Tag: Discernment

If you are considering commenting or sending me an e-mail objecting to the fact that I warn against certain teachers, please click here and read this article first. Your objection is most likely answered here. I won’t be publishing comments or answering emails that are answered by this article.

This article is kept continuously updated as needed.

I get lots of questions about particular authors, pastors, and Bible teachers, and whether or not I recommend them. Some of the best known can be found above at my Popular False Teachers tab. The teacher below is someone I’ve been asked about recently, so I’ve done a quick check (this is brief research, not exhaustive) on him.

Generally speaking, in order for me to recommend a teacher, speaker, or author, he or she has to meet three criteria:

a) A female teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly preach to or teach men in violation of 1 Timothy 2:12. A male teacher or pastor cannot allow women to carry out this violation of Scripture in his ministry. The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be living in any other sin (for example, cohabiting with her boyfriend or living as a homosexual).

b) The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be partnering with or frequently appearing with false teachers. This is a violation of Scripture.

c) The pastor or teacher cannot currently and unrepentantly be teaching false doctrine.

I am not very familiar with most of the teachers I’m asked about (there are so many out there!) and have not had the opportunity to examine their writings or hear them speak, so most of the “quick checking” I do involves items a and b (although in order to partner with false teachers (b) it is reasonable to assume their doctrine is acceptable to the false teacher and that they are not teaching anything that would conflict with the false teacher’s doctrine). Partnering with false teachers and women preaching to men are each sufficient biblical reasons not to follow a pastor, teacher, or author, or use his/her materials.

Just to be clear, “not recommended” is a spectrum. On one end of this spectrum are people like Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth and Kay Arthur. These are people I would not label as false teachers because their doctrine is generally sound, but because of some red flags I’m seeing with them, you won’t find me proactively endorsing them or suggesting them as a good resource, either. There are better people you could be listening to. On the other end of the spectrum are people like Joyce Meyer and Rachel Held Evans- complete heretics whose teachings, if believed, might lead you to an eternity in Hell. Most of the teachers I review fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum (leaning toward the latter).

If you’d like to check out some pastors and teachers I heartily recommend, click the Recommended Bible Teachers tab at the top of this page.

The Daily Grace Co.
Not Recommended

(Listen to the abbreviated A Word Fitly Spoken podcast version of this article: Glad You Asked: Discernment- part 2. The segment on The Daily Grace Co. begins at approximately 25:36)

“The Daily Grace Co. exists to equip disciples to know and love God and His Word by creating beautiful, theologically rich, and accessible resources so that God may be glorified and the gospel made known.”

The Daily Grace Co. (henceforth, “DG”) started out in 2014 as a small, “kitchen table” publisher of Bible studies. Today, “We offer over 50 Bible Studies, both topical and on books of the Bible. Over the past 10 years, we’ve shipped over 3 million Bible studies that have helped individuals grow in their love and knowledge of God’s word.” DG has also expanded into a parachurch ministry, with podcasts, magazines, live chats, speaking engagements, online Bible study “communities,” and their own DG conference.

According to the Meet the Team page of DG’s website. Kristin Schmucker is the “CEO and Visionary for” DG. She is married to Jeremy. “Jeremy’s role as President [of DG] is to implement the vision of the CEO.”

Depending on which part of the website you read, DGC employs between 51 and 64 people, which they’re looking to double by 2025. This is no longer a kitchen table “ministry” of one or two or a handful of Christian women volunteering their spare time to write a few Bible studies and put out a podcast. This is a full blown production business. They have a large headquarters building in Spring, Texas. When they say Daily Grace Company, they mean it. It’s a company.

Now, let’s be absolutely clear from the get go. There is nothing unbiblical, in and of itself, about Christians running a successful company and/or parachurch ministry, selling Christian books and products, and making a reasonable profit. I know of several such companies and parachurch ministries which manage to do so while maintaining sound doctrine, and without compromising on Scripture. The issues with DG are not that it is a successful business and ministry, but the way it became, and continues to be, a successful business and ministry.

When it comes to doing business in evangelicalism, you have two choices: you can stick to Scripture no matter what, and let the financial chips fall where they may, or you can pursue profit and opportunities to expand your reach by compromising – a little or a lot – on Scripture. Look at how many millions your major false teachers are worth and how famous they are compared to even the most prolific doctrinally sound pastor or teacher you can think of. The bottom line is, you can turn a decent, legitimate, and biblical profit by sticking to Scripture and sound doctrine, but there’s much more money to be made and fame to be achieved by scratching itching ears and compromising on Scripture. As Jesus so wisely said:

And one of the ways to expand both your reach and your profit margin is to hitch your wagon to the stars of false teachers.

