When a respected leader begins teaching something false, a church owes two things at once. It owes a clear word about the error. It also owes the person a patient, private effort to reach them before they are gone. Carlton Pearson’s story shows what happens when the first arrives loudly and the second barely arrives at all. This guide helps you practice correction that tells the truth about error and stays gentle toward the person who is doubting.
You can work through it alone over a few quiet sittings, or with a group in one long meeting. Some prompts ask you to think about your own questions or your own habits of correction. Answer those privately if you want to. Nobody in a group should be asked to disclose a doubt they have not chosen to share.
Two failures, not one
Dr. CJ Rhodes, who pastors Mount Helm Baptist Church, traveled to Tulsa in 2007 to interview Pearson in person. By the time he arrived, Pearson was preaching what he called the gospel of inclusion. Rhodes is plain about what that teaching is: “the gospel of inclusion is universalism.” In Pearson’s version, Christ’s work has already saved everyone, so repentance and faith are no longer needed. By Rhodes’s account, Pearson’s congregation had shrunk from about 5,000 people to around 200.
Rhodes does not soften his verdict. “I don’t agree with this gospel of inclusion,” he says on the record. Jude 3 teaches that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and Pearson’s teaching removed faith from that sentence. The doctrinal failure was real.
The conversation between Rhodes and Lisa Fields keeps returning to a second failure, and it is the one this guide is built around. Fields describes how Pearson was pushed further away “because the people that had his number were in relationship with him, went to the press before they went to him.” The people with the closest access to him chose the most distant way to respond.
People who hear this story tend to keep one failure and drop the other. Some hear only the heresy and treat everything else as excuse-making. Others hear only the cruelty and start to wonder whether the doctrine mattered. Before going further, notice which way you lean. That reflex will shape how you respond the next time someone near you starts to drift.
Read Jude before you read the headlines
The letter this ministry takes its name from holds both concerns together. In Jude 1:3, the writer calls believers to contend: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” The whole letter warns against false teachers in strong terms.
Near its end, though, Jude turns to the people who are wavering. Jude 1:22-23 reads: “And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”
Read the two passages slowly, then work through these observations before you discuss what they mean.
- Who is Jude addressing in verse 3, and who is he describing in verses 22-23? Are they the same people?
- What verbs does Jude use for the church’s action toward the wavering? What does each verb require you to be close enough to do?
- Where does Jude place the hatred in verse 23? Is it aimed at a person or at something else?
Jude’s rescue language assumes nearness. You cannot pull someone out of a fire from across the street. Fields used this passage when she taught on Pearson, and her question comes straight out of it: “are we there to pull them out or does our behavior when we’re unloving and unmerciful further push them in?”
Paul gives a similar instruction about a believer who opposes the truth. 2 Timothy 2:24-25 says: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” Paul does not tell Timothy to stay silent. He tells him to teach. The gentleness serves the goal of repentance and does not replace it.
One caution in reading. Many people reach for Matthew 18:15 here, where Jesus says to go to a brother “between thee and him alone.” That passage concerns a personal wrong done against you. Pearson’s case was public teaching, and public teaching can call for a public answer. Rhodes himself says the church needs theologians and apologists to answer Pearson’s argument openly. The lesson of the story is narrower and harder. A public answer does not excuse skipping the private conversation, especially for someone who has the person’s phone number.
What the people closest to him could not answer
Rhodes’s account adds a detail that changes how the story reads. In his telling, Pearson’s universalism grew partly out of word of faith teaching that was common in Tulsa at the time. If believers could claim healing and prosperity by faith, Pearson asked, why not claim salvation for everyone? Some of his peers objected that he was taking the teaching out of context. Rhodes says the objection failed “because he couldn’t really defend why salvation was distinct from healing and prosperity.”
So Pearson’s friends had a problem. They had a conclusion they disagreed with and no argument against it. Rhodes puts the gap this way: “you didn’t have other brilliant people who could really wrestle with him about where he was.” Denunciation filled the space where an answer should have been.
The cost was personal as well as intellectual. Rhodes describes “the emotional trauma he experienced by being castigated by so many people who he had covered and prayed for through their crises.” He says Pearson took the rejection as a sign he was right. Harsh treatment did not correct him. It confirmed him.
This is where the story speaks to ordinary churches. A doubter usually brings a question before they bring a conclusion. If the only reply available is a public rebuke, the question goes unanswered and the person decides nobody can answer it. Rhodes names one such question directly: how a loving God could condemn someone who never heard the gospel. “That’s a legitimate question that many people have already answered,” he says. His worry is that people who never meet those answers will end up feeling, in his words, “I’ve been lied to my whole life.”
