  
Matthew Paul TurnerThe Wittenburg Door Interview By Becky Garrison December 2006 Matthew Paul Turner, former editor of CCM Magazine (the Christian music industry's leading periodical), well-respected author (lots and LOTS of good books) and lecturer poses this question on his website (www.matthewpaulturner.com): "How can Christians maintain our status in the world while keeping our footing in a Gospel-inspired, yet truly relevant worldview?" We tried to answer this question but we got a splitting spiritual headache. That's why we leave theology to trained professionals.
?MATTHEW PAUL TURNER: I think there are very few books out there that honestly portray the guilt, pain, and frustration that being in church all your life can sometimes bring upon a person. Also, I wanted to share what the church has done for me, what it has done to me, and where I believe my relationship with Jesus is now. DOOR: How would you describe the faith of your childhood? TURNER: I was a very imaginative kid. So, faith for me was very simple. It wasn't hard for me to believe that Jesus died for my sins, and that He was coming back someday. I went to a faith-based school and everything that was remotely enjoyable was in most cases considered sinful. DOOR: How did you break free from that background? TURNER: My story is pretty cliché in a lot of ways. I was afraid to voice something that is a concern of mine because when someone does that in a legalistic situation often they're told to shut up. I had watched so many of my friends, who had either asked questions or done something wrong in my church, and they had been excommunicated or they had lost their faith in Jesus. I honestly became co-dependent upon legalism, and I could not exist as a believer without legalism being part of my life.  DOOR: How did you break free here? TURNER: It wasn't until I got away and went to college that I was able to ask those questions, and experience Jesus in a more real way. Even then it was very hard for me to separate doing all this stuff from my Jesus experience. When you've been spiritually abused, six months of knowing the truth is not going to help you out of a situation. It takes you a long time of frustration, therapy, and prayer, as well as a lot of reminding of how much God loves you to get out of it. DOOR: How did studying the Sermon on the Mount change your relationship with Jesus? TURNER: When I look at the Sermon on the Mount, my life rubs up against those words of Jesus. It is put in its place; it's humbled. I try to read the Sermon on the Mount at least once a week because I believe in those words we find the life of what it means to follow Jesus. When you start meditating on blessed are the pure at heart, you let Him search your heart. That's when I have found that I get to know my failures. DOOR: How then do Christians differentiate between doing God's will versus our own following our own desires? TURNER: One of the few evangelical books that really moved me as a young adult was Experiencing God. In that book Henry Blackaby talks about just going and joining in with God's will, looking for places where you can be a part of something that you feel God is doing. So many times we insert "me" or "us" into a dream. I think when we back away and get out of focusing on us and the prideful side of the dream, then we can find that true meaning of what God wanted us to do in the first place. We sometimes dream and we let God dream these dreams, but then we put our spin on it. It's not until we lose that spin, and God reshapes our heart that we get out of His way, and we really see the dream come alive. DOOR: Often one can find themselves all alone or maybe even divorced when one's friends and their spouse in particular do not support these God dreams. TURNER: I absolutely know people like that. Often I think what I would say to the Israelites as they were in the middle of their wilderness of forty years of silence from God. I try to think about how I would feel if God were to put me in a place where He stopped talking to me for forty years. When people lose everything for a dream, I think that's where they feel like God isn't communicating with them. DOOR: What do you do when you feel all alone in the wilderness? TURNER: I try to remember what I felt when I heard Him the last time when He still speaking to me about being passionate about that dream. In most cases that always encourages me to get up off my depressed slump, move out and do it again. I haven't lost a spouse because of my dream, and my family supports me but I've certainly had disappointments and frustrations come out of pursing my dream. There are people who are not kind, and the financial situation isn't always great but my wife and I both feel compelled that this is what we're called to do so we forge through the frustrations. DOOR: Note to readers: Check out his book Mind Games (June 2006) for an in-depth look at Matt's personal battles with depression and anxiety. Now, speaking of things that depress us, how do you respond to those Christians, who practice the gospel of prosperity? TURNER: That is probably one of the most frustrating things that I