Paradigm Lost

May 3rd, 2012

Is it Safe to Come Out?

God continues to amaze.

Weird things are happening at my old church, and I can say the same of my new church. The difference is that the things that are happening at my new church are positive.

I can’t believe how well I fit in. The pastor and his wife are COMPLETELY on board with the Holy Spirit.

Back around 1995, I turned on Fox News for the first time, and I had my usual emotional reaction to listening to the news. I braced myself for a pile of left-wing distortions, omissions, lies, and sneers. But it didn’t come. I thought something was wrong. I figured it was a momentary aberration. But they never returned to “normal.” No matter how many times I watched, I continued to see fair treatment of conservatives.

It felt odd. It didn’t seem right. It seemed like the other shoe was hovering over my head, waiting to drop.

The same thing is happening at my church. It’s freaking me out. I really mean that.

Every so often, I feel a powerful urge to post something about the Holy Spirit, or about the way modern charismatic churches have turned into whorehouses and cults. I’ve been posting stuff like that for quite some time. I’ve gotten used to the knowledge that I could be inviting rebukes or silent disfavor from people in authority, or from those they have succeeded in indoctrinating. I knew I was sealing myself out of the Circle of Trust, as one exiled volunteer put it to me in a moment of levity.

I don’t have that problem any more. If I post something on Facebook about the power of tongues, guess who shows up to “like” it or expand on it? The pastor or his wife! I’m not kidding!

Here’s a video I posted. It’s Glenn Arekion, on Sid Roth’s show, talking about the power of tongues. It’s one of the greatest teachings you will ever see. My pastor’s wife actually REPOSTED it. Can you even try to understand what that meant to me?

In my old church, they actually had a policy about who was allowed to receive or interpret a message in tongues. They apparently thought they could decide whom the Holy Spirit would choose, which is like trying to decide where lightning will strike.

I would guess that the aim was to avoid a scenario in which crazy people ran up and down the aisles gibbering and making things up, but it was not a good solution. After all, the Holy Spirit gives us direction, and like the Bible says, where there is no vision, the people perish.

I’ve come to realize that I was going to a de facto pre-charismatic church. Technically, they were charismatic. They taught that we should be baptized with the Holy Spirit. But they didn’t really believe God would do much for you.

The New Testament tells us the Holy Spirit will enter into us like a virus and grow and reproduce God’s nature in us. We’ll develop the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. We’ll have faith. We’ll work miracles. We’ll be more loving and self-disciplined. My church did not teach that. They admitted that the fruit and gifts existed, but they taught self-help and positive thinking. They said we should try to pray for 15 minutes a day; they didn’t tell us to do a lot of praying in tongues or with our understanding. They spent much, much more time talking about human effort than about God’s power, and like the Bible says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. In other words, you are going to promote the things you actually care about. In other words, BS walks, etcetera.

There was one area in which they claimed God would move heaven and earth to help you. That was the area of money. If you gave burdensome, unscriptural offerings, God would repay you with giant returns. It hasn’t happened to anyone I know, but they taught it. Where are all the millionaire Christians? Haven’t seen them yet, although the prosperity gospel is over thirty years old. There are millionaires here and there, but the harvest that was predicted does not exist. There should be more millionaires and billionaires.

They taught that we would get “thirtyfold” and “hundredfold” returns on our offerings, but I don’t know one person–not one–who has had that experience. I know people who say giving has resulted in more prosperity, and I would not deny that, provided giving is done correctly, and that it’s not all you do. But let’s do some math so you will understand how far off the doctrine was.

Imagine you get a thirtyfold return on your tithes, and it kicks in on a yearly basis. One year, you give ten percent of your increase. The next year, God gives you thirty times that amount, or three times your original income. Your tithe should go up by a factor of three. The following year, God should give you thirty times three times your original tithe, or nine times your original income. So on the low end of the promise–“thirtyfold”–your income should multiply by three on a yearly basis. At the end of five cycles, you would be looking at three to the fifth power, or 243 times your original income. Before too long, you would own the entire planet.

I don’t know anyone who has seen their income multiply by 243, but I do know people who say they tithe yet have gone broke.

Anyway, it’s extremely odd that a church would tell people to expect God to work financial miracles, when they also tell them they have to help themselves in all other areas. It is suspicious.

The church taught about networking, which says a lot. They taught about things like good posture and exercise. Good stuff to know, I suppose, but it’s not really what the Bible is about. The Bible is about being filled with the presence of a loving, powerful supernatural being that changes you and fixes your problems.

What I’m saying here is that they taught about the Holy Spirit baptism, which makes them charismatic, but they lived like Baptists or Lutherans. They lived like people who had never heard of Azusa Street.

I showed a few people the power of tongues, and it worked for them, but the church never had any interest in it. Funny; those people have left or backed away from the church. The Holy Spirit brings revelation. He shows you problems with bad doctrine. He is the reason people are leaving.

