Mega-Church = False Gospel?

“If you preach the law as the Bible really does, or the gospel as it’s really meant to be proclaimed, you will empty the Compaq Center.”
- Dr. Michael Horton

T-Wax has a helpful qualification to this quote from Dr. Horton. I'm sure Dr. Horton would agree. Trevin writes:

I agree with Dr. Horton that, if he has in mind Joel Osteen’s church in Houston (which meets at the Compaq Center), he is probably right. Were Osteen to preach the biblical gospel, he would probably lose a great number of his people. Osteen’s messages are motivational speeches, not biblical sermons. So, yes, if Osteen were to begin preaching about sin, grace, and redemption, the people who flock to hear him week to week would probably go somewhere else.

But we should not take Horton’s remarks as referring to any mega-church.

It would be a shame for us to grow suspicious of any ministry that sees a measure of numerical success. We could easily adopt a mindset that says, If a mega-church pastor is seeing numerical growth, he must be doing something wrong. He must be watering down the gospel. He must be giving them entertainment over substance. Otherwise why would he have so many people?

Read the whole thing.