Andy Stanley’s Deep and Wide: A Review
BY SETH DUNN
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Who is Andy Stanley?
Andy Stanley is the
founder and senior pastor of North Point Ministries (NPM), which is an organization that started as a single church (
North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia) in the fall of 1995.
[1]
The organization now boasts six Atlanta-area churches as well as
numerous independent “strategic partner” churches scattered throughout
the United States.
[2] Stanley is the son of former Southern Baptist Convention President Charles Stanley, who is the
founder of
In Touch Ministries and the long-time
pastor of First Baptist Church Atlanta. The younger Stanley served as an associate pastor at his father’s church before founding
NPM. In
Deep and Wide: Creating Churches in Unchurched People Love to Attend,
Andy Stanley shares the story of how he founded his organization and
offers direction on how to create similar “churches which unchurched
people love to attend”. The book is broken up into five parts, each of
which addresses a part of Stanley’s model.
Endorsements
The most telling part of Stanley’s book comes not from the text itself but from its endorsements page.
Deep and Wide‘s list of endorsers is a who’s who of
entrepreneurial seeker-sensitive megachurch pastors.
Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Craig Groeschel, Steven Furtick, Perry Noble,
and Louie Giglio all give the book high praise. Hybels, the
father of the seeker-sensitive movement, famously lamented that his own Willow Creek network of churches was “
a mile wide and an inch deep“. Hybels’ negative assessment of the fruit of seeker-sensitive movement no doubt served as an inspiration for Stanley’s title
Deep and Wide. In the book’s introduction, Andy Stanley writes, “Local Churches should be characterized by deep roots
and wide reaches. Churches should be theologically sound
and culturally relevant.”
[3]
Given Stanley’s attitude about church, the identities of his endorsers
should come as no surprise. Those identities should also serve as a
warning to those who look to Stanley for wisdom. To be both biblically
educated and informed of the exploits of men like Furtick and Noble
leads one to be wary of them and what they recommend.
Getting All Theological
Andy Stanley’s ministry model rises and falls upon the notion that
churches can be attractive to unchurched people. From a business
standpoint, Stanley’s notion seems counterintuitive. It sounds a bit
like opening a burger joint for people who don’t like beef. However,
Stanley’s model has actually succeeded in growing a brand new church
plant with 708 charter members into a multi-site ministry with thousands
of members and international influence in the span of two decades.
When Stanley set out to form
NPM, he recognized that his geographic market was already saturated with churches that
churched
people loved to attend. “I grew up attending churches designed for
church people,” Stanley writes, “No one said it, but the assumption was
that the church was for church people. The unspoken message to the
outside world was ‘Once you start believing and behaving like us, you
are welcome to join us'”.
[4]
The Bible Belt resident realized that if he created one more church
“for churched people” then few would be enticed to join it. So, Stanley
created a business that the Atlanta market did not have, a church for
unchurched people. Using various tactics, such as playing secular music
to open services, Stanley and his co-laborers have managed to grow
North Point Church into the quasi-denomination
North Point Ministries.
NPM
grades itself on how attractive it is to its target audience,
unchurched people. Andy Stanley reveals this metric of success to
readers on page 15 of
Deep and Wide. Anticipating a negative
reaction Stanley writes, “Now, before you go getting all theological on
me and writing us off as a dog-and-pony show, take note: We are a
church. Our goal isn’t to create an
event unchurched people love to attend. We are creating
churches.”
[5]
This phrase shudders the biblically-minded reader to the core. In
order to explain and defend his idea of what “church” is and how it
should be, Andy Stanley warns readers not to get “theological”.
Theological is exactly what anyone seeking to lead Christ’s church
should be. As has been demonstrated by its numerical growth, Andy
Stanley’s method of church management works from a business
perspective. However, it is theologically untenable and blatantly
unbiblical.
Untenable Ecclesiology
Stanley’s defense of his method is a specious one. He claims that
NPM
is creating “churches”, not “events”, that a certain demographic, the
unchurched, loves to attend. This claim breaks down when analyzed. It
is common parlance to ask someone, “Where do you go to church?” or “What
church do you attend?” However, these questions are manners of speaking
meant to determine in what church one holds membership. Unlike events,
churches are not attended. Churches are essentially bodies of
believers. The sentence “I attend a body of believers” is incoherent.
The sentence “I attend worship services at First Baptist Church” is
not. That is because churches are bodies of believers which hold
events, most frequently Sunday worship services. It is truly the Sunday
services of
NPM, its events, that are geared towards
unchurched people. Churches are, by definition, composed of churched
people. Yet, Stanley creates his own definition of “unchurched”.
Rather than defining unchurched people as those who are not members of a
body, Stanley defines the unchurched as those “not having attended a
church for five years or longer”.
