Christianity Today

Six years ago, the leadership at LifeChurch.tv took an intentional shift, beginning to provide its resources for free. Now, YouVersion is the fastest growing Bible app with more than 50 million users. Senior pastor Craig Groeschel told Christianity Today that once the church began giving away resources, it removed the competitive attitude he felt towards other church leaders. He uses that decision to illustrate a way to battle envy, one of the toxic attitudes he identifies in his new book, Soul Detox (Zondervan). He founded LifeChurch.tv, which now has 14 campuses, in 1996. CT Online Editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey sat down with Groeschel at his church in Edmond, Oklahoma, to talk about toxicities, what a cleanse looks like, and what made him shift in his ministry.

How did you decide which toxic behaviors to identify?

A lot of it came from my personal experience and leadership observations. For example, we believe lies about the world or we believe lies about ourselves and end up really being deceived on how we are being poisoned by the world. People can literally step into toxic behaviors or mindsets or allow even influences from the culture to poison the way they think or poison their souls without even really knowing it.

When you describe toxic behaviors, is it identifying sin? Or do you think it's less obvious than sin, per se?

Oftentimes it is sin. Sometimes it may be less obvious. I don't know if having a bad attitude is sin or not, but I think that's something that's obviously harmful.

How do these behaviors impact a church and its leadership? And where do you see that as you're trying to help people get detoxed?

Toxic mindsets, toxic influences, toxic attitudes can hit everybody at every level. They can impact marriages, through the poison that we allow to hurt our soul through negative self-talk. Or, for instance, are we transferring ownership of ministry to others or are we afraid of that and holding it to ourselves?

With negative self-talk, is there a danger in too much positive self talk or a self-help mentality? How do you balance knowing our sin nature and need for confession?

I'm not describing "name-it-and-claim it," or if I just speak this enough it's going to happen. I'd rather somebody be positive than negative, but I don't go so far as to say you can create everything with your words, and if you just speak positive words then life's going to be great. If you speak faith-filled words consistent with the Bible, then it might actually change your perspective in a hard time but it might not stop the hard times.

How can people engage in culture in a serious way that isn't toxic? How do you identify when it turns from something analytical, "let's discuss this piece of art," to influencing your mind and behaviors?

I don't believe we should run and hide from culture. It's not something we should be afraid of, and as Christians, I think we can help create culture and help redeem culture. I do think that there are a couple of extremes that are probably dangerous. One is, I'm going to run and hide. The other is, Everything is okay and nothing is bad. There is wisdom somewhere in between, and what's maybe right and helpful to someone may not be right and helpful to someone else. For instance, we had a nice meal out with some friends and we were talking about our faith and talking about our church and spiritual growth, and then we went to a movie where there is literally a ghost raping a girl. I walked out afterwards kind of facing what I've said in the past, which would be, "If it doesn't bother me, why would it be wrong?"  

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