Godly Discernment in a Deceptive Age

Interview with Warren Cole Smith

Tim Moore: We’re going to have a very special guest on today to talk about Christian stewardship. What does it mean to be a responsible steward of the blessings God has given us? And how do we ensure that the ministries and even the churches that we want to support are also being responsible stewards? Well, I’m very glad to be joined by my friend Warren Smith. Warren is the head of MinistryWatch, which is a parachurch organization that provides oversight and holds accountable ministries like ours and churches.

And Warren, you have a tremendous bio. I mean, just looking at your background, for many years, you were involved at the Colson Center, a place that I have great appreciation for. Even now, you work with World Magazine and the World Group to provide insights on a regular basis through their podcasts. And of course you have a background at Pricewaterhouse which is a tremendously well-known organization that provides integrity even in the corporate world. So have I captured just a bit of your background? What else would you tell our viewers today?

Warren Smith: Well, I would tell your viewers and listeners that I’m a follower of Jesus. What we do, we do from a Christian perspective. We are not trying to tear down the church but encourage the church and build up the church and to bring, again, as you said, transparency and accountability to the Christian ministry space to the end that people have more confidence in Christian ministries, and would give more, be even more generous with their money, time, and talent.

Tim Moore: Well, and I appreciate that rule that you play because, frankly, you have helped even us as a ministry become more and better. We are very intentional about being good stewards of the resources shared with us so that we can fulfill the mission God has called us to fulfill. But having other organizations that bring a degree of accountability, I think that raises the bar for everyone.

Before we jump into some of the specifics of ministries, let’s start just as a global question, Warren. Many Christians have grown disillusioned or at least very disappointed at the lack of moral clarity in our society today, when even Supreme Court justices cannot recognize what a woman is. How have we collectively gotten to this point?

Warren Smith: Well, we didn’t get here overnight, and it’s not going to be a quick fix for us to get out of the situation that we’re in. I have been looking at this issue and studying it for many years. In fact, I’ve written a couple of books about the topic. And one of the things that is clear to me is that when society is dark, when the culture is dark, darkness is not a thing, it is a lack of a thing, and that thing is light. And so I think the way we get out of this mess is the church has to be a light in the darkness. The way we got into this mess, I think, is that the church stopped being a light in the darkness in many parts of culture. This is an extraordinarily long question. Many books and even multiple volumes have been written on the history of the church, but I think it starts maybe even as early as the 19th century, whenever there was a separatist movement in this country. We withdrew from many of the cultural and social institutions. Because the Church withdrew, they were taken over by secularists, by people that didn’t believe what we believe. And now we find ourselves on the outside looking in with many of the most important civic institutions today.

But again, I think there is a way back, and I think that way back is for Christians to be salt and light, for Christians to…not in a way that necessarily doesn’t have to bring conflict. I’m not saying that we should avoid conflict, but I think if we do what Jesus told us to do, which is to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that process of loving our neighbors is going to be the way that the church comes back from that place of marginal credibility that it has today to a place of, I think, great credibility that it could have in the culture.

Tim Moore: I think that’s well put. And really, you start with the individual, and it is our individual responsibility to be salt and light wherever the Lord has placed us. I cannot necessarily impact the Supreme Court individually, but I can impact my family. I can impact my neighborhood; I can impact my church. I would argue sometimes it’s not just that secularists have crept into the institutions of the world. My goodness, they’ve crept back into the Church, and some churches are given over to secularism or at least embracing the world.

Well, another question. We here at the Lamb & Lion Ministries could argue, I do, that Proverbs 29:18 is being fulfilled before our eyes. Of course, that says, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” I used to cite this when I was in the Kentucky Legislature. And other translations actually say that the people are unrestrained or are running amuck, and I say there’s a whole lot of running amuck out there, but either way, that seems to describe America in 2024. So has the church failed to clearly enunciate a godly vision for our broader society?

Warren Smith: Yeah, I think that is a part of the problem is that we have failed to enunciate a biblical vision, a godly vision for society and culture. I think maybe a bigger part of the problem is that Christians don’t act like they believe that vision that they articulate. And let me tell you what I mean by that, is that they don’t get involved locally. I mean, many people can tell you who the president of the United States is, but they can’t tell you who their state legislator is. They can tell you who the vice president is, but they can’t tell you who the chairman of their local city council or county commission is.