Partnering with, and Influenced by False Teachers (Including Female “Pastors”/Preachers)

In the spring of 2024, I learned that DG had hosted what they call a pop up shop at IF:Gathering 2024. A pop up shop is a booth at a conference or other event where DG sells its products. They give 10% of the profits to the organization hosting the event. From the size of the IF crowd it appears the arrangement was mutually financially beneficial. But at what cost? Scripture commands us not to partner with false teachers.

(Instagram link / screenshot)

DG also had a merchandise space at IF:Gathering 2023 and helped sponsor the conference by donating attendee swag bags. Notice, too, in this post from Jeremy, that he mentions sitting under teaching from the “keynote speakers”. You can find a list of IF 2023 speakers here and see for yourself that they are mostly women (IF speakers are typically women “pastors,” women who preach to men, false teachers, and woke). So, Jeremy, the president of DG, violates Scripture’s prohibition on women instructing men in the Scriptures by voluntarily sitting under the teaching of women.

(Instagram link / screenshot)

I scrolled through the DG podcast feed and took note of a few of their problematic guests with recognizable names, which have included Chrystal Evans Hurst (false teacher and Tony Evans‘ daughter, Priscilla Shirer‘s sister), Jen Wilkin, both of whom preach to men, and Sharon Hodde Miller, who is a female “pastor”. In one podcast episode I listened to, Kristin positively quoted Craig Groeschel on leadership.

In this blog article (originally published in DG’s Be Still magazine, issue #1) titled Learning By Heart, Melissa Emma describes taking part in false teacher Beth Moore’s Scripture memory program. She cites a quote from Ann Voskamp as the reason for selecting her “word for the year“. She also positively quotes false teacher Dallas Willard.

In another blog article, Goals for 2017, the author says of Beth Moore’s book, Praying God’s Word, that she “can’t wait to dig into it to learn how to unlock the power of praying Scripture” as though Beth holds some mystical key – over and above Scripture – that will “unlock” some magical “power” of prayer. When it comes to biblical practices, such as prayer, the Bible is sufficient to teach us all we need to know. And when the disciples point blank asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He – God Himself – looked them in the eye and told them (and us) exactly how He wants us to pray. But she’d rather look to a false teacher to “unlock” this “power”. She also raves over a Lysa Terkeurst book she read, a Tara Leigh Cobble D-Group she participated in, and a Beth Moore Scripture memory program she took part in.

Here’s Kristin with another positive quote of Beth Moore:

(Instagram link / screenshot)

Here, Kristin says she’s “grateful to be able to attend Bible Study with [Beth Moore] who wrote the first Bible study that I ever did.”

(It is unclear exactly what Kristin means by attending a study “with” Beth Moore. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, Kristin and Beth do not go to the same church. However, their ministry headquarters are in proximity to each other, and Beth has taught Bible studies at her ministry headquarters, so perhaps it’s one of those Bible studies Kristin is referring to.)

(Instagram link / screenshot)

False Doctrine

Mysticism and Spiritual Formation

One of the clearest examples of DG teaching mysticism and spiritual formation is Jennie Heideman’s June 2021 blog article, How to Practice Solitude. Now, before we even get into the content of the article, I want you to think about that title and stop and mentally flip back through your Bible. Which passage(s) of the Bible teach us about solitude, the need to “practice” it, and how to practice it? If you can’t think of any, there’s a reason for that. There aren’t any. Solitude is not a biblical spiritual discipline¹.

Here’s how Jennie defines the practice of solitude:

Solitude allows us to spend time with God. But instead of spending time with God through studying the Scripture or meditating, we are spending time with God by just being. Just like you don’t need to talk constantly with your spouse when you spend time together, spending time with God through solitude involves just being together with Him. And as we spend time with God in this way, He gives us His presence, words, direction, and peace.

So, if you were thinking, “Oh, ‘solitude’ must mean finding a quiet place, alone, to pray and study my Bible,” that’s not what Jennie means. She explicitly says “instead of” studying Scripture, you’re “just being” with God. You’re not praying, you’re not reading your Bible, you’re alone, it’s quiet. Exactly what is it you’re doing during this time of solitude? The only thing I can envision looks scarily like transcendental / New Age meditation or contemplative prayer.

