Talk:Ed Stetzer

Notability

Ed Stetzer is a leading missiologist and church planting thought leader, widely sought after to train pastors and church leaders of a variety of denominations. This starter page needs additional references, but should be retained within Wikipedia. --DeknMike (talk) 00:26, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

"Leading missiologist" is a bit vague - if he is a "thought leader", then we should have reliable sources demonstrating that his thinking has made an impact. StAnselm (talk) 00:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Working on adding sources DeknMike (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Controversy section

Should the content about James MacDonald buying Stetzer a car from church funds be included in the article? Pinging editors who've been reverting back and forth to discuss: Everything7, SunCrow,Tandehaut,PhilipMelanchthon

The content in contention:

In April 2019, investigative journalist Julie Roys reported that former Harvest Bible Chapel pastor James MacDonald had used church funds to purchase a vintage 1971 VW Beetle (valued at $13,000) as a gift for Stetzer. Stetzer received the car from MacDonald in April 2018. In April 2019, Stetzer asserted that he did not know that MacDonald had used church funds to purchase the vehicle; he added that when he found out that church funds had been used, he reimbursed Harvest in the approximate amount of $13,000. The concern raised by his taking such an unusually large gift was that Stetzer, “who serves as contributing editor for Christianity Today [...] might have improperly impacted the way in which CT reported on the HBC debacle as it unfolded in recent months.”

References

Schazjmd (talk) 23:44, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Schazjmd: No, it shouldn't be included. First of all, the story that's being quoted is about MacDonald, not Stetzer. The "reporter" had an obvious conflict of interest with MacDonald and used the story to tear down anyone connected with him. It also isn't a newsworthy item. This story does not meet the threshold of newsworthiness. It’s a personal blog acting as a single source that has obvious conflict of interest. She did no reporting for the story. There was no contact with the subjects to verify the story. She basically just ran with some hearsay because she was trying to take down MacDonald. Then a website of the lowest reputation (Christian Post) basically rewrote the story from her blog. It's what they do for page views. CP is the "Christian" version of the National Enquirer. There is not a single legitimate news outlet that wrote on this as a controversy—because it wasn't and it shouldn't be included in any Wikipedia page—for MacDonald and surely not for Stetzer. You just can’t say, “this was on a blog and another website reprinted it so it meets Wikipedia standards for credibility and citation.” It does not, it has not, and it will not—even though a small group of editors keeps saying it does. Everything7 (talk) 20:05, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Everything7, personally, I agree. Wald76, since you just restored the contentious content today, could you explain why you feel it belongs in the article? Schazjmd (talk) 20:12, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Schazjmd: We have two questions here: Is this story newsworthy? And if it is newsworthy, is it accurate?

The claim is that Stetzer, a pastor, accepted the gift of a vintage car from another pastor. The gift was worth about $13,000, almost a quarter of the average US pastor’s annual salary. Such a generous gift from a pastor is so astonishing and incredibly unusual that most of us would immediately wonder about the quid pro quo. Making this gift even more noteworthy, James MacDonald (pastor), the gifting pastor, at the time was under increasing criticism for his financial and other improprieties at Harvest Bible Chapel. Two bloggers, Ryan Mahoney and Scott Bryant had been documenting these for many years at The Elephant’s Debt. Stetzer, a contributing editor of the flagship evangelical Christianity Today, was in a key position to influence MacDonald’s struggle with these and other critics.

Some months after giving Stetzer the car, MacDonald learned that his crisis was going to grow much more serious: investigative journalist Julie Roys had recently published an expose of Moody Bible Institute, leading to the expulsion of its President, its COO, and its Provost. Now MacDonald learned that Roys was working on a story about him. He took pre-emptive action and caused Harvest to sue Roys, along with Bryant and Mahoney.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Stetzer’s magazine, Christianity Today, let MacDonald publish a very unusual and one-sided editorial in which he laid out his rationale why the biblical injunction against one Christian suing another Christian in a secular court did not apply to him or his church. A month later Christianity Today published a second very partisan article justifying MacDonald that went so far as to include a full press release by MacDonald.

In response to the lawsuit, Roys instituted a discovery process for relevant church documents to help prove her case. Harvest and MacDonald seemed quite surprised that they had to open their files to Roys and her attorneys, and immediately withdrew the lawsuit to avoid discovery. Roys then began to publish her expose, and the MacDonald scandal blew open. It was picked up by major Chicago area media, including the Chicago Tribune. The church board reluctantly concluded that their critics had been right all along. They fired MacDonald, took control over his radio ministry, and apologized to Roys, Bryant, and Mahoney. The church paid their legal fees, and an additional amount for damages.

