Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Furtick and Osteen

So on June 4th a pastor named Steven Furtick wrote a post that was titled "Please stop pickin on Joel" in which he pretty much told everyone to stop talking negatively about Joel and his preaching. Then I saw leaders agreeing with him and posting a link to it on their stuff. I have a few problems with what Mr. Furtick said. (Keep in mind while you are reading this that i often read and enjoy his blog but i hated this one.)

1. He called Lakewood a church which it is obviously not. It is a place for a bunch of lost people to get together and feel good about their lives.

2. While i fully agree that we should not be mean-spirited and that we should do a lot more walking than we do talking. We should publicly expose Joel for being a false teacher, which is what he is.

3. Pastor Furtick said that he was impacting Houston. Which is true except he forgot to mention that the impact he has is that he is an instrument of deception.

4. Who gives a crap that this man preaches to 40,000 people weekly if they are only there to feel really good about themselves. Oh and Steven, the reason why i could not get 40,000 people to come hear me weekly is because the Jesus I preach (which is the One from the Bible) is an offense to unconverted sinners.

Again I agree that everything we say and do should be out of love, and that we should be doing before we begin talking, but that is all most of us are doing.

We should expose Joel Osteen for what he is because people need to know.

Be doers of the Word.

4 comments:

J.R. said...

I would love to see you write about what God continues to do in your life rather than what you disagree with about everyone elses.

I challenge you not to use the blog as a weapon in a public forum, but rather as a tool for impact in the Kingdom.

Trust me when I say I know how hard that is sometimes when you want to get back at people and/or expose what you perceive to be true.

Take that for what it is worth. Just my thoughts. I believe in you!

jeff hill said...

Thank you Lee for your input but if you look at all of the posts you can currently see displayed on my page you will see that only two talk about how i disagree with everyone elses actions.

People need to know what is wrong with what is going on around them

I love you man.

Unknown said...

It's a little difficult to take seriously an argument that suggests at one point that I'm "lost" and only "get together and feel good about my life" in one point ... and then that you "fully agree that we should not be mean-spirited."

For one thing, I go to Lakewood to celebrate and worship Christ as well as how to be a better Christ-follower. If you're truly interested in learning more about how we do that at Lakewood, I've got roughly as many answers as there are questions on the topic.

Secondly, the argument seems to assume that God cannot even work through whatever it is that's going on at Lakewood (I'm referring to point #3 specifically) ... or anywhere else, for that matter. To my understanding, God wastes nothing. Not Pastor Furtick, not Pastor Osteen, not even bloggers like you or I.

I'm also interested in an elaboration on point #4 ... are you really suggesting that there are fewer than 40,000 true Christians in the entire world ... or at least within driving distance of yourself?

jeff hill said...

Firstly, you have a cool name. (It is my little brothers)

Secondly, I apologize if i have offended you sir.

Thirdly, I would never say that God cannot do anything except for lie or anything else that goes against His character. So yes, God can work at Lakewood, but, I believe it is in spite of Mr. Osteen. Which is true for most of us but every single time I have heard Joel preach he has taken whatever verse or verses he was using way out of context and therefore not preached the Bible and therefore done nothing except for become a great motivational speaker.

fourthly, I was not at all suggesting that there are fewer than 40,000 true believers in the entire world nor that there were only that many and to be honest I don't even understand how you got that from what i said. I was just saying that if i preached like Joel it would be easy to pack out any arena, but when you truly preach the Bible lost people do not like it unless God has regenerated them.

Fifthly, God always has a remnant. I do believe that there are true believers at Lakewood it is just that it has nothing to do with whether or not they do things in a Scriptural manner at Lakewood.