Emasculated men and their women let LifeWay replace Bible Studies

Ten years ago while in a LifeWay Sunday School group I challenged some of the points of theology of the “teacher”. He whined to the pastor and the pastor told him that he might listen and learn from me. He got so upset that the pastor did not get on my case that he went into a hissey fit and quit the church. The pastor did tell me that I could be more tactful. I agree. Tact never was a strong suit of mine. Emasculated men often have the emotions of women. I should keep that in mind when dealing with them.

LifeWay now teaches almost all group studies within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and many other churches as well. Sunday School “teachers” in most SBC churches are really facilitator’s for LifeWay publishing house materials. Most Sunday School leaders do not know the Bible well enough to teach it and most church boards would not allow them to depart from using LifeWay materials even if they did.

LifeWay studies seemed to be designed to not rock anyone’s theological boat. Pastors and church leaders trust LifeWay to not offend anyone with their inoffensive Gospel that avoids controversial passages.

I have taken a position against replacing real Bible studies with LifeWay magazine studies for a decade and I express why in this article that I wrote about ten years ago. Opposing LifeWay studies is SBC churches is like spitting into the wind, because pastors and elders love LifeWay studies. Allowing a SBC publishing house to teach the congregation means that they no longer are responsible for teaching doctrine in the church. Many pastors now just tell stories in their sermons that has some application for living your best life now.

Of course, if you’re going to have generic teaching for all in Sunday School in this postmodern generation, it cannot be deep or rock anyone’s boat. That is where most SBC churches are now at. True salvation’s in most SBC churches are rarer than good Elvis impersonators.

I think these LifeWay studies help foster biblical illiteracy. They teach a generic version of biblical passages but there is no in-depth teaching there. People learning from these studies for years are still drinking milk because they actually never learned the Bible and cannot correlate related passages to gain understanding.

It is easy to insert aberrant views into a LifeWay study because it is set up for group discussion and they tend to get off topic. The facilitator’s and the groups somehow tend to get into their own pet issues week after week. In another recent SBC church where I was a member, I got fed up with a LifeWay Sunday School facilitator that was promoting the latest doctrines that he had heard from the Word of Faith heretics on TBN.  Another LifeWay Sunday School facilitator in that same church was still promoting Rick Warren.

It seemed that the leadership of that church could care less that these Sunday School teachers promoted heretics as long as the class used the LifeWay magazines. I eventually left that church for a number of reasons and I was not alone. The senior pastor, the assistant pastor, the youth minister, most of the youth, most of the music ministry, at least one deacon, and a third of the congregation left that church within a year. The remnant of that church is presently going through some sort of lengthy SBC rehab program to learn how to become a more loving church. I suppose the materials for learning that also comes from LifeWay.

Last week I was in a LifeWay study in another church that we attended for about 6 months now. It again turned into a disaster. LifeWay Sunday School “Bible studies” like to get comments from members in the class. It does not matter who speaks up or whether they understand what they are talking about. A woman’s comment to the class was “I read an article that taught me that in any situation to just ask “What would Jesus do” (WWJD).

I really can’t tell you what led up to the WWJD comment because I probably was dozing until the WWJD statement alerted me. One of the problems with these LifeWay studies is that no matter the scriptures being read and discussed, some in the group study will somehow get the topic on their same pet issues and then it is zzzzz time. My wife kicks me when she sees me dozing, that is, when she is not dozing off herself. When we both doze off at the same time it literally can become a pain in the neck.

Basically, my not so tactful reply to the woman who said she lives by the WWJD mantra is “I just read an article that said we should not be doing that because we cannot possibly know what Jesus would do in our situation. We are not God”. I admit I did not tactfully flower coat my response. Having just come out of stage one sleep, I did not have time to arrange for the flower delivery. I never expected her to take my response as a personal rebuke. If I was rebuking anything it was a rebuke against those that think this cliché gives the answer to how Christians should live their lives.

Almost a decade ago I wrote an article about the “What would Jesus do” trite mantra fad that was still going around as a result of a book by that name. I think I explain my position against this presumption in that article quite well, so you might want to read it.

