Thoughts on the Network

Network friends, I am writing this because of my continued concern for you. I fear that “the storm” that has surrounded the Network may feel like it is slowing down and ending. However, I want to continue to write, as I have time, to remind you that this storm will never go away, as much as you and your leaders may try to suppress that. Real souls have been affected by your leaders’ actions and words, as well as your own. An apology and repentance would go a long way, but even still there would be wounds carried on in this lifetime (as a general note, real repentance would be a turning away from things like lying, manipulating, and spiritually abusing and turning to Christ in faith). Your leaders have hurt a lot of people, and your continued support and endorsement (shown in your willingness to sit under their preaching and obey them) lumps you in with them. I fear that some believe that their leaders will answer for them to the Lord and while there is some truth there, you too will answer to the King. You see, we are dealing with issues surrounding the Network that are of eternal importance. One does not get to preach the gospel on one hand and yet by actions and words live completely in opposition to that gospel all the time. Pastors do not get to hammer their people with law and burdens in sermons/teachings and tack the gospel on at the end and call that a gospel message. I realize that as fallen individuals, Christians will live lives full of sin but there is a higher calling in living for pastors. If your pastor cannot rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), he has no business in that vocation. Network friends, I pray for you a lot. Know that I disagree with you on a lot of different issues as well. I am genuinely concerned for you. My hope is that you would learn what it truly is to live a life found in and resting in Christ. The rest of this document will contain quotes from reading and listening that I have been doing for school and devotional time. I hope that you will see that I, along with hundreds if not thousands, am not just making things up about you. When you read these quotes, consider them as if they were written about you and your leaders. These authors and pastors know about you and your Network even though they have never heard about you or met you.

 Like I have stated above and in other places, I do not believe that many of the Network pastors are fit to be pastors. Several would not meet character qualifications and others would not meet the qualification of “able to teach.” As I listened to a podcast called theocast the other day, I had to pause the episode in amazement because it was as if they knew the Network culture. They were speaking about the distinction between Law and Gospel. Particularly they were discussing how some pastors protect their churches against nominalism. Justin Perdue starts by saying, “We (some pastors) think that if we make Christianity harder, then we’re going to weed out the weak and the fakers. And the weak, not like sincere weak, we’re just going to weed out the people who don’t belong.” Friends, I know that you and your pastors do this because I did this and was instructed to do this by those leading me. Those who struggled or who did not fit in, were shown no attention. I’m sure that there are some exceptions, but in my experience, this was generally true. To my shame, the way that I got people to leave was to show them no attention. What a horrific way to treat fellow image bearers and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Charles Townsend followed Perdue by saying, “It makes pastoring easier. If I can put a whole bunch of burdens on people and I can give them a standard, because grace is sloppy. Grace is messy. If I can put a bunch of rules (on people) and I can kind of ground it somewhere in Scripture, and then I can put burdens on people, and I can place guilt on them, and I can make them toe the line then my calendar stays less full.” Perdue follows him by saying that this kind of thinking from pastors is because, “there is bad fruit everywhere and there are a lot of false professors in the church, so to speak. So then it’s like, what do we do? And I think devoid of some of these historic categories and given our natural frame to weave the works back in, we take this kind of Green Beret approach to Christianity. Only the strong survive and only the serious among us are the ones who really are legitimate. And so, let’s turn the temperature up on the Law to test who is legitimate and who is not.” Friends, do you feel that in your life? Do you feel like you are one of the strong ones who has survived? Do you feel like those of us who have left were weaker or just disgruntled? Pastors, do you realize that you have utilized the Law to hurt the sheep? If you don’t believe me, go listen to Sándor Paull’s sermon on obeying leaders. Listen to Steve Morgan preach on obeying leaders. Listen to Dan Digman preach on God speaking through leaders. Listen to Scott Joseph on following leaders. Oh friends, I hope you feel the weight of this discussion. What Perdue and Townsend described is a lifeless and sad Christianity.

