Years ago I attended a church that had a pastor who liked to use illustrations, stories, etc in his sermons. In the early aughts, there was a fever pitch concerning anything end times. The Left Behind books were very popular (they even wrote a kids version, how fun!). During one of his sermons the pastor said, “Did you know that American Airlines will not allow two Christian pilots to fly together? Want to know why? Because if the rapture happens, then no one will be there to fly the plane.”
This is not a joke. This really happened.
In my simple trusting mind (at the time; I’m much wiser now) I was AMAZED that a major airline believed in the possibility of the rapture, and that they took necessary precautions! I related this story to one of my non-church friends one day and was met with rousing laughter. “You can’t be serious? He SAID that? You know that’s not true, right?” And the seeds of doubt were sown that day.
In the early 2000’s, when we wanted to debunk conspiracy theories and rumors, we went to the source – and the source was snopes.com. I searched their site, and sure enough, it was just a rumor. I was shocked to see that Snopes is still alive & well! I think more people should visit the site.
According to Snopes:
“The FAA does not have any regulations referencing religious beliefs.” Likewise, our query in this vein to American Airlines was met with the assurance that AA does not now have such a policy, nor has it ever had one.”
I showed this to the pastor, to which he responded, “Well someone sent it to me in an email.”, and I never heard him say it again. To my surprise, this tall tale has been circulating since the early 90’s! Too bad the pastor didn’t fact check it before he shared with hundreds of trusting parishioners. Some of them probably still believe it to this day, just because that pastor shared it in a sermon. One of those people could have been me.
Demonic Cancel Mob
‘Christian Twitter/X’ is an interesting place. Just in the last few weeks it has been in an uproar over a sexist & misogynistic marriage joke that Josh Howerton told during a sermon in March, at his church, Lakepointe Church in Rockwall, TX. After the internet took him to task, he issued a quasi-apology the week after Easter during the morning service. In that same sermon, Josh also compared himself to Jesus, who, according to Howerton, was also harassed by a ‘demonic cancel mob’. Being the sleuths that we are, Julie Roys posted on her blog on April 13, alleging that Howerton plagiarized his apology from his pastor friend, Joby Martin. You can read about that here (and see the side by side video comparison). It’s quite shocking.
Then there was the Stronger Men Conference on April 12 & 13, hosted by James River Church in Missouri. They are famous for the ‘show me the toes’ controversy. Here is a link to an excellent podcast that covered it. (Heaven Bent). Josh Howerton let us know he was in attendance (and was probably there on the church’s dime). He snapped a pic of Mark Driscoll on stage and posted it to his Instagram story. Johnna Harris captured a screen shot, and once again, Christian Twitter/X erupted. Not only did he fake an apology, he gave a shout out to disgraced (and disqualified) pastor Mark. He’s really on a roll!
The piece de resistance for Howerton was when he posted an explanation for his fauxpology on April 17. Joby did Josh a solid by posing for a selfie together. Then Josh thumbed his nose at his haters and said he plagiarized Joby’s ‘goodbye’. How pastoral.
Joby Martin & The Nursing Mother's Faux Pas
Admittedly I had never heard of this pastor before last week. After a cursory internet search, I discovered that he is the pastor of The Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Fl. Since Joby was dragged into Josh’s line of fire, everyone wanted to know…what did JOBY have to apologize for?
Shelia Gregoire wrote a post on her blog on April 19th about this very thing! Members of Joby’s church sent her the sermon that got Joby in hot water last year. Here is the link to the sermon. It starts at the 4:00 min mark.
Joby begins to explain what the word ‘hesed’ means in Hebrew, in particular, the word picture assigned to that word, which is a mother nursing her baby. He then goes into a story about a time a woman sat on the front row during a service & started nursing her baby. He went on to say,
“Now I know it’s weird for a dude to talk about nursing moms; I know, it’s super awkward. And look, it’s awkward for us too, ladies, just so you understand. Back before we moved over here, in the front row, of our first year, this lady thought that it was time to nurse ON THE FRONT ROW! And I did not look at that and be like ‘awww, the steadfast love of the Lord’. No! I’m like, ‘get a room, that’s gross’.”
He also referenced a sermon that Mac Brunson had delivered on Father’s Day, which is where Joby had gotten this explanation from. (see how that works Josh?) I found the sermon of Brunson talking about the word ‘hesed’ and that in the hebrew ‘word picture’ definition, it is referring to a woman nursing a baby. This is collaboration folks! Sharing ideas…putting bullets in each other’s guns, etc.