I did attempt to give some further explanation in the class, but it was obvious to me that nobody was interested in hearing anything further about why I said what I said to her. My wife did add, “Instead of saying WWJD, maybe we should really be asking ourselves what Jesus wants me to do in this situation”. The facilitator then went on to the next LifeWay point. But I noticed the woman got up and went to the bathroom. Some 15  minutes later the LifeWay study had ended and she emerged out of the bathroom all red-faced and was bawling like a baby.

A woman in the group embraced her while she was bawling and my wife went over to see what she could do. My wife told her she apologized if her statement sounded harsh. The woman responded, “I think you said enough already!” At that point, I made a decision that I should have made many years ago. I will no longer attend LifeWay Sunday School studies.

I cannot find the article that I told the woman I read, or remember most of the details, but it talked about a hypothetical church where all agreed to live by the WWJD mantra. I do remember that within a very short time the whole church was a dysfunctional heretical basket case and for many more reasons than I pointed out in my article. The crux of the story is that Jesus never told us to try to emulate His life on earth.

A woman in another class in a church that I attended about eight years ago used the WWJD statement. It was the reason I wrote my article. The topic in this class eventually got around to, “would Jesus ever lie to prevent a greater evil”? Christians protecting Jews from Nazis in WWII was an example brought up. Should a Christian lie to the Nazis to save lives of the Jews, or should you just tell them the truth? That woman said “Jesus would never lie even to save someone’s life because lying is a sin. Therefore, we also should not lie even to save someone’s life. Just let the chips fall where they may.”

That is how absurd this kind of thinking can take people who think that just asking yourself WWJD is the solution for every situation. While it is true that Jesus would not have lied. Protecting these people would not have been a problem for Him. We cannot just pretend to be Jesus because we are not Jesus. If we were, we would not even need Him to save us.

Furthermore, WWJD is used by people who cannot possible know the mind of God because most of them have not even taken the time to study His word. The Jesus that some women like to emulate in their mind is much more like their boyfriend then the omnipotent Jesus of the Bible.

If you do not even know the Bible, how can you possibly have a clue what God would have you do, yet, what Jesus would do in your situation? If you do not even know the scriptures, the Jesus you think you know is the Jesus of your own imagination. How then can you pretend to know what the Jesus of the Bible would do? If “believers” would learn the scriptures they would know Jesus and not a four word trite response.

Mature Christians that read the Bible are not going to learn much from LifeWay’s dumbed down teachings. LifeWay studies seem to be designed for seekers, baby Christians, emasculated men, and women. Anyway, that is my opinion of them, for what it is worth. I have never learned anything that I did not already know from a LifeWay study. Have you ever seen your pastor attend one? Obviously they think the LifeWay studies cannot teach them anything.

I have also notice in these studies that those that get emotional and defensive tend to be women and emasculated men. Their arguments come from their feelings rather than from any understanding of God’s word and sound doctrine.

LifeWay studies are set up so that those without an ounce of Biblical knowledge or understanding have equal voice with the more learned in the group. Then when someone who knows the Bible disagrees with the biblically illiterate they take it personally rather than learn from the more learned among them. This should not be. Those that do not know the Bible ought to be silent on issues of interpretations of scripture in the Church.

What adds to the problem is that few people actually read the LifeWay lessons before the class. I have seen this in almost every LifeWay class for a decade. Basically, in classes they read the selected scriptures, but few, have read what the LifeWay authors taught about those scriptures. Yet, they still comment as if their own opinions are what the group needs to learn about the LifeWay selected passages.

I believe God gave the Church teachers to teach Christian doctrine. Then, if there are questions about the teaching it should be addressed to the teacher not a group. The group dynamics model used in the LifeWay studies is wrong-headed, in my opinion. I see no such teaching model in the Bible.

The LifeWay publishing arm of the SBC has moved way beyond just publishing Sunday School magazine studies. Now they are producing just about everything found in the SBC churches and many other churches. Wait a minute. I thought SBC were all independent churches? So they say, but you would never know it from what goes on in them. Almost all are clones. They use whatever LifeWay promotes and LifeWay is the voice of the SBC.

Rick Warren and LifeWay just teamed up to do a six part video series based on “The Son of God” movie. A movie made by a New Age Catholic that does not get the gospel correct. I suppose LifeWay will now be promoting this series all over the SBC as if it were the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Why not just give the true gospel of Jesus Christ without the spin of the heretics?

