The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 28 – Warren Smith

Episode 28: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Warren Smith, head of Ministry Watch, about the intersection of his Christian faith and his career in journalism. Smith discusses his formative years, the authors who shaped his thinking, and the development of his worldview. A key topic is the concept from his book, Restoring All Things, which posits that Christians are called to be agents of restoration in all spheres of life, not just within the church.

The conversation then shifts to his current work at Ministry Watch, an organization that promotes transparency and accountability among Christian ministries. Smith details the principles his organization uses to evaluate ministries, such as financial transparency and independent governance, and addresses the growing trend of ministries claiming a “church exemption” to avoid public disclosure. He concludes by exploring the ethical challenges of his work, drawing a sharp distinction between biblical kindness, which involves speaking the truth, and cultural niceness, which prioritizes conflict avoidance.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:00):
Thanks for tuning into the Dr. Jeff Show. This show is available on Apple, Google, Edifi, Spotify, Overdrive, Liftable and wherever you get your podcasts. Hey gang, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. On this show, I interview major thought leaders from many fields of influence showing how worldview changes everything.

Today, I’m speaking with a man who has extensive experience as a journalist and on applying the Christian worldview to everything that happens in society. He was vice president and associate publisher of World News Group. You love World Magazine? I love World Magazine.

Before he became the Vice President for Mission Advancement for the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, now he heads up Ministry Watch, which profiles the integrity of evangelical ministries to ensure responsible giving. It is an amazing conversation that’s very diverse, that has a lot of practical application for how we live and give, and even the difference between what it means to be kind and to be nice. Please welcome Warren Smith to the show. Warren Smith, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Warren Smith (01:13):
Jeff, it’s great to be with you and yet to actually see you because like you said before we started, our ships have been passing in the night.You’ve been speaking at Summit and I have too, but not at the same time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:23):
We have been in a two week long program. It’s more likely than not that we won’t have a chance to connect during that time. So I’m glad we have a chance to have a conversation now. And we have so much to talk about because you are an author, you are a journalist, you’ve worked with World Magazine for many years. You ran a newspaper for many years.

And now you’re working with a ministry called Ministry Watch, which helps people develop discernment in the ministries that they support. And a lot of fascinating reports coming out of that. Some good things that ministries are doing and also some awful things that different ministries are doing. So we have a ton of things we can talk about today.

Warren Smith (02:05):
Yep. We sure do. It’s great to be on with you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:08):
I’d love to just hear a little of your story growing up. What do you think happened in your growing up years that kind of moved you in the direction of having a journalistic impulse?

Warren Smith (02:24):
Right. Well, I became a Christian when I was 14 years old, made a profession of faith in Christ at that time. I was at a revival service put on by my church. I went to a large megachurch. It’s called Roswell Street Baptist Church, which in the 1970s was one of the largest churches in the Southern Baptist denomination. In fact, the man who baptized me, Dr. Nelson Price, is still alive today. And I hear from him from time to time.

So it was also about that time I had these great mentors in church and this great church environment that shared the gospel with me faithfully and regularly. And there came a point that the Holy Spirit used that to convict me of my sin. And I prayed to receive Jesus when I was 14. Right about that same time, I was obviously in high school, a 14 year old, a freshman in high school, and I had a couple of really great teachers.

(03:19):
One of them, I remember Mrs. Kane, and she was my English teacher, and she really gave me kind of a love for and an interest in writing and in literature. And she was also a Christian believer. And I think that may have had, even though I went to the public schools, we had a lot of Christians as teachers in our public school system then. Another teacher, Wanda Patterson, was the journalism teacher at our high school. And there was a great, we had a really excellent high school newspaper. I didn’t know it at the time. I just thought it was our school paper.

But what I have come to find out later was, it was really excellent and it’s won many awards, and it was largely because of Wanda Patterson. So I would say that my sort of coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus and also kind of light bulbs going off for me in the literature and journalistic world happened sort of about the same time.

