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.”
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.