And we have, as individual Christians, the most… most of us, I mean, some of us have a national platform. You’ve got something of a platform. I’ve got something of a platform, and I thank God for that. But the vast majority of Christians have the most influence with the people who are closest to them. And I think that the way for Christians, if I could put it this way to, and I don’t like to use this language, take back the culture, but I think the way that Christians can most effectively, let’s put it this way, show love for their neighbors, is to get to know their neighbors, get involved locally, get involved in the local communities.

And I think that that is going to be an important part of the way back, and I think that that’s part of what the Church has neglected. We’ve been all about big rallies, and megachurches, and national, and mega ministries, and we, I think, have sometimes forgotten the importance and the value of just the everyday loving your neighbor as yourself component and the credibility that that will bring to the message that we are articulating. I think it’s a both/and. There’s this old saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words. Well, I don’t necessarily believe that. I believe that we should use words all the time. We should have a clear, articulate vision, but we should also love our neighbors as ourselves to give credibility to empower to those words.

Tim Moore: Right, they won’t care how much we know until they know how much we care, in other words. I agree, I think sometimes people look to the next election and think, “If we can just get that top position, then the benefits will trickle down.” And really, Christ modeled that the Church is to impact that the grassroots level, and that impact goes upward instead of the other way around throughout society. Well, God called Ezekiel as a watchman. He said, “Stand as a watchman on a wall,” and you hit a ministry that serves as a watchman over other ministries providing necessary accountability and shining a light to encourage biblical transparency. What motivated you to serve the church in this capacity?

Warren Smith: Well, the ministry was founded in 1998 by Rusty and Carol Leonard. And their vision and the vision that they have generously sort of handed off to me to carry on is to create transparency and accountability to the end that the church and the Christian ministry space would be stronger and have more credibility. The Bible says that we are children of the light, and we should walk in the light. And the Bible says that we are not to have fellowship with evil deeds of darkness, instead expose them. So there’s clear biblical admonition and precedent for doing what we do at MinistryWatch, which is to shine a bright light on Christian ministries. But once again, I just want to reiterate that our goal is not to tear these ministries down, but to help them see how they can improve to the end that they would even be more effective in the work that they’ve been given to do.

And let me just add one thing, too. The watchman on the wall, or the soldier, or the warrior, whatever you might want to call him, he doesn’t fight because he hates what’s in front of him, but rather because he loves what is next to him and behind him. And I think that that’s the posture that I want to take in MinistryWatch. It’s really easy to adopt what I call a culture war mentality, and I don’t think that that is particularly helpful in this day and age. I think that while we should have the backbone of the warrior, we should also understand that love should be our primary motivation and not fear.

Tim Moore: Always. Yes, sir. And sometimes I think it is important to remind ourselves of that because there seems to be a lot of fear percolating. And I say, we are not people who should be in fear. I love the psalm, which declares, “I will not fear.” We will not fear. Instead we are people of hope and we know the end. Well, frankly, I appreciate, again, the protective nature of the work you do. But over the course of years, and it seems to be growing more prevalent year by year, we’ve witnessed a number of prominent ministries and even ministers that have fallen and failed grievously. And I should say, but for the grace of God, all of us are prone to wander, prone to leave the Lord we love, and to fall. So as you’ve tracked and documented highly publicized failures, Warren, what common threads of temptation and blind spots, perhaps of arrogance, have you encountered?

Warren Smith: Yeah, that’s a great question. And there are a few. I mean, this is not super complicated. And one of those is a lack of transparency that when I see an organization that doesn’t release its financial information to the public, that doesn’t make its important financial information known to donors in particular, that for me is a real red flag.

Another one would be board structure. I don’t want to get too much into the weeds here of nonprofit management, but all organizations, including churches, should have an independent board. And if it’s a nonprofit, what an independent board means, is that they’re not employees of the organization and they don’t have a financial interest in the organization. They’re not family members or a vendor. In a church, that should mean deacons and elders who are not on the staff.

One of the things that I ran into, for example, when I covered Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church back maybe a decade ago was that, of the 35 or 36 elders that were on the staff, of the elders that were at Mars Hill, about 33 or 34 of them were also members of the church staff. So it was impossible for them to exercise any real oversight of what’s going on in that church because they had a financial interest. So independent board and/or deacons or elders, complete transparency, those things are super important to an organization.