Is it that difficult to give an accurate account of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Why distort the Gospel of Jesus when there is no good reason to do so? Yet they do. For example: The movie has Jesus saying I am the way and the truth and the life and then this hippie Jesus ends His saying there. Why not finish what Jesus said. “No man comes to the Father except through me”. Maybe because that would not fit the views of the New Age producer.

There are many such things that were left out or added to twist the Gospel to fit the views of those that made the movie. How will people who now rely on movies for the gospel and not God’s word actually hear the true gospel? Let’s hope that this 6 part LifeWay-Warren series does not contain the errors but actually inserts the gospel of salvation somehow. I doubt that it will.

Keep your eye on the leadership of LifeWay and who this publishing house promotes. I will almost guarantee that they will be moving more and more toward ecumenism, as will the SBC.

I have a friend that is a teacher of Christian doctrine in the local jail. He also attends the Sunday School that I had been attending. He told me that he is also fed up with the LifeWay studies and the general lack of biblical knowledge in the group. From what he said to me, he suggests, that if you say something about what the Bible actually teaches, it goes over the head of the people in the group. You either get this blank stare or an emotional based non biblical argument. He only attends this SBC church because his wife wants to belong somewhere.

I have another friend in the area who has exceptional knowledge of the Bible but he would rather be playing golf on Sunday morning than attending anything as dumbed down as what we call church these days. Who can really blame him? The churches are driving the real men out with dumbed down doctrine and Sunday traditions of emasculated men and their women.

I frankly have had much greater spiritual fulfillment camping and hiking in the mountains by myself, or conversing with other Christians in a coffee shop, then I ever had in church. I get emails from Christians that will not attend church because they cannot find one they wish to attend. Others, hate what is going on in the church that they do attend.

If there are real men left in Baptist churches, or any other churches in America, it is time for them to take over. They might first start by actually teaching the Bible themselves instead of letting a publishing house of men and women do it for them. They also might start some home fellowships so people can actually have Christian fellowship.

I think the publishing arm of the SBC subtly pushes the churches that are buying their material into the direction they want the evangelical movement to go. However, that is not necessarily in the direction of sound doctrine. The problem is that mega church leaders and Christian media stars are overly influencing the SBC and LifeWay. I do not think local churches need these new evangelical protestant popes plotting their own course.

Why let LifeWay make your local church conform to them? Sure LifeWay has some good material, but allowing one publishing house to control all media in the entire Southern Baptist Convention of churches (and many other churches), might become as dangerous as having faith in Rome if the SBC and LifeWay follows the New Evangelical mega church leaders and ecumenical pushers.

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10 thoughts on “Emasculated men and their women let LifeWay replace Bible Studies

  1. Having finally found a church I can attend, one of the things I have noticed is the number of men in the church.it delights me.I like that the teachers and pastors are men.So if y’all think all women want a wussified emotional church and wussified men…naw.We want a whole and believing body.

    Amen!

    Faith

  2. Hi Don-

    I can relate to your experiences with dumbed-down Bible studies and Sunday School classes. Although I’ve never had the “privilege” of using LifeWay materials, I know what it’s like to realize that a)virtually no one in the group has more-than-a-cursory grasp of what the Bible actually says on most-of-the vital doctrines and b)virtually no one appreciated it when I would challenge some of the things that would be said during discussion time. Actually, even during “teaching” time. Now, I know I don’t know everything about the Bible but when someone says how “scriptural” THE SHACK is, I can’t let that slide. When one member, who claims to believe in eternal security, brings up questions/or points week-after-week that make me believe that the man probably doesn’t, something wells-up inside of me and I must say something.

    One leader of a group I attended for several years, a godly man who unfortunately taught a Reformed-view of Eschatology, would often subtly mock folks like me who are Pre Millenial. For the longest time, I didn’t say anything, figuring that there are different views on end-time events. Meanwhile,the-rest-of-the group were soaking it all in (“Gee, I guess we will have to go through the Great Tribulation, Jack says so and He really knows his Bible!”)