see in Christian culture that just irritates me. Preachers promise that if you'll give, you'll get. If you keep staying on the course and keep going through the motions, then God is going to be there at the end of the road. It's nothing more than just happy thinking, because God doesn't promise that. Over, over, and over again, we see situations of people in scripture, who are giving their all, and then God is saying to them, I'm pleased with you but I'm not necessarily going to hand you a bunch of money, land, or whatever they were looking for. DOOR: Tell that to Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyers. TURNER: I think Joyce Meyers is a very solid Bible teacher. She just really knows the Old Testament, and I have been encouraged to listen to her. But when she goes on about how if you keep going God is going to bless you, well, she's a multi-millionaire. She flies a private jet to these gigs. Of course, she looks in the mirror and says, "God has blessed me. I used to be a poor housewife." DOOR: What's your take on Joel Osteen? TURNER: Does he even open his Bible? And when he does, does he actually speak from it? Is he really digging down and getting the message? Because what is he giving you that any motivational speaker can't give you? DOOR: Then you have Pat Robertson issuing Christian fatwas... TURNER: The whole situation was just blown out of proportion. When you just gab on national television like Pat Robertson does, then you're going to get yourself in trouble. I have seen him ramble on and on about several things, and I'm thinking, "What are you talking about? You're making absolutely no sense." This was one of those days when I don't want people to know that I'm a Christian. DOOR: How did getting fired as the editor of CCM inform your faith? TURNER: The idea of provocative faith is really losing the "me" perspective and the "me" investment. I was a person who just invested in me. For somebody like myself who was a music business major and went to school in Nashville to become this, and did not have an editorial background, and all of a sudden you are handed a very influential position in an industry that you love, man that can go to your head, and it did. For a while at the very beginning, God and I were on the same page. Then slowly over time I realized I was actually pretty good at the job, and I was kind of testing the waters, and being controversial for the sake of being controversial. DOOR: Yeah, we've kind of done that a few times. TURNER: Eventually, the focus turned back on me, and I thought that I could do it, and ultimately they fired me because the magazine's numbers were going down. I went through just a couple months of so much embarrassment, frustration, and realizing who my friends were versus people who were interested in getting covered in the magazine. It's kind of like getting naked before God. DOOR: You do not want to see our editorial board buck nekkid. Trust us. TURNER: You kind of sit before God, and you just weep. You say you know what God? I need to sit here in your lap for a while. That was one of those moments in that moment I just learned more that it isn't about Matthew Paul Turner, and that I had to learn it over, and over, and over again. DOOR: In The Coffeehouse Gospel you suggest that people try to preach the gospel without being obnoxious, and offensive. 
TURNER: Sharing your faith is such a weird cumbersome thing anyway. As Christians we try to simplify it to the point of putting it in four points. If you go through these four spiritual laws, then you would instantly have a relationship with Jesus. When I was growing up in a church, I would go out "soul winning." I would go door to door knocking on people's door and asking them whether or not they knew where they were going to go after they died. I had these six questions that I asked, and if they couldn't answer a question right I would skip down to this particular response. This absolutely befuddled me that we would lower the concept of Jesus to that. Every interaction that Jesus had with people where their hearts were changed, it was a needy conversation where something profound happened. I think anyone who has really lived life knows that believing in Jesus is a lot deeper than any of us could ever begin to imagine.DOOR: Conversely, you have these mainline churches, where you get the feeling that Jesus is a four-letter word. God forbid they should use the words Jesus Christ in their sermons. TURNER: There are lots of people who water down the message. They belittle the message of Jesus by not talking about Him, and not actually explaining what it means to be a follower of Jesus. I think there are a lot of people that sit in their church that are not on the journey of belief at all. They are going through the motions because the preachers are not explaining Jesus. They are avoiding Him at all costs because frankly Jesus was not cool. We can try to make Jesus cool, relevant, and edgy but when it comes down to it, Christians believe in a man that claims He's God walking on earth. He was perfect, and He died on the cross for our sins, and then He rose again three days later. You