If you grew up in the Bible Belt or in the heavily churched Midwest, you know that a good sermon is supposed to contain (all together now) “three points and a poem.”
This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on a Washington Post sermon that ran with this headline: “A small-town Georgia preacher fills pews by leaving no one out.”
It’s possible that the author of this highly doctrinal news story understood the basics of Southern preaching. Hold that thought, because we will return to it. But first: The Big Idea of this sermon is stated in absolute terms — there is “good” religion and there is “bad” religion. Let they who have ears, let them hear (or whatever the new language is in this case).
I. It is always appropriate to open a sermon with a conversion story that illustrates the preacher’s Big Idea. This grab-a-tissue Washington Post feature could not be more explicit about that:
HARTWELL, Ga. — At night, the worn sign looks like a beacon in the darkness out front of the modest, red-brick Mt. Hebron Baptist Church.
The tired, it reads. The poor. And huddled masses. Welcome home.
In this small town in the rural northeast corner of Georgia, it’s the kind of message that assures Teri Massey she is loved for being who she is — a message 180 degrees from the one she heard in the Baptist church where she spent her teens into her 40s, where her grandfather, father and brother all held leadership positions.
When Massey came out in 2004, shortly after meeting the woman she later would marry, the congregation in that other small Georgia town responded by campaigning to send her to conversion therapy and holding prayer vigils outside her home.
She found Mt. Hebron a few years ago through a friend. Pastor Grant Myerholtz, whose usual preaching attire is T-shirt and jeans, met her and her wife at the door. They listened carefully as he stood in the pulpit and proclaimed: All are welcome.
“It was like this load was off of me,” Massey, 63, recalled last week.
There are good churches and there are bad churches. Got that.
II. This is an age in which churches need to change their doctrines if they want to, well, grow (or at the very least get good coverage from blue-zip-code elite newsrooms).
Thus, this Post story offers a very clear thesis statement as Point II. What is “good” religion and what is “bad” religion? The details are all here. This is the first part of the equation:
At a time when many houses of worship are struggling to sustain themselves — with church membership and attendance both at all-time lows in this country — Myerholtz seems to be pulling off a miracle of sorts: Tiny Mt. Hebron is flourishing. Barely a dozen people showed up for his first sermons in fall 2020; these days, sometimes 100 faces are looking up at him.
Church members say his empathy and engagement are what draw them. His interpretation of scripture is not what is traditionally heard in a conservative community.
In April, for instance, Myerholtz gave the opening prayer at the Hartwell Pride festival — which already had weathered a backlash from area churches over a proposed spring drag show. “There’s a community of people that guard their religion and say, ‘It’s not for you. You’re a sinner. You can’t love God like that,’” said the organization’s president, Collin Graham, who is trans. “So I think it was important to have [Grant] out there to show people that you can be a Christian and you can be gay or trans.”
Bad religion talks about sin and, in particular, any sins defined by clashes between centuries of Christian doctrine and those of the current Sexual Revolution faith.
In this case, we have a pastor who was raised and trained as a Southern Baptist (#BOOOOO) who has converted to progressive “independent” Baptist status. He has had a rough life — National Guard injury and arms covered with tattoos — who has publicly repented of his Southern Baptist sins with the Pride event prayer. I would assume that this prayer was the hook for the story pitch to Post editors.
Now, his church is “a miracle of sorts.” Actually, 100 people in pews is interesting, but only if we know the status of the dozens of other Baptist flocks (of various kinds) in the Hartwell area. But this journalism sermon is not interested, one little bit, in the actual details of “Baptist” life and who is who and what they believe.
Oh, other than an anecdote about a “bad” Baptist who has rejected the Pride stance in rather extreme pulpit language. Is this other preacher a fundamentalist Baptist? A Southern Baptist? Another “independent” Baptist? This kind of information is not relevant.
Actually, what this story desperately needed was some input from other local Baptists — white, Black, Latino, etc. — about the Gospel according to Myerholtz (maybe) and the Post (for sure). I bet the other points of view would be quite diverse and sympathetic, even from most of the Baptists who rejected the Myerholtz approach to doctrine.
III. However, doctrine really doesn’t matter or, if it does, that is bad.
Actually, the Post story has very little content about what this preacher has to say, since it is clear (maybe) that he has publicly proclaimed “good” Christianity on the Big Idea that matters. But there is some content here:
By 2011, he was in the National Guard. A fall during a training exercise left him with brain and spine injuries, and while recovering, he picked up a book called “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by a former Franciscan priest named Brennan Manning. Myerholtz decided to build the rest of his life around its simple premise for the Gospel: unconditional grace.
He was back in Hartwell with his wife when a chance encounter with one of the deacons at Mt. Hebron led to an invitation to lead the church. Myerholtz arrived with new energy and double sleeves of tattoos. He says he was embraced immediately.