In the last paragraph, I briefly Mentioned Sándor’s sermon called “Followers Should Obey Their Leaders in All Matters.” Network friends, go listen to this sermon. What Paull preaches on is uniformity, not unity. Unity is Christian, while uniformity is cultish. Paull is not the only Network leader to teach this either. What he is calling for, robs the church of displaying the glory of God. It takes redeemed sinners from different backgrounds and cultures and makes them all fit a mold that interestingly is not prescribed in the Bible. God uses all our different experiences, backgrounds, and cultures to display His glory to a dying world. Again, unity is Christian, but uniformity belongs to cults. Speaking of groups that deviate from historic, orthodox Christianity, I’ll mention another group that is in the same vein as the Network.

In the fifteenth century, a man by the name of Jean Gerson became tired of a Christianity that he thought only consisted of head knowledge. So, he decided that the way to ascend to God was through emotions. In The Reformation as Renewal, Matthew Barrett writes on Gerson’s thought, “The soul’s journey to God did not travel through the head but the heart. Gerson did not jettison theology altogether, but he did believe spirituality was the proper focus of the Christian faith and life” (Barrett, 2023). Sounding familiar? He continues,

By implication, a doctrine’s importance was largely determined by its relevance to Christian spirituality. Key components of the Trinity, like eternal generation and eternal spiration, had little use. They were speculative. Gerson advocated dispensing with complex theological inquiry and sticking to the Bible. Gerson detested advanced theological vocabulary, proposing instead that theologians must limit themselves to language laypersons can follow. In practice, Gerson’s biblicist method meant distancing the Christian faith from theological debates to focus instead on the moral instructions of the Bible that tell the Christian how to live. Gerson recommended that theological education be reconfigured so that at least half of the student’s time was spent on Christian living. Books assigned to students were to focus on the mystical experience of God; theological tomes and treatises on the endless disputes over eternal divine matters were to be suppressed (Barrett, 2023).

Steve Morgan’s Network is not that unique. While Morgan and the other leaders try to be new and fresh, they spout the same errors as people like Gerson who have gone before them. This type of thinking and teaching is dangerous. The biblicism that Barrett attributes to Gerson would also rightly be attributed to the Network. But why is this dangerous? After all, doesn’t the Network just teach what’s in the Bible? Let’s go back to Barrett’s The Reformation as Renewal. For one, “Biblicism is a haughty disregard for the history of interpretation and the authority of creeds and confessions, chanting an individualistic mantra, “No creed but the Bible,” which in practice translates into “No authority but me”” (Barrett, 21). If this rightly describes the Network, this is bad news. Barrett continues, “Biblicism treats Scripture as if it is a dictionary or encyclopedia, as if the theologian merely excavates the right proof texts, chapter and verse, tallying them up to support a doctrine. Biblicism limits itself to those beliefs explicitly laid down in Scripture and fails to deduce doctrines from Scripture by good and necessary consequence” (Barrett, 21). I’m not sure how many times I heard from leadership something along the lines of “the Bible is clear.” After reading the above paragraph, perhaps those leaders were not always correct. Friends, read church history.

I am trying to emphasize that we cannot use the Bible however we would like. We cannot study it, interpret it, or teach it without considering how the Church throughout time has. To do so would be dangerous and inevitably lead to error. Friends, read church history. Just because your pastor opens the Word and preaches a seemingly “Biblical” sermon, this does not necessarily mean that it is a faithful teaching. If his sermon is mainly about how you should do, do, do or don’t, don’t, don’t, you should run. You cannot earn more favor or lose favor with the Father based on your performance in the Christian life. Christ, your perfect representative, obeyed without flaw in your place. Nothing will ever change that. Because that is true, you are freed to love God and neighbor. Those neighbors would include those of us who have left the Network or those who were forced out of the Network by various circumstances or individuals. I hope that you understand that I care for you, and because of that I will not quit attempting to reach you through various avenues. I think what you are doing is dangerous, and I am concerned for you.