Let me just also mention on an individual level that guys like you and me, folks that are actually in leadership in ministries, we need to have people around us that will tell us the truth about ourselves. We need to be in a mentor-mentee relationship with people. We need to have other men or women, in my case, it would be men, but maybe there might be women leaders, that would need women in their lives that would not only are they mentee to a mentor, an older mentor, but they’ve got others in their life that they’re mentoring as well, because you don’t learn anything until you try to teach it. And when you have people in your life that you are mentoring, that’s who you tell.

And I’ll just mention one other thing if I might, and I know I’m kind of rambling on here too, but Jesus in John, I think it’s John 15, said to his own disciples, “Up until now I called you servants, but now I call you friend.” And there is… and I think that this is a truth that is sort of hiding in plain sight in Scripture that we don’t pay enough attention to, and that is the power of friendship. So many men and women I know in senior leadership roles talk about how lonely they are. I’m sad to say we write stories of pastors that are in meltdown, in some cases, they’ve even taken their own lives by suicide. And one of the things that they will say is just how lonely they are, how alone they felt in the world.

And I just think friendship, especially among ministry leaders, is important. And I would encourage any ministry leader who is listening to fight for friendships, fight to have men and women in your life that you can be true friends with. And if you know a pastor, and if you know a ministry leader, reach out to them. I think that you may be surprised at how few friends they have and how much they would welcome you reaching out to them in that way.

Tim Moore: That is a powerful word. I do have a few that I stay very close to and engage with on a regular basis. And even with my board, when I came here to this ministry, I told them, “I expect you, A, to hold me accountable, and B, to have complete authority to ask me, ask my wife, ask my staff, but to really reach in and not just assume things are right because that is a proper relationship.”

You mentioned being an instructor. I think when you have mentees, people who you are helping to shepherd along, it also brings a level of responsibility that raises the bar even for a leader or a mentor to realize, “Alright, I have to… I have to accomplish a certain level of, or achieve a certain level of responsibility because there are people who are depending upon me, and it is a healthy relationship. Well, we’re talking about ministries, even ministers.

What word of counsel and wisdom would you offer not just to ministries and ministers, but to individual Christians who do not want to leave the Lord they love or ever to discredit Him or the Gospel in the eyes of a very eager to mock world?

Warren Smith: Joel Belz, who was the founder of World Magazine and a mentor to me over the years, he used to do events with our donors and readers, and I had the privilege of accompanying him on many of these events. Inevitably, we would get asked a question, he would get asked a question which is, how can we pray for you? How can we pray for World Magazine? And Joel would always answer in this way, “Pray that we would remain faithful. And Joel said what I have seen now, that so many ministry leaders begin well but end badly for all kinds of reasons, some of the reasons that we’ve talked about.

Another mentor of mine, especially during my years at the Colson Center, was a man named Chuck Colson. And Chuck Colson, when he was asked, What can Christians do? Do we start a movement? Do we raise money for our political candidate? Whatever. Chuck would always say, “Stay at your post and do your duty. That faithfulness is your responsibility. Results are God’s responsibility.”

And I think too often in this day and age that we look for the big ministry, the big result, the big, how many fannies were in the chairs, how many salvation cards got filled out. And listen, I’m not saying that those things are not important. I’m just saying that they’re not what God apparently seems to measure. When God talks about fruitfulness, He doesn’t necessarily talk about large churches or large numbers of people. He talks about things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Those are the fruit of the Spirit that I think God measures, and I think that that’s one of the things that both as ministry leaders and people in the pews and donors to ministry.

We administer primarily to serve donors. We want to help them be more effective stewards of the resources God has entrusted them. And I think we should ask that question. What are we measuring? Are we measuring the right things? Are we measuring what the Bible measures, which is love, joy, and peace? And I think that if we reframe our thinking in that way, both the Church and the individual church people, the men and women and the pews, are going to be well served.

Tim Moore: Yeah, I love the movie “Braveheart” not because it’s always historically accurate, but I think it gives a depiction of standing strong. And the scene where William Wallace is trying to get his comrades to stand firm because they’ll win the victory if they just stand, and his cry is “Hold, hold!” And I’ve used that in a political setting where some of my colleagues were getting very wobbly, as Margaret Thatcher used to say. And I’d say, I’d tell them, “If you would just hold, we will win the victory. But if you fade, and get fearful, and run from the battlefield, we are defeated before we even meet the enemy so to speak,” figuratively, of course.