As the scandal grew more serious, Stetzer contacted the church to see if MacDonald had misappropriated the funds for the Volkswagen from them. Finding out that they had, he reimbursed the church. This was about a year after he received the VW.

Christianity Today took such a strong pro-MacDonald position that their credibility took a serious hit by taking MacDonald's side so strongly. Did Stetzer influence them to take such an unwise partisan position because of this large gift? Did the magazine ever reprimand Stetzer for violating their conflict of interest policy in such a large way?

If all this is true, then this controversy section is highly relevant content for this article and quite newsworthy. If Stetzer is noteworthy enough to warrant a Wikipedia entry, then it should be more than a WP:PROMO piece.

On to accuracy and supportability. Does Roys have an "obvious conflict of interest with MacDonald"? I have no idea what this could be or why it would be relevant. The Harvest lawsuit was dropped before her articles even appeared.

Is Roys just a “reporter” (in quotes)? No, in fact she’s a graduate of the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. Read her piece on Stetzer and the VW. It’s clearly the work of a trained investigative journalist. She’s very careful to document sources, corroborate with multiple people, and reach out to people on both sides (Stetzer did not respond to her requests, by the way). She’s clearly trustworthy: her prior series on Moody Bible Institute, as mentioned above, was so insightful and accurate that the Institute’s board acted on it and replaced the top tier of managers. If her reporting was as shoddy as Everything7 makes it out to be, she would have been sued for libel instead. The same holds true for her work on Harvest: it was so carefully reported that Harvest’s elder board acted on it and fired MacDonald. And you can read that Harvest cooperated with her and confirmed the financial transactions involving the Volkswagen. If her reporting were as slapdash as Everything7 said, then Harvest or MacDonald would have successfully sued her for libel instead of settling out of court and paying her legal fees. And as far as I know, Stetzer also doesn’t think her reporting of his role in the MacDonald crisis is libelous since he hasn’t sued her or the Christian Post. So yes, I think this story is trustworthy as reported by Roys.

I also believe that the Elephant’s Debt, the Wartburg Watch and other internet journalists who’ve worked over the years carefully documenting MacDonald’s misdeeds have been pretty accurate, including their corroboration of the Stetzer gift.

So to conclude, this controversy section passes my muster for being noteworthy and accurate. I think it should remain as long as it’s respectful of the material and of WP:BLP. The doubled references should be cleaned up. Alternatively, I’d be okay with just removing the article. Wald76 (talk) 03:20, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

@Schazjmd:

I hope I am doing this right as I am relatively new.

I don't know that the answer above really addresses the questions here: is this really a wikipedia level story and is this a source with a conflict of interest?

I am not as much up on all the details as Wald76, but even this description (above) shows a level of interest that is, well, odd. I can tell that Wald76 has a vested interest, but even in the answer, he/she points out the work that Roys did on Moody Bible Institute, but Roys wrote on her blog that she was fired from Moody. (And, I believe Stetzer works there at Moody now, both at the church and on Moody Radio.) That's just another conflict of interest. But, the bigger issue is that Roys blogged on this and a blog is not a source. Then the Christian Post rewrote that blog. But, you still can't source a blog on wikipedia.

As far as accuracy, I can't speak to that. However, saying that "Stetzer has not sued so it must be accurate" does not make sense either.

Oh, and one more thing, the other editor here (Tandehaut) has made edits to two pages-- MacDonald and Stetzer. And, dozens of edits to MacDonald. So, I get that there are a few people really passionate about MacDonald and connecting him to Stetzer, but no one else found this newsworthy. It's only controversial to people upset about the situation and that's not how wikipedia is supposed to work. Wikipedia is not a blog. PhilipMelanchthon (talk) 01:26, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

@Schazjmd: PhilipMelanchthon reminds us of a most salient point: “Roys wrote on her blog that she was fired from Moody. (And, I believe Stetzer works there at Moody now, both at the church and on Moody Radio.) That's just another conflict of interest.”

It’s quite true that Roys was fired from Moody Bible Institute (note that Moody Church is not affiliated with Moody Bible Institute). But listen to Julie talk about her firing.

Three months ago, my career was going precisely to plan. I had just published my first book and had begun receiving invitations to speak at major conferences and large churches. My platform was growing. My radio show was doing well. And I was publishing regularly in Christian periodicals. Life was good until . . .