Somehow this just didn’t make sense to me. Brunson’s assertion was a little too specific, in my opinion. I went to a website that I like to use for researching the original biblical languages – Blue Letter Bible. According to the website, the word ‘hesed’ is used over 250 times in the Old Testament, and is translated as ‘love, kindness, loving kindness, mercy’, ‘steadfast love‘. No mention of word pictures or nursing mothers.
Crowdsourcing
Since I’m not a Hebrew scholar, I thought I would send out a plea to any theologians, hebrew experts, etc to ask about Brunson’s explanation of the word ‘hesed’. The internet did not disappoint! I received lots of responses, none of which supported Brunson’s teaching on that Hebrew word.
I also emailed the Associate Dean of Old Testament Studies at Grace College & Seminary, Tiberius Rata. He graciously responded to my question and gave me permission to share his response:
“The Hebrew word hesed has a wide semantic range and it is translated as loyal love or steadfast love. In the New Testament it is translated agape (unconditional love). The idea that each Hebrew word paints a picture is wrong. On the other hand, the pastor could have used the image of a nursing baby at his/her mother’s breast as a picture of that, but in no way does that come from the text.”
It seems Dr. Brunson was either taught this in seminary by someone else, or he took the liberty of coming up with the ‘word picture’ idea on his own. Either way, the scholars don’t support it, and neither do I.
In this particular situation, the collaboration between pastors was a failure, and I hope that anyone who has heard this taught by Martin or Brunson won’t go around telling other people, and risk embarrassing themselves. It almost seems like an ongoing game of telephone with these guys.
In Acts 17:11, Paul speaks of the Berean Jews…the fact checkers of the day.
“Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
They were COMMENDED, not labeled a demonic cancel mob.
Quotably Quotable
I love a good quote. I share them often, and I give credit to the author. I learned that in middle school. Here are some good quotes I have seen recently:
“Words build bridges into unexplored regions.”
“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place.”
“As long as you’ve got love in your heart, you’ll never be alone.”
So inspiring! I could easily imagine these quotes on an inspirational poster in a doctor’s office.
A couple of years ago Josh Howerton asked the internet how he could use an inspirational idea or quote from someone that he wouldn’t want to cite, because the source is not a person he would want to point them to:
What Howerton is saying here is that he probably shares content with his church in his sermons that may not have come from a great source. He doesn’t want to cite them for that very reason. Why is that a concern? Well, because he could be quoting from bad sources, and you would be none the wiser of where it came from. I think it will surprise you when I cite the authors for the quotes I listed above – Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels & Charles Manson (in that order)!
Can you imagine if your pastor used one of these quotes, then you go out and share this ‘inspired’ thing your pastor said, and you get fact checked and told that it came from Adolf Hitler?
THIS IS WHY YOU CITE YOUR SOURCES!!!
Not to pick on Josh Howerton, but he inadvertently set himself up as the poster boy for this. He was called out a couple of years ago by Sheila Gregoire for plagiarizing content in his sermons. Click here for a link to the podcast. He responded to that with this blog post, in which he asserts that most pastors share content/ideas, they aren’t required to cite their sources, and as long as you get something out of the sermon, what does it matter? I wonder where he got that idea? Probably from his dad, Rick Howerton. Rick was a pastor at The Bridge Church in TN (before Josh took over). He wrote this piece on sermon plagiarism, which reads a lot like Josh’s post. A rebuttal to Josh’s plagiarism post was done by Dean Lentini on his Youtube channel, Underdog Theology. He also talked about Josh’s plagiarized apology in this video, which I highly recommend watching. Give this guy a follow on YouTube & on X @underdogtheopod. He’s great.
Why This Matters
Plagiarism is defined as:
I don’t know about you, but I would feel really really dishonest for quoting or using someone else’s intellectual property without attribution. I don’t think pastors & churches get to establish their own rules concerning plagiarism. There are industry standards that everyone must adhere to when it comes to plagiarism – why would the church’s standards be lower? Not only that, if pastors are openly sharing their content/ideas amongst themselves, who’s fact checking any it? I shared ONE example of how information was shared between pastors that was not correct…imagine how much of this is going on?
I think now the responsibility falls on the Bereans of our day – The demonic cancel mob.