(04:15):
So I really think about my life as one in which my Christian faith and my love for literature and journalism are kind of a piece. I mean, they’re obviously different, but they developed in me at about the same time. And also too, Jeff, I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the years, as I know you have.

And if I’m interviewing an engineer, I might say, “Hey, how did you get started in your engineering career?” And they might say, “Well, I took my mother’s toaster apart to see how it would work.” Or maybe you’ve had a great career leading kids, mentoring, leadership. You teach a lot on leadership. And I would be willing to bet that you had some great mentors in your life and some great leaders in your life. And you looked at them and said, “I wonder how they did that. I wonder how they do that.”

(05:09):
“What makes them such great leaders?” And then you wanted to imitate them. Well, that happened to me as a writer as well. I would read, I was a reader first and when a book would have an impact on me, some emotional impact on me, I would always usually ask the question, “How did they do that? How did that writer make me cry or make me laugh?” Or whatever it was.

(05:32):
And I wanted to learn how to do that. So again, all of that was kind of working together. I think at the time I was going through it, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old and then beyond, I don’t think I probably could have said it quite that way, but now looking back on it, I really do think that that’s kind of how it was happening that I was growing spiritually and I was also kind of growing in my understanding of the world and how the world operates. And those two understandings were in many ways coming together.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:00):
Warren, I’d be curious to know some of the books that you would recommend that people who are watching or listening to this show right now should read to get a sense of what really great writing is like. Who are some of the people you turn to?

Warren Smith (06:18):
Yeah, that has changed over the years. So I’m going to be a little bit random probably in my talk. But when I was in high school, I had a teacher, Gerald Amicker was his name, Mr. Amicker, and I was an aide for him during one semester. And he made me read a book called The 50 Greatest American Short Stories. He ostensibly told me that he wanted me to read that book so that I could pick out three or four stories that he could teach to his ninth graders the next year or the next semester.

But that book, reading those 50 great short stories, which were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Flannery O’Connor. And I’m drawing a blank on some of the names right now, but John Cheaver, they were the greats. And Steven Crane, The Open Boat, William Faulkner’s Arose for Emily and The Bear were in that book, I recall.

(07:18):
So these were great short stories that I think were formative in my life. When I got to college, I didn’t read a lot of fiction. I read a lot of nonfiction and I was really shaped by C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. I was really shaped by John Stodt and J.I. Packer. Os Guinness’s first book, I think it’s called Our Dust Is Turned to Death. It came out in I believe 74. I started college in 76.

So I read some Os Guinness in those early days. And I did read Lewis’s fiction, but like the Chronicles of Narnia and the space trilogy, but I guess I wasn’t really as taken by his fiction as I was by his non-fiction. I read The Lord of the Rings when I was in high school and then I read it again when I was in college. I would say more recently, people like Wendell Berry, his novel, Jaber Crow is one that I just really love.

(08:17):
Walker Percy, especially a novel called The Movie Goer, which I think really, I think it has a very sophisticated understanding of what media culture is all about. I mean, the book was written in the 1960s, but it is called The Movie Goer. It was about the impact that the movies had on the main character there. Kind of in the nonfiction world that I read, Jeff.

When I speak at Summit, I often talk about how media shapes our worldview. I often refer to Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is a book that I know you know, and that in fact y’all sell in the Summit Library or the Summit Bookstores. So I mean, I could go on and on and I know you don’t want me to, but more books come to mind as I’m talking, but those are maybe a few that might partially answer your question.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:08):
Well, I think that’s a great place to start. And I know a lot of the people who are watching and listening are saying, “Please don’t give me one more book to read. That’s all you do is tell me I should be reading more books.” We do obviously tell students at Summit, if you want to be a leader, you’ve got to be a reader, but often we’re telling them, we’re giving them recommendations of books based on the information contained in those books.

What you’ve given us is a little bit of a list of books that will help us learn how we can aspire to put our thoughts down on paper in a way that communicates vividly for others. So thank you. I appreciate that. I didn’t anticipate asking that question, but I think that’s, yeah.

