Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

In 2017, the following ten posts received the most page views:
10. K-LOVE’s Pledge Drive: Money Behind the Music (2017)
9. Former Newsping Pastor Perry Noble Incorporates Second Change Church (2017)
8. American College of Pediatricians v. American Academy of Pediatrics: Who Leads and Who Follows? (2011)
7. After the Demise of Mars Hill Church Mark Driscoll Landed on His Feet with Over One Million in Donations (2017)
6. IRS and Postal Service Agents on Scene at Benny Hinn’s Office (2017)
5. Mark Driscoll Spins the End of Mars Hill Church (2017)
4. A Major Study of Child Abuse and Homosexuality Revisited (2009)
3. Former CFO at Turning Point Claims David Jeremiah Used Questionable Methods to Secure a Spot on Best Seller Lists (2015)
2. What’s Going on at Harvest Bible Fellowship? James MacDonald Resigns as President of HBF (2017)
and the #1 post is:

  1. Open Letter to Gateway Pastor Robert Morris from a Former Member of Mars Hill Church (2014)

 
Some past posts have aged well. The 2009 post regarding child abuse and non-heterosexuality has been in the top ten nearly every year since 2009.counseling image 2 Readers continue to be interested in Mars Hill Church and various players surrounding the demise of that church.
Although the page views don’t show it, the story that continues to be covered here and almost nowhere else is the Gospel for Asia saga. The target of federal scrutiny and two RICO lawsuits in the U.S., GFA has also initiated and been involved in various legal actions in India. Although the scope of the GFA empire dwarfs other organizations I have examined, it continues to fly along under the radar.
For a profile of my work and the role blogging has played in it, see this lengthy article by Jon Ward in Yahoo News earlier this month.

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Top Ten Posts in 2015

The ten top posts during 2015 are as follows with the most popular first:
1. Open Letter to Gateway Church Pastor Robert Morris from a Former Member of Mars Hill Church – This was posted on November 2, 2014 but remained popular throughout 2015. Driscoll recently joined Jimmy Evans as a director to form The Trinity Church in Phoenix.
2. Former Chief Financial Officer at Turning Point Claims David Jeremiah Used Questionable Methods to Secure a Spot on Best Seller Lists – This story about David Jeremiah’s questionable tactics from a former insider was a scoop but not one which stuck to Jeremiah like  a similar scandal did to Mark Driscoll.
3. Hillsong’s Brian Houston Interviewed Mark and Grace Driscoll After All (VIDEO) (AUDIO) – First, he said he would interview Driscoll, then he said he wouldn’t, then Brian Houston aired an interview with Mark and Grace Driscoll. It was great theatre but didn’t draw good reviews from former Mars Hill leavers.
4. A major study of child abuse and homosexuality revisited – This post from 2009 is one of the most popular articles in the history of the blog. In it, I demonstrate a key mistake in a journal article often used to link homosexuality and child abuse.
5. Southern Baptists Say Enough to Perry Noble and NewSpring Church – I am surprised that this post got so much attention.
6. Gospel for Asia Faces Allegations of Misconduct; GFA Board Investigation Found No Wrongdoing – The GFA story received the most attention from me this year.
7. Pastor of Willow Creek Presbyterian Says Church Reaction to Hiring Tullian Tchividjian is “Overwhelmingly Positive” – I briefly covered Tullian Tchividjian’s comeback as a development minister at a PCA church in FL.
8. A Few Thoughts on The Village Church Controversy – Village Church’s leadership apologized for their response to a young woman who sought a divorce from her husband who had admitted having child porn.
9. Hillsong Founder Brian Houston Issues Statement On Mark Driscoll at the Hillsong 2015 Conference – Mark Driscoll’s return to the spotlight garnered much reader attention.
10. Gospel for Asia’s K.P. Yohannan and the Ring Kissing Ritual – While the financial scandals were of interest to readers, this article ranked higher than the money problems.
To fully capture activity on the blog, one should consider the Gospel for Asia scandals (Patheos considered my coverage as a part of one of their top ten Evangelical stories of 2015).
It has been a good year and I thank my readers and those who support the blog with their comments and regular visits.

New York Times Stands by Claims on Ted Cruz's; Says Book Could Make the List Next Week

The New York Times told me this morning that Ted Cruz’s book could make the best seller list next reporting period if sales warrant. The paper also stands behind the claim that “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”
Times spokeswoman Denise Rhoades Ha said this morning that “The book could appear on a future list. Every week is a new sales reporting period and could have a different outcome.” Thus, if strong sales have resulted from this dust up with the Times, Cruz might find himself on the list next week.
The Times won’t release or discuss their evidence because those details might lead to further manipulation of the list.  Ms. Rhodes Ha added that the Times stands by their comment on the matter released earlier:

We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.
This book didn’t meet that standard this week.
Our goal is that the list reflect authentic best sellers so we look at and analyze not just numbers, but patterns of sales for every book.
In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.

