A Negative Critique of an Actual Good Statement by Paul Washer

I've never met Paul Washer or heard him in person.  He has become well known among conservative evangelicals.  He has preached at Grace Community Church, Masters College, and the G3 Conference.  Often, Todd Friel refers to him on his Wretched program.  He is the founder and director of Heart Cry Missionary Society.  He was a missionary to Peru for ten years.  I'm using him for this post because of good things I hear from and have heard from him.

Paul Washer entitles this presentation:  "Churches Using Carnal Means to Attract Carnal People."  I agree with a very large percentage of it. He starts out with this:

Because we have dumbed down the gospel, because we're not preaching the true gospel, and we are using carnal means to attract people.  If you use carnal means to attract men, you're going to attract carnal men.  And you're going to have to keep using greater carnal means to keep them in the church.

I'm right with him on that.  I agree that those could be the two biggest problems going, if not the first and third biggest problems with the second the corruption of the biblical doctrine of sanctification.  However, Washer is very concerned about that too, as seen in recent tweets by him (his last three):

The Apostle Paul and James are not teaching contrary doctrines of salvation. Paul addresses the cause of our salvation (faith), while James addresses the result of our salvation (works). From both writers, we gain a comprehensive or holistic view of the work of God in salvation.

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 11, 2019

Salvation by faith will result in works or obedience to the will of God. Yet even these works are not to be attributed primarily to the one who performs them but to the God who gives grace — Paul wrote, “But by the grace of God I am what I am" (I Corinthians 15:10).

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 12, 2019

Those who have been saved by faith will begin to live in increasing conformity to God’s will, not by their own strength, but because they have been regenerated and indwelt by God's Spirit. They are God's work, for God's glory. They will not be lost because God will not lose them!

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 14, 2019

Washer repudiates using carnal means in the church to attract men to church, because it will result in attracting carnal men.  I also agree that it will necessitate greater carnal means to keep those carnal men.  However, does Paul Washer fellowship with churches that use carnal means?  Conservative evangelicalism is full of them.  They still use plenty of carnal means in their youth groups (Washer mentions "youth groups"), including the rock music and rock concerts, which are carnal music.

He continues:

We have these large churches fill with unconverted, carnal people.  But in those churches we have this small group of people that honestly want Christ, and they honestly want His Word and they honestly want to be transformed.  They don't need anything else.  All they need is true worship of the true God and scripture being preached to them and lived out before them.  That's what they want. 

Now I want to tell you the great sin of the American pastor.  And this has got me in a lot of trouble, but it's true.  This small group of converted people in that local church, all they want is Jesus and all they want to do is the right thing.  They want purity, they want truth, they want Christ, but the pastor, in order to keep this larger group of unconverted people, he caters to them.  So while he's feeding these carnal men and women with carnal things, he's letting the sheep of God starve to death and he's going to stand before God one day in judgment.

Then Washer gives an illustration to try to motivate people to do something about this, to stand for these people in these churches.  This was the essence of everything that he said.  You can listen to the rest of it, but I want to comment on the two paragraphs coming from him.

I agree that there are these large churches full of unconverted people.  Their pastors have told me themselves that they have mainly unconverted people attending their churches.  They know it.  They are doing exactly what Washer says.  There really are a smaller group of people in these churches in many cases, just like he described.  It's sad but true, what he's saying.  But what's missing?

Washer calls on people to do something about what he's describing as very bad, but I have found something else about these people in these churches.  These "good people" very often have a church to which they could join that isn't using carnal methods and is doing all the good things that he describes about a good church.  I've talked to them many times.  I've told them about the difference.  I've been doing this for over thirty years.  What do the "good people" do?  They stay in their carnal churches using carnal methods.

The "good people" in the churches according to Washer's description, I've met.  They don't want this church described.  They want, as I've seen it, some fictional church that is halfway between the carnal method church and the one Washer describes.  They also don't want to give up their carnality as much as he describes.  What would someone do who wanted it?  He would separate from the carnal church, which is a practice of biblical separation.

As well, what should anyone do to rescue these people?  Washer says the people who do nothing about it are as guilty as the people doing it.  What do they do though?  The small group needs to be taught by people like Washer to join another smaller group, one that isn't using carnal methods.  The small group that loves the Lord as Washer describes can leave in a biblical manner.  If a Roman Catholic is converted, truly so with a true gospel, he should leave the Catholic church.

I ask, can you worship God in your church?  We have a tract with that title.  A person who can't worship God in his church, because it uses carnal worship and doesn't preach a true gospel or have a true God, should leave that church and go to one that does.  Carnal churches are hard to leave.  They have friends, sometimes family, carnal music, carnal methods, and the size to provide certain comforts and conveniences.  The truth, separation from worldliness, and transformation aren't as important as these things to most of these "good people."

The kind of church that stays pure is a shock to the system of the person who has stayed for a long time at a "carnal church."  A church doesn't stay pure by accident.  It requires discipline.  It doesn't draw in the visitors like the carnal church.  It's easier to get people to come and feel that rush of success.  What might go along with the purity is a personal separation that the "good people" are not accustomed to.

To wrap this up, Washer doesn't mention separation.  Separation is all over the Bible and in nearly every New Testament book.  There is an actual section on separation in most of the epistles, and yet evangelicals rarely make a peep about separation, including the conservative ones.  Washer himself hobnobs with evangelicals.  Those are his people.  I don't see him with separatists.

On Washer's website, I saw him preaching to a large crowd of evangelicals filling up a gigantic cathedral in Paris.  How did they draw that big crowd in Paris?  To get a large group of people together, doctrinal or practical barriers are diminished or removed.  That alone is a method.  Is it a godly method to decide to devalue doctrine and practice for the purpose of a larger group, finding commonality by moving doctrines and practices into non-essential categories?

If the good people separated from carnal churches, those churches would get the message that they are losing their good people because of their ungodly beliefs and practices.  That's what they should do.  Then the smaller, godly, pure churches would get bigger.  This doesn't happen because these good people are not so good as Paul Washer thinks and says.  They are not walking by faith, but walking by sight.  They won't "go outside the camp" to identify and suffer with the people of God.  Paul Washer himself stays within the confines of the fellowship of that crowd.