And again, where does the Bible teach this practice of “just being together with God”? It doesn’t. God is omnipresent. From eternity past to eternity future, He has always been, and always will be constantly present in every millimeter of the entire universe. You are never outside of God’s presence or not “with God”. Here’s what the Bible says:

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I lift up the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
Psalm 139:7-10

And Jesus promised us:

…and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:20b

And let’s take a closer look at that last sentence of her definition of solitude:

And as we spend time with God in this way, He gives us His presence, words, direction, and peace.

Where does the Bible teach this?

What passage of Scripture says that if we “practice solitude” God will “give us His presence”? It doesn’t. As we’ve already seen, God is always with us because He’s omnipresent, plus, as Believers, the Holy Spirit indwells us. You couldn’t get away from God’s presence if you wanted to. Nobody could. What Jennie is talking about is some sort of phantasmagorical goose bumps. A mystical feeling of what is supposedly “God’s presence”. And that’s not taught in Scripture either. That’s the idolatry of feelings and experiences.

Where does Scripture say that if we “practice solitude” God will give us His “words” and “direction”? It doesn’t. God instructs us in His written Word that when we want His words and His direction, we go to rightly handled Scripture. Scripture is sufficient for all things pertaining to life and godliness.

Finally, where does Scripture say that if we “practice solitude” God will give us “peace”? It doesn’t. Our peace was purchased on the cross with Christ’s blood. He is our peace and peace is a fruit of the Spirit in us. But again, Jennie isn’t talking about biblical peace. She’s teaching you to idolize a feeling of peace.

Jennie tries to play the “Jesus card” in order to legitimize what she’s teaching:

And one of the things that Jesus did was practice solitude... Jesus gave us the example of solitude as a way to draw closer to God. In fact, there are at least 22 recorded instances of Jesus seeking solitude to be with His Father.

Where? Where is even one of those 22 recorded instances? Jennie provides no links, no Scripture references. Why? Because Jesus did not give us an example of solitude in Scripture the way Jennie defines it, and she knows it. The closest things Jesus did to “practicing solitude” that I can think of are in verses like…

Matthew 14:23a– “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”

Mark 1:35- And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Luke 5:16- But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Jesus didn’t seek solitude to “just be together with” God. He prayed.

Finally, there’s this recommendation. Richard Foster is the “founding father” of the Spiritual Formation movement.

And, as previously mentioned, in the article Learning By Heart, Melissa Emma quotes false teacher Dallas Willard on Spiritual Formation.

The so-called spiritual disciplines¹ of “silence” and “solitude” are also taught – right alongside biblical spiritual disciplines – in both the men’s and women’s versions of DG’s book Growing in Grace: Knowing and Loving God through Spiritual Disciplines.

The Enneagram

While DG doesn’t seem to overtly teach the use of the Enneagram or spend much time on it, it’s clear the Enneagram is part of the culture of DG.

In DG podcast episode 21: Ask Us Anything, the hosts take questions from DG followers, one of which is, “What are your Enneagram numbers?” (36:13). Amy and I have posted a number of episodes of A Word Fitly Spoken answering listeners’ questions, and one question we’ve never been asked is “What are your Enneagram numbers?” most likely because we’ve taught on several episodes that the Enneagram is unbiblical. Why would DG followers think this question would be welcomed? Because DG presents itself as an organization followers surmise would be Enneagram-friendly. And they’re right, it is.

In the episode, though the hosts clarify that our identity is in Christ, they say of the Enneagram, “We personally think that the Enneagram can be fun, it can be helpful in our relationships, and looking at the way we tend to react to things, and analyzing ourselves…”. They’ve both clearly taken the Enneagram test and are well-versed in the meanings of the numbers, because they each know their own numbers right off the bat and have guessed each other’s numbers.

The same could be said of Kristin, who discussed her Enneagram number in an interview on the Women & Work podcast with Courtney Moore and Missie Branch:

One of my own followers contacted me to let me know that she had previously applied for a job at DG, and one of the questions on the application asked what her Enneagram number was.

Wokeness and Racism

In these two DG podcast episodes on race, The Beauty of Racial and Cultural Diversity in the Church and How Can We Respond to Racial Injustice?, the two white hosts interview white DG staffer Aubrey Coleman about racism and how to combat it. Why Aubrey? Because she’s married to a black man, as the featured image of the earlier episode makes sure to tell us.

“We are not experts. We are not black; we don’t know what it is like to be black in America,” they introduce one of the episodes by saying. That’s true. But they do have (currently) four other staffers who are black, who do know what it’s like to be black in America. It’s impossible to tell whether any or all of them worked at DG at the time these episodes were recorded, so one is left to wonder:

If any/all of them were employed by DG at the time of the recordings, why was a white woman chosen for the interview over a black staffer?