That was interesting, since Manning is a preacher that I know pretty well — since I heard him preach a week-long Episcopal church retreat in my Denver days and interviewed him several times.
That classic book — “The Ragamuffin Gospel” — has been very, very popular with progressive evangelicals for several decades, while drawing lots of criticism as well. Some of that criticism came from thinkers who liked Manning’s basic “grace” message, but thought he was very quiet on issues of repentance.
It is accurate to describe Manning, who died in 2013, as “a former Franciscan priest.” He was a laicized Catholic priest who was married, then divorced, and was brutally honest about his life. Consider this famous quote:
“I’ve been a drunk and I’ve been divorced. I’ve been sexually promiscuous, faithful during my marriage but unfaithful due to celibacy, a liar, envious of the gifts of others, a priest who was insufferably arrogant, a people-pleaser and a braggart (which I’m probably doing right now to give you the impression that I’m humble and honest)... By sheer undeserved grace, I’ve been able to abandon myself in unshaken trust to the compassion and mercy of Jesus Christ.”
More than anything else, Manning was chased by critics who accused him of preaching — by commission or omission — the doctrines of “Universalism,” the belief that all people are “saved,” no matter what they believe and whether or not they have ever repented of their sins.
Manning explicitly stated, in interviews with me and others, that he never preached universalism. What he said, again and again, was that far too many churches preached about sin so often that sinners never heard the “unconditional grace” part. But, yes, he affirmed (there would be arguments about that) traditional Christian views on moral theology. He also preached that grace is “unconditional,” but that sinners should repent and embrace that grace.
What does Myerholtz believe on these doctrinal issues? Readers never find out.
III. Well, this sermon does include one other piece of doctrinal information — doctrine expressed in deed, rather than words. But let me stress, again, that the Post team is totally agnostic when it comes to asking this preacher what he actually believes. See Point II in this sermon.
But let us attend to this:
… On two Saturdays this month, Myerholtz will host a lakeside baptism for anyone who has been denied that rite for any reason. “If it were up to me, a representative of every ministry in this town would be there with arms wide open,” he says. “We have the easiest job on the planet as Christians if we want to accept it. That is simply to love everybody.” …
Church is, and has always been, the community’s backbeat. Every week, the local newspaper devotes a page to the worship service times of the area’s 100 houses of worship, nearly half of them Baptist.
OK, I will ask: What do Baptists preach about baptism?
Well, if you grew up as a Baptist preacher’s son in the South (tmatt raises his hand), you certainly know what it means when Baptists baptize an adult by immersion. It means that they have walked the aisle and said that they want to convert — either to Christianity or to being born-again as a Baptist.
Let me share a story about someone else who knew a thing or two about altar calls. When I converted to Orthodox Christianity, my spiritual father was Father Gordon Walker, who was a former Southern Baptist preacher and Campus Crusade for Christ campus evangelist. Here is the opening of a column that I wrote about Father Gordon when he died eight years ago.
It was a typical evangelistic crusade in rural Alabama and, as he ended his sermon, the Rev. Gordon Walker called sinners down to the altar to be born again.
Most Southern towns have a few notorious folks who frequent the back pews during revival meetings, trying to get right with God. On this night, one such scalawag came forward and fell to his knees.
"Preacher! I've broken all the Ten Commandments except one," he cried, "and the only reason I didn't break that one was that the man I shot didn't die!"
It didn't matter that this man repeated this ritual several times during his troubled life, said Walker, telling the story decades later at Holy Cross Orthodox Church outside Baltimore. Now wearing the golden robes of an Eastern Orthodox priest, Walker smiled and spread his arms wide. The church, he said, has always known that some people need to go to confession more than others. The goal was to keep walking toward the altar.
Now, is that a standard “Baptist” way of expressing repentance, grace and salvation? Trust me that most Baptists would say, “No.” But this is what Father Gordon preached day after day.
Now, what does Myerholtz preach about baptism?
I have a journalism question about that: What does it mean to say that this pastor will offer baptism by immersion to “anyone who has been denied that rite for any reason”? Are those his words or those of the Washington Post? Does this include people who reject Christianity?
Again, what does Myerholtz preach about baptism?
Some would say that this is not the stuff of newspaper reports. That’s “doctrine” (see Point II). However, readers should note that the Post team raised the baptism issue. This is a crucial question in the three-point sermon delivered by one of the world’s most influential newspapers
This Post sermon, alas, does not end with a poem.
However, the feature writer who wrote the story does have a website that opens with information that is relevant to this newspaper report about Hartwell and the people who live there. That personal testimony opens with:
I moved to New York City 21 years ago, sure that nothing could be worse than a continued existence in Hartwell, Georgia, where I grew up. I studied fashion at F.I.T. and journalism at NYU.
“Existence”? Message received.
Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited graphic featured at the Sermon Information website.