[6] Here again, Stanley’s presupposition is that church is something that is
attended and not an entity in and of itself. What Stanley’s philosophy boils down to is another absurd statement: The goal of
NPM is to create churches of which unchurched people love to be a part.
But oil and water don’t mix. The church of Jesus Christ is a
particular group of people. This is what the Apostle Peter reminds the
early church in his first epistle:
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit,
fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the
revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to
the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.'” 1 Peter 1:13-16
In the scripture above, Peter quotes a command of God to the nation of Israel
recorded
in the book of Leviticus – “Be holy”. This demonstrates that the New
Testament Church is an extension of Old Testament Israel. The latter
served as a witness that the Messiah was coming, the former serves as a
witness that the Messiah has come and is soon to come again in
judgment. In any age, the Israel of God serves as a witness to the
world while maintaining a separation from the world. In order to serve
as a witness, the church must maintain a unique and separate identity.
This is what it means to be holy. The Greek term
ἅγιος
used by Peter and translated as “holy” in the scripture above indicates
that the church is to be set apart from everything and everyone that is
not the church. The church is to be different from the world. Thus,
it is completely reasonable for a church to expect that people who want
to be a part of it first change the way they believe and behave. This
expectation is in line with the Christian doctrines of
regeneration and
sanctification.
Once a sinner gets saved, to use commonly understood evangelical
terminology for regeneration, he is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Thus
starts the process of sanctification. At this point the believer starts
to look like the church and, as Peter puts it, should no longer be
conformed to his former lusts. A true believer isn’t merely
attracted to the church, he
is the church. A church that insists that its membership be holy is merely a matter of
salt being salty.
Yet, this is off-putting to Andy Stanley. It is also apparently
off-putting to thousands of other Atlanta-area residents who were raised
in the same church culture as Stanley. These off-put consumers are
drawn to
NPM and the philosophies of its leader, Andy Stanley. Stanley boldly declares that he “leverages their consumer instincts”
[7] and claims that Jesus did the same.
Stanley puts his own spin on what the church is in the second section
of his book. This is the section in which Stanley attempts to give the
biblical justification for his approach to church.
[8]
In Chapter Three, Stanley gives a very short and lightly footnoted
summary of church history in which he literally anticipates the question
“how long is this chapter in anyway?”
[9] Once again, Stanley is flippant about theology.
Deep and Wide’s chapters which give biblical justification for Stanley’s model of church should arguably be thorough, should arguably be
deep.
However, Stanley’s pattern is to trade on brief, specious arguments
shrouded in humor, pithiness, or some personal account. His writing
style is not unlike his preaching style; both lack depth and operate on a
surface level. His argument in Chapter 3 is dependent on his treatment
of the Greek term
ἐκκλησία[10]
which is translated as “church” in almost every English Bible. Stanley
asserts that the word “church” is not a translation of ἐκκλησία but
rather a bad substitution for it.
[11]
According to Stanley, the institutionalization of the movement, or
“church”, that Jesus started led to the ἐκκλησία being associated with a
building or a location controlled by an institutional authority. He
associates the perversion of the Greek term with the machinations of the
Roman Catholic Church and cites the Reformers as those who would be
sympathetic to his view. This does not, of course, play out in church
history. The seeker-sensitive movement of Warren, Hybels, Stanley, and
their ilk began hundreds of years after Martin Luther and other
reformers began the task of breaking free from Roman Catholic error and
subjugation. The seeker-sensitive movement is firmly planted inside of
modern American entrepreneurial pragmatism and is nowhere to be found
in first 400 years after the Reformation began.
Stanley is at least partially correct in his treatment of the term
ἐκκλησία, however. In Greek culture, the term often referred to a
gathering of people, not necessarily Christian or religious. Stanley
writes, “An
ekklesia was simply a gathering or an assembly of people called out for a specific purpose.
Ekklesia never referred to a specific place, only a specific gathering.”
[12]
This statement is true. At the same time, it is a straw man. That
Christ’s church is not a specific location is not the argument of those
churches who would insist that church members believe and behave in a
certain way. It is a straw man created by Andy Stanley to further his
narrative that church is a movement. It’s not. It’s a people. It’s a
people sanctified (set apart) to God and for God. No one needs a
dedicated building to be Holy but it’s certainly okay to have one. Andy
Stanley’s organization has several.
Such buildings are where the church formally gathers for its most
frequent event, Lord’s Day worship. It is here where Andy Stanley’s
model of church runs into another very serious problem – the world
doesn’t honor God. The Bible makes it clear in several places that the
world, those
not a part of the church and therefore not currently set apart to and for God,
are at enmity with both God and His people. The Apostle James wrote:
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on
your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship
with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a
friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that
the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit
which He has made to dwell in us’?” James 4:3-5
When God’s people gather on the Lord’s Day to praise God they should
not expect that unbelievers will want to take part in that worship.