Well, Warren, I will tell you, Lamb & Lion Ministries, speaking on behalf of our ministry, has been very grateful again for the accountability and the validation that we have received from you. Well, I say that from MinistryWatch because you have given us a recognition of a high rating for transparency, for accountability, even a Shining Light Award. And so we do purpose to be transparent about our finances, responsible stewards, again, of the message that God has blessed us to proclaim. How can our viewers, our readers follow MinistryWatch and learn about the other ministries that perhaps they are eager to support?

Warren Smith: Yeah, well, I appreciate you asking that question. Let me just also say that you guys earned, we don’t award anything. You’ve earned it, and so congratulations on that. I tell people, when folks ask me how they can raise their ratings, I’d say, “Listen, it’s not magic. It’s math. You either do the hard work or you don’t do the hard work.” You guys have done the hard work and you’ve gotten high ratings as a result of that, so congratulations on that.
But to answer directly your question, go to ministrywatch.com. It’s pretty easy, MinistryWatch.com. We do daily journalism at that site. We publish three to five stories a day at the website. We also have a MinistryWatch 1000 Database that is clearly marked on the front page of that website. But ministrywatch.com, that’s sort of where to go first, and you can find everything we do from there.

Tim Moore: Well, I so appreciate the work that you do. Again, you are part of my daily absorption of information and encouragement. Sometimes you’d say, “Well, the stories are telling about failures at times, but even that is encouraging to me to hold true and to stay true as a ministry, as a minister, as a servant of the Lord at any level. So I would encourage our viewers to watch MinistryWatch, and to stay attuned to what you produce. Warren, again, I look forward to us meeting not just via technology and the miracle of Zoom, but in person, because I think we have much in common, and we serve as co-laborers in the Kingdom of God.

Warren Smith: I’ll look forward to that. I hope our trails cross soon.

Conclusion

Nathan Jones: Warren’s commitment to Scriptural integrity and accountability is pretty impressive.

Tim Moore: It really is, you know, and it’s important to realize that at one time, we couldn’t have known where our dollars were going if we contributed to a ministry. But today, through his ministry and other accountability kind of ministries, we can know where our dollars are flowing. The bottom line is too many ministers and ministries have faltered and failed, and we don’t want to waiver in our commitment to follow the Lord and fulfill our calling with integrity. If you want to view MinistryWatch’s assessment of Lamb & Lion Ministries, visit their website at ministrywatch.com. While there, you can also register for their powerful daily ministry newsfeed.

Nathan Jones: In the 17 years I’ve served at Lamb & Lion Ministries, I’ve never doubted its accountability. Why do the trustees find that so important?

Tim Moore: I think we all find it important. Nathan, you and I do personally because we are, first and foremost, accountable to Jesus Christ. And so, we are accountable to you, our supporters, our viewers, but primarily we are accountable to the Lord God Himself.

Folks, every day we are contacted by people who ask for prayer on their own behalf or on behalf of loved ones. We are honored to be entrusted with that privilege. We’re also grateful for so many of you who uplift Lamb & Lion Ministries with your prayers and financial support. Christ in Prophecy is able to reach people across the country and around the world because so many of you are faithfully investing in Lamb & Lion. We’ve been able to relaunch Christ in Prophecy Radio because, through you, God has provided us with the resources to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible with our Gospel-centered message.

Over 3,000 supporters have joined with us as prophecy partners. They have committed to contributing at least $25 each month, and in return, they receive monthly ministry updates, our acclaimed Lamplighter Magazine, and periodic gifts. If you’re not a prophecy partner already, I hope that you will prayerfully consider partnering with us.

Nathan Jones: If the Lord tarries, next week, we plan to continue our focus on the rise of deception and the encroachment of wolves in sheep’s clothing within the church itself. You won’t want to miss this episode. Even as we offer a clear-eyed warning and tools for discernment, we’ll end on a very hopeful note.

Tim Moore: From MinistryWatch to Watchman Fellowship, we’ve talked a lot about watching today. We hope that you have been encouraged as you stand as a watchman on the wall in this fraught age. Until next week, let’s all determine to look up and be watchful for our redemption is drawing near.
Godspeed!

End of Program