If none of them were employed by DG at the time of the recordings, that means DG was a very white company until fairly recently. It doesn’t speak well of their track record of diversity in hiring at all. Currently, there are only four black staffers pictured on DG’s Meet the Team page. Four. Out of 51. And only one is involved in content creation (at what seems to be the same level Aubrey was – staff writer).

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Back to the episodes. Neither episode is dated, but the latter (How Can We Respond…) sounds like it was recorded shortly after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery (February 2020), Breonna Taylor (March 2020), and George Floyd (May 2020).

Both episodes seemed to go point by point through the woke playbook of the time:

• The women never think to question whether or not the narrative they’re hearing from the world is true, but proceed to label the worldly definition of racism as “sin” anyway. “God is a God of justice, and one day He’ll set everything right.” Their assumption is that the injustice is being reported accurately (by lost people in the media, BLM, etc.), and is, indeed, actual injustice, and white people will get the justice they deserve.

• They unquestioningly take for granted that the Arbery, Taylor, and Floyd incidents were all definitively instances of “racial injustice” with no other mitigating factors.

• Clearly influenced by worldly ideas and worldviews from the likes of non-Christians such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi, they repeatedly remarked on white people’s supposedly inherent racism (“white fragility,” “white privilege,” “whiteness,” etc.) A few examples from the “How Can We Respond…? episode (my remarks are in parentheses following the quotes):
  
  27:01- “…the implicit biases, and evil prejudices in all of our hearts should be exposed…”
  
  22:37- “… doing justice, correcting oppression, pleading the cause of those who are silenced and unheard, these things are not optional for the Believer. They are a requirement.” (In the context in which the women are speaking, this is a mishandling of Scripture. Additionally, they are using God’s Word to beat white people over the head until their unbiblical feelings of guilt over this legalism prompt them to do what the worldly race agenda wants.)
  
  22:18- “Black image bearers have been mistreated and devalued, and I have sinned against them and against God by remaining in the comfort of my own privilege through inaction.”
  
  21:37- “We have to evaluate our own hearts.” (She then quotes Psalm 139:23-24, which is David’s plea for God to examine his heart, not for us to examine our own hearts, so… more mishandled Scripture, there.)…
  
  …”I think that our tendency might be to defend ourselves and say, ‘But I’m not racist,’ find ways to justify ourselves, but we have to acknowledge that because of our fallen nature we all have prejudices and we will all struggle with racism to some degree… we need to recognize our own racism… He’s the one who can reveal those sinful patterns and tendencies that we might not even recognize in ourselves.” (So, either God, or we white people {notice, there’s no call for black people to examine their hearts for racism}, or both are to examine our hearts, but the only acceptable conclusion we’re allowed to reach after doing so is that we’re racists.)
  
  20:22- “Be willing to listen to our black neighbors… we need to listen with humility, and not defensiveness. We need to listen with the assumption that we are the ones who have something to learn from this conversation.” (White people need to listen, not black people. White people need to learn, not black people. White people are the sinners when it comes to issues of race, not black people.)
  
  11:00- “Our tendency may be to only want to hear from people who look like us when it comes to the Word of God …It is so important that we …are looking to hear people’s voices who are different from us… especially on the Word of God.” (This is a very unbiblical hermeneutic called standpoint epistemology. Basically, it says that we can’t truly understand what a passage of Scripture means until we hear what it means to black people, women, homosexuals, etc.)
  
  1:44- “Pursuing racial reconciliation is part of our preparation for Heaven, right?” (Excuse me, but where does the Bible teach this?)
  
  0:14- We want to be faithful to do this work of racial reconciliation because that is the ministry that we’ve been given, the ministry of reconciliation.” (This is a complete twisting of 2 Corinthians 5:18-20. We have not been given the ministry of reconciling the races -mainly lost people- to one another. We have been given the ministry of reconciling lost people to Christ.)

• In the “Beauty of … Diversity in the Church” episode:
  
  Churches are pressured to pursue diversity based on a popular mishandling of Revelation 7:9, essentially, that because “every nation, tribe, and tongue” will be gathered around the Throne in Heaven, churches have to make sure they look like this now. Only there’s no explanation of how to do this if, say, your church is smack in the middle of China and there are only Chinese people around. There’s also no expectation for black churches in America to pursue diversity by reaching out to white people.
  
  Individuals are called to proactively pursue diversity in their own lives, perhaps by moving to a more diverse neighborhood, changing gyms, or joining a more diverse church. (Or maybe by finding a new job at a company that has more than four black employees out of 51. Of course, if white people flock to diverse organizations, won’t those organizations become more white and less diverse? Won’t that decrease the number of “black spaces”? It’s a pickle, I’ll tell ya.)