Thus, to gear church services to appeal to a demographic (whether it is
called “lost” or “unchurched”) is to change the focus of the worship
event. The event ceases to be about appealing to God. Instead, it
appeals to man. Not only that, it appeals to the unregenerate man. The
Apostle Paul wrote:
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves,
nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, e
kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you
were sanctified, but you were “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
How can unsanctified people find appeal in a Christ-honoring,
church-edifying worship service? The same way a goose hatches out of a
chicken egg…it doesn’t. It’s another absurdity. Stanley’s method of
church is to essentially water down the message of scripture while
having the people of God cater to “unchurched” people who have no
interesting in serving or worshipping Him in spirit and truth. Stanley
turns what should be praise songs and preaching into a concert followed
by a motivational speech. It draws numbers, but not holy ones.
Stanley’s method not only confuses the nature of the church but perverts
its primary weekly event, the worship service, to a form of worldly
entertainment. Unchurched people simply don’t love Christ’s church.
Unchurched people simply don’t love the worship of God. Thus, a church
that unchurched people love to attend is not a church at all. It’s akin
to hamburger joint that puts tofu patties between buns, calls them
hamburgers, and serves them to people who don’t like beef. It does good
business and happily makes thousands of sales…but it doesn’t sell
hamburgers.
A Didactic Problem
Much of the “biblical” justification Stanley gives for his model is
subtlety deceptive. Among Christians, there is universal agreement that
the church belongs to Christ. Stanley uses the exploits of Christ, as
chronicled in the Bible, in various places in his book to support his
own assertions. When he does so, he engages in more specious error.
Almost never does Stanley appeal to the teaching of the Apostles (as has
been done above to critique his methodology). This is significant. It
is essential to understand the biblical context in order to understand
Stanley’s erroneous method of teaching. The fours gospels often
descriptively portray
Jesus as taking some action to teach the reader about whom Jesus is and
what he is doing while the epistles of the Apostles
prescriptively
instruct the church. Stanley relies on the former to support his
ecclesiological assumptions where the former are not addressing church
operations.
Stanley rightly points out that “If you want to know what Jesus meant but Jesus said, pay attention to what Jesus did.”
[13]
One thing that Jesus did was to appoint Apostles such as Paul to
oversee the early church. We find the writings of Peter, Paul, James,
John, and Jude in their numerous epistles, many of which predate the
authoring of the four gospels. These epistles are written by Apostles,
in many cases to specific churches, in order to instruct the churches on
how they should operate. In other words, the epistles of the New
Testament instruct churches on how to be churches. In
Deep and Wide Stanley cites the epistle of James thrice (
James 1:17,
2:20, and
2:26), the epistles to the Corinthians thrice (
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and
10:26), the epistle to the Romans twice (
Romans 8:28 and
Romans 12:2), and the second epistle to Timothy once (
2 Timothy 3:16).
Through none of these citations does Stanley make a substantial
argument about the church should operate or behave. Instead, Stanley
relies on descriptive stories from the gospels. Indeed, Jesus reached
out to the outcasts of society and challenged the religious authority of
his day. However, the brotherly love and evangelism demonstrated by
Jesus and his disciples in the gospels do not translate into a church
model where worship services center around appealing to the unchurched
and finding places of service for them. If readers aren’t careful, they
can get so excited about the praiseworthy exploits of the Lord Jesus
and not notice that Stanley is not applying them in the proper context.
Stanley is adamant that “every church should be a church irreligious people love to attend.”
[14]
This premise can be restated as follows: “every gathering of God’s
people to exercise religious devotion should be a gathering of God’s
people where the religious devotion being exercised is loved by those
who are
indifferent or hostile to religion“.
To defend this absurdity Stanley invokes Jesus. He writes, “The church
is the local expression of the presence of Jesus. We are His body.
And since people who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus, people who are
nothing like Jesus should like us as well.
[15] This statement does not play out in scripture.
“…Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of
God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at
hand; repent and believe in the gospel.'” Mark 1:14-15
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed
to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many
brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom
He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He
also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30
Jesus’ most vociferous critics, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and
teachers of the law, were not like him. Yes, they were the same
ethnically but
spiritually their hearts were far from Him. Those who accepted Jesus
accepted his offer of forgiveness and were called on to turn (or repent)
from their sins. In doing so, they could become like him. Andy
Stanley not only advocates that the church appeal to the world, he
argues that Jesus did so. Jesus, as history shows, had no friendship
with the world. Andy Stanley does. In a jab at his critics, Stanley
writes, “All of my critics are religious people (It may be the only
thing I have in common with Jesus).”