Now I’m at a church where people are as excited about tongues as I am. I just don’t know what to do. I’m beside myself. I feel like I won the lottery. I would have been happy with less worldliness and venality. I never expected to find myself in such agreement with the people above me. I did not think such churches existed.

I feel like I got away from Pharaoh. When God told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the Jews go, he told him to tell him they had to be released so they could serve God, or be his slaves. It wasn’t just a political liberation. They were under a worldly man who took too much of their time, work, and money. Their primary purpose was to serve God, not a greedy, self-promoting man who exalted himself above God. In moving to a church that respects the Holy Spirit, I feel that I will be free to serve God. The parallel is remarkable, especially since I started going to the new church during the week after Passover.

Obviously, the people who ran my old church were not on the same moral level as Pharaoh.

I could not bless my old church. I tried to write for them, free of charge, and I did good work, and nothing came of it. I cooked for them, and nothing came of it, even though I did such a good job, people begged me to go back. I tried to help fix up their cafe. The tools I brought in ended up gathering dust. I was initially invited to join the pastor’s prayer group, but that fizzled out. If it ever restarted, they did not inform me. I occasionally led a different prayer group, but the man who was in charge of it was fired by the church (his position was eliminated), and the group vanished. I joined the official prayer team, but I saw they were doing things that I had been taught were dangerous, so I quit.

There was nothing I could do to help the leadership. I felt like I was pouring fertilizer into the sewer. And when I gave them advice, the usual response was to reject it and criticize my negativity, or just shine me on. “That’s great, Steve. We love you, bro.” God hasn’t sent them anyone else who can do what I can do. Why would he?

I only succeeded as an Armorbearer. A sort of security guard. That’s nice, and it produced a lot of good fruit, but making me a security guard is like hiring an electrician to compose an opera. God gives people gifts for a reason, and when his blessings flow, people are matched with the jobs God equipped them to do.

I don’t know what I’ll do at the new place, but I know I’ll be able to do the most important thing of which I’m capable. I’ll be able to promote the Holy Ghost. Everything else is peanuts. If I teach someone to pray in tongues, no one is going to come along behind me and say I’m wrong. In fact, I’ll be reinforcing what they already teach. That’s what I would have done at the old church, if I had been able to!

I don’t care about the cooking. A church shouldn’t run a business, anyway. You can’t serve God and Mammon, and you shouldn’t waste people’s tithes subsidizing a failed restaurant. Not when you have other bills you can’t pay. I’ll be using my cooking talents in my home from now on, when I invite friends for prayer meetings. That’s good enough.

When I worked on a kibbutz, I met a man who had starved during the Holocaust. When he worked in the kibbutz kitchen, they had to send people behind him to clean up. He used to hide food in the cabinets. He couldn’t help it. He could not get used to the idea that food would continue to be provided for him.

I feel like that man. I’m so used to being suppressed and disappointed, I feel like I can’t stand up straight and relax. Can I really be in a church that listens to God and moves in his guidance and power? Can it really be that people won’t take advantage of me and say one thing to my face and another behind my back? I can’t get used to that paradigm. I need time to heal, so I won’t transfer the emotions I felt at the old church to the innocent people at the new church. I know they won’t be perfect, but most likely, there are some depths to which they will not sink.

I miss my mom. Every so often, she gave me a piece of wonderful advice. The language was a little harsh, but I’ll repeat it anyway. One day she told me a friend’s ex-husband had bought the friend a new Lincoln Town Car. I asked why he would do that. And she said, “Because not everyone is a son of a bitch.” That really stuck with me. It’s wiser than it sounds.

I would never call anyone at my old church a thing like that. I don’t think they sit around plotting to do evil. But I have always treasured that lesson, and the fundamental idea applies. Every preacher falls short of the glory of God, but they are not all so carnal you can’t deal with them. There are churches where people are treated pretty well. Even on this cursed planet, that is not too much to expect.

I was going to write about something else. Oh, well. Tomorrow.

10 Responses to “Paradigm Lost”

  1. Bradford M. Kleemann Says:

    Maybe the woman that kept throwing out your flour thought you were hoarding it because she thought you had been starved in the kibbutz.

  2. Steve H. Says:

    It was mostly pepperoni and bananas, but point taken.

  3. Ed Bonderenka Says:

    Just finished Jude in our Bible Study.
    A guide to detecting false teachers.
    And then:
    Jude 1:20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
    21 Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
    22 And of some have compassion, making a difference:
    We had quite the discussion and I mentioned your blog and your struggles with the gifts at church.

  4. Steve B Says:

    Steve,

    For what it’s worth, I am really blessed and encourged by what you write here. Your posts encourage me in my walk, and convict me when I stray, which is a good thing.