Overall, DG’s position on race seems to be in line with other organizations that have been labeled “wokevangelical” (such as The Gospel Coalition): they’ve adopted the secular worldview on race and racism and covered it with a thin veneer of Christiany-sounding legalism which they support with mishandled Scripture and misplaced white guilt.

Extra-Biblical Revelation

“God told me.” “Sit quietly and listen for God to speak.” “Hearing God’s voice.” The unbiblical idea that God verbally and/or audibly talks to Christians today on the regular is completely unbiblical. God has already spoken. He speaks to us through His written Word, where He has made abundantly clear that Scripture is not only sufficient as we seek to follow Christ, it is actually better, preferable, and more reliable than supposed voices from the sky or in your head.

DG has a habit of appearing to align with the doctrine of biblical sufficiency while simultaneously teaching extra-biblical revelation. It’s slick enough (unintentionally, I’m sure) that you might miss it if you’re not paying attention.

Again², the article How to Practice Solitude is an excellent example of what I mean.

In the second paragraph the author pays lip service to “[listening] to God’s (sic) as He speaks through Scripture” [from the context, the word “voice” seems to have been left out after “God’s”], but throughout the rest of the article, the “through Scripture” part is nowhere to be found and it’s easy to infer that she’s talking about extra-biblical revelation. For example:

…solitude allows you to hear the voice of God. However, it can be challenging to listen to the voice of God if you don’t practice Bible intake because it will be hard to decipher between your thoughts and God’s words. 

If you’re “hearing the voice of God” through Scripture, this statement makes no sense. If you’re “practicing Bible intake” (this isn’t defined, so I can only surmise it means some form of reading, listening to, or being taught the Bible), there will be zero difficulty “deciphering between your thoughts and God’s words” because your thoughts are in your head and God’s words are on the page of Scripture in front of you. You cannot “listen to the voice of God through Scripture” if you’re not “practicing Bible intake”. She’s talking about extra-biblical revelation here.

But instead of spending time with God through studying the Scripture…solitude involves just being together with Him. And as we spend time with God in this way, He gives us His … words…

The author explicitly says we can receive “His words” by practicing solitude instead of studying Scripture.

And in this DG post, you’re again misled to believe that “solitude” is a biblical spiritual discipline and that, “When we take time away from people, distractions, and noise, we quiet our hearts to listen to God’s voice.” If you’re supposedly “listening to God’s voice” by reading your Bible, a) why doesn’t this post say so, and b) why do you need to “practice solitude” to hear what God is saying in His written Word?

(Instagram link / screenshot)

In DG podcast episode 87: Learning the Voice of God, the hosts repeatedly stressed that we need to read Scripture in order to learn the voice of God and God’s tone of voice instead of saying Scripture is the voice of God. It was very confusing, but after listening to the episode twice, I finally figured out why I was confused. “Learn the voice of God/God’s tone of voice” – which the hosts never clearly defined – may be cutesy little aesthetical phrases, but they are neither biblical terminology nor biblical concepts. The Bible never speaks of “learning the voice of God” or “God’s tone of voice”.

The prophets said, “Thus saith the Lord.” Jesus (and many others) said, “It is written,” and “Have you not read?“. In other words, What does the Bible say?

The Bible does not teach us that that we’re to learn what the voice of God “sounds like” by reading Scripture so that when He allegedly speaks to us outside of Scripture, or we hear one of the many “voices” of our culture or evangelicalism speaking to us, we’ll know whether or not it matches up with “God’s voice”.

When Paul, one of the many religious “voices” at the time, came to Berea and began to teach, the Bereans did not say to themselves, “Well, my goodness, we had better learn the voice of God so we’ll know whether or not that’s what we’re hearing through Paul.” No, what does the Bible say? The Bible says, in Acts 17:11, they were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so“. “Look it up,” not “learn God’s voice”.

Ironically, the hosts spoke for a bit about “learning God’s voice” for the purposes of discernment, so that we would recognize that false teachers and false doctrine are “not God’s voice”. But this doesn’t even seem to work for the hosts themselves (who recommend a Jen Wilkin resource in this same episode), Kristin Schmucker (and her aforementioned fawning over Beth Moore and other false teachers), Jeremy Schmucker (who loves him some IF:Gathering and sits under the teaching of women), and others who work at DG who promote the Enneagram, teach Spiritual Formation and worldly social justice, tout false teachers they love, and who have welcomed women “pastors” and women who preach to men onto the DG podcast.

