Is Andy Stanley Coaching Your Church?

I believe in honesty and transparency, as much as can be possible, in a church setting. God doesn’t need our scheming and under-handed dealings to prosper the church.

So why the secrecy? Why do a small, privileged group of people get special treatment and coaching from Andy Stanley’s people? Why are ordained ministers (like my husband) and the elders and the congregation kept in the dark?

One of the things that Andy’s people prefer in the churches that they takeover is that they are non-denominational and definitely not congregational. The coaches who work for Andy’s network of churches (formerly North Point Strategic partners, now the Irresistible Church Network) work hard to insulate those they coach from any detractors. They function outside of the authority structure of the church. They are unknown men working in the shadows to infiltrate your church. You can not question them because you don’t know who they are. And unfortunately, you can not reach out to someone in a position of authority over your senior pastor because you attend a non-denominational church, the congregation has no power and the other pastors are just “staff” that the senior pastor can hire and fire at will. (Or, should I say at the will of Andy Stanley’s coaches?)

COACHING = AUTHORITY minus ACCOUNTABILITY

The coaches at the Irresistible Church Network don’t care about you because you are not the customer. They don’t care if you’ve been called by God to serve in your church because your not the one paying their bills. If they don’t think you’re on board with Andy Stanley or if you don’t fall completely in line with their agenda, they’ll coach the pastor to get rid of you. They don’t care that it will tear your family apart or the ripples of pain it will cause. They don’t care if the pastors who are dismissed attempt suicide multiple times throughout the process and the family is left to pick up the pieces without their church family to lean on. They just don’t care. They coach their pastors to make you sign non-disclosure agreements and hold the money over your head so you’ll go away quietly–for the sake of the church. They know how to keep you silent. But I’m done being silent.

No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not making up the story that there were secret coaches from Andy Stanley when we were dismissed. I know it as a fact. Our church, which has been around since the 1920s, had become a full blown member of North Point Strategic Partners and not even all the elders or pastors knew, let alone the congregation.

And no church would be allowed in this partnership without accessing the full extent of the “products” offered up by Andy Stanley, which include coaching, not just for the senior pastor, but also for a special group of his choosing. Obviously, neither I nor my husband were in that group despite our 12 years of impactful, God-ordained, and blessed ministry at our beloved church.

We had a motto at our church back then, “A place where I can belong.” Towards the end of my time there, that phrase just mocked me. I knew I didn’t belong because a few in the church, the few that had the power, didn’t want me. I tried to belong by joining the staff as a custodian. My thought was, I would get to be in the weekly staff meetings and hopefully have a positive influence on them and encourage everyone to read the Bible. The one time I spoke about reading the Bible together, I was just met with blank stares and the senior pastor just moved on with the meeting without even addressing what I said. Often when I was cleaning during worship rehearsals, I would sit in a bathroom stall and weep knowing that I would never get to sing again at my church. Only a few could truly belong and the rest were just the cogs in the wheel of the machine, completely at the mercy of the “clique” that had taken over our church.

clique

/klēk,klik/

noun

noun: clique; plural noun: cliques

1. a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common, who spend time together and do not readily allow others to join them.

How can coaches direct a church when they don’t even know the people of the church? Oh, they think they know the people because the pastor gossips about them and slanders their character in their “coaching” sessions and to the other pastors in their networks. The person being slandered has no recourse because the coaches are unknown and unapproachable and the coaches don’t reach out to the person being slandered to find out if the accusations are true or not.

I have tried on multiple occasions to seek reconciliation with the pastor, with the Irresistible Church Network and Andy Stanley himself. They don’t care. They don’t respond. They don’t think I’m worthy of even a conversation. They have no accountability, except this blog I write.

DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

I think one of the biggest problems is that the coaches lead their pastors to believe that “the ends justify the means.” This thought is not a far leap from what it says on the Irresistible Church Network page:

For Andy Stanley, too much emphasis on the Bible creates a church that unchurched people won’t want to attend–violating his 1st commandment–“Thou shalt not have a church that unchurched people wouldn’t want to attend”.