[16]
The churches being critiqued and rebuked by Paul in his many epistles
could have made the same, haughty quip. In reality, Stanley misapplies
the exploits of Jesus to justify his brand of pragmatic religious
consumerism. Misapplying Jesus is nothing new.
All About Andy
The first part of the book is dedicated to telling Andy Stanley’s
biographical story. He grew up in a tense and combative church culture,
one in which his own father was punched in the face during a church
business meeting at First Baptist Atlanta. It was a fight for his
father to become of the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Atlanta and a
young Andy and his best friend Louie Giglio witnessed it. After Andy
grew up and went to seminary, he entered the fray and accepted a
position as a student minister at First Baptist Atlanta. He served in
this capacity for ten years. Then, almost by accident, he took the
first step to becoming the Senior Pastor of his own church. First
Baptist Atlanta was determined to move to a more suburban location. It
obtained access to a piece of property known as “the warehouse” and
opened up a second campus there. The intention was to move the entire
church to that location; at the time, the multi-site megachurch fad had
yet to become popular. Stanley was tasked to lead the location until
the move could take place. However, it was delayed indefinitely.
The real estate market did not provide First Baptist Atlanta with a
feasible environment in which to move in the planned timeframe. To make
matters worse, the younger Stanley had a falling out with his father
which revolved, in large part, over Charles’s Stanley’s controversial
and very public divorce. Andy Stanley would eventually resign his
position at First Baptist Atlanta. However, he retained a very large
following. He was able parlay his popularity into a new church plant,
no longer operating under the authority of his father’s church but still
well within its shadow. Stanley was finally free to do things his own
way. He has.
During his tenure working with youth at First Baptist Atlanta, a
twenty-six-year-old Stanley put on what the deacons of First Baptist
Atlanta deemed an “irreverent and unruly”
[17]
youth event in the church building. Despite a number of decisions for
Christ made by attendees, the deacons were very upset at the spectacle.
Stanley, ever-pragmatic was aghast at their disgust. After all, hadn’t
it worked? Arguably, this experienced helped shape
NPM
services into what they are today, seeker-sensitive concerts followed by
motivational speeches that are in some way related to God. Andy
Stanley turned the youth-concert methodology rejected by the stodgy
deacons at his father’s church and turned it into a church model. He
then put that church right in their back yard. If
NPM seems more like a rock and roll youth revival than a church, it’s not hard to see why.
NPM
and Andy Stanley are shaped out of a rejection of conservative Southern
Baptist culture. Unfortunately, they have also come to reject the
biblical expectation for churches.
That Andy Stanley devotes the entire first section of his book to his
own, interesting personal history is not surprising. Stanley is a part
of the
NPM brand, it’s his. Arguably, he is the brand. Such
personal story telling is not uncommon among church entrepreneurs. In
Section One of
Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley attempts to
establish his authority as a church expert before making a biblical
case. By the time readers get to Andy’s “biblical” argument for the
NPM
model in Section 2, the reader has already subconsciously become an
observer of the Andy Stanley story. If the reader isn’t careful, he
will miss how the story’s protagonist misapplies scripture to support an
untenable church model.
Deep and Wide
Andy Stanley presents his “Deep and Wide” model in Sections 3 and 4
of the book. Section 5 is about how to lead an existing church through
the change processes in order adapt to Stanley’s model. Andy lists a
number of “Catalyst” principles and templates to be followed. These
items are not worthy of significant review. Since Stanley’s model is
unbiblical, its specific inner-workings should also be rejected. To be
sure, there is a lot of good common sense advice in these sections.
(For example, Stanley points out that an unkempt nursery area will leave
parents too worried to focus on Sunday services.) Just as sure,
however, is the folly of following Andy Stanley down his path of
pragmatism.
Deep and Wide is essentially a guide to “franchising
McChruch.” McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s have a franchise model. So does
North Point Ministries. Unlike those fast food giants, Stanley professes that his idea for consumer appeal was given to him by God.
[18] Comparison of Stanley’s model to the word of God proves Stanley’s claim to be false. The
NPM
model is not from God and is not one for shepherding sheep. It is a
model for herding goats. Andy Stanley is a dangerous man whose pastoral
ideas are dangerous to the health of Christ’s church.
Deep and Wide is a book that should be marked and avoided.
*Please note that the preceding is my personal opinion. It is not
necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any
church of which I am a member, any church which I attend, or the
educational institution at which I am enrolled. Any copyrighted material
displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.
[1] p. 104
[2] There are also partner churches in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Venezuela.
[3] P. 18
[4] p. 69
[5] p. 15
[6] P. 14
[7] P. 15
[8] p. 16
[9] p. 60
[10] In English this term is transliterated as “ekklesia”.
[11] p. 62
[12] p. 59
[13] p. 298
[14] p. 12
[15] ibid
[16] p. 15
[17] P. 278
[18] p. 48