Warren Smith (09:48):
I can’t remember who it was that said to me, I’d heard it recently, but it really deeply resonated with me, that we should read books or let me say it a different way.

We should understand that when we read books, we are not merely receiving information, but we are actually receiving formation, that we are being formed by the media that we consume, the books that we read, the podcasts that we listen to, and we should be aware that that’s going on, even if it’s not necessarily our intention that a particular book or a particular TV show or movie forms us, that is probably what’s happening. So we should be happening. So we should know about it. We should be aware of it. We should be intentional about that process.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:34):
Yeah. That actually leads me directly into the next question I wanted to ask, Warren. You and John Stone Street wrote a book called Restoring All Things. And what I love about the book, there are several things about it. I love the fact that you are able to take some of these interviews that you’ve done in the past, some of the stories that you have told and put them into the book, but that alone would not make a good book necessarily.

What makes a good book is the underlying premise, which is that Christianity is not just something for inside the church. It is something that when lived out is transformational. And so that was the formation part in addition to the information. Could you talk a little bit about how you arrived at that realization? Because I still think a lot of people don’t really see that. They see church as something you go to rather than something you bring out. Yeah.

Warren Smith (11:40):
It’s a great question. And by the way, I should also add, Jeff, I think maybe you and I have had this conversation before, but just in case we have, and even if we have, maybe for our listeners, Summit was essential in the creation of restoring all things. I was coming to Summit by then.

I’d been there a couple of years and was speaking pretty regularly about how media shapes our worldview and media bias and some of the other things that I know a little bit about. But at the same time, especially about, I think it was 2014, I was the scholar in residence at Summit, spent most of the summer there. And I heard you speak a lot. I heard you speak probably four or five, six times a week. I’d sit in the back of the room while you were speaking to the students.

(12:23):
I heard John Stonestreet speak a lot. That was probably the year that John and I became very close. And I began to realize that some of what I was saying and some of what I was doing in my career at World Magazine at that time, which was basically storytelling. I know you’ve had Marvin Alaska on the program and he’s talked about biblical storytelling on your show before. I was really resonating with a lot of what John was talking about and a lot of what you were talking about.

And John and I kind of conceived that book on the beautiful evenings that you have there in Manitou Springs, Colorado. But a part of what we came to pretty quickly was that as Abraham Kuiper said, God is sovereign over all things, not just the church, as you say, but we go not to the church, but we go from the church and we minister to the world that the gospel is not only good for me personally, and it certainly is, it’s not only good for the church, but it is good for the world.

(13:25):
The gospel is for the life of the world. And one of the things that I was hearing at Summit over and over again from you, from John Stonestreet, and it began to become a part of my thinking was that we evangelicals do a really great job of what I have come to call the first three chapters of the biblical story, the biblical meta narrative, you might say, creation, fall, and redemption, we get pretty well. We kind of understand that.

The church is pretty consistent about preaching that and teaching that. But that fourth chapter that we call in restoring all things, restoration, the restoring of all things, the fact that God has not only saved us from hell, from death, from sin, but he has saved us for something, for the life of the world, to be his agent, his instrument of restoration in this world.

(14:24):
So that’s really the genesis of that book, in my view. And I think John would agree with me, we owe Summit a great deal for being able to codify those ideas and say them relatively succinctly in the book. And then we divided the book into various areas of life. We’ve got a chapter on education. We’ve got a chapter on the pro-life movement. We’ve got a chapter on the arts and entertainment.

We’ve got, again, going back to Kuiper, that all things belong to God. Kuiper famously had that saying that there’s not one thumbs width or not one square inch of all of creation over which Christ, who was sovereign overall, does not declare mine. So we wanted to take all those spheres of life and devote a chapter to them. And John, even though when I look back at the book, it’s hard for me to tell which pages he wrote and which pages I wrote because we edited each other’s pages pretty deeply.

