Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley: Stop Preaching “The Bible Says So”

on October 26, 2016

Popular megachurch pastor Andy Stanley has repeatedly encouraged preachers to stop using the phrase “the Bible says so” and its various iterations. In recent weeks, he has doubled down on his claim that it’s time to stop appealing to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, even within the Church, because America is now a “post-Christian” society.

“If you’re trying to reach people with an undergraduate degree or greater, over half your target audience will not be moved by the Bible saysthe Bible teachesGod’s Word is clear or anything along those lines,” Stanley wrote for Outreach Magazine on October 20.

Stanley recently fleshed out this idea during a discussion with Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), at the ERLC’s conference on August 25 and reported on the Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Chelsen Vicari.

Moore prompted Stanley to explain a statement he made in 2014, when he argued that Christians should avoid using “the Bible says” during sermons. While maintaining that he believed in the inerrancy of Scripture, Stanley encouraged pastors to “get the spotlight off the Bible and back on the Resurrection” and “leverage the authority we have in the Resurrection as opposed to Scripture” in order to better reach the secular culture.

Three days later (on August 28), Stanley developed this idea further during a sermon entitled “The Bible Told Me So“. This sermon met with widespread confusion, prompting Stanley to defend his thesis in a lengthy column for Outreach Magazine, as cited above. The text of his column – co-authored with Church of God Pastor Thomas Horrocks under the title Why ‘The Bible Says So’ Is Not Enough Anymore – totaled nearly 7,500 words.

Stanley revealed that he had surreptitiously adopted this approach himself, a tactic he has now employed for the better part of a decade. “Eight years ago I shifted my approach. I didn’t announce it. I just did it,” Stanley wrote.

“As part of my shift, I stopped leveraging the authority of Scripture and began leveraging the authority and stories of the people behind the Scripture,” Stanley later explained. “To be clear, I don’t believe ‘the Bible says,’ ‘Scripture teaches,’ and ‘the Word of God commands’ are incorrect approaches. But they are ineffective approaches for post-Christian people.”

Well-known Baptist pastor John Piper responded to Stanley in a lengthy post of his own (nearly 5,000 words), published October 25 on the website Desiring God. Piper spent the first section of his post (more than 1,500 words) exclusively summarizing Stanley’s argument before making his own case. Indeed, while corresponding with Piper, Stanley commented that Piper’s “response is gracious, thorough, fair, and inspiring.”

Nevertheless, Piper was direct in his critiques of Stanley’s position. He argued “that Stanley’s view might rescue a doubting believer, and at the same time establish in churches and families a view of the Bible which undermines the faith of the next five generations.”

Piper encouraged “younger preachers not to blow off what Andy Stanley says,” but questioned whether Stanley’s proposed solution to reaching America’s “post-Christian” culture was really “the best alternative.” Piper admitted that overtly expositional preaching can often be done poorly, but maintained that sound expositional preaching need not “sound naïve or childish.”

“I am arguing that a God-breathed, inerrant Bible, with Jesus Christ at the center, is explosive with its own intrinsic and self-authenticating glory,” Piper wrote. “The joyful experience of this glory is what every human heart in the preacher’s audience was made for.”

He wrapped up his response to Stanley with a final admonition to preachers.

So my concluding suggestion is this: join Andy Stanley in caring deeply about winning “post-Christians”; join him in moving beyond simplistic and naïve-sounding shibboleths; join him in cultural awareness and insight into your audience; join him in the excellence of his teaching and communication skills; and join him in his belief in the complete truthfulness of the Bible. And then spend eight years blowing your people’s post-Christian circuits by connecting the voltage of every line in the book of Romans with their brains.

When it comes to preaching, nothing is more powerful and self-authenticating than the Spirit-anointed, passionate, expository exultation over the inspired text of Scripture. If you don’t believe that, perhaps you have never seen such preaching.

Piper noted in his introduction that Stanley had told him during their correspondence, “The last two paragraphs made me want to shout, ‘AMEN.'” Thus in theory, if not in practice, John Piper and Andy Stanley arrived at some sort of exegetical common ground in the end.

  1. Comment by Mike Ward on October 26, 2016 at 11:37 am

    This is the have your cake and eat it too approach that the moderate churches tend to take. Unlike the liberal churches they claim to believe what the bible says, but unlike the conservative churches they don’t care what it says. I find them infuriating. I often take a middle of the road approach myself, but that it because I often find myself unsure of what the bible says and unsure of how true it is. But I cannot fathom these Christians who have so much confidence in the bible and their understanding of it, but simply ignore everything they don’t personally like.