Other Concerns

I want to preface this section by emphasizing the word “concerns”. I see some things in Kristin’s example to others (both employees at DG, and DG followers) that concern me. I am not saying that they are necessarily sin or false doctrine (unless otherwise stated below) because a) I don’t have enough detailed information to know, and/or b) there’s some degree of Christian liberty in some of these areas. It is possible that with more information it might become apparent that some of these issues are sin. It is equally possible that with more information my concerns would be completely allayed.

“Concerns” – that’s all I’m saying.

Keepers at Home

I do not take the legalistic position that no woman can ever work outside the home for any reason. I’ve written numerous times (here and here, for example) that there are seasons and circumstances in which it may be perfectly biblical for women to work outside the home. However, except in the direst of circumstances, the childrearing years are not one of those seasons or circumstances. A wife and mother’s primary responsibility, according to Scripture, is to focus on caring for her husband and children, and to manage her own household.

By her own admission in various interviews, Kristin’s children were little (I believe she has said “toddlers,” if I’m not mistaken) when she started the company, and she and Jeremy still have five children at home. 

Jeremy’s bio on the DG website reads: “In 2020 Jeremy and Kristin adopted two children from Costa Rica, completing their home with five children, ages 6-11.” That means in 2024, their oldest child is turning 15 and their youngest, 10. This year (2024) is DG’s tenth anniversary. Kristin has been at this for ten years.

Mom is CEO of this company. Dad is president. I don’t know any specifics about how many hours a week they work, but common sense would tell you those are not part time jobs. Typically, CEOs and presidents of companies that size put in more than a regular 40 hour week. It seems like a reasonable inference to observe that Kristin’s primary focus on a day to day basis is not on caring for her husband and children and managing her household, but on running her company.

(I’m not saying she doesn’t love her husband and children or questioning her relationship with them, I’m simply saying there are only 24 hours in a day, and it would seem that Kristin spends more of those hours on her business than on raising her children and managing her home.)

In an interview on the Women & Work podcast with Courtney Moore and Missie Branch, Kristin talked about juggling work and family:

This might not be as concerning were it not for the fact that DG’s target audience is Christian young women, most of whom are of the age when they’re getting married and having children. They look up to Kristin – who is very publicly transparent about her work and her family – as an example of Christian womanhood. Instead of following Scripture’s admonition to be an older woman who teaches what is good: that younger women should be “workers at home” if at all possible, she teaches by her example that “what is good” is to exchange the primacy of caring for one’s husband and children, and managing one’s household, for managing a business.

And DG doesn’t just teach this by way of the example Kristin sets. It was also evident in DG podcast episode 252: Women and Work, which primarily focused on women working outside the home.

There was no discussion of Scripture, such as Titus 2:5, about the role of wives and mothers in the family. No discussion about what’s best for kids or the family. No discussion about making sacrifices to stay home, because that’s what’s normative and ideal according to Scripture. Nothing other than a hat tip to “Maybe you’re a stay at home mom,” in a list of all other kinds of work (i.e. “Maybe you’re a doctor, maybe you’re a teacher, maybe you’re a stay at home mom…”).

And it’s not surprising. DG was founded by and is made up of women who work outside the home and see this as some sort of divine “calling”. (There were several comments about working outside the home being a “calling”: “We felt fully called.“ “what God calls us to,” and so on. I inferred they were talking about a feeling or “God verbally told me to…” as calling. In other words, more extra-biblical revelation.)

You’re not going to be encouraged as a stay at home mom or to become a stay at home mom by this company. Subtly or overtly, the message you’ll receive from DG is that it’s glamorous, exhilarating, and purposeful to discover what God is really “calling” you to do … instead of being a “keeper at home”.

Marriage, Complementarity, and Biblical Man/Womanhood

Kristin is the “CEO and Visionary for” DG. “Jeremy’s role as President [of DG] is to implement the vision of the CEO.”

Kristin is the boss. Her husband works for her, carrying out her wishes and her directives. They spend the majority of their waking hours with her in charge. Think about that in light of what the Bible teaches about headship and submission in marriage, and about how that work dynamic would impact a marriage.

I listened to DG podcast episode 254: Women and Leadership, in which Kristin described starting the company, and I found a few of her remarks telling. She said that in Christian circles, “Men don’t always affirm your leadership. My husband has been my biggest cheerleader as I’ve led The Daily Grace Co for the past ten years.”.