(15:17):
The basic format was that John provided a lot of the theological and philosophical underpinnings for each chapter, and I provided the stories for each chapter, but based on the reporting and journalism that I’ve been doing for many, many years. But like I say, I think we both kind of contributed to each other’s section so that by the end of it, it’s kind of hard to tell the difference even for me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:37):
Well, you’re a great writer and John’s a great writer. He’s a great editor. I think I look back at my books, Understanding the Times, Understanding the Faith, Understanding the Culture. Those books would not be what they are if John had not gone through them line by line and really helped me, helped bring them to life.

Warren Smith (15:55):
Well, that was certainly true of my experience with John as well. There was a great collaboration. I don’t think we had, I’ve co-written books with lots of, I wouldn’t say lots of people, but four or five people, including Marvin Alaski and people you know, Jeff. I don’t think there was one crossword between John and me during that whole process, which is not always the case because when you write something, it comes out of your heart, your soul, your life experience, and sometimes it’s tough to let go of it. But it was a really great experience for me at least.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:24):
Are there particular stories that emerged from not just the stories you told in Restoring All Things, but as a journalist, stories that you have told that stick with you, that are in your heart and in your mind that you regularly think about, that demonstrate this principle of restoration?

Warren Smith (16:46):
Well, there are a lot of stories that are in the book. In fact, I think we did a count at some point and discovered that there are about 70 stories that, sometimes the stories are only a paragraph for too long, but sometimes they go on for a number of pages. I think, Jeff, to answer your question would be one that is very personal with me. It’s the story that’s at the very end of the book.

In fact, the only parts of the book that John and I each wrote separately, and we didn’t kind of submit to the other for editing, was right at the end of the book. I wrote a little personal story and John wrote a personal story. And we wanted to let the reader know that this idea of restoring all things and some of the principles that we were talking about in the book were also a real part of our lives as well.

(17:37):
And the story that I tell is actually a story of my father. My father is a Korean War veteran. He’s still alive, 91 years old. In fact, I saw him yesterday, took him to a doctor’s appointment yesterday in Atlanta, but he fought in some of the worst battles in Korea, Heartbreak Ridge, the Punchbowl, some of the really, they call them the hill battles of Korea. They were some of the worst battles in Korea.

And one day he was in a very forward position and he saw a guy in a Jeep over a period of several hours winding his way up in very exposed terrain to get to my dad, to get to where he was and where my dad was. And every once in a while, the North Koreans or the Chinese would lob a mortar shell to try to hit the only moving thing that they could see on this mountainside, but they missed him and the guy kept coming, kept coming.

(18:27):
And when he finally got to him, my dad realized because he introduced himself, he was a salvation army chaplain and he just was saying, “Hey, I just want to come and give you guys a word of encouragement and ask if there’s anything I can do for you.” And gave him some paper and pen and offered even to write letters or to send letters back. And my dad had had a very, very negative experience with the church in his early life, and I won’t bore you with those details. I mentioned it a little bit in the book. And that experience with that Salvation Army chaplain, Jeff, was what Greg Koukl would call the pebble in my dad’s shoe.

(19:07):
In the book Tactics, some of our listeners, I know you know it, talk about sometimes you can’t really bring somebody in one short interaction to salvation, but you can put a pebble in their shoe. You can make it so that the gospel is something that they can no longer ignore or dismiss. And that Salvation Army chaplain’s courage and perseverance to come across that exposed ridgeline to minister to my dad was the pebble in my dad’s shoe.

He ultimately did make a profession of faith in Christ. And of course, all three of us kids are now Christians as well. And I share that story because we don’t know who that Salvation Army chaplain is. My dad didn’t know then. I certainly don’t know today. Only God knows and his name and his fame are lost to history, but he had a very, very powerful impact on my dad’s life, on my life, on my kids’ life, through me.

(20:06):
And to me, that story is kind of an encouragement to me to be faithful in the small things, to do the things that God has called you to do. Don’t look for big platforms, don’t look for book sales or even podcasts like we’re on right now, even though I welcome these opportunities and I’m grateful for them.

