Tag: andy wood

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Leader of Saddleback Church Isn’t Sure If ‘Married’ Gay Folk Who Get Saved Should Divorce

In a newly unearthed clip, Andy Wood, the new pastor of the 25,000-member, 14-campus Saddleback Church that recently raised eyebrows after ordaining several women’ pastors’ and having a “Blacks Only Worship Service” where no white members were allowed in, so the “black fold” could have a “safe space” to “heal,” says some troubling things about homosexuality.

We discussed Saddleback Church a few days ago after revealing they have gay-affirming pastors on staff and that they promote and partner with the pro-LGBTQ+ ministry ‘Embracing the Journey” which seeks to counsel parents of children confused about their sexuality. 

In the snippet, which is several years old, Wood says that he doesn’t know if a homosexual couple should divorce if one of them becomes saved, and later says he’d attend a gay wedding/ marriage and even get the couple a gift. 

Q: I have gay friends who came to Jesus after they were married and adopted children. God hates divorce. How would you approach the situation?

Andy Wood: “I don’t know.”

Stacie Wood: “It’s really hard.”

Andy Wood: “I don’t know if there’s a black and white answer. And I think I would sit with them in it. And I would pray with them. And I would try to wrestle through that decision. And I think it’s such a life- it is such a massive, massive decision that I would probably say, ‘read the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to lead you, and I will journey with you with it, in it.’

And as you journey through it with them, I would have an ongoing conversation to ask them how the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding them, I think is how it would handle it. Because I don’t, I don’t know.“

He continues:

Andy: “You know, Laurie and Jason, our friends are on the line. They were missionaries overseas, and they would see people come to faith who had in polygamous cultures, and they had five spouses. And so what do they do? Do they divorce four of the spouses and keep one of them? Or… I don’t, I don’t know.

So I think, read the bible, pray, ask the Holy Spirit to speak. That would be my encouragement, and then journey with them through it.”

Staci: “Yeah. I think that people that draw hard, strong lines, and it gets really difficult. It doesn’t take into account how complicated the individual situation can be. (Andy: “Yeah”) , it has to be navigated with nuance, and a lot of wisdom and grace.”

Andy: “Yeah. And I think that part of what the enemy does in our minds is that there are some situations that are black and white and there are some that are gray. And I think that the situations that are more black and white, call for a decision, and situations that are more gray call for more discernment, prayer and scripture, I mean, processing and talking through it.”

Reacting to the video, prominent scholar Robert Gagnon notes on Twitter: “The level of theological ignorance here is stunning. Do they honestly think that, had the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5 “married” his stepmother, Paul would have faced a conundrum about whether to insist on dissolution of this egregiously immoral union?”

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Saddleback Church’s Andy Wood Says He Just Wants to ‘Love and Support Pastors in the SBC’

In an interview with the Associated Press, Andy Wood, the new pastor of the 25,000-member, 14-campus Saddleback Church that recently recently raised eyebrows after ordaining several pastrixes and having a “Blacks Only worship service” where no white members were allowed in, so the “black fold” could have a “safe space” to “heal,” says he doesn’t want to get involved in denominational politics, despite his church being ground zero for new controversies within the SBC.

Having recently introduced his wife Stacie as the congregation’s newest female teaching pastor, Wood told AP:

“The church should be a place where both men and women can exercise those spiritual gifts. My wife has the spiritual gift of teaching and she is really good. People often tell me she’s better than me when it comes to preaching, and I’m really glad to hear that.”

According to the AP, Wood “expressed gratitude for the SBC’s partnership at Saddleback and Echo and hopes that it would continue.”

“I’m not looking to engage in denominational battles. I’d really like to be a unifier of people – to help, love and support pastors in the SBC.”

For years Andy Wood’s former church, Echo Church, was supported by the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board (NAMB), all the while wife Stacie was an ordained “teaching pastor” and regularly leading services.

Saddleback’s longtime former pastor, Rick Warren, previously made a surprise appearance at the SBC 2022 convention back in the summer and spoke for several minutes uninterrupted, using his time to list all the accomplishments he has done as the largest Southern Baptist church in the world, bragging about all his accomplishments while telling attendees that they need to stop “bickering over secondary issues” like what gender the pastor is, and instead focus on the Great Commission.

Despite being a SBC church with money and influence, there is no way they will unite anyone so long as they continue to act in arrogant disobedience.

Instead, they should fire the pastrixes, get rid of any church leadership who went along with the idea, put on sackcloth and ash, mourn their actions for a decade, and then we’ll talk about how they can start unifying and loving SBC pastors .

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Saddleback Pastor Andy Wood’s Old Church Defends the Use of NDAs

After Echo Church received sustained criticism and scrutiny over allegations that their former pastor Andy Wood was bullying the staff and acting like a spiritually abusive tyrant before he left to become the new senior pastor at Saddleback Church, an investigation was launched seeking to corroborate these accusations. 

Within weeks the investigation commissioned by Saddleback to put their congregants at ease came up empty and cleared him of any abuse or wrongdoing, along with another independent third-party firm that found similar results. Yet some critics were not assuaged, pointing out the investigation was a farce in light of the use and enforcement of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) utilized by the church necessarily made it so that current and former staff members were not able to speak their minds. 