Rhodes describes the balance he wants this way: “There’s a truth side and a grace side.” He also insists that “there is some space for judgment, not judgmentalism, of course.” Holding both is not a compromise between truth and kindness. It is what the gospel requires.
The objection: maybe nothing would have helped
The strongest challenge to everything above deserves a fair hearing. Fields reports that some bishops who were there at the time say “his mind was already made up. It wasn’t anything we could do.” Rhodes allows for this. Pearson told him that earlier closed-door meetings and prayer might have changed things, and that “by his own admission, he may have gone a different direction.” Rhodes then grants that Pearson may already have gone too far to turn back.
Rhodes also notes that his picture comes largely from Pearson’s own account, and that there are other sides to the story. A wounded man’s memory is real testimony, but it is not a neutral record.
So be careful with the lesson. The story does not prove that gentle, private correction always brings someone back. Scripture makes no such promise either. Paul’s phrase in 2 Timothy 2:25, “if God peradventure will give them repentance,” leaves the outcome with God. What the story does show is that the church cannot know what patience might have done when patience was barely tried. Fields frames it as a matter of basic respect, whatever the outcome: “give people the courtesy and the respect. Just like if you were off, you would probably want someone to come to you versus you finding out when you log onto social media.”
Faithfulness is measured by whether you did what Jude and Paul describe, not by whether the person came back. That frees you from two burdens. You do not have to win, and you do not have to give up the truth to stay close.
A practice: the conversation before the post
Rhodes names a pressure that pushes believers toward public correction. He describes “this call out culture, which I think is often more so mediated by our need to be liked and approved.” This practice slows that impulse down. Try it the next time someone you know says or teaches something you believe is wrong.
- Restate before you respond. Write down the other person’s view in two or three sentences, as fairly as they would put it themselves. If you cannot do this, you are not ready to correct them.
- Find the question under the claim. Pearson’s conclusion grew from a question about why salvation should be treated differently from healing and wealth. Write down the question you think sits underneath your friend’s position.
- Check your own answer. Can you answer that question from Scripture, in context, without a slogan? If not, study before you speak, or bring the question to someone who can help.
- Check your access. Do you have this person’s number, or a real relationship with them? If so, the first conversation belongs there, not on a screen.
- Write the private message first. Draft what you would say to them directly. Read it against 2 Timothy 2:24-25. Is it patient? Does it aim at their repentance or at your being seen to be right?
Public teaching may still need a public answer later. Galatians 6:1 adds a final check before any correction: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”
If you are the one with the question
Some people reading this are not the correctors. They are the ones quietly wondering about hell, or about people who never heard the gospel, or about teaching they grew up with that no longer holds together. Fields says plainly that “People are wrestling with these silently.” Having those questions does not make you Carlton Pearson. Questions become dangerous mainly when they have nowhere honest to go.
Fields recalls bringing a hard question to a seminary professor who admitted he struggled with it too. “I didn’t need him to give me five points. I needed him to say, I’m wrestling too.” If you want to, consider naming one question to one person you trust: a pastor, a mentor, a mature friend. This is an invitation, not a requirement. You can also take your time choosing that person.
Doubt is sometimes tangled up with harm done by a church leader. If the hurt behind your questions includes abuse, by a leader or in your home, your first need is safety and a trusted person, not an argument. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. Seeking a counselor for that kind of wound is not a failure of faith. A leader’s failure is real and grievous, and it is not the failure of Christ.
Questions for discussion
If you lead a group, read the Jude passage aloud together before any discussion. Let people answer the observation prompts before anyone offers an interpretation. Keep the conversation on the questions rather than on any named public figure in your own circles. Make it clear that people may pass on any question.
- Rhodes holds two judgments together: the doctrine was wrong, and the response made things worse. Which of the two do you find harder to keep in view, and why?
- In Jude 1:22-23, what would “pulling them out of the fire” look like with a real person in your life? What would it cost you?
- Pearson’s peers disagreed with his conclusion but could not answer his argument. What questions do people in your church ask that you are not confident you could answer well?
- When have you seen public correction actually lead someone to change their mind? When have you seen it harden them? What made the difference?
- Paul ties gentleness to the hope of repentance. How would you know whether your gentleness had slid into avoiding the truth?
- What would your church need to change for someone to voice a serious doubt early, before it hardens into a public position?
Rhodes hoped believers would not simply write Pearson off as a heretic, but would show “that we’ll demonstrate why the gospel of Jesus Christ as we believe it biblically, theologically historically, is the way, the truth and the life.” Fields describes the same task: “we have to be able to intellectually defend the claims that Carlton is making, but also with gentleness and respect.” Before you close, pick one name. It might be the person you have been tempted to correct from a distance, or the person you might trust with your own question. Decide what one honest, private step toward them would look like this week.