But Chuck Colson, who I know you know, knew Jeff, and was one of my mentors, used to say, “Stay at your post and do your duty.” That is what the Christian life is all about. And I think that that’s an important lesson of restoring all things and kind of what we were trying to communicate there is this faithfulness in the small things is what really matters in the economy of God.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:53):
Yeah. Man, what a great story. Well, I’m so grateful for your dad, for his service to our country and the lesson there that the unknown person is the one who ministered. And as George Elliot said, many influential people rest in unknown tombs, but if we are faithful that God takes those efforts and uses them, that’s an incredible word of encouragement.

I’d love to move into talking about the organization that you head up now called Ministry Watch. You are probably well loved by a lot of donors and have greatly irritated a lot of Christian ministries. Because you focus on holding them accountable, you bring, I don’t know how to say it, but you bring a journalistic sensibility to examining ministries and making sure that they are accountable, which as a journalist, you do differently than somebody, say, who is an accountant, who is looking at their books and giving them stars or taking away stars or whatever else.

(22:11):
I’m curious about that work. First of all, let me ask it from a donor perspective. There are so many people who are doing such great work and they need funding, but there are also a lot of people out there who are asking for funding, who aren’t stewarding it well. And I’m curious how you go about discerning the difference and how a donor might be helped in doing that.

Warren Smith (22:43):
Right, right. Well, I appreciate that question. First of all, just in a nutshell, Ministry Watch exists to bring transparency and accountability to the ministry marketplace. And we think that by bringing transparency and accountability, that will also bring increased credibility to the ministry marketplace as well.

And as you say, we do that by doing investigative, what I like to call accountability journalism, because not everything that we do is hardcore investigative stuff. Sometimes it’s just simply a matter of, a big ministry releases a new annual report and we will report what is in that annual report and maybe ask some tough questions, but for the most part, we’re not trying to do a 60 minutes expose.

(23:27):
And we do analyze the financial statements of the thousand largest Christian ministries in the country and we put them on our website and we give them grades, transparency grades and financial efficiency grades as well. So that’s what we do. I guess, Jeff, in that answer that I just gave you comes a number of the principles that we use, primarily this idea of transparency and accountability, those two words are guiding lights.

I guess they’re the left and right guardrail for us down on the road that we travel might be a way to put that. We believe that Christians are people of the light, therefore we should stand in the light, that the Bible says the truth will set you free. And I believe that it always sets you free. It never doesn’t set you free. Now, obviously the Bible also says to speak the truth in love.

(24:27):
So there is a discernment and a wisdom that we have to use so that we’re not taking facts, individual truths, you might say out of context, but putting them in a larger context. So there are some skills, some discernment that kind of goes into the process. But I would say in a nutshell, this idea of transparency and accountability just keeps showing up over and over again. We let those two be our guiding principles.

So for example, we look for ministries that do annual audits. And if an organization doesn’t do an annual audit, we view that as a red flag. If we look for organizations that release their Form 990s to the public, I don’t want to get too much into the weeds here, Jeff, but a Form 990 is like a tax return and it has a lot of important information. And donors, I believe, deserve to see that information before they give.

(25:23):
By the way, I should mention that Summit does both of those things. So we think that is a very good sign. So congratulations on that. We think that organizations should have an independent board of directors. So the two that I just mentioned relate to transparency, accountability would relate to things like governance, the board of directors. We think that every organization, every Christian ministry should make the names of their board known to the public. That’s on the Form 990.

So if they’re releasing their Forum 990s, it will be there. We think that that board should be independent, which means that they don’t, Jeff, you don’t have your kids or your spouse or your biggest vendors on your board. I mean, you’ve got people that will look you in the eye and tell you the truth about your own behavior if that’s necessary. And because listen, trust me, for all of us, for Jeff, for you, for me, it will be necessary at some point.

(26:25):
And I don’t know, you’ve been at this long enough and are old enough, maybe you can agree with what has happened to me. I’ve had my board have to tell me some tough things from time to time. They’ve had to tell me no from time to time. And I might not have liked it at the time, but in retrospect, I thank God that they were there to protect me and to say no to me from time to time.