    The struggles you have shared about changing churches really hit home with me, because I went through much the same thing at an AOG church myself. They bought off hook, line and sinker on the Purpose Driven Church craze, and sadly, the young pastor who took over when the senior pastor died of cancer took a vibrant, growing, spirit-filled church of over 2,000 people and ran it into the ground. I saw the sighs, and I tried to “do the right thing,” presented my concerns seriously and prayerfully, and was basically patted on the head and told, thanks for sharing but we know what we’re doing.

    We finally had to leave the church, and it was the right call. I’ve read your blog for years now, and I’ve wondered why you stuck it out as long as you did at that other church, given all the problems you’ve shared here.

    I’m glad to see you’ve found a new, Spirit-filled home. And please don’t think that “nobody reads this blog,” cuz we do, and your ministry is bearing fruit…even if you don’t always see it.

    Steve B

  5. Spud Says:

    I concur about your desire to take time and heal with your new church before taking on ministry responsibilities. It almost sounds like you’re going through a divorce, found a woman who makes you so happy that you wonder if it’s all a dream, or the holy 2×4 is getting ready to whack you upside the head.

    Seems like AoG churches peaked with Brownsville and some are trying to catch the fire again yet falling short. It all comes down to basics, recognizing who is the head of the church and the proper working of the Holy Spirit.

  6. Mike Says:

    Hope and frustration at the same time, and a plea for prayer and the gift of speaking in tongues!
    Steve – I have been following your blog for a good while, and we have exchanged a few brief emails. I guess I keep coming back to your blog because I appreciate your broken-heartedness over the state of the Church and because I need more in my Christian life. I did go to an AG church in Orlando like we discussed. I went up for prayer at the end of the church and ended up talking with an older guy. He did pray for me, but we talked mostly about counseling and his old car collection. I was not feeling the power of the Spirit. I am considering finding your new church in Miami and “busting in” there to see if someone can pray for me to receive this gift. My marriage stinks, my attitude stinks, and we just discovered we were pregnant (praise God) but I hate to think of raising a child in the context of our stinky relationship. I desperately hope that God has something for me in all of this, and I would love it to be the kind of speaking in tongues you have been talking about.
    When I saw the video I downloaded it and watched it. I was encouraged and frustrated at the same time, almost to tears. Why does good scholarship produce terrible spirit lives? Why are powerful spirit lives sometimes connected with poor scholarship? Here’s what I mean: I loved Glenn Arekion’s story and want that in my life. But when he talked about Acts 6:4 and “prayer” vs “the prayer” and focused on the lack of the definite article “the” in English even though there is a definite article in the Greek, my heart sank. Yes, there is a definite article in the Greek that is not in English. That is because definite articles in Greek work differently than definite articles in English (see http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/eimi.html).
    My main point is that it feels like, once again, the truth comes linked to some bit of stupid random unhelpfulness. Do I think less of praying in tongues because of his analysis of the text? No. Do I want it less? No. Do I trust Glenn Arekion less? Well, not exactly. There is too much other evidence that he is right on, but I am truly annoyed that he would choose to base some of his case on a potentially misinterpreted and misunderstood Scripture which, when exposed to accurate scholarship, may undermine his credibilty.
    As a kid I hated the fact that pastors would tell stories as if they were true to illustrate some Scriptural point, but the stories turned out to be made up “sermon illustrations.” How desperately I wanted true Scripture to be illustrated with true truth!
    My main plea is for speaking in tongues so that I can build up my faith and clean the junk out of my spiritual life and my relationships.
    Far down from that is a plea for Spirit empowered accurate scholarship.
    In the meantime, hear this as a continued plea for God to do something in my life!
    Thanks for listening. Thanks for writing.

  7. Steve H. Says:

    Interesting info on Greek grammar. Sometimes you can see more confirmation than there really is. But he’s not pinning his doctrine on one phrase in Bible, as you say.

    I just had people over for prayer and homemade pizza, so I am way too tired to read that whole Greek thing you linked to. I see something saying a definite article may be IMPLIED where it’s MISSING, but I don’t see the bit where it says it can be ignored when it’s there. If you could give us a hint, it would help.

    New Dawn just opened a church in Winter Haven. You might want to check it out, if it’s not too far.

  8. Steve H. Says:

    I’m sorry to see Kenneth Copeland’s name mentioned on his site.

  9. Ed Bonderenka Says:

    Dear Lord, please help Mike find the spiritual strength and guidance he seeks from You to live the life that will to honor You, to lead his family and bless them.

  10. Mike Says:

    Steve –
    thank you thank you for your comments! It’s good just to have someone listen.
    the relevant part of that link would be the section entitled “The Meaning of the Article.” It is just one or two paragraphs – I didn’t mean to have you read the whole thing.
    Thanks for the tip on the church in Winter Haven. I’ll google it to see how far it would be – way closer than North Miami!
    again – thanks for listening – thanks for persevering with what God had for you and for blogging about it. Please pray in the Spirit for me as you are lead by Him.
    thanks again!