Although it is loving and in keeping with Scripture for a husband to support his wife in her biblical pursuits, Jeremy has, for the past ten years, cheered Kristin on as she…

• prioritized building a business over building their home
• became his boss
• became the primary provider for their household
• followed and partnered with false teachers, including women who preach to men
• led or encouraged him to sin by sitting under the teaching of women (see his post about IF:Gathering 2023 above)
• believed and promoted false doctrine

What would their example of marriage look like to the women who follow DG and look up to Kristin if Jeremy had pursued biblical headship in his home in these areas over the past ten years? How much more spiritually healthy would their marriage and family be?

This “woman in charge” dynamic has trickled down and permeated DG in general. Of the 51 employees pictured on the Meet the Team page of the website, only ten of them are men. There are eight people on the “content team” (these are the people who -I have to assume, because it doesn’t actually say- write the Bible studies, books, blog, and other content). Of those eight, zero are men. This is a female-run, and driven company.

That wouldn’t be as big of a deal if they produced content exclusively for women, but, as their FAQ page says, “Our men’s and women’s studies contain the same content, but the main difference is in design and photos.”.

So you have women writing Bible studies for men. Technically, this doesn’t violate the letter of the law in Scripture, because the prohibition regarding women teaching men is in the context of the gathering of the church body, not authoring a book, but it certainly violates the spirit (which is why I have a note on the Bible studies page of my website asking men not to use my studies).

(Additionally, while Kristin, Jeremy, and the other two members of the executive team all have their degrees (but not which schools or seminaries) listed, there is zero information listed for the content creators besides their names. Who are these women? What is their theology? What sort of training or degrees do they have that qualify them to write Bible studies and theology books?)

Always Be Closing

The overall tone of DG’s website is that it’s a merch site with tons of stuff to sell. But while they sell a few Bibley accessories like t-shirts and stickers and coffee cups, most of what they’re selling is content merch: Bible study books and leader kits, verse and prayer cards, magazines (two, quarterly), journals, “handbooks” (theology/Bible reference books), a membership to access their online Bible study groups, and so on.

You just feel like you’re being sold from the moment you arrive at the website. It’s push, push, push. Product, product, product. And their product is Bible study. In fact, in a video promoting one of their theology books (Diving into the Theology Handbook, previously featured on the DG website), the woman promoting it calls it a “product” twice in the space of five minutes.

With this overwhelming “always be closing” mood of the website, I can’t help but be reminded of Jesus clearing the temple and rebuking the sellers to stop making it a house of merchandise. In fairness, DG is a business, not the temple or the church, but when the product they’re packaging and pushing is the Bible, it sure feels similar.

The Sensuality of Frenetic Aesthetic

An equally over the top tenor of DG is its emphasis on aesthetic. You are just bombarded with this soft, feminine, “Christian girl Instagram influencer” vibe on every page of the website and in every product they’re selling you. Mind you, there’s nothing sinful about soft lit pictures of flowers and cups of coffee and whatnot, but if you’ve ever heard the old saying in advertising, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak,” you’ll have some idea of what I’m getting at. It feels like 95% of what you see is sizzle, and, yes, there’s a steak under there somewhere, but you don’t know a whole lot about it, and the sizzle is what captures most of your attention, anyway.

Emphasizing this point, on the home page of the DG website, you can find what appears to be the DG motto or mission statement: “The Daily Grace Co. creates Beautiful, Theologically Rich & Accessible Resources that equip disciples to know and love God and His Word.” Notice, they “create” these resources. It’s artistic creativity of beauty that’s emphasized first. “Beautiful” is the very first descriptor and it comes before “theologically rich”.

In the aforementioned video selling the DG Theology Handbook (which looks like it’s supposed to be an introduction to systematic theology), the woman in the video flips through the pages which are saturated with beautiful Instagrammy images and infographics, and she makes a point of saying, and demonstrating, what a beautiful coffee table book it would make. I don’t think I’ve ever heard another theology book marketed that way.

So what’s the problem? God created beauty, didn’t He? Of course He did, but like everything else, beauty has to come under submission to biblical principle and function.

Amy and I have talked several times on A Word Fitly Spoken about women being drawn away from sound doctrine by sensuality. Not the sexual definition of that word, but the but the classical definition: “appealing to the senses” – your five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. “SENSE-uality”.

It’s exactly what Eve experienced in the Garden. Genesis 3:6 says:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…

Eve saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes. That’s visual sensuality. (And don’t let it escape your notice that this was Satan’s weapon of choice against a woman.) The sensuality of the experience captivated Eve. She was wooed by, and acted on her senses rather than objectively and dispassionately evaluating the reality of the situation, the content of what the serpent was saying, and how it conflicted with God’s clear command. We often fall into the same trap.

