Highway to the Lutheran Danger Zone
A true Lutheran story of success, podcasting, fame, failure and what happens after.
--
This last week’s Twitter meltdown may have been the end of Lutheranism as you know it. Here’s my story. The details will shock and thrill you.
January of 2013 — I, an Anglican, load up on a ton of Lutheran podcasts
My love of the mixed White Horse Inn begins to wane and my hunger for the pure Rod Rosenbladt grows. Just and Sinner! Boars in the Vineyard! Table Talk Radio! all these Lutheran podcasts begin to get regular rotation.
July of 2013 — I join the LCMS and follow a ton of Lutherans on Twitter
We move to Oregon, join our first LCMS church. I pine for the pure Anglican liturgy that we left in California.
Nevertheless, I build my Confessional Lutheran community online.
April of 2014 — Emboldened by my rising Lutheran celebrity status, I start a Lutheran podcast
I redesign JustAndSinner.com for Pastor Jordan Cooper. He thanks me by name on his podcast. The time is ripe. I’m talkin’ liturgy, I’m talkin’ sacraments, I’m talkin’ confessions. Me and two lutheran friends start the impossibly hard to spell “Pseudepodcast”.
Heady times but there’s signs of trouble among our fellow Lutheran podcasters.
Hmmm.
August of 2014 — We join Pirate Christian Radio. Life in the Lutheran fast lane.
Buckle up, kids. This poop just got real.
Jan 2015 — Dan Price works through his issues
Remember this?
Good news though:
Well that was easy.
Now that he’d quickly worked through his still mysterious sin, Dan felt it was time to launch a new clothing line / speaking tour: ChristHoldFast.
Feb 21, 2015 — Chris speaks at the Liberate conference with Dan and Tullian
The Pseudepodcast team had some concerns about this but in retrospect they really weren’t justified.
Yep. This turned out just fine.
Feb 22, 2015 — We go supernova.
Our star burned too bright, too quick. In our hubris we publicly criticize Rosebrough for speaking at the Liberate Conference.
The response was swift:
And then:
Summer of 2015 — Aftermath (Liberate was too liberated)
Banished from the Pirate Christian Radio mansion, my podcasting compatriots and I dealt with the sudden fall into obscurity each in our own way. I moved from hipster Portland Oregon to lame-ass Sacramento California in the middle of a drought.
Tullian had some issues:
Liberate shuttered but not before handing the reins to a little up and coming ministry called… wait for it… Christ Hold Fast!
Wait?! Christ Hold Fast? Not the incredibility hip ministry / designer clothing brand / law & gospel collective run by former Lutheran podcaster Dan Price?
Not the Dan Price who still darkly hints about his undisclosed sins on Twitter?
Winter of 2015–2016 — Chris stands firm
I comfort myself with the thought that surely Chris learned his lesson after supporting Liberate last time. Surely no respectable, confessional pastor would support a ministry run by people who clearly have deep issues and shouldn’t be a hundred miles from a pulpit. Surely.
Really, Chris? REALLY?! Well, at least they gave you top billing for selling out. I mean, we expect this kind of stuff from Popovits but not the guy who runs The Museum of Idolatry.
I emailed Chris twice politely asking him to reconsider his support. No response. The last communication I got from him was him kicking us off the air.
The Christ Hold Fast conference came and was a big hit judging by the amount of memes people created of themselves:
Seriously, guys. Try a new filter.
Sadly, Rosebrough went un-memed. Maybe he never stuck a dramatic enough pose? Loosen up, Chris!
Oh and look who’s back less than a year after his adultery incident:
Man, life must be hard for poor Tullian. He can’t even afford jeans without holes in them. Somebody give this man a job!
March 2016 — We’re not going to take it
If you think this is getting stupid, that was the general feeling among many of us too.
Oddly enough, it was Dan Price appearing in a debate with Dan Brown that pushed people over the edge. My former co-host blogged and disclosed that the sin that Dan had been darkly hinting at for the last year was that Dan had committed adultery with someone in his congregation, apparently done some blackmail, and was somehow still the pastor of that congregation.