    Finally,when he made the statement that the early church didn’t believe in the imminent return of Christ, something inside of me snapped. I wasn’t nasty but I was forceful 🙂 and told him that Jesus Himself actually taught it in Matthew 24:44. Well, in return, I got a condescending glare and some goobly-dee gook twisting of a couple-of-other scriptures.

    Recently, a small group started at our church. Many who joined were new-in-the-faith and when it was suggested that we study I John, I demurred strongly, voicing my concern that it might be a bit too deep for younger saints. Well, my opinion was duly noted and I John was selected despite my objections. OK, I figured, the Holy Spirit can still use this. I mean, I John is part of God’s Word, isn’t it? To make a long story short, this “study” was ankle-deep, depth-wise at best and painfully missing key-truths at worst. After awhile (and I tried, I really did), I stopped going.

    The upshot of this is that besides the fact that many of the Christians I know remain Biblical illiterates, I am somewhat-of-an outcast. Believers smile and say “Hi” and everything but I’m not the most-popular guy around. Last year when I had a hip-replacement, not one person in that group stopped-by or called to see how I was doing after I got out of the hospital. I’m not whining–people are busy but I’m certain the reason I’m not “near-and-dear” to the hearts of some of the brethren is due to my outspokenness.

    I repeat, I don’t know everything about the Bible. And I can do better in the friendliness department. But I’m not a grouch and really care about fidelity to God’s Word.

    Thanks for listening.

    Sincerely,
    Chris

  3. Hi Don, You have opened the floodgates to so many things here, the increasing compromise and apostasy, the biblical illiteracy of the average Christian, the “pooling of ignorance” method
    of Bible study in which most people just share their opinions, the lack of sound doctrine and sound teaching, and of course the feminization of our churches. It is so tragic what our churches have morphed into. A truly godly Christian woman wants godly male leadership in the home and in the church. Nothing else will satisfy. And I’m fully aware that it takes a whole lot of courage these days for a man to stand up, because the women in our churches are infected with feminism (many)and offer strong resistance. There, I said it and I hope I’m not in too much trouble for it. I love the God-ordained differences and distinctions between male and female. He made us different and gave us different roles. If the lines are blurred, even in church, we have confusion.

  4. Hello Anna

    My wife would claim you as a true sister in Christ. Both you and Faith have stated what my wife believes. She is a joy, and I don’t doubt both of you are as well.

  5. Don:
    This is a very good article and there were so many points I would like to respond too but I don’t have the time. I am flooded with thoughts and emotions because I am pastoring an SBC church. Even though I graduated from an SBC school I was not really familiar with all the SBC ways because I served in another denomination.

    God has allowed this church to grow in some ways since sending me here. I preach through books of the Bible on Sunday mornings and have taught doctrine (basic systematic theology) and books of the Bible on Wednesday nights. Those ministries have grown in attendance. I started a men’s group that started out good and grew, then; the men started to act like men and the strongest group in the church (the women’s missionary union) stepped in and caused problems. The women’s group is the biggest visual stronghold in the church. Attendance at the men’s group has gone way down. I do not use fluff materials to help the men grow or to challenge them to act like godly men. (My wife does not attend the WMU because there is nothing there for her)

    The church continues to use Lifeway material in Sunday school. I cannot get them to stop using it. I am one of those pastors who do not attend SS. There is nothing there for me. As I was writing this I was just interrupted by a man asking me if there was a men’s group meeting tonight. It seems one of the women was telling other women there was no men’s group because we finished the study we were doing. The women from the women’s group were telling their husbands that there was no men’s group tonight. There is a WMU meeting tonight. I need to stop because I will digress and get off topic.

    Bottom line; if I did not pastor this church we would not attend it. Sorry for the length of the comment. I will fight the good fight until Christ returns. The life and testimony of our churches and their people are at stake. Ministry done in a God honoring way will always face opposition. I appreciate your ministry. It was encouraging today. Thanks.

  6. I thought that I was the only one that saw a creeping trend toward “Baptist-Lite.”

    I watched in amazement as the well known “perky blond” Bible study teacher slammed cessationist folks while saying God told her that practicing Roman Catholics are saved. One of the Baptist mega-churches in Houston was her springboard to fame. Any criticism or concern was stifled due to the financial benefits desired from her drawing power. Her shift to WOF is obvious – but no negative observations from LifeWay or any organization benefiting from the income stream.

