What I think about Joel Osteen

For some reason, people ask me all the time what I think about Joel Osteen. "He has pretty teeth" is my most common response, but then they press me to critique his theology and approach since he has become the voice of Christianity to the masses and (in many ways) our ambassador to unchurched people everywhere. He has taken much criticism for his "health and wealth" style of preaching, but the fruits of him ministry are undeniable. I hate to presume to "critique" a fellow pastor (especially one whose impact is roughtly one trillion times that of my own), but in fairness to all of you who have questioned me on this, I now feel compelled to record a few thoughts on the issue. Here are my candid thoughts on Joel taken verbatim from an email I sent as a response to a question on Joel and his brand of preaching...

These are tough issues, because the message of “abundance/health/wealth” is so intoxicating and attractive. In some ways, I feel that God uses people like Joel (whom I believe to be sincere) to make Christianity attractive to unbelievers and baby Christians. In the same way, the reality that I create for my toddlers has more candy and fluff than real life will when they reach adulthood, but it’s all they can understand at the time so their sense of reality isn’t so much “untrue” as much as it’s just immature. In the Kingdom of Heaven, I see Joel as the Kindergarten teacher. We need good, uplifting, encouraging Kindergarten teachers (and Lord knows we have plenty of Kindergarten Christians). The problem arises when people stay in Kindergarten. We are called to continuous growth and the more we mature in Christ, the less we will be fueled by abundance for our own personal pleasure and the more we will become concerned about abundance for the sake of reaching others with the life-changing message of Christ who is greater than any material treasure we could ever imagine.