The attack on the Bible was one of Andy’s drumbeats during the days of my husband’s dismissal and I’m confident our pastor bought into it hook, line and sinker.

Andy also, during this time, despised small churches and led his hundreds of thousands of followers to believe that it was “selfish” to attend a small church. I guess because unchurched people only want to attend big churches? I took great offense at this and posted my thoughts about it on my Facebook page to try and undo such a terrible teaching. Sometimes I wonder if he preached that sermon in response to my little blog post about my little church in July of 2015 which I’m sure was not received well by my big church pastor who was being coached by Andy Stanley’s peeps.

Of course, I didn’t know all this was happening behind the scenes. I was just reacting to the dramatic changes happening at my church to attract the unchurched and trying figure it out. Before I was shunned from the worship team, I posted an article titled, “Could Excellence Be Killing the Church” by Karl Vaters. I got called into the pastor’s office and was scolded for posting that article. The discussion got heated and the pastor ending the conversation by saying something like, “We will value excellence and that’s final!” End of discussion.

I knew the pastor was waist deep in Andy’s teaching about being an attractional church as espoused in Andy’s book, “Deep and Wide” which had become our church’s new bible. We had to be “excellent” by the world’s standard in order to attract the “unchurched”, even if that meant denying people the opportunity to participate or getting rid of people who think differently. The ends justify the means.

No argument that I made against being an attractional church would be tolerated or heard. I was committing the cardinal sin of disagreeing with Andy Stanley.

This underhanded behavior is appalling and deceitful, but justified in their minds because they, and they alone, know how to reach the “unchurched”. And eventually, when the elite few got strong enough, they got rid of anyone who stood in their way until all that was left were their people.

They couldn’t be honest about what they were doing at the beginning because too many people would have left, along with their money. I’m confident that the select few in charge realized that Andy’s teachings, especially Andy’s beliefs about the Bible, would never fly with our church, so they kept what they were doing a secret.

That is how Andy Stanley gets things done. The ends justify the means. It’s quite ingenious, but something I would never do.

IS ANDY COACHING YOUR CHURCH?

I write this blog for the few discerning people out there like me wondering what is happening to their church. Here are a few simple ways to know if your church is dabbling in the Andy Stanley stuff:

Things they do and say:

1. “The church is for the unchurched”

2. “We should be known for what we’re for, not what we’re against.”

3. They’ll use a specific kids curriculum. Preschool will say something like, “God made me, God loves me, Jesus wants to be my forever friend” and elementary curriculum will be all about making the “wise choice”. (This is usually the gateway drug for the church.)

4. They imitate Andy’s preaching style, especially the white letters on black with words highlighted in yellow preaching screen. They also may completely copy sermons that can be purchased from Irresistible Church. Back in the day, the North Point Strategic partners website said that partner churches’ must preach a minimum percentage of sermons taken directly from North Point. (Something you would think the congregation ought to know, right?)

None of these things are bad in and of themselves and a church should not be berated simply for using a black screen with yellow words or using a certain kids curriculum. However, these are the current signs of a church dabbling with dangerous Andy Stanley philosophies and it is completely reasonable to dig deeper if this describes your church.

Be aware that the signs change. For example, back in the day we used to talk about “being orange.” The Andy Stanley catch phrases and systems will come and go. So, more importantly, I urge you to turn to God’s Word as your ultimate filter for what is good and pure and acceptable in the church. Don’t be like me and wait until it affected my family.

I turned a blind eye to many pastors before us that were dismissed. I have recently reconnected with the first pastor who was dismissed and apologized for not questioning more what was happening. He said it wouldn’t have mattered because he was also forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He and his wife were cast out, alone, and lost the relationships that mattered most to them. It took them two years to heal from the damage done to their spirit. Two years of ministry lost. Thankfully, God did not abandon them and they are leading an incredibly thriving leadership ministry for an entire denomination.

One thing I am confident about, whatever Andy Stanley and his coaches are doing, It’s Not Love.