How do I decide which Christian preachers, teachers, & authors to listen to and which to avoid?

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 25, 2011 | 7 comments

While we’re taking time in our worship gatherings to hit 7 questions during the 1 SpringHillians series, there were many commonly-submitted questions that we’ll be addressing in the coming weeks on the blog instead of in a sermon.  This and the following questions in this blog series are quoted verbatim from emails we received.

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Question: How do I decide which Christian preachers, teachers, and authors to listen to and which to avoid?

People usually fall into one of two camps of failure when it comes to this issue…

• They reject too much. I’m very pro-seminary training, but this is usually “seminary guy”.  This is the guy whose attitude is basically “You should only read them if they’re Reformed, Complementarian, amillennial, Southern Baptist or Presbyterian, and have had JI Packer endorse their books.  Everyone else is a HERETIC!”  Different theological camps insert different labels and names into the list, but the attitude is the same.  Paul warns two young pastors, Titus and Timothy, against this kind of theological hair-splitting that leads to unnecessary division HERE and HERE.  These people hurt the church through their divisiveness.

• They accept too much. Whether it’s because they grew up around angry, argumentative Christians and want to avoid becoming that guy or it’s as a result of Biblical naivete, their attitude is, “We should just focus on the good; there’s no reason to be negative toward someone’s teaching.”  Although there’s a great intention behind it, this attitude isn’t the same attitude as the New Testament.  Some of Jesus’ most consistent and passionate warnings were that false teachers would infiltrate the church disguised as godly men in the future.  Paul also gets a little crazy on some false teaching HERE.  These people hurt themselves through accepting teaching laced with poison.

THE LITMUS TEST

As gracious but discerning Christians we should make our litmus test for what to accept and what to reject the same as The Bible’s.  You see the same litmus test consistently applied by Paul in two passages…

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.  (Galatians 1:6-10)

And again here…

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

In the first passage Paul literally says, “If anyone is intentionally distorting the gospel, they and their distorted gospel can go to hell.”  In the second passage Paul is talking about the fact that some people are only preaching the gospel for more money or for more fame.  His response: “Who cares?  The gospel is being preached!”

The consistent litmus test of the New Testament that we should use in evaluating preachers, teachers, and authors is (SURPRISE!) the gospel. The question I always ask when trying to decide if someone is a trustworthy teacher about spiritual matters is “Do they get the gospel right?”  If the answer is yes, they’re on my team regardless of their disagreement in secondary issues.  Does the central message of their preaching and teaching match Paul’s description of the gospel “of first importance” HERE?

LITMUS TEST APPLIED

For example, a popular pastor and author was asked recently how he would “tweet” the gospel and here was his response:

I would say that history is headed somewhere. The thousands of little ways in which you are tempted to believe that hope might actually be a legitimate response to the insanity of the world actually can be trusted. And the Christian story is that a tomb is empty, and a movement has actually begun that has been present in a sense all along in creation. And all those times when your cynicism was at odds with an impulse within you that said that this little thing might be about something bigger—those tiny little slivers may in fact be connected to something really, really big.

Now I don’t want to judge a guy based on ONE interview or statement, but that’s not the gospel.  If this is someone’s central message, they’re probably not an ideal teacher (to put it softly) regardless of how gifted or inspirational they are.

On the other hand, many of us REALLY need to “make our team bigger” by focusing on the gospel more instead of being divided by secondary issues.  I’ll finish with this great quote by a seminary professor I read recently…

I would have “problems” with MANY of the great Christian leaders of the past. Martin Luther liked beer, a LOT; John Wesley was pretty disappointing as a husband; George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards had some annoying amillenial and hyper-Calvinist tendencies; C. S. Lewis squeaked in some pretty confusing stuff to his Chronicles of Narnia; D. Martyn Lloyd Jones baptized babies. But these were people whom God used mightily. It doesn’t excuse the errors or mean that we shouldn’t be clear about why we see things differently, just that we recognize the centrality of the Word of the Gospel and God’s hand on it.