Trinity Bible Church Not Doing Matthew 18 on Steve Lawson? Some Updates
The With All Wisdom Podcast has revealed some new information about the Steve Lawson fracas in their latest episode, with Pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis insisting, among other things, that Trinity Bible Church is not pursuing Matthew 18-style church discipline against their former Lead preacher, and that the question of Steve Lawson’s membership is far from “settled” despite what certain sub-church groups have declared.
Throughout the show, the two hosts tie their commentary back to their three main points from previous episodes:
- Steve Lawson was not a pastor or elder at Trinity Bible Church.
- Trinity Church is not doing or pursuing Matthew 18 with Steve Lawson.
- Trinity has a defective ecclesiology at the core, seen clearly by their well-established practice of using a rotating list of guest teachers rather than their pastors and elders to preach the sermon and lead through the word.
The hosts offer that those three points were the thrust of their message and that comments about Lawson’s membership were “kind of a subpoint of a footnote of an afterthought.” Despite seeing their quotes about Lawson’s non-membership being repudiated by Josh Buice and then widely circulated by the masses, they reject the suggestion that they’ve retracted their claims in the face of opposition.
I wanted to say this in light of G3’s updated statement that they made on November 14th, or whatever it was; it was last Thursday, maybe. They had an article, but they also had a video presentation, and one of the statements that jumped out at me was, quote, ‘the facts are clear’, end quote, about Lawson’s membership.
The facts are clear…
And I immediately thought, “well, no, they’re not” because of what I know, because of what you and I know, the sources we have. We have inside sources as well. They quoted, apparently they got information from two people inside the church, and I had at least two, now I’ve got more than two sources, who are very unclear.
…Our three main issues that we disclosed that, by the way, were not mentioned in the G3 statement, which was interesting. They were just neglected. They should have been mentioned.”
They also add:
“So, just for the record, no, we haven’t retracted that statement. We have not recanted. So, as a matter of fact, I had a member of the church, of Trinity Bible Church, listen to that podcast that was in question. He listened to it twice, and he said, and he’s an active member, he’d been there six years, and he says, I have no beef with anything you and Derek said. You should stand by it.”
…We’ve done further research, and I’ve talked to two members of the church, current members, who couldn’t verify that Steve Lawson was a member of the church. So it’s a mystery. It hasn’t been validated. And G3 said that the ‘facts are clear that Steve Lawson was a member’, but Trinity church has yet to come out and say Steve Lawson was a member. Steve Lawson has yet to make a public statement saying that we were members. And also, not only that, they haven’t defined what their membership process is.”
Relating specifically to Matthew 18, the host’s comment line up with our sources, who say:
“We also said that Trinity church was not doing or pursuing Matthew 18 with Steve Lawson, and most people didn’t know that either. And that changes the whole conversation. And again, how do I know that? Because I called the church and the church staff member who knows, and that’s been verified since then. They are not doing Matthew 18 with Steve Lawson.
Calling out a bit of hypocrisy, they press on:
It’s not only unwise, I think it’s wholly unbiblical for a man to be the lead preacher who is not an elder at the congregation. And yet that’s how this church was structured. I think it contributed to this fallout. There’s a lack of accountability. There is a kind of propping up of a man, which is ironic when they came out with their initial statement, verbal statement, and they followed it up with the sermon the next Sunday.
The elder who spoke said that “you don’t come to church to hear a man.” And I thought, well, isn’t that interesting? Because that’s exactly how you structured your church, is that you are coming to church to hear a man. And now you’re tasting the bitter fruit of how you’ve structured things. And so you’re elevating the preaching in a way that I think is artificial and not fitting for the local church. You’re kind of detaching preaching from pastoral ministry.
Speaking of being the lead preacher, an outside source who talked to leaders in the church told us that while Lawson was a lead preacher at the time of his implosion, “the goal was to see him become an elder in the days to come.” This would be pretty convenient, given that Lawson had six years to get his act together, but he never did.
Furthermore, whereas most churches have a member-accessible church directory, the hosts allege that Trinity had no such offering.
Here’s another newsflash of a fact that as of two days ago, Trinity Bible Church has no church directory or record of who the current members are. So, if you’re a member at Trinity church, you can’t look up a directory and find out who the other members are because there isn’t one, and they’ve admitted that.
And another revelation, with a point:
“Another important update regarding the membership at Trinity Bible of why it’s in question is, here’s another fact, members have reported that neither Steve Lawson nor his wife have even been to Trinity Bible Church since September 19th when this became public.
They haven’t even been there. They’re gone. Missing in action. That’s information that we’ve been able to gather from actual people at Trinity, at the church. So as of yesterday, that’s nine weeks, neither of them have been at the church. If they were members, in the way that we talk about membership, they would be at the church because the shepherds then have the responsibility for caring for their soul, shepherding them through this process, dealing with whatever that sin was that Steve committed.
We’ve had multiple situations at our church where adultery was involved with our members, and both parties, because they didn’t flee our church, they remained at the church. We’ve had sinners, unrepentant, recalcitrant members remain at our church Sunday after Sunday while they’re going through the discipline process, all the way up to step four, which we appreciate so that we can work with them and pray with them and be patient.
So that puts a huge question mark about the nature of what membership they’re talking about when they haven’t even been there in nine weeks. Who is caring for the soul of Steve Lawson’s wife? Who’s shepherding her? I don’t know.”
At this time, only the leadership team at Trinity Bible Church can clear up the confusion over all these questions. Yet given all that’s transpired in the last nine weeks, we would need more than a mere word or statement from their leadership team before we take anything they say at face value.
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