The founder of one of the nation’s leading ministries wants the church to refocus its mission, which is to inspire people to follow Jesus Christ.
Andy Stanley, founder of Alpharetta-based North Point Ministries, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian organizations, said the church “will be here long after the Democratic and Republican parties are gone.”
Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church, recently sat down with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to talk about topics ranging from the political and cultural divide sweeping the United States, the church’s role today and how his church keeps young families coming in despite declining attendance elsewhere.
He also talked about the rift and subsequent healing in his relationship with his father, Dr. Charles F. Stanley, a globally recognized televangelist who died in 2023 after building a megachurch in First Baptist Church of Atlanta and then a religious empire with the nonprofit organization In Touch Ministries.
On social media, “everybody has a microphone and the more extreme you are on social media, the more people will listen to you,” said the soft-spoken Stanley, who sounds more like a neighbor chatting across the fence than a lectern-thumping preacher.
“So, you can raise money in the extremes. You can get followers in the extremes,” said Stanley, the father of three adult children. “You can’t raise money in the middle and you don’t get much attention in the middle, but most people live in the middle. They wake up, they get their kids in school, go to work, pay their bills, go to the grocery store, watch a few Netflix favorites, go to bed, get up and do it again.”
Stanley, 66, a political conservative, addresses some of this in his 2022 book “Not In It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church” in which he criticized some evangelical leaders, podcasters and media personalities of being too focused on the notion of winning.
Today, he still maintains too many are mired in the extremes politically and culturally and he knows he’s likely to catch flak for that opinion as he has at times throughout his ministry.
Founded in 1995, Stanley’s nondenominational North Point Ministries has grown from one location in Alpharetta to eight campuses around metro Atlanta with more than 70,000 active attendees.
Below are excerpts of the Stanley’s interview with the AJC, edited for clarity and length:
On cultural, religious and political divides
You and I live in Atlanta and for the past several years, driving through that interchange of (Interstate) 285 and (Ga.) 400 — where they’ve done this extraordinary feat of engineering, never shutting down any of those lanes — every time I would drive through, I would say to Sandra (his wife), ‘We’re not divided. Look at this. ... We know how to get along. We know how to work together. It’s just that in terms of who gets the attention, it’s the people who don’t want us to and who can make the most money and get the most attention by stirring up controversy.
Fear is a powerful motivator and in a political season like we just came through, everybody gins up the fear because we’re supposed to be afraid of the people in the other party. Then it all settles down. We all go back to work.
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Challenge to the church
The challenge in the church — and one of the things I am interested in addressing if I have any influence left with evangelicals these days — the evangelical church because of what’s happened politically has swung to the right toward fundamentalism. And most people don’t understand the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism, but there’s a huge difference.
Fundamentalist extremes are toxic and they create hypocrites, which means they create people who can’t tell the truth about what they’re doing while they expect other people to do what they’re supposed to do but don’t do. ... So because of what has happened politically, my opinion is the evangelical church has been tugged and pulled over to the right in this unhealthy way, and it’s become too fundamentalist.
Evangelicals think I’ve swung far left. I haven’t. The thing is, if you go way right, more people are to the left of you. People say ”Well, Andy’s changed and he’s compromised.” Of course I know I haven’t. ... I don’t believe anything different than I did 30 years ago: I communicate differently. I’ve tried to adjust in terms of how the culture has adjusted so that I could speak to people who have, again, walked away from faith or aren’t interested in faith, so some of that has changed. ... But in terms of core beliefs and confidence in the Gospel, none of that has changed.
One of the things that’s heartbreaking to me is, as a Christian and as an evangelical, our primary responsibility is to present the teachings of Jesus in such a way that they’re winsome and attractive — because it’s called “good news” and this is good news because we’re about to celebrate Christmas. And when the angel announced the birth of Jesus, the angel said, “I bring you good news and great joy,” not for Republicans, not for Democrats, (but) for all people.
The fact is that so many churches and, really, church leaders, have swung so far right. Basically their message is, “We want to reach people for Jesus who are Republicans.” Because the messaging is clear: If you’re a Democrat you’re not welcome here. Which means most of the African-American people in America, you’re not welcome. All of my African-American friends grew up as Democrats and still pretty much vote Democrat. ... So that whole messaging of “Yeah, we want to reach people for Jesus,” but then they’ve become so political they’ve said to half the country, “We don’t want to reach you,” for a certain type of person, which is basically the definition of Christian nationalism.
On his vision for North Point and growth:
I just, literally, wanted to create one really good church and, by really good I mean an outward-facing church where you get rid of everything that was a potential obstacle to people who were interested in faith, had left the faith or were coming to faith. Of course now everybody is sort of doing the same thing, but we’re in year 30. So 30 years ago, you know, we were considered kind of radical. ... We weren’t even trying to be cool.
As a preacher’s kid who loves church and never strayed from my faith, I have always been convinced that following Jesus will make a person’s life better and make them better at life. It will make him a better father, better husband, employer and better employee. So, I just was fortunate to have had an opportunity after working for my dad for 10 years to start from scratch with a group of people who shared that vision.
Finding healing with his father
(North Point Community Church) started big. We had about 800 core people, including children, so that was a big church from day one and most of them came from my dad’s church, which you know is a whole story in itself and I’ve written about how he and I made peace with all of that. I wasn’t trying to steal people from his church but my parents went through a difficult divorce. I didn’t feel like I could stay. I had sort of become like a lightning rod.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
I wrote a book called “Deep and Wide.” In Chapter 2 I tell that whole story, and the interesting thing about that is when I wrote this chapter about my relationship with my Dad and all that tumultuous time, I went over to his house and said, “Dad I want to read you this chapter because I need your permission to publish this and if you don’t like it or if there’s something you want me to change, because, you know, it’s personal.”
So I sat there and read that chapter to him out loud and we both cried and cried because, you know, it brought up stuff. When I finished, he paused and looked at me and said “You need to publish that just the way it is. That’s exactly what happened and that’s going to help a lot of fathers and sons.” And that just says so much about him that through all the pain and stuff that we went through he was like, you know, this is real life.
On online worship
We are growing. You know COVID changed everything for everybody. Everything speeded up and slowed down all at the same time. So coming out of COVID we did not hold live services for a year ... so consequently when we reopened our buildings people had got accustomed to watching from home. So people without children, for the most part, to some extent, stayed home (saying), “We give, we love the church but we like pajama church and we’re good.” So people my age, empty nesters, were slower to come back. The people with children are the ones who came back. Our church is growing with young families, which is super healthy and we’ve very excited about that. I couldn’t tell you what the average age is but there are lots of strollers.
“The trend is not toward atheism or agnosticism. The trend is toward I-don’t-go-to-church-ism. People have not abandoned the faith entirely, they’re just lost interest in church and there are so many options. When you and I were growing up, Sunday morning you had to go to church. There was nothing else to do if you didn’t go. Of course, that changed a long time ago.
Our student ministries are big, our middle school ministries are big, our singles, our college. ... We have a college gathering at Buckhead Church on Monday nights and they’ll have 900 to 1,000 college students.
What’s ahead
Healing always — regardless of what the ailment is — healing always takes time so, hopefully, we’ve begun some of that healing but I’m not so sure with divisions within evangelicalism.
A church that leads with the preaching and teaching of Jesus, that’s the kind of church we want to be and I think that’s what every church wants to be because we’re Christians, right?
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