I’m pointing this out, not to compare DG to Satan, but to remind all of us not to let our passions and senses lead us. We need to think, discern, and make decisions rationally and objectively, based on the hard, cold facts, not the fancy window dressing.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a beautiful aesthetic, just as there’s nothing wrong with a beautiful piece of fruit. But the truth of God’s Word comes first and reigns over all. Bible before beauty.

Financial Translucency

Something else I found troubling is the Daily Grace Foundation page. It tells you DG is financially supporting missionaries, Bible translation, and various discipleship orgs, but it’s very brief and doesn’t say specifically who or what they’re financing. That’s not financial transparency. When you spend your money at DG, some of it is going to these undisclosed organizations you know nothing about. For all you know, these orgs could be run by or affiliated with false teachers, women “pastors,” people who are woke, etc. Or they could be perfectly doctrinally sound. Who knows? That’s the point. You don’t know.

A Parachurch “Church”

A final concern about DG is something Amy and I have discussed on our podcast: parachurch Bible study with no pastoral oversight. It’s not just that DG sells Bible study books and paraphernalia, they also have a daily Bible teaching podcast, and you can buy a monthly membership to their online community, The Daily Grace Collective, an online platform where you study the Bible “in community”. (The Bible study books they’ll be using, however, are, of course, sold separately.)

The community you study the Bible with is your church, not an online, unsupervised group of strangers. Listen to what DG’s page selling the Collective recently said (this has apparently been removed):

“Does this sound like you? You deeply desire to grow in your love and knowledge of God and His Word. You want to be connected to a community that is serious about their faith and encouraging one another towards spiritual growth…The Daily Grace Collective is a membership community with the goal of pursuing consistency, community, and spiritual growth together.”

“a community that is serious about their faith and encouraging one another towards spiritual growth” – that’s church.

“a membership community with the goal of pursuing consistency, community, and spiritual growth together.” – that’s church.

The Daily Grace Co, a parachurch organization, has actually created a parachurch church. There is absolutely no biblical mandate or warrant for such a thing. If you want membership in a community, encouragement toward spiritual growth, and Bible study, go to church. Join a Bible study class your pastor and elders can oversee so they can make sure it stays doctrinally sound. Sit under the teaching of your doctrinally sound pastors, elders, and teachers. The church is God’s plan.

One thing I heard in one of the DG podcast episodes above on racism, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that “we should be after one another’s sanctification.” DG believes that confronting fellow Christians about things they say and do which are unbiblical is a good thing, and that when a fellow Christian lovingly confronts us in this way, we should “listen with humility, not in defensiveness,” consider what she has to say, be challenged by it, and repent. I hope Kristin, the whole DG team, and any DG fans who have had their feathers ruffled by this article, will practice this aspect of what DG preaches with regard to the things I’ve said here.

What’s the bottom line? I wouldn’t put The Daily Grace Co. on the level of a Benny Hinn or a Kenneth Copeland. They’re not wild-eyed heretics who will drag your soul off to Hell, but there are these several issues that, collectively, force me to say, “You don’t need this. You can do better.”

Ladies, quit picking through the pile of poo of popular women’s Bible study hoping to find a diamond chip. Just study straight from your Bible and go to church. That’s where the real diamonds are, and that’s all any of us really need.

Many thanks to my research team for providing some of the links and information above. If you’d like to become part of my research team, click here.

¹There’s a bit of confusion these days in evangelicalism over some of the terms the spiritual formation movement uses. Spiritual Formation is an unbiblical system of mysticism led by people like Richard Foster and the late Dallas Willard. The term “Spiritual Formation” should not be used by doctrinally sound churches/Christians (as some do) as a trendy term for biblical discipleship or training in Christian character because it will be confused with the aforementioned system of mysticism.

Until the Spiritual Formation movement came along and co-opted it to include unbiblical practices (like solitude, as mentioned in the article above), spiritual disciplines was legitimate terminology for practices taught in Scripture that help us to grow in Christ: Bible reading, prayer, worship, Scripture memory, giving, serving the church, evangelism, etc. Many doctrinally sound churches and Christians still use this term correctly and it does not mean they’re into mysticism or Spiritual Formation. (One example is Don Whitney in his excellent and doctrinally sound book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.) However, because it’s confusing to so many, churches may want to use a term like “the ordinary means of grace” or “biblical discipleship practices”.

²I realize I’m repetitiously citing some of these articles. I read multiple DG articles and listened to several DG podcast episodes, but these just happen to provide excellent examples of the points I’m making.