So again, we could talk all day. I could talk all day about this. You probably don’t want me to, but transparency, accountability, those are the two words that I just keep coming back to. So those become sort of our guiding principles. Does it contribute to transparency? Does it contribute to the accountability of the senior leadership? And so that’s what we do.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:12):
Yeah. Well, of course, we focus on that a lot at Summit. We have a well-known auditing firm who looks through our books every year. It’s a lot of work to maintain that kind of transparency and accountability. The Form 990 that you’re talking about is extensive. It takes a lot of preparation. We have a person who spends about three months of every year just filing forms with all 50 states because we have donors who contribute to Summit from all 50 states and the amount of paperwork is immense.

And in here, this ends up being a little bit of a rub sometimes with people. A lot of people have said, “You know what? We don’t want that information released to the public. And our reasons, stated reasons are that our board members will be harassed, they’ll be doxxed, our top donors will be harassed.” So what they do is kind of take refuge, Christian ministries saying, “Well, we’re a church and all that information is protected by religious freedom, so we don’t have to release it.” I’m curious what you think about that trend, because I can see arguments pro and con.

Warren Smith (28:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, let me acknowledge that religious liberty really does matter. We care about it here at Ministry Watch as well, and we think that it should be protected. As a journalist, I care about the First Amendment, and not only is freedom of the press in the First Amendment, but freedom of religion or freedom from the establishment of religion by the government and the free exercise of religion, all three of those, plus a couple of other freedoms are in the First Amendment.

So these are important. They’re not ancillary to me at all. However, again, I keep coming back to this notion of transparency and accountability. We think that the trend that we are seeing of ministries to claim what is known as the church exemption, in other words, they claim to be a church so that they don’t have to release their Form 990s to the public is a problem.

(29:17):
The problem that it is trying to address is real. We acknowledge that, but we do not believe that claiming to be a church, so you don’t have to release your Form 990s is the right solution to that problem. For one thing, Jeff, you can release your Form 990s to the public without releasing your list of donors. The donor list is on what’s called the Schedule B as in bravo of the Form 990. You don’t have to release that to the public.

So you don’t have to reveal the identity of your donors. You do have to reveal the identity of your board on a Form 990, but from our point of view, we think that’s important. I do think that there is a This that donors will get docked, I’m sorry, that board members will get doxed, that they might be harassed. There have been a few examples of that in the past few years.

(30:13):
But in my view, the risk is very, very small and the cost of not releasing 990s is much, much greater than at least currently the risk is. Now, check back with me in five years and I might see that the risk profile has changed and that this solution is not the best solution, but the position of Ministry Watch right now is that Christian ministries should not claim the church exemption unless in fact they are churches, that they’re doing Marion and Burien and having Sunday services and administering the ordinances or the sacraments of communion and baptism and so on.

So I object to Christian ministries claiming to be churches based on the sort of practical side, transparency and accountability side, but also theologically speaking. They are not churches. They are not doing what the Bible, what a biblical definition or understanding of the local church does. And so I would have concerns on both scores. So that’s my answer, Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:22):
Yeah, that’s really helpful. Show the book real quick. I know you have it handy there, Faith-Based Fraud. So this book, there are probably a lot of people who are watching and listening right now who may be contributing to ministries that aren’t committed to transparency and openness. They kind of like what they do. They’ve heard that person speak, they like them. But you share a lot of stories in that book of ministries that are doing things that don’t seem to be good stewardship at all and that even seem shady. Yeah.

Warren Smith (32:01):
Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. And I want to be really clear, Jeff, that what we do at Ministry Watch and the stories that I tell in faith-based fraud are not designed to tear down the church at all. In fact, the subtitle of the book is Learning From the Great Religious Scandals of Our Time.

My goal in the book and what we try to do at Ministry Watch is, again, to go back to the restoring all things idea that we began our conversation with Jeff, is that we’re trying to create principles for good governance, for increased transparency and accountability, and when necessary for restoration. We do not believe that just because a ministry falls into scandal or some other kind of a problem, whether it be financial, sexual, whatever, whether it be a ministry or a leader, that there cannot be restoration. Thank God there can be restoration.