In a new update posted on their website, the church put out an FAQ regarding their use of NDAs and the accusations of using them to silence critics, explaining:

“No, Echo does not use NDA’s in this manner. In fact, Echo puts a lot of emphasis on staff safety, care, transparency, and professionalism. Our handbook encourages staff members that “if you believe that you are being, or have been, harassed in any way, please report the allegations of the incident or incidents to a Leadership Staff member or Human Resources within a reasonable time, without fear of reprisal.” In such cases, the situation is immediately investigated.

In order to protect everyone whose information is housed in our database system, Echo does use a traditional NDA every time someone is granted access to our database, whether staff or volunteer. This is because the privacy of our church members’ personal information is very important to us.

We also ask employees that transition off our staff to hold other private organizational information in confidence. Again, this is common practice, used simply so that employees do not inappropriately share passwords and private information with those that shouldn’t have them.

Such agreements are not intended to prevent anyone from sharing their experience at Echo, whether positive or negative. It deals specifically with information, not the individual’s personal experience.

Some of our separation or termination agreements in the past asked employees to agree “to not to disparage or slander the reputation of the church, its directors, pastors and staff, or any church members/attendees” and also stated that the church “agrees to abide by this same condition” toward the staff member. The heart of this was to serve as a reminder for the church and the Christian employee to act in a Christ-like manner, avoiding gossip and destructive slandering that causes division, rather than unity.

Though the documents and verbiage mentioned were designed by a third-party HR company and is standard for many churches in America, Echo is currently having all our HR documents reviewed again by another company to ensure that we are operating with the highest standards possible.”

There is currently a petition on Change.org requesting that the church “release all former employees from any non-disclosure agreements, any non-disparagement agreements, and any documents that prevent former employees from telling their stories” that has garnered 1167 signatures, arguing that these practices “can “act as silencers on victims of abuse.”

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Saddleback Pastor Apologizes for Mark Driscoll Interview, But is He Sincere?

Newly minted Saddleback pastor Andy Wood apologized last week for interviewing Mark Driscoll at last year’s Echo Conference, saying that he regrets the “pain, confusion & distraction this caused.”

His apology has not assuaged his critics, however, and it’s no wonder. Wood is both coy and disingenuous in describing the purpose of the interview. In a previous comment, he said that Driscoll wasn’t being given a platform and that the conversation was intended to help other leaders avoid the same mistakes he made and was a sincere attempt to help people lead with love.” In his tweet, he said the talk was about “helping pastors learn from his (Driscoll’s) mistakes.”

It was nothing of the sort. Jason Adams-Brown, the former Planting and Missions Pastor of Echo Church, dismissed this as spin and damage control, writing on Twitter:

“I know of no one on Echo’s staff who was supportive of Wood bringing Driscoll to the leadership conference. Local leaders even asked him not to. The evidence was already clear on Driscoll before the podcast. He knew.

In a staff meeting his wife, Stacie Wood, said all the stuff that happened with Driscoll in Seattle was due to spiritual warfare because Seattle was a dark place. This was said because many were concerned about bringing Driscoll.”

While the audio has not been made publicly available and Echo Church has since purged the video from the website, RNS describes the scene this way:

“Driscoll was interviewed last year at a 2021 leadership conference run by Echo Church in San Jose. During a conversation with Wood — the soon-to-be lead pastor of SaddleBack Church — Driscoll described the troubles at his former church as a “board war” and blamed the devil, social media and secular culture for causing church conflict.

Church governance should be set up to protect a pastor’s power, he argued, adding that “you’re going to have people who are literally in your organization, sent there by Satan, to seek to steal, kill and destroy,” he said. “And they’ll call it love and accountability.”

After leaving Mars Hill, Driscoll moved to Arizona, where he now is pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale. He has also embraced charismatic and Pentecostal ideas about leadership. During his talk, he said modern-day apostles — whom he described as mostly suburban megachurch pastors — should rule over churches and other pastors, rather than those churches and pastors being overseen by a local church board or elders.

Driscoll’s idea met with enthusiastic approval from Wood, who described Driscoll as a mentor, someone who had helped shape his ministry and befriended him and his wife.

“We love you guys,” Wood told Driscoll.

This tracks. The only mistake Driscoll copped to in that interview is ever letting his elders hold him accountable, and it was a lesson he learned well as he jumped ship and started a new church. Is that the lesson Wood wanted the pastors to take away from the conversation?

Despite having hundreds and hundreds of people attending each week, Driscoll’s new church, The Trinity Church, has no elders. Instead, there are five other pastors, none of whom function in the office of an elder with the accountability and decision-making process that goes with it. Driscoll does have a small corporate board made up of a handful of people, some who don’t even go to his church and others who aren’t even pastors.

Whereas in years past, Driscoll defended a biblical understanding of the office of elders in his teaching and his books, he has since disavowed their importance, choosing to abstain from anything that may tinker with his power or do him dirty by daring to take him to task for his many acts of malfeasance.
This way, he has all power, and there are no limiting influences on the control he exerts. Armed with the keys to the kingdom, Mark finally gets to call the shots all on his own, unencumbered by biblical ecclesiology or any accountability.

Wood knew this, was told this, but chose to ignore it anyway. It’s for this reason we don’t buy the apology one bit.