can only make that so cool, and I'm not sure Jesus was looking for Him to be cool anyway. DOOR: How does the Christian entertainment industry define what is acceptable? TURNER: Whatever the Southern Baptist Church claims is OK. DOOR: No wonder Christian merchandise is so durn boring. But how come they get to call the shots here? TURNER: They're defining so much what is acceptable is because so many of the people, who run big major radio stations, are Southern Baptist. DOOR: So, how come then The Wittenburg Door is a member of the Evangelical Press Association but we can't get carried in any Christian bookstores? TURNER: In my first book, Christian Culture Survival Guide, I used the word "masturbation." So, Lifeway won't touch it. DOOR: Assume the pun is intentional. TURNER: You have gatekeepers that conservative, and really, really old. So, it sort of takes somebody dying, and somebody new coming in and saying hey, we're going to redefine it. Until some people fall off or have a change of heart, things aren't going to change. It's frustrating because we see little bits of change here and there. The fact that an author like Donald Miller is as popular as he is, is certainly a breath of fresh air. Will it continue? I don't know. DOOR: We've heard people who write drivel but they feel it's divinely inspired. TURNER: When somebody asks me my opinion about the music or the writing they are doing. I am going to be honest because I'm hoping that they will be honest with me. My books are not God-inspired. It's just an opinion from me, and I happen to be a follower of Jesus. There's a story in the Christian Culture Survival Guide, where a singer tells me her song is God inspired. She doesn't want to change this song because it's great. It's her favorite song that's from the Holy Spirit. I'm like, "Well, if the Holy Spirit had this song then something horrible happened between His having it and her getting it." That was the last time I got in trouble. I'm a lot nicer now. DOOR: We remember the flap that Amy Grant got when she "went secular." Do you think it is easier for Christian entertainers to come out of the closet and live in both worlds now? TURNER: I think it's much easier. What Amy did that was so brilliant is that not only does she sing a song called, "Baby, Baby," but she takes it like ten steps further, and has this extremely romantic video with the guy who's not her husband where she's acting like she's completely in love. They're touching each other, and all this stuff. Amy Grant just doesn't break down the barriers with that. Rather, she made a clearing for other people when everyone else comes in, they almost are wimpy compared to her moves. DOOR: How do we take back the word "Christianity"? Seems to use like the word evangelical and Christian has been completely distorted. TURNER: There are certain words that I'm afraid for people to start using again because they'll end up ruining them, and they'll end up meaning something that they weren't necessarily ever to mean. Why can't we use the word "Christian"? I'm sick of this whole, "You got to be relevant" crap. DOOR: Amen, brother. TURNER: I'm just so over it, and I'm so past the whole idea of we have to save it or whatever. I really think that there has to come a time when we embrace the history of our faith, and there's the good, the bad, the ugly, and the obscene, and move forward and say I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to have some of the values that my past had about Christianity, but I am going to stand on the fact that they were passionate about Jesus. While they certainly did not get everything right, I believe that they were passionate about Jesus. I'm going to take that history, and I'm going to be just as passionate. I'm going to present love, peace, hope, mercy, and all these things that Jesus was passionate about. You know what? DOOR: No – do tell. TURNER: Years from now, people are going to be able to look back and say Matthew Paul Turner did not get it all right. He did not have all his things in order. But Matthew Paul Turner was passionate about Jesus. I'm hoping that I'm adding to the history of what we're doing here, and why we're here on earth. I'm not going to screw up the cause of Christ too much because there are some people in history that you look back and you think, how did Christianity survive that? Christianity will survive Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. One of these days they're going to be dead and gone, and hopefully the memories people hold on to are not the crazy things they say but the things that really is inspiring about them, and that they do the things they do because they love Jesus. I'm just learning that it used to be that it was a lot simpler for me to love a person, who would be considered the armpit of society than it was for me to love a legalist. I'm learning that grace abounds from both, and I have to learn to love both. As much as I get frustrated by Falwell, Robertson, and the people like them I know that there are things that they do that inspire people to be deeper in their faith.
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