Screwtape's Advice about Ordinary Churches

As a follow up to my previous post on the Wild West West of Church Planting, I channeled my inner CS Lewis and wrote my own “Screwtape Letter” to illustrate the need for churches to refocus on doctrine and shepherding over growth gimmicks. In case you haven’t read it, the Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis’ most popular and creative books where he writes a series of fictionalized letters from a senior demon to a lower demon instructing him in how to deceive Christians.

This is an AI image I made with Bing

My dear Wormwood

Your failure regarding your patient's recent conversion to Christianity has been reported to our Father Below. You should expect the usual consequences.

I also note with great displeasure his recent visit to an ordinary, traditional church. You fool! How could you allow this to happen? Have you learned nothing of how the Enemy's power works? This development is most regrettable.

True conversion to Christianity is, unfortunately, an irreversible condition. Therefore, you must focus your future efforts on hindering your patient's spiritual growth. To accomplish this objective, he must be kept from ordinary churches that teach the old, damnable doctrines.

If your patient cannot be deterred from attending a church, all is not lost. He does not yet understand that many so-called "churches" are actually decoys that have been captured by our Father Below. Have you not read the memo regarding our religious entertainment initiative? Or did you not attend the workshop hosted last month by the Department of Seduction?

Had you attended the workshop, you would have learned our strategy of deploying Religious Entertainment Centers (RECs) as decoy churches. Christians are lured into them because the sign out front says “church.” Inside the church, however, they are never permitted to teach the old, damnable doctrines.

These RECs are entertainment spectacles - just the sedative needed to keep your patient comfortably complacent. Your patient must never learn what a church actually is, lest he discover that the Enemy Above is actually displeased with these entertainment spectacles.

Your patient's ignorance works to our advantage. If he can be kept ignorant of his own ignorance, all the better. If he can become confidently ignorant, that's best of all.

This provides you an occasion to fill his mind with our own devilish priorities. Then, using the usual schemes, you can inflame his pride, making him supremely confident that he is following the Enemy Above while subject to the priorities of our Father Below.

Be sure to remind your patient that the traditional church he visited is quite ordinary, which he should then regard as an embarrassment. Please do read Appendix F in the policy manual, "On Traditional Churches." There you will learn the subtle art of tempting Christians to despise the ordinary. Suggest to him that the Enemy's power does not work in the usual, boring ways. You must lure him into an R.E.C. under the pretense that its sheer size is evidence of the Enemy's blessing.

Remember, the Enemy presses his advantage against us with what he calls "acceptable worship, with reverence and awe." This must be avoided at all costs.

Surely you understand the devastation we experience in our dark realm when the Enemy's people offer Him acceptable worship and learn the old, damnable doctrines? May it never be! Once you convince your patient that pop songs and self-improvement speeches are sufficient to placate the Enemy, all will be well.

If he resists the usual methods, convince him that the Enemy's "mission" is better served by R.E.C.s than ordinary churches. We have sustained a number of delightful evils by convincing people they must disobey the Enemy to win converts. Their eagerness to evangelize is a ripe opportunity to smuggle in our priorities.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

King’s Domain Conference: Gendered Virtue

The King’s Domain conference is less than a month away and all the details are coming together. I’m excited that a good number of people signed up for the single’s mixer.

Being a smaller conference, one of the biggest benefits will be the opportunity to connect with other like minded people in a comfortable setting. You’ll also have a great chance to interact with the speakers and ask them questions. We’ve got Michael Foster, Joe Rigney, Toby Sumpter, Shane Morris, Matt McBee, and myself as keynote speakers.

Here’s a quick explainer video for why we’re doing it and why you should come. If you’ve been considering this conference, go ahead and register now so we can save you a spot!

More details and registration info are available at www.genderedvirtue.com.

Book Reviews for God’s Good Design

I’ve been so encouraged by the positive feedback I’ve been getting about God’s Good Design, like this one.

Here’s a recent Twitter post from a GGD reader.

It’s starting to accumulate a good number of 5 star reviews. The overall review score for both Amazon and Goodreads is 4.6. For a plain spoken book on a controversial subject, I’ll take that. :)

Having a lot of ratings and reviews on Amazon is a big help, so if you’ve read the book, please consider leaving a rating and/or review!

New Published Writings

“Christian Singleness in the Modern World”

I was honored to publish this booklet on Christian singleness for Founders ministry. It is available for preorder now and will ship in April.

“Why Conservatives Lose (and What We Must Do About It)”

In this essay, I explain why conservatives always seem to lose the big cultural battles. Conservatism and progressivism are not simply two sides of the same coin, or two alternate paths to the same destination. Instead, they are two fundamentally opposed, irreconcilable worldviews that cannot coexist for long. Conservatives win by building and progressives win by tearing down.

“How Leftists Neuter Religious Conservatives with the ‘Christian Nationalist’ Smear”

This was my first time writing for The Federalist. They reached out to me to write this piece about how the left uses “Christian Nationalist” to silence Christians and drive us out of political involvement.

My Book Review of Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, by Joe Rigney

I have agree to be a contributing scholar for the newly launched Center for Baptist Leadership. My first piece for them was a this short review of Joe Rigney’s excellent book, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety that Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World.

Other Media Appearances

Here’s my interview with Shane Morris, where he and I have a really interesting conversation about masculinity, femininity, anthropological heresies, and how on-demand birth control broke everyone's brains. Shane is another one of the keynote speakers for the King’s Domain: Gendered Virtue conference.

Here’s my appearance on Jon Harris’ podcast, Conversations that Matter, where we talk about singleness in the church and advice for Christian singles and their pastors.

Here’s my appearance on Keith Foskey’s YourCalvinist podcast, where we talk about church planting, whether or not the church planting bubble has burst, and the “not your grandma’s church” mantra.