Ross explains that belief in the Trinity is a non-essential issue for Christians, and that it's "crazy" to divide over it. See the story and transcript at https://t.co/K5mJcisjmzpic.twitter.com/AgrgtggtkY
Bonus: Interesting backround on Elephant Room and Jakes’ Modalism:
In 2011, Jakes was invited to the Elephant Room. At this roundtable, prominent Christian pastors from different perspectives would be asked hard questions about their beliefs and practices by other well-known pastors. Prior to the event, there were questions about why Jakes should even be invited in the first place, particularly because, as Tim Challies noted, Jakes has shown a “continual reluctance to affirm a standard, time-proven creedal statement of trinitarian orthodoxy and that he has often used the language of modalism.” Phil Johnson was more direct, writing:
“A self-styled “bishop”—notorious for his love of money, who teaches a false prosperity gospel, who freely shills for every aberration on TBN, who was ordained in a Sabellian denomination, who has been confronted repeatedly about his anti-trinitarianism, who refuses to renounce modalism, who declines to embrace any standard expression of Trinitarian conviction, and who (on top of all that) is unclear on practically every doctrine germane to the gospel—such a figure should not be warmly welcomed into evangelical circles and given the platform at an evangelical conference as if we’re confident that he is a solid brother with good intentions.”
Then the big day hit. Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald played the fool by lobbing a couple of softball questions his way that didn’t go nearly enough into any needed specificity. It was pathetic and crushingly dissapointing. Jakes was not pressed but treated with kid gloves before being declared a brother. In this way, Driscoll and MacDonald were co-conspirators in the Great Evangelical Coverup that gave the prosperity-preaching heretic the respectability of orthodoxy that was trumpeted all across the evangelical landscape, from The Christian Post to Christianity Today.
To this day, everyone believes that Jakes embraced and affirmed the Trinity at the Elephant Room, yet nothing could be further from the truth. It’s revisionist history. He left the event affirming a belief and acceptance of the Trinity, which garnered the big headline, so long as he could define Trinitarian “persons” (which he said was the language he was ‘uncomfortable’ with) as “manifestations.” This is a distinction with a damning difference, because a ‘person’ is not a ‘manifestation’. Using the same methods that Mormons use, Jakes was more than happy to affirm any point of doctrine, so long as he could pour his own definitions and understanding into them. Following this, gullible Christians oblivious of his sleight of hand and stubborn recalcitrance cheered him for his newfound doctrinal fidelity, and the rest is history.
In 1998, The Potter’s House doctrinal statement read, “God-There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three Manifestations: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Then for a short time, also before the Elephant Room, it was changed to read: “THREE DIMENSIONS OF ONE GOD. . . . Triune in His manifestation, being both Father, Son and Holy Ghost AND that He is Sovereign and Absolute in His authority. We believe in the Father who is God Himself, Creator of the universe. (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1).”
Several years after the Elephant Room, it reverted to the 1998 statements, changing the capitalizations of ‘manifestation,’ which it has remained ever since.
The thirty-seventh in this year’s series showing our brothers and sisters in Christ gathering for church service as faithful believers.
While going to church does not make one a believer, refusing to faithfully attend a local church should seriously call that faith into question. This is a glimpse of what the global church is up to, and will feature images in chronological order, week to week, of the men and women being obedient to the scriptures. As always, click pictures to enlarge them.
The Village Church Pastor and professing complementarian Matt Chandler joined a gaggle of lady preachers for a two-day Passion conference two weeks ago, advertised as ‘by preachers, for preachers’ where ‘communicators can develop and sharpen their art and heart for preaching” and where female preachers waxed eloquent about the importance and power and responsibility entrusted to them.
The women preachers included Christine Caine, Priscilla Shirer, ‘pastor’ DawnCheré Wilkerson, and Sadie Robertson Huff.
First the obvious: But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. — 1 Timothy 2:12-14.
While it would be one thing if these women were teaching only and exclusively women, this is not the case. All four women preach and introduce to mixed audiences during church services, particularly Wilkerson, who is a ‘lead pastrix’ of a church in clear violation of the scripture.
Compromise, thy name is Matt Chandler.
Perhaps the worst part of all this is how unskilled and awful these women are. They’re not even good teachers to women, much less men, and any person being taught by them is being done a great disservice.