I blew the whistle on the Moody Bible Institute. Since then, I’ve been fired from my job as a national radio host. I’ve had speaking engagements cancelled. My use of a studio at the offices of a Christian magazine has been revoked. I’ve received vicious hate mail. I’ve lost friends. And I’ve missed several golden opportunities to promote my book at a time crucial to its success. It’s been brutal, both professionally and personally. But I knew this would happen.

I’m not naïve. I’ve been in Christian media and ministry far too long to think I could take on a giant like Moody and not suffer consequences.

So full well counting the cost she would pay by confronting the leadership of Moody Bible Institute, she went ahead and spoke out. Then the leadership fired her. But by deliberately sacrificing her job she catalyzed a major change in that leadership. The President, Provost, and COO were all forced to resign in their turn. PhilipMelanchthon describes Roy’s sacrificial act as a “conflict of interest”. I do not think that phrase means what he and Everything7 think it means. What she did was diametrically *opposed* to “conflict of interest”. She deliberately chose to *sacrifice* her interests to bring out what she (and later the Moody Bible Institute board of directors) saw as serious problems in the MBI leadership. Does the fact that Stetzer currently works for Moody Radio (which I hadn’t known) mean Roys can’t expose his wrong-doing too? Of course not.

PhilipMelanchthon goes on to speculate: “I am not as much up on all the details as Wald76, but even this description (above) shows a level of interest that is, well, odd. I can tell that Wald76 has a vested interest, but even in the answer, he/she points out [...].”

Innuendo makes a poor substitute for solid facts. It might surprise PhilipMelanchthon that I’ve never stepped foot on the MBI campus, in Moody Church, or in a Harvest facility. And why is it “odd” that I’m “up on all the details” and have a high “level of interest”? Should Wikipedia editors be uninformed and uninterested? Is institutional corruption something people should not show “a level of interest” in if the institution in question happens to be ecclesiastical?

Everything7 and PhilipMelanchthon are both hung up on the point that Roys’s pieces were published in the form of “blogs” and that “blogs” are uniformly poor in quality. But her thorough exposés on MacDonald have prompted stories in the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Herald, World, Christian Post, Christianity Today, and other publications. It’s 2019 and news has been moving from printed paper to digital format for over two decades. A counter-example: the two pro-MacDonald Christianity Today articles I cited above are very flawed. They weren’t fact checked, were extraordinarily biased in favor of MacDonald, and didn’t bother to incorporate any opposing opinions. Does the fact that they appear in printed form somehow make them more truthy than Roy’s digitally-published exposés? Hardly.

PhilipMelanchthon concludes with a reprise of Everything7’s newsworthiness point: “I get that there are a few people really passionate about MacDonald and connecting him to Stetzer, but no one else found this newsworthy. It's only controversial to people upset about the situation and that's not how wikipedia is supposed to work.” But this is not at all an issue of emotions or of how many people are talking about this issue here: either Stetzer did accept a large gift from MacDonald in gross violation of the conflict of interest policies at Christianity Today, Wheaton College, and now perhaps Moody Radio, or he did not.

And Stetzer *did* accept the gift of the vintage Vokswagen from MacDonald:

I [Roys] also contacted Harvest Attorney Christopher Nudo. Nudo confirmed that Walk in the Word had purchased the car for Stetzer last spring and that in March, Stetzer had reimbursed the ministry for the full amount of the car, just under $13,000.

The only reason this wouldn’t be newsworthy is if Stetzer himself is not newsworthy: perhaps the best resolution here is to just remove this page.

Wald76 (talk) 02:00, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Wald76, you're welcome to submit the article to WP:AFD if you don't consider Stetzer to be notable.

Most everything you've said has to do with Roy and MacDonald (and the controversy is covered in MacDonald's article), but the involvement of Stetzer seems tenuous at best. He accepted a gift, learned it was paid for with church funds, and returned it. I'm not finding significant coverage of Stetzer on this topic (in reliable sources) to justify including it in a WP:BLP.

Per WP:BLPSPS, Roy's blog isn't a reliable source for inclusion in this article. Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article. According to Roy's blog post, she contacted various organizations that Stetzer is professionally connected to and none pursued (or admitted to pursuing) any "conflict of interest" investigations or actions. Should that change and reliable sources provide significant coverage of it, then would be the time to discuss including it in this article. Schazjmd (talk) 14:18, 14 August 2019 (UTC)