How should a church respond to critics?
Ed Young, pastor of the 20,000 congregant Fellowship Church, was recently accused of keeping financial secrets from his congregation by WFAA, a Dallas/Fort Worth news organization. Among the report’s claims are that Young owns a private jet and has a 10,000 square foot home valued at $1,500,000.
Oh, he also reportedly makes a million bucks a year from the church.
Suffice to say, the claims put forward by WFAA have been summarily rebuffed by Young and a few of his church’s board members. You can see Fellowship’s side of the story in the 25 minute video below. The truth seems to be that they lease the plane because of Young’s international speaking engagements and tight schedule, and the home is closer to 7500 square feet. The salary? Not so much.
Regardless of who is right in this circumstance—and from what I can gather from a token amount of internet research, the facts seem to be stacked in Fellowship Church’s favor—this presents a great opportunity to discuss an issue that I think is becoming increasingly important in the Internet age: how should a church handle critics?
Most churches over a certain size and age have had to face a PR nightmare of some sort. Maybe not on the scale of Fellowship’s, but a nightmare nonetheless. Perhaps, it’s something as simple as a bad reputation, or perhaps as terrible as a high profile scandal. More likely, the pastor is just really good at incensing a very vocal and disagreeable crowd.
That’s when blog posts, newspaper articles and gossip start. Pretty soon, googling the church’s name brings up the church’s homepage as number 1 and number 2 is a slanderous news or blog article. In the case of Fellowship, they chose to directly answer the criticism, but other churches ignore the naysayers.
How do you think a church should respond to critics? Do you think that Fellowship did the right thing in this situation? How have you seen churches effectively handle criticism?
How was the report slanderous? They admitted they owned the plane, leasing and owning are for the most part the same. The report mentioned he owned a 10,000 square foot home, Ed said it’s really 7800sgft of “air conditioned” space, the house is probably just about 10,000 sguare feet, Ed never released his entire Salary package, housing allowance, benefits, salary etc, so we don’t know about that. Anyway the point of the report claims Ed was keeping these things from his people, was He? He never said. So I’m still trying to see how the report is slanderous?
But to answer your question the best way to respond to critics is to tell the truth, that never fails.
@John, again, I’m not close enough to the situation to really make a judgment call on this situation. But, from what I’ve seen, Fellowship is trying to tell the truth. If leasing a plane works anything like leasing a car, the two are definitely different. Additionally, unless Ed’s house is 10,000 square feet (air conditioned or not), telling people it is 10,000 square feet is untrue. The report was presented as a critique on Ed’s character, so in this case citing something untrue would be slanderous in my opinion.
However, I can’t say about his salary package, as you mentioned, he hasn’t released it.
Anyway, back to the question at hand: I agree with you, honesty is the best policy. Do you think it’s appropriate to address the questions in a church service? Or should it be done through other means?
“If leasing a plane works anything like leasing a car, the two are definitely different.”
How are they different? I think you’re stuck that the report seemed to indicate, I think, that Fellowship Church paid $8,000,000 outright for the plane. But if someone drives a Mercedes, leasing, making payments to own or an outright purchase, at the end of the day it’s expensive car to own or lease.
As for slander. The question the report raised about Ed’s character is was he hiding his lifestyle from his people. The reporter interviewed several people, one on camera. Ed’s character doesn’t hinge on a 2200 square foot difference but on a carefull scrutiny on ALL of the facts. Now the report didn’t do that in my opinion, but it didn’t rise to the level of slander in the legal definition of the word. Ed was asked for an interview and he declined. The intention was not to slander him
“Do you think it’s appropriate to address the questions in a church service? Or should it be done through other means?”
IMHO, it should be done through other means, it’s church business, so it should be handled as business. Actually by handling it the way they did they, addressing issues in a church-wide setting, not scheduled for businees, they seem to be confirming the major point of the report, that the people of the church are unaware of things. It all could have been handled by stating, “Here is a copy of our annual business reports for the past 10 years”, “if you have any questions let me know”
John, as you stated, leasing is different from buying. I can lease a car for a year or two for a lot less than buying a car outright. I’m sure that the Fellowship financial board knows that as well and made their decision accordingly.
Can we question whether or not it’s something a church should even consider? Absolutely! Frankly, I’d be very uncomfortable if my pastor leased (or bought) a private plane.
Also, I was using slanderous in the dictionary sense (ie purposefully attempting to defame Ed), not the legal. My apologizes if that was unclear.
I only bring the leasing/buying thing up because the report uses it along with the 2200 square footage discrepency as a way to cast Ed in a less than favorable light. In my mind, it calls the rest of the report into question.
Anyway…
I agree with you. It really does seem to be something that should have been handled in a business type meeting, and frankly, it could have been circumvented if they published their financials in an easy to find place.
“The Church” has had critics since the serpent deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Today’s technology-centered society just provides different avenues for the same age-old criticisms. Some might be warranted and others not. Nobody is disputing that over history there have not been scandals involving churches and people connected with them. We are, after all, only sinful humans in a fallen world.
That is where the beauty of the grace and forgiveness of God is so wonderful.
Let’s also not forget the parts of the Bible that instruct us on being holy, being honest, or being forgiving. If the church, the pastor, and whoever else, is conducting itself according to Scripture-based principles then I believe God has equipped it properly to withstand criticisms.
Some critics are unbelievers who use every small negative to make an attack on God. We hope and pray that Jesus reaches them, as we are reminded to “turn the other cheek” and keep believing, praying, forgiving and doing God’s work.
This trend has reached a whole new level thanks to of on-line blog services that you can bring anywhere. Since most people spend more time online, blogs like help them kick their research into overdrive, Adelina Stalder
I think its scum for a church leader to do this. All this money can be put to greater use to expand the church. Really 8 million dollars for travel for a single person, a single church leader. Many bishops and pope travel economic class, when they are going to speak or go to conferences.
This is no church its one big scam. This man is a millionaire.
“…and the truth will set you free”
Your church is only as great as the people who believe in the One who gives us the choice to be saved by His grace through believing in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for our pitiful lives. Beyond that, it is not our call to judge because we’ve been warned about judging. We were called to judge ourselves and rightly divide the word of truth.
Arguments come when the ‘pious’ declare a fault. 99% of their arguments come from a lack of understanding. Proverbs 4:7 will protect us all if we’ll walk in that wisdom.
The Holy Bible is God’s instructions for us to live OUR lives, personally, for him. If we’d stop trying to get everyone to do things OUR way and start doing them God’s way, this wouldn’t even be a topic on this site.