  7. I may have made this statement before, but I will say it again. In the last church my family attended (we are not there anymore for a plethora of reasons) I tried to attend “Bible studies”. They were not Lifeway but they were similar to what you described. One particular study I lasted all of half of, because I had to walk out. It was some “sensitive males who are not ashamed of having a feminine side to them” type of malarkey. When the “elder”, more “spiritually experienced prayer warrior” guy who was teaching it approached me to see why I walked out, I told him that I felt like I was watching a feminine hygenine commercial instead of a video concerning Biblical issues. He really was perplexed as how to answer me. If I was still at that church, I would still be waiting with the crickets chirping away.

  8. Don

    I support you in your position of not attending watered down wishy washy Sunday School lessons. You have done a good job of venting your frustration in your article. That message unfortunately resonates with almost all North Americans & Western Europeans in particular.

    Probably because I was a member of a more liberal denomination at the time – I gave up on the church supplied “learning literature” back in 2000. For the next 13 years I taught the Bible from the Bible. The only time I deviated from that was when I was teaching church history (not much on that past the first century in the Bible).

    Then last year I got to the next fork in the road – the denomination that was already loosy goosy went way off scripture at our general assembly last summer and I had to leave the whole denomination. Been visiting a Southern Baptist Church and an independent church. Both Sunday Schools are taught by very experienced Christians straight from the Bible (the SBC guy is 92 and been a minister for 60 years; the independent guy is a top university math professor and has been teaching Sunday School for over 40 years). Hard to find folks like that but you can if you are in a big metro area like I am.

    The bottom line – do you have 30 years of progressively learning the Bible or do you have 30 years of repeating the same one year over and over? Move away from the milk… chew that meat… go where you need to go to grow in Christ. Your time is too short to do anything other than that!

    Maranatha!

  9. Hi Don &all,

    I am one of those who have given up on trying to find a good church.As Don has mentioned how many attempts he has made,likewise i’ve wasted more time & money then i care to say.Fellowship is a joke,after the initial “love bombing” things become rather cold very fast unless you are a willing clone.That means being compromised.I’ve been to conservative and liberal churches and there is not much difference,because the people generally are the problem.Yep,no biblical foundation.Those true christians who are in the midst,have learned to be silent,for what ever reasons,only they know.So,i’ve fostered a few relations and have family where i can actually do some good.I minister to friends and nieghbors,as well look for other opotunities to serve.But above all,I read and study the Word.If I thought that I could be any help to those in the church,I might be willing to tough it out.But most of the time,I would leave just feeling a little sick.

  10. Reading between the lines, you have an excellent wife. My wife was just like her to me. She went to the Lord early, too early, a few years ago. Without her, I feel like a hapless guy wandering about. We were in a SBC SS class 20 years ago when a class member started talking about his son being saved because he was infant baptized. I was shocked and thought I wasn’t hearing correctly. Nobody in class said a word. I spoke to the teacher afterwards and he said he knew he should have talked to the member but didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of everybody. A while later, another member started talking about how anyone who believed in God strongly whether or not they accepted Jesus, was going to Heaven, because they believed in God just as much as we do. The same teacher knew better and didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to upset her in class, or anywhere else for that matter.

    In the 80’s & 90’s I worked closely with a SBC man for years. I trusted his beliefs. He was like a mentor to me. One day just before he retired, he said something along the same lines as the lady mentioned earlier. I was floored and questioned him. I said you have been in the SBC for years and we believe the Bible when Jesus said He is the only way. He said he didn’t believe that part about Jesus being the only way. I kept trying to talk to him, but in the end he did not accept the Bible as the whole Word of God. I was so sad that I couldn’t reason with him.

    This has been happening in the SBC churches, and most other denominations, for a long time.

    BTW, i didn’t confront the first man because was I new in that church and naive. I thought for sure the teacher would say something or, at the very least say something to the man afterwards. He was a teacher and more experienced than me. He didn’t and I only saw the guy a couple of times after that and was unable to talk with him. The lady was extremely disruptive in class. No one wanted to say anything to her because I think they knew she would not listen. She had breast cancer and died a year or so later. I hope she found the Lord.

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