Oh.
After this, Chris suddenly had a epiphany:
Now for someone who has built their career hounding people on the internet, I would expect this to be something of an existential crisis for Mr. Rosebrough. This is the equivalent of a mob goon suddenly proclaiming that he’s against capital punishment. We may be seeing the end of Pirate Christian Radio?
Epilogue: The End Of Lutheranism As You Know It!
If you only know Lutheranism from online memes and podcasts, here’s my recommendation.
Get your gospel unplugged
Don’t get your Law & Gospel online. The pastors you meet online may be decent, godly men or they may be unstable, attention-hungry jerks. Either way it’s really hard to care about somebody when they’re just an avatar and 140 characters of text.
I called out Chris Rosebrough boldly on Twitter because I was just typing text into a box and hitting “Tweet”. Were I to meet Mr. Rosebrough in real life, I’d probably be much less bold, a little nervous and embarrassed and he’d probably be the same. Because then I would be looking into the eyes of a living, breathing, real person and I’d see that they were vulnerable just like me. But the internet puts a mask over all of our humanity.
Run to your nearest confessional church and find a pastor who will preach the gospel to you not just to his Twitter followers.
Snack on ministries, feast at church
See the thing about “ministries” like Christ Hold Fast and Liberate is that they’re a lot like church but with all the parts that keep you safe amputated. They attract people who want attention but never rocked enough to get a record deal. How else can you explain all the photo-ops that happen at these conferences?
Also, I was on a Lutheran Theology podcast that a lot of people listened to for a while. Me. That should be enough to make you a wee bit skeptical. There is no accreditation process for podcasting or speaking at a conference.
Now don’t read me wrong: I’m definitely not saying that you should give up your favorite podcast or the occasional conference. But these things should be supplements to your regular nourishment of church.
The radical grace movement sucks
Basically the “movement” spearheaded by such folks like Tchividjian and Price almost went out of its way to validate its most outspoken critics. For a few years I believed this “movement” to be authentic Lutheranism and repeated many of the trite gospel-ly sayings that are still being memed by Christ Hold Fast. The silver lining of the utter disaster that is the radical grace movement is that it exposed how rotten their theology actually was. When the shepherd sleeps with the sheep and everyone responds with “GOSPEL!”, you don’t have authentic Christianity.
Elyse Fitzpatrick published an article on Liberate, which has sense been deleted, but the gist of it was: “People who are into radical grace will never abuse it.” One paragraph said something like: “Show me the guy who loves the gospel and cheats on his wife. I don’t think he exists.”
A few weeks later Tullian stepped down because of his adultery. The article was deleted.
Yet the people in this movement refuse to connect the dots, despite the havoc they create. Count me in as one of the legalistic, pietistic critics. Liberate / CHF is living proof that we all will take advantage of grace.
Finally, this whole thing was really dumb
I’m less and less convinced that social media or the internet is an appropriate vehicle for the mysteries of God in Christ Jesus. My experience of Lutherans and social media has gone from fun to annoying to make it stop! It seems to bring out the worst in us all.
The sad thing about this story is that people involved have been abused, marriages have broken, lives have been more or less ruined. Judging by Christ Hold Fast’s plans to start planting “Law & Gospel” churches, more carnage may be on the way. But social media has a numbing effect. It’s hard to feel compassion or empathy for avatars.
This Sunday I will go to church and receive the mysteries of God guarded by sober men who are ordained by a respectable synod and know my name. Twitter has very little to offer me in comparison no matter how many gospel-centered-hashtags, pithy quotes or Instagram-filtered memes come down my timeline.
I wish Lutherans would abstain from this widespread banality out of protest. At least do the decent thing and tweet about stupid stuff like the rest of society.
And stop meming yourself. Really. Just stop it.
P.S. Chris, if you’re reading this, which I doubt — how about you lay off evangelicals for a while? After your most recent bunch of tweets, I think you owe Mark Driscoll an apology. Clearly the only reason you’ve been publicly hounding him is because he picked on you in Sunday School.
