Poor Billy - A Word to TGC - Canada from an American Pastor

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now you can listen to the article! cool right?

On November 4th, 2021 Pastor James Seward penned an article called A Word to American Christians from a Pastor in Canada. Knowing the publication, I figured a “Thank You” wasn’t coming.

We’ve chronicled before how we, like so many other faithful Christians, have been blocked by The Gospel Coalition - Canada, so we don’t need to rehash that here. Instead, if you’re ignorant of that debacle, you can catch up by listening to our Episode 032 entitled Double-minded and Unstable: TGC Canada and Biblical Christianity. And, quite frankly, we encourage you to do so.

What we received from Pastor Seward was a confusing, unhelpful, “nuanced” rebuke to kindly stay in our lane. He argues that we tend to do more harm than good when we outsource our American colonial ideas of biblically-based liberty to Evangelicals across the Great White North. We inspire Renegade Evangelicals to take up their faith and further fracture the already strained Canadian Evangelical church. That it is us -in our radical ideas of Liberty- that cause sheep to question their undershepherds on Covid policies and biblical practice. It is us that sows division among the brethren. A hefty charge for someone claiming to think through things slowly, carefully, and with a great deal of nuance. But let’s take a look and see what we come up with.

Canadian Church Challenges Should Have Biblical Solutions…Right?

Pastor Seward claims to be an American who has been pastoring a church in Canada for the last 8 years. During those 8 years, he has noticed that Canada is much different from the United States in how the Church up there operates.

He describes pastoring there as “walking on a tightrope, both arms outstretched to help you maintain balance.” He says that the Canadian church has little resources by way of funding, conferences, broad country -wide communication platforms, or Canadian parachurch movements. Due to these geographic and resource challenges, he says the Canadian church “lacks cohesion.” 

We agree this is problematic, right? The Church in Canada should have some baseline cohesion, cooperation, and community sharing right? This is what we would desire for all churches in all places. It’s what we see in Acts as the baby Church was taking off, and we see it set up as an archetype of how we should strive to look and function. It is undeniable. We’re with you Pastor Seward! However one might expect, perhaps in a different article written with better intentions, that we might find a list of ways for the Canadian Church to gain those things, right? Perhaps an examination of Acts 2:42 and following to gain a good perspective of how going back to basics might just be one of the most integral things any people in any nation might do. Perhaps to stress faithfulness and devotion to the Word will be saved for a different letter. For this letter points fingers pretty quickly.

Dirty Americans

Going back to the tight rope analogy, Pastor Seward writes, “You need both arms [to balance], but oddly one of those arms has a 50lb weight attached to it. As a result, finding your balance is tricky. That’s what it’s like to be a Canadian pastor. And American Evangelicals are that 50lb weight.”

Oof. Let’s get some more quotes before we respond.

“Meanwhile, the American Evengelical media behemoth comes upon a Canadian pastor or story that serves American interests well. And the volume on that one pastor or story gets turned up, which is helpful for the United States. But when our neighbour’s music is turned up to normal for them, it’s extremely loud for us…The way American Christians use Canada often makes our work here that much harder.”

Lets take a pause to notice some things.

The accusation is towards who exactly? In the first paragraph, he points to American Evangelicals. In the next quote, he sites the “American Evangelical media behemoth” which is, ironically but undoubtedly, dominated by TGC and those like them. And he wraps up again pointing the blame at American Christians.

So who is it, Pastor Seward? Who is to blame? We should be careful to lob accusations without actually accusing anyone or anything. Yet, while the person or group of people who is to blame is quite unclear, the accusation itself seems to be crystal clear: across-the-border commentaries coming from the US regarding the Canadian Church are self-serving the interests of US Christians at the expense of the Canadian church, further dividing and hurting an already struggling Church.

That’s a tall order, Pastor. Tower of Babel tall. For someone who wears their ability to provide “nuanced assessments” of situations, we sure are coming in with a bulldozer.

And this is where generalities are unhelpful. If he simply said who or what was the problem, we could clearly address that and respond to it. Because he did not, whether intentionally or otherwise it is certainly unclear, we’re left with lobbed accusations at potentially every American Evangelical who has provided some kind of coverage for Canadian Church struggles. You can see where we might take this article with some amount of grief.