Sadie Robertson Huff. To quote EDW ,” She’s being groomed to be a false teacher and is ultimately a product of megachurch culture.” Gaining an audience because she’s a pretty celebrity, she’s a lousy preacher, objectively so- rarely connecting the scripture to the point she’s trying to get across. She’ll say some good things here and there, some truths with a lot of fluff thrown in, but she’s not teaching from the text. If this weren’t bad enough, she frequently gallivants with false teachers, including heading up a new conference with Modalist TD Jakes and Joyce Meyer. She should not preach to anyone, particularly about the art of preaching, given her inability to handle the text.
Christine Caine is the charismatic, egalitarian, one-time leader from Hillsong who preaches the word/faith prosperity gospel. Caine holds to the notion that Jesus died on the cross to give you possessions, wealth, and health, and that it is there for the taking if you have enough faith and confess it positively. It’s no surprise then that she cut her teeth on Hillsong, the Brian Houston-led boondoggle that has a reputation for being among the most immature, Scripturally ignorant, and carnal people in the history of the world ever to call themselves Christians.
She also leads Propel Women, a network designed to empower women to become preachers and pastors who have cut their teeth on Caine’s teaching. Oh, and she too loves T.D. Jakes.
DawnCheré Wilkerson is the lead pastor of Vous Church. Other than being a miserable preacher whose sermons end up being scattered, emotionally driven affairs that don’t connect to the text, she and her husband had a part in the infamous Megachurch Blindsides Church Plant by Selling Building, Abandoning Congregation – ‘Today is Last Service Ever’ betrayal. They knew full well that a church congregation was about to be sinfully blindsided and abandoned, and they did nothing about it.
While Chandler has a long history of preaching and teaching at conferences alongside weird and wonky women, given the subject matter and purpose of the conference, how he acts and behaves speaks louder than his website’s statement of faith ever could.
With the news that North Point Community Church is still committed to hosting the controversial Unconventional Conference, where Andy Stanley will be a keynote speaker, another conference speaker has dropped out and is being replaced by a North Point Church pastrix.
The conference is being put on by Embracing the Journey, a radical gay-affirming ministry that partners with North Point that offers to counsel parents of struggling LGBTQ+ children.
Notably, nearly all the speakers are gay-affirming and pro-homosexuality, some radically so, including at least one in a ‘gay marriage.’ While some have suggested the conference would be canceled after the revelation of who the speakers are coming to light, new announcements show it’s right on schedule and has garnered “unprecedented” interest. Tickets range in price from $276 for early bird pricing to $518 for late registration.
For more on North Point Community Church’s and Andy Stanley LGBTQ affirming stance, see below.
Because a distinct portion the leadership at North Point is gay-affirming, the speaker list refects this, with almost all of them being pro-homosexuality in one way or another.
Greg and Lynn Mcdonald are both affirming. Their organization recommends all pro-queer resources and endorses books about why the bible celebrates homosexuality, rather than condemns it.
Debbie Causey is an affirming, pro-gay pastrix at North Point who celebrates affirming ministries and is a board member of the pro-LGBTQ advocacy group Renovus.
Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee is a pro-LGBTQ affirming author who wrote a book about it Changing Our Mind: Definitive 3rd Edition of the Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBTQ Christians with Response to Critics
Dr Michael Sytsma sits on the board of Directors of Pro-LGBTQ organization Embracing the Journey and has appeared with North Point staffer Ryan Gray on the church’s Care Network several times as a teacher.
Brian Nietzel is a gay man married to his ‘husband’ and is the founder of the pro-LBGTQ advocacy group Renovus, where several members of North Point Church sit on the board.
Al Causey is Debbie’s husband and the Adult Ministries & Ministry Services Director at Gwinnett Church, one of North Point’s satellite churches.
David Quinones – a parent of a gay son and a frequent speaker at Embracing the Journey, he builds bridges that foster healing and reconciliation between the church, LGBTQ+ individuals, and their families. He recently created a Family Care Group for family members of gay kids.
According to the most recent promo material, Pastor Chris Clark is no longer listed as a speaker. Clark is a leader of a pro-LGBTQ+ Embracing the Journey support group at Saddleback Church and has a daughter who he refers to as his trans “son.”
In his place is Pastor Jenny Boyett.
Boyett has spent over 17 years at North Point Community Church, most recently as the Associate Director of Adult Ministries and then the Director of Author Support and Leader Training. She claims to be a “Master Working Genius Facilitator, a Certified Temperament Coach, and sought-after public speaker.”
It is unclear whether or not she is gay-affirming, though if she is not, she’d be the first.
