The Druckerites Must Issue a Safety Recall For Their “Emerging Church” Product Line

Rick Warren, Bob Buford and Bill Hybels are the Druckerite “trinity”. All three of these men were personally mentored by the late business guru Peter Drucker and these three men more than any others are responsible for innovating the church by purposely changing congregations from a pastoral leadership model to a CEO / Innovative Change Agent leadership model. All of these innovations were strategically crafted under the careful eye of Peter Drucker. And all of these innovations were incubated, introduced and injected into the church through the coordinated efforts of Drucker’s disciples through their different but intimately connected organizations; Leadership Network, the Purpose Driven Network and the Willow Creek Association.

What many people don’t realize is that the Emerging Church is a product created by and promoted by the Druckerites.

If you don’t believe me then it is time for you to listen to or re-listen to my interview with Doug Pagitt regarding the genesis of the Emerging Church. Pagitt provides us with an expert insiders look at how the Emerging Church came into being and got off of the ground. What you will discover is that without the Druckerites there may have never been an ‘emerging church’. The Druckerites formed, bankrolled and promoted the Emerging Church much the same way a music marketing company might form and promote a boy band like the Backstreet Boys or N Sync.

Here’s the interview.

After listening to Pagitt’s retelling of the story of the emergence of the Emerging Church is it any wonder then why Druckerites like Rick Warren and Bob Buford lent their support and credibility to the Emerging Church? They were responsible for creating it.

Take a look at who endorsed Dan Kimball’s 2003 book The Emerging Church. In that list you will see both Druckerites as well as out right Emergent Heretics all singing the praises of Kimball’s book. In fact, Rick Warren AND Emergent Apostate Brian McLaren both wrote the forward to the book.

Emergent Innovators List

Why would a supposedly conservative evangelical pastor like Rick Warren want to lend his credibility to the Emergent Church and have his name be directly associated with men like Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren? Rick Warren is a Druckerite and the Emerging Church is a product developed by the Druckerites. Rick Warren is in fact one of the Fathers of the Emerging Church. That's why he lent his name and credibility to the product.

What’s also patently clear is that when the Druckerites spend time and money developing new church business products they spend zero time and money on quality control. Sadly, the Druckerites are so enamored with innovation that they have no systems in place to vet out false teachers and heretics. As a result, Druckerite products may in fact pose a severe safety risk to the church.

Case and Point: I have been saying for almost 5 years now that Brian McLaren is a heretic and a dangerous post-modern liberal. Yet, McLaren has written articles that have been featured at pastors.com. Rick Warren lent his credibility and endorsement to the Emerging Church movement without even so much as a hint that he had any concerns about the troubling doctrine and theology of its leaders. Bill Hybels has invited Emergent Leaders like McLaren to speak at Willow Creek Conferences and Youth Leader Conferences and Bob Buford’s Leadership Network has been promoting and selling McLaren’s books for years on the Leadership Network website.

What does this prove? It shows that there is absolutely ZERO doctrinal and theological oversight when it comes to the Druckerites and the products that they develop.

In light of the fact that Brian McLaren has finally decided to come clean and lay his theological cards on the table in his new book A New Kind of Christianity AND in light of the fact that McLaren has finally admitted that those of us who’ve been saying that he denies the fall of man, hell, Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement, the inerrancy and authority of scripture and Christ’s return in glory to judge both the living and the dead were right all along...

I am calling on the Druckerites, Rick Warren, Bob Buford and Bill Hybels to issue a safety recall for their ENTIRE Emerging Church product line.

Futhermore,

I am calling on the Druckerites to publicly repudiate and rebuke Brian McLaren, Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt for their heresies.

I am calling on the Druckerites to remove all Emerging Church products from all their youth groups including any books by emerging authors as well as all Nooma DVD’s.

I am calling on the Druckerites to issue an apology to the body of Christ for failing to put the proper safety systems in place to vet out false doctrine and heresy from the products they develop.

I am calling on the Druckerites to convene a standing theological safety committee to doctrinally review and scrutinize all Drukerite products and methods in light of sound doctrine and a Christ-Centered / Gospel Centered Theology. The decisions of this safety committee must be binding.

This safety committee should be comprised of top theologians and church practitioners who still firmly hold to the doctrines and confessions of the Protestant Reformation. For this committee I nominate Dr. Mike Horton, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, Dr. Albert Mohler, Dr. Alister McGrath, Rev. William Cwirla, Rev. Todd Wilken, Rev. Ken Jones, Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, Rev. Paul Washer, Phil Johnson and the Rev. Jeff Noblit.