I also contacted HarperCollins earlier today and asked if the company planned to release evidence which would support Cruz’s denial. HC has not replied as yet. Publishers are aware of where bulk orders go and could provide relevance evidence on bulk sales or lack thereof. Last Friday, a HarperCollins’ spokeswoman said the company found no evidence of bulk orders.
See my post from yesterday for more background.
 

Ted Cruz Accused of Gaming the New York Times Best Seller List

HarperCollins has been around this block before.
According to Politico, the New York Times informed HarperCollins that Ted Cruz’s new book won’t be on the best seller list because the reported sales didn’t meet the Times “standards.”
Clarifying, the Times rep Eileen Murphy told Politico that bulk sales kept Cruz’s book off the list.
I asked Times spokeswoman Denise Rhoades Ha if the Times might go back and remove some best sellers now that we know that the authors used strategic sales to elevated their position and she declined to comment.  I have reported on several such books and authors including Mark Driscoll, Les and Leslie Parrott, and David Jeremiah.
Although they won’t say, I speculate that the attention given to the scams perpetrated by Christian authors in the wake of Mark Driscoll’s discovery may have made the Times tighten up their review of sales.
UPDATE: Coming late to this story, I didn’t realize Cruz and the publisher have denied the allegations.  Cruz wants to see the evidence.
H/t to this tweet and this one.

Sutton Turner: Big Churches Like Mars Hill Church Need Big Decision Makers

Former Mars Hill Church executive elder Sutton Turner has posted part two of his reflections (he posted part one yesterday) on the decision to commit church funds to buy Mark Driscoll’s book Real Marriage on to the New York Times best-seller list.
In this post, Turner takes credit for changing Mars Hill by-laws to include the Board of Advisors and Accountability. The BoAA consisted of three executive elders (Driscoll, Bruskas, and Turner) and four outsiders (various members at different times, but including James MacDonald, Larry Osborne, Jon Phelps, Matt Rogers, Michael VanSkaik, and famously Paul Tripp). Turner asserts that big decisions (like the New York Times scheme) require leaders of big organizations to weigh in. In today’s post, Turner writes:

The board in place at Mars Hill in the summer of 2011 consisted of local elders who had been at Mars Hill for many years. They were inside the organization. I’m not sure what they discussed regarding ResultSource, but they needed outsiders who were experienced in big decision-making and who were outside of their context to help them.

I assert that ethical sense is more important in such decisions, but Turner attempts to make a case that outsiders help prevent groupthink. I cover groupthink when I teach social psychology and I disagree with his analysis. If anything the structure of the BoAA lent itself to groupthink. The board was small and insulated from the rest of the elders due to the control the BoAA had over the entire church. Their moves and deliberations were secret with no meaningful input allowed from the lesser elders or congregation. Moreover, preventing groupthink is primarily leadership responsibility. Solid leaders who do not need to be in control of all aspects of an organization can prevent the negative effects of group cohesion whether the board members have experience or not.
Turner’s advice to leaders in yesterday’s post is inappropriate if groupthink is a concern. Turner objected to the ResultSource contract but did not buck the system. He wrote:

What You Cannot Do

  1. When the decision is legal, you cannot stay and complain that you did not agree with it. You cannot be divisive while continuing to remain on the team. If you are going to be divisive, you need to leave.

  2. You cannot leave the organization and complain to your friends or through social media when you actually had an opportunity to fix it if you had stayed. I have seen many people leave Mars Hill who had positions of influence. They did not agree with decisions, resigned, and went to social media to try and bring about organizational change from the outside. To me, if you stay, you can be part of the solution, but if you leave, you need to leave and allow leaders who remain to make changes for the organization’s future.

One of the ways to avoid groupthink is to encourage dissent and disagreement. Worrying about being divisive when in fact you have principled disagreement is part of what fuels the cohesion that is at the heart of groupthink. Having a local elder board is a minor concern compared to the problems inherent in self-censorship and mindguarding (see this brief summary relating to groupthink).
Turner then outlines what he claims was the response of the BoAA to the ResultSource decision.

At our board meeting in August of 2013, I provided a detailed analysis and accounting of the ResultSource marketing plan. At this board meeting (six months before the signed ResultSource contract was leaked to the public), the new board agreed that this type of marketing strategy would never be used again. In fact, no other books that were published through Mars Hill used it. We, as board members, would certainly not always get it right. In fact, in the following months, we would even make mistakes around the public revelation of the ResultSource contract. (I desired for our first media response at that time to clearly communicate two things: my level of involvement in the decision and the BOAA’s decision to never repeat the practice. Unfortunately, this did not happen.) But six months before the public spotlight, this new board of outside leaders, who were unassociated with the ResultSource decision, evaluated the proposal afterwards and made the right decision: it was a bad idea and it was wrong.

In 2014, Justin Dean was the first one out with a statement about ResultSource and he claimed it was an opportunity. If the BoAA had made this decision, why wasn’t Justin Dean made aware of this fact? I would like to hear more from Turner about how and why three different opinions of ResultSource were communicated to the public in the space of about a week.