Is Pastor Seward trying to call out faithful groups like CrossPolitic, Founders Ministry, and Apologia Church for standing up for Liberty and the cause of the oppressed? Or perhaps he’s being more direct at men like Owen Strachan, Douglas Wilson, Voddie Baucham and John MacArthur for shedding light on the atrocities being committed? It’s simply impossible to know, but perhaps some of these people are owed an apology.

So he’s clearly coming at us down here pretty hard. But what are the fruits of our self-serving meddling in Canadian affairs? Billy.

Who Is Billy Anyway?

Pastor Seward then comes up with a silly hypothetical scenario around this “fictional” character, Billy. Billy is characterized as an out-of-step rabblerouser who, like American Evengelicals, crush any spirit of unity in the Canadian church. He preaches a sermon, invites press, and defies free speech laws in Canada and is then arrested. Pastor Seward then pivots across the border and describes how American Evangelicals have been waiting, drool dripping from crooked lips grinning to reveal yellow fangs ready to feast on the flesh of the Canadian Church. We report what happened, call it out and “amplify” Billy’s perspective around the globe. The Canadian Church, as a result, start asking hard questions of their pastors (gasp!) and the Canadian Church scatters in disarray.

Not knowing who Billy is is very problematic. There have been several “high profile” arrests of Canadian pastors. I think the top three would be 1. Pastor James Coates, 2. Artur Pawlowski, and 3. Pastor Tim Stephens. So here we have three men, two of whom have had similarities with their arrests, and one outlier whose arrest was quite dramatic. Is Billy James? Or is Billy Artur? Or is Billy Tim? We simply don’t know. But lumping these men, and others, together in one pot simply isn’t “nuanced” enough.

Over the past 10 or so months, we’ve learned the stories of dozens of  Canadian pastors and congregants. As stories broke, sometimes it was difficult to determine who was being faithful and persecuted, and who was being purposefully contentious. We will not pretend that just because a headline says “pastor” that they are truly operating or called as such. Of course we need to be judicious. We’ve taken down posts when we learned more information about the people we posted about because, while we can agree that what was being done to churches was egregious, not everyone was going about it the same way. We do not rejoice in Tobias Tissen or Artur Powlowski’s arrests, but we see now a clear (biblical?) categorical difference between those kinds of men and events and ones like Pastor James or Tim’s arrests.

So, to keep track, Pastor Seward should’ve been more clear as to who he was accusing, and who Billy is.

Answering who Billy is is muddled even further by some of the things Billy does that are not inherently sinful or even problematic. For instance, Billy calls some pastors “cowards.” Well, this certainly is not wrong. Just take a trip through the prophets or gospels to know that there certainly are times when such an admonition is fully warranted. Billy “preaches a jarringly candid sermon that defies the law.” This certainly isn’t inherently wrong or sinful, especially considering some of Canada’s egregious laws on speech and religious practice throughout the pandemic. Is Billy Artur? Or is he Pastor Jacob Reaume or Aaron Rock who regularly call up pastors to “act like men” as Paul did? We simply don’t know, and that’s terribly unhelpful.

Additionally, what makes the Canadian Church’s process of “tailoring a way forward to [the] Canadian context” inherently correct? Should it take 24 months for the church to side with the writer of Hebrews as to the necessity of the gathering of Christ’s Church? Absolutely not!

Conclusion

It is not the fault of American Evangelicals that the Canadian Church has, by and large, so poorly responded to government mandates over the past year, just as much as it’s not the Canadian Church’s fault for any of the myriad problems we face in American Evangelicalism. I’d say it is a good thing that media coverage of those faithful men like James, like Tim, has caused some sheep to look at their Scriptures more closely and ask their pastors hard questions. I’d say more pastors need to grow spines and preach the Word faithfully to the people. I’d say trade prolonged discussion and nuance for deep, rich biblical study and faithfulness. Then, perhaps, God would light a fire in Canada like it has never seen. But continuing to write articles pointing fingers and playing the victim certainly won’t be looked favorably on by God. 

As Justin so appropriately concluded after reading this article, “Well that guy got one thing right, there definitely is a weight being tied, but it isn't a weight to their arm that throws off their balance, it's a millstone that is tied about their neck, and they are the ones that tied it there.”

Brutal, yes. Appropriate, yes. And may we all guard against this same apathy and complacency as we continue to seize the faith.

It should be said that we’d love to have Pastor Seward or anyone from TGC Canada on the podcast to discuss this stuff in person. We think dialogue might go a long way in clarifying some of these things for everyone. #seizethefaith