Question: I noticed a picture of President Bush with Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of a huge Methodist ...

Question: I noticed a picture of President Bush with Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of a huge Methodist church in Houston. This pastor seems to be growing in influence and power. Do you have any information about him? Is he an evangelical?

Response: Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, named “one of Newsweek’s 100 Americans to watch for the new century,” has attended Robert H. Schuller’s “Institute for Successful Church Leadership” for sixteen years and follows in the footsteps of Schuller and the latter’s mentor, the late Norman Vincent Peale. Caldwell is the pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, described as the “spiritual home for more than 12,000 members.” President Bush endorsed Caldwell’s 1999 book, The Gospel of Good Success, with these words: “Kirbyjon Caldwell is a true ‘Point of Light’ in our community. A man of faith, a civic activist, he is a powerful influence for good. When you read The Gospel of Good Success, Pastor Caldwell’s faith comes shining through and one feels stronger and better for that.”

As for what that “faith” may embody, it is certainly not “the faith once delivered to the saints” for which we are to “earnestly contend” (Jude 3). Caldwell declares in his book, “We’re a lean, mean Kingdom-building machine, with over 120 ‘ministries’ serving the community seven days a week. There are ministries for everything from job placement and financial planning to weight loss and alcohol rehabilitation...that help somebody step out of the herd and become a leader of his or her own life. The story of Windsor Village is prayer coupled with action, and proof of the incredible power of this combination stands one mile from our church: The Power Center...our 24-acre, 104,000-square-foot, multi-use business complex designed to address the multi- faceted needs of our community. The Power Center is our Church’s physical manifestation of Holistic Salvation....The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the BBC, NBC-TV, and other media have hailed The Power Center as an entrepreneurial incarnation of the twenty-first-century Church....My mission in this book is to show you how to use the principles of Holistic Salvation to create an internal center of power in your own life....The first baby step toward Holistic Salvation is to realize that God wants you to be successful—blessed with a bounty of Good Success!”

The true gospel that saves souls is conspicuously absent from the pages of The Gospel of Good Success. Caldwell’s “Holistic Salvation” that is designed to bring wealth and success in this temporary world is presented in detail, but not a word is to be found about biblical salvation for eternity. If President Bush says Caldwell is a “true ‘Point of Light,’” we will have to take his word for it, with the disappointing realization that the “light” Bush commends doesn’t point to Christ, salvation and heaven but to humanistic success as the world measures it.