It’s time for Rick Warren, Bob Buford and Bill Hybels to do the right thing and admit they’ve endangered the body of Christ by releasing a doctrinally defective and theologically dangerous product. For the sake of the body of Christ they MUST issue a safety recall for their entire "Emerging Church" product line.

Comments

[beon]

You've missed some history.

Rick Warren didn't start this... Chuck Smith(Born 1927) did. Before anyone heard of Saddleback, in 1981 my Grandparents huddled in one of Chuck Smith's end of the world rapture vigils at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.

Chuck Smith taught the "Mosaic"(as in Moses) style of church leadership and growth as opposed to the traditional board-of-elders style. He encouraged prospective pastors in his audio Bible school to plant churches in ways ensuring the pastor's autocratic power over church direction and assets. When such power could not be intially guaranteed, it should be assumed as soon as possible.

The first move of the Pastor-King should be to employ the most expensive music director possible. As the worship dynamo is the most critical element to the growth and sustainance of the church. At the first church I can remember, when I was 6 or 7, our pastor Burt Smith(unrelated to Chuck, but by his suggestions) did just this. He had his secretary alter the minutes of the board meeting and hire a 200K/yr music director. The board of elders dissolved itself and made an exodus from the church. It was not many months later when a Sunday School student walked in on the 200K music director in the throes of passion with the new youth pastor while looking for more chairs for his Sunday school class.

Their should be plenty of critiques of the Calvary Chapel movement on the web, but this did not start with Drucker. Drucker is merely used as an extention of this autocratic/"mosaic" Church growth model already developed by Chuck Smith. At some point long before Warren, Chuck Smith had the business savvy to franchise Calvary Chapel.

This is where the church-growth model became a central component in evangelicalism. Since Calvary Chapel was not a denomination that would use funds to plant churches, pastors would need to plant their own churches or appropriate other chuches. Pastors were not expected to have the funds to buy the Calvary Chapel franchise to start with, so all churches would begin as nondescript non-denoms with boards until the church built up enough funds to buy the franchise. When the church voted to buy the franchise name and logo, they would also be voting (usually unawares) on a "Mosaic" church government model that autocratically gave the pastor authority over the church finances, assets, board, you name it. While there are over 1000 official Calvary Chapel's, there are thousands more non-denoms planted and infused by church planters trained on Chuck Smith's church growth techniques.

My contention is that the as these techniques distilled though American Evangelicalism by the mid-1980s, they laid the ground work for the application of more "advanced" CEO business tactics to the "Mosaic" model of church growth and government, which were "perfected" in the Druckerites.

In order to get the church big enough to afford the franchise, Chuck Smith had a specific formula around growing churches, which included making the services into entertaining sermon shows with concert quality worship programs. Added to that were local media blitzes with combined pr, word-of-mouth, and ad campaigns.

The mega-church and the church growth movement was around decades before anyone had heard the name Rick Warren.

And while the business/church growth model may have pre-dated Chuck Smith, it doesn't appear so. It appears he was ordained a minister in the Foursquare Gospel Church (widely known for its theatrical services) shortly after the death of founder Aimee Semple McPherson, but became disallusioned over disagreements on how to DO church growth. In 1965 (When Rick Warren was 11-years old.) Chuck Smith became the pulpit pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa a congregation of 25...

Don't forget that Aimee Semple McPherson's 4-square Angelus Temple was the first megachurch in U.S. History seating over 5000 weekly attendees in 1923.

While nearly all modern megachurch's were founded after 1955, most did not experience mega-growth until the beginning of the 80's.

This puts Chuck Smith as the leader in the evangelical movement of applying business concepts (franchise) to church growth models, working off of the theatrical groundwork laid by Charles Grandison Finney in the 2nd Great Awakening and "perfected" into Megadom by McPherson in the 1920's.

[A concerned consumer]

It would be interesting to see a list of the "products" that should be included in the recall.

Has anyone thought to put that together.

Someone should start a petition or put together a class-action suit or something.

[A concerned consumer]

Two years ago I was at one of the satellite locations for the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

Fully 25% of the books on sale for the event were either written by or endorsed by high profile Emergents.

If you didn't count the books written by those who were invited to speak at the event then the only books available were from the Emergent Church product line.

Certainly a very deliberate push of Emergence merchandise at this event.

Maybe they knew that the end of the trend was in sight and they wanted to clear out their remaining stock.