(33:01):
And that’s happened in my own life. I’m guessing it’s probably happened in your life more than once. In fact, I’ve got a friend who says that he doesn’t know anybody that is being really used by God, that hasn’t been severely broken at least once in his life. And I think that there’s a lot of truth in that.

So restoration is what God’s in business doing, but it also I think requires humility on our part. It requires confession. It requires repentance, which means turning from the old behavior and getting back on a path of biblical behavior. So I’m trying to do that in the stories of this book, and that’s kind of what we try to do at Ministry Watch as well. Again, not to tear down, but to build up, to be engaged with God in the process of restoration. But Jeff, there’s a theologian that’s named F.F. Bruce.

(34:00):
I really don’t know much about him other than this one quote that I heard when I was in college that says, “The acknowledgement of sin is the beginning of salvation.” And I think that that’s true on an individual level, that we really can’t receive the saving grace of Jesus until we’re willing to admit that we’re broken, that we’re sinners, that we need a savior. I think that’s true on an organizational level as well, and that we need to face the brokenness in ourselves as leaders and in our organizations.

And I think too, and I know this may be beyond the scope of what you want to talk about today, Jeff, but I think candidly, the evangelical church has some reckoning to do. I think that some of the scandals that we’ve seen recently with Willow Creek and Ravi Zacharias and James McDonald, and the list unfortunately goes on for a while, are indications that not only are these individuals experiencing a brokenness from which there needs to be healing, but that we as a church have tolerated this kind of behavior maybe for longer than we should, and that we are in some ways complicit in that behavior because we have been silent.

(35:25):
Our mentor, Chuck Colson, used to talk about the spiral of silence, that silence really is complicity in evil behavior. And so I’m hoping that this book and what we do at Ministry Watch maybe opens up that conversation and allows us to talk a little bit more openly about our brokenness, brings some humility to us, but also to the extent that that does happen, it also really opens up the channel for God’s grace to operate in our lives, in our ministries, and in the evangelical world generally.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:59):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s going to be super helpful for people who are donors. And I hope that everybody who watches and listens to this show is donating, that they’re generously contributing to the work of the gospel in their own communities and around the world. But I want to also ask, the journalistic aspect of this, the students I’m working with these days do not want to be disliked. They don’t like it when there is conflict.

They would rather, if there is conflict, cut people out of their lives than to have the conflict and really resolve it. They would rather just cut it off because they don’t like it. They don’t want their neighbors to give them the stink eye because they believe something that’s different than what their neighbors say. They just want to get along with everybody. Now, as a journalist, you have to be able to conduct interviews, discern what is happening, and then explain it in a way that, to put it charitably, may not be the preferred narrative of the person you are interviewing.

Warren Smith (37:05):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (37:06):
You’ve got to be willing to be disliked in short. Is that about right? And how do you personally grapple with that?

Warren Smith (37:18):
Well, that’s a great question. I don’t have a single answer for that, Jeff, but I’ve got a number of answers that maybe I’ll try to hit shortly. But one of them is what I said earlier, that the truth will set you free. The truth always sets us free. The truth never doesn’t set us free.

And even though journalism is being practiced badly these days by a lot of people, and I acknowledge that, I think that journalism practiced well is in fact the process of truth seeking. And so to that extent, I view what I do at Ministry Watch and what I did when I was at the World Magazine and as really a godly vocation. It is a vocation that really done right, done well, sort of springs out of these biblical ideas. Number two, I think it’s also important to differentiate the biblical idea of kindness.

(38:24):
The Bible absolutely commands us to be kind. It’s one of the fruit of the spirit, right? From what, I was raised in the South, Jeff, I think you were raised in the South as well. And I know you spent a lot of time in Tennessee, at least. I don’t know if you were born there or not. Our mamas told us to be nice, right? Yep.

Dr. Jeff Myers (38:44):
Yep.