  2. Comment by Nutstuyu on October 26, 2016 at 1:39 pm

    I suppose if Stanley were a lawyer, he’d also be telling new associates to stop saying “the law says” or “the statutes say”. Come Lord Jesus, quickly come, and remove these chaff!
    #UMC #ObeyTheBookOfDiscipline #WesleyanCovenantAssociation

  3. Comment by Roger on October 26, 2016 at 5:08 pm

    Jesus loves me this I know because the Bible tells me so. Regardless of the oratory skills of a megachurch Pastor or Layman or the testimony of a new believer, Acts 16: 14 tells about the woman named Lydia, and she was not converted until she heard Paul’s gospel and then God opened her heart. Unless God opens the heart to the hearing of the word, no one will be successful in their ministry.

  4. Comment by Norma Nason on July 28, 2019 at 6:15 pm

    I have spent hours reading about False Teachers,
    who is a Bible, believing teacher who is left???

  5. Comment by Pudentiana on October 26, 2016 at 5:44 pm

    If you are too cool for school; stop pretending to preach the Word.

  6. Comment by AlphaOmega on October 27, 2016 at 11:54 am

    He and Rachel Evans are the Bible-Free Christians.

  7. Comment by RUKiddingme? ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ on November 19, 2016 at 4:08 am

    I often wonder what Charles Stanley feels about his son teaching heresy. It very sad because what Andy is doing is the complete opposite of what his father taught him. I hope he repents.

  8. Comment by John S. on November 21, 2016 at 7:29 am

    What is he teaching that is heresy? Any specifics? Nothing given above is heretical.

  9. Comment by aviya on November 19, 2016 at 11:54 am

    Andy Stanley is a false teacher and a heretic; do not listen to him

  10. Comment by Wesley on November 20, 2016 at 7:32 am

    you mean Andy is a heretic for using St. Paul’s own argument that unless Christ rose from the dead then his own preaching is useless and St. Paul should be pitied as well as all his followers for they are still lost in their sin. i cannot believe all the Bible idolaters who are bashing Andy for pointing everything back to the resurrection of Christ.

  11. Comment by Pesh on July 10, 2017 at 11:02 am

    the word was with God and the word was God. John chapter one. . . so doing away with the bible means doing away with God

  12. Comment by John S. on November 21, 2016 at 7:28 am

    What is he teaching that is heresy?

  13. Comment by Wesley on November 19, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    Andy Stanley is making his case by using St. Paul’s own case when tells the Corinthian Church that if Christ did not rise from the dead that anything he taught was for naught. then St. Paul made his case for the resurrection not from Sacred Scripture, but by pointing his readers to the eyewitness testimony. if Christ did not rise from the dead then the Bible is nothing more than a book of fables. we need to work from the resurrection of Christ back to the Sacred Scriptures by making the case that the early church councils especially the one at Carthage that official canonized the New Testament. the early bishops relied on eyewitness testimony by the original Apostles themselves or close disciples of the original Apostles. the Sacred Scriptures are the recorded testimony of eyewitnesses of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Christ tells St. John that he was alive, died, and lives again emphasizing his own resurrection. everything about Christianity either centers on the resurrection of Jesus Christ or it is just like all the other world religions. the Bible is no different from the Quran if the resurrection never happened.

  14. Comment by Scott “Sable” Miller on November 20, 2016 at 8:45 am

    How do we know about the resurrection? The Bible.

  15. Comment by Overcome Evilgov on November 19, 2016 at 8:31 pm

    If Stanley’s dad, a TV pastor, Charles Stanley, would have spent more time with his family and walked out faith maybe his son wouldn’t be an apostate pastor.

  16. Comment by phishing4men on November 20, 2016 at 4:08 am

    Andy your going to bust hell wide open, your dad must be so proud of you.

  17. Comment by Barbara F. on September 11, 2017 at 5:31 pm

    While I do not agree with Andy Stanley, I do understand what he is saying. I do not know his heart and cannot call him an apostate preacher. Nevertheless, the problem lies in refusing to reference the Bible, the Word of God.

    It does not matter how “modern” the world becomes, souls, new and old, must always, always be reminded that the Bible is our only guideline for this life. Look at those who are not living by the dictates of the Word of God. This is where we get our mass murders and all things ungodly.

  18. Comment by Dewey Shirley on November 23, 2018 at 8:59 am

    Stanley obviously wants to believe only the parts of the Bible with which he agrees. He wants to preach the resurrection, which he read of in The Bible – but he overlooks the fact that this came from the very Bible that he doesn’t believe. Satan has him confused.

  19. Comment by Dewey Shirley on November 23, 2018 at 9:02 am

    Overcome evilgov obviously doesn’t have any children or he/she would never make such a remark about parenting. Children have a mind and will of their own and will do what they want.

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.