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The "Cotton Candy" Appeal of Joel Osteen Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, is perhaps the fastest rising TV preacher in the country having already “built America’s largest church” (Charisma, June 2004, cover). Writing in The Quarterly Journal from Personal Freedom Outreach, Richard S. Liichow and G. Richard Fisher set the stage: Many would look at Houston’s Lakewood Church, with its 30,000 people attending services each Sunday in a 16,000-seat arena that once was the home of the Houston Rockets basketball team as the epitome of church success. But that success was achieved at a cost to sound doctrine and spiritual integrity.
Lakewood, a Charismatic, Word Faith powerhouse in the 21st century, was founded by [Joel’s father] the late John Osteen, who started his pastoral career as a Southern Baptist. After receiving ‘the baptism in the Holy Ghost in 1958,’ he became enamored with the Charismatic renewal movement. In 1959, he left the Southern Baptist Convention… Osteen eventually became associated with the Word Faith Movement (“The Leaven of Lakewood,” October-December 2004, Vol. 24, No. 4, p.1).
In an article from The Christian Sentinel entitled “The Prosperity Gospel’s Coverboy” Jackie Alnor further points out that Joel Osteen: made the list of the Top 20 Influencers of the Pentecostal/charismatic community in the Jan/Feb 2003 Issue of Ministries Today magazine. He was listed with other notables such as Kenneth Hagin Sr., Tommy Tenney, C. Peter Wagner, and Joyce Meyer. “There is no arguing that the following 20 leaders have inspired us, challenged us and in many ways caused us to rethink what it means to ‘do church’ in today's Culture,” the article boasted (“Joel Osteen: Prosperity Gospel’s Coverboy”, http://cultlink.com/ar/osteen.htm, emphasis added).
Now certainly there is nothing wrong in itself with growing a church or becoming prosperous. However the job of the pastor is to teach a congregation the whole counsel of God and not necessarily to make someone feel good. Therein lies the danger of an immature and ultimately deceiving message like the one espoused by Osteen. From that same article we read: Osteen gives the new vision of his ministry: "We’re all about building people up. We’re all about helping people reach their full potential. We don’t push some kind of religion.…all we push is joy and peace and victory through Jesus Christ. …Our message every single week - is through faith in God you can live an overcoming life of victory … I believe that’s the message this generation needs to hear. We’ve heard a lot about the judgment of God and what we can’t do and what’s going to keep us out of heaven. But it’s time people start hearing about the goodness of God, about a God that loves them. A God that believes in them. A God that wants to help them. That’s our message here at Lakewood." (ibid., emphasis added).
One could certainly take issue with Osteen’s comment that “this generation” has “heard a lot about the judgment of God.” Recently Osteen was the subject of an interview with MSNBC correspondent Jamie Gangel who said - “Forget the fire and brimstone. Popular preacher Joel Osteen offers his listeners a simple, upbeat message.” The article then goes on to fill in some background information: A college dropout who has never been to seminary school There is no fire and brimstone in his church. If the message sounds simple and upbeat, that’s just the way he wants it.
The Christian-based, non-denominational congregation draws a remarkable mix of races, and his televised self-help sermons are number one in Nielsen ratings and broadcast all over the world. And if that’s not enough, his book, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," has topped the New York Times best-seller list, selling 1.5 million copies.
[Osteen has] developed his own style — sermons are strictly optimistic and address practical, everyday issues, like time management. His critics say it is all too simplistic, that Joel is part of a new trend called prosperity gospel ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6894347/, italics in original).
A large part of Osteen’s appeal is no doubt his concept of a “God that wants to help” people which no orthodox Christian pastor would deny anyway. However, this “upbeat message” is then connected to the very heart of what the late Dr. Walter Martin, widely recognized as the “father of modern Christian cult apologetics,” labeled “the Health and Wealth Cult,” which is probably better known now as the Word Faith Movement (W/F). As one Christian author has noted about W/F: “It sort of treats the Bible as a collection of fortune cookies," says Michael Horton, a theologian with the Westminster Seminary. “If you claim the right verses, then you can have health, wealth and happiness” (ibid.).
Rob Bowman, president of the Center For Biblical Apologetics and a former colleague of Dr. Martin, explains in his book Orthodoxy and Heresy why this kind of bad diet of all cotton candy spiritual “sweets” is so harmful: The church today is plagued, not only by heresies and aberrations, but by doctrines which I would characterize as “junk-food doctrine.” Junk food won’t kill you, unless that’s all you eat - in which case poor nutrition will eventually catch up with you (p.54).
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