Warren Smith (38:44):
They said, “Be nice.” And I think that in some ways, Satan doesn’t create, that’s not what Satan does, only God can create. Satan corrupts. Satan takes the good things that God has made and he gives us plausible substitutes and tries to make us believe that they are the things that God, I hope I consistently say that. And I think that niceness in our culture has become Satan’s substitute for the biblical idea of kindness.

(39:22):
And so I think that it’s really important for us to understand, kind of, that distinction, that being nice is not necessarily the biblical ideal that we should be striving for. Kindness is the biblical idea, and it is not kind to anyone to allow them to persist in their error. A mentor of mine, Fitzsimmons Allison, who wrote a book called The Cruelty of Heresy.

And what he meant by that was that it might sound nice to say to someone, “There is no hell,” or that there are many ways to get to God other than through Jesus. So I’m not going to judge the way that you choose. But what I would want people to understand is, that is extraordinarily cruel to somebody, to tell them that they’re okay when they’re not okay, when something is good, when it is not good and will lead to destruction.

(40:22):
So that’s kind of another principle that helps to guide me. The other thing too, Jeff, if I could just maybe take one more minute. And I’ve never served in the military. My son was in the Air Force for five years and my dad, we’ve already talked about a little bit. So in some ways regret that I didn’t serve in the military, but I’ve read a lot of military stories.

And one of the things that has struck with me in some of these stories that I’ve read is that the true warrior, the true soldier, doesn’t fight because he hates what is in front of him. He fights because he loves the people who are beside him and behind him. And I think that one of the things that I try to keep in mind at Ministry Watch and in all of my investigative journalism is that, and I learned this once again at Summit, or at least partially at Summit, the idea that ideas have consequences that comes from Richard Weaver, you guys say it a lot at Summit, but you also say at Summit, that’s at least where I first heard it, bad ideas have victims.

(41:31):
And so I try to keep in mind in the work that I’m doing that bad behavior produces victims. Bad ideas produce bad behaviors and bad behaviors produce these victims, and that part of our role is to defend the defenseless, to be an advocate for the victims. We’ve already talked about donors, but to be an advocate for donors as well.

So Jeff, no one of those little anecdotes that I just shared with you probably provide a complete answer for how I can kind of keep getting up every morning and doing my job whenever a lot of people don’t like what we do, but those principles really do guide me that kindness is better than niceness and that bad ideas have victims and that some of those victims need defending and that my love motivated by the gospel is to be a father to the followers, to defend the defenseless. And I think that that’s what we try to do at Ministry Watch.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:35):
And that the truth will set you free.

Warren Smith (42:37):
Amen.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:39):
Yeah. That’s great. I’m so grateful for your answer. I’m taking away a lot from that, especially the distinction between niceness and kindness. That is really helping me personally as I’m trying to work through a bunch of different, the kinds of conflicts you get into when you have a ministry like Summit where people don’t always agree with you or like you or sometimes even hate you because of the stands that you take. Warren, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Warren Smith (43:08):
It’s been my pleasure. Jeff, you ask great questions. It’s always fun to hang out with you even if it’s virtually. So thanks a bunch and I hope we get to do it face to face real soon.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:15):
Me too. A special thank you to my guest, Warren Smith, for joining the show today. You can follow him on Twitter @warrencolesmith and visit ministrywatch.com. For the latest news about the ministries you care about, you can also listen to the Ministry Watch podcast to hear what’s happening in the world of ministry these days.

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(44:09):
Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show. It’s a podcast from Summit Ministries, summit.org. Summit is a nonprofit ministry that exists to equip and support the rising generation to embrace God’s truth and champion a biblical worldview.

For nearly 60 years, Summit Ministries has been training students and those who work with students to develop, deepen and defend a biblical worldview through life-changing conferences, thoughtful church, homeschool, and Christian school, curriculum books, free online resources and more. If you want to live out a biblical worldview in today’s world and you desire to instill a lifelong faith in the rising generation, visit summit.org/thedrjeffshow for more information.