Let the Bedbugs Starve

This morning during prayer I got more revelation about churches.

My prayer life keeps improving. These days I will often get up in the morning, go to the den, put on worship music (not Christian dance music), and pray while walking around. I am getting very aggressive, and I expect it to increase.

Today while I was praying, I thought about the way my life had changed since getting out from under a pastor.

When I was serving at churches, I had to deal with a lot of immature, ignorant people who were in authority. They did not pray much. They did not get revelation from God. They just repeated what other people told them. Nonetheless, for one reason or another, they were put in charge of ministries.

If you’re a pastor’s brother in law in a charismatic, money-centered church, you can pretty much count on running a ministry, unless he doesn’t like you. The wife will automatically be a pastor. Buddies and people who agree with everything the pastor says are likely to be promoted. Sometimes these people belong in their positions, and sometimes they don’t. The rest of us have to deal with them.

When the people in the Bible needed guidance, they went to men who were in contact with God. That’s what they did when they were doing things right, I mean. They went to Moses or Samuel or Jesus. They didn’t go to the high priest’s uncle or wife.

We are different now. We go to whichever crony or sycophant is available.

You can tell church leaders are useless when they have to brainstorm in order to come up with things to say or do. People who are anointed always have something on the stove. God doesn’t put a real servant in charge of something and then sit back to see the wonderful ideas the servant’s tiny, unaided brain can come up with.

When I was serving at Trinity Church, they used to come up with nutty projects. One was called “the 2020 Vision.” Rich Wilkerson said they were going to save a certain number of people by 2020.

I looked it up on the web, and it turned out about a billion churches had also had the 2020 vision, but it meant totally different things to them. And they had had the vision long before Wilkerson did, and you probably know how preachers love to steal hot ideas.

The 2020 vision lasted a few months, I think. It’s only 2015, so something is not quite right.

Wilkerson’s son Richie once preached about “microwave sermons.” The day you’re supposed to preach approaches, and you realize you have nothing to say, so you call a buddy and have him email you a sermon. You then serve his moldy garbage to your congregation, like a microwaved burrito.

He thought he was telling us about the problems preachers have, but he was really telling us God had not chosen him to teach us. If God had chosen him, he would have had something to say.

Rich Wilkerson manipulated people with Steve Munsey’s “Seven Blessings of Passover” nonsense, telling them God would give them a great year if they gave him lots of money. Then I exposed that lie, and he reinvented it as the “Heart for the House” offering, meaning the people were supposed to devote themselves to building his corporation.

In the Bible, “house” means something different. It refers to a human being God is trying to build. This is not something Rich Wilkerson has a heart for.

My last church put the pastor’s brother in law in charge of various things. It seemed like they were impressed because he had a career that involved IT. He put the church on Indiegogo (yes, I know) and tried to raise money. He led the men’s ministry and made us do silly team exercises which almost certainly came from corporate training. We were asked to participate in a tug of war to demonstrate how important it is for everyone to pull. I refused. A tug of war is a great way to put yourself in the hospital, especially if you’re over 40. You can’t make uneducated people understand the forces involved when several tons of men pull in different directions on a rope.

We also went bowling once, at a really dirty facility that served rotten food. That was pretty bad.

People who don’t pray have bad ideas, or they take bad ideas from other people. They have no business running anything. Even if you do pray, you need some time to mature. If you were stealing cars last year, you probably aren’t ready to be a youth pastor.

I’m not really comfortable with the whole “youth pastor” idea. We should learn from older people, because they’re the ones who know things.

This morning I realized how free I am. I don’t have to give big donations to wasteful people now. I don’t have to be on the prayer line for several hours a week. I don’t have to come to seven a.m. volunteer meetings and then serve until mid-afternoon, for pastors who show up late for church and then prolong the services by showing boring slides of their grandchildren.

I talk directly to God every day. He teaches me things that are true and useful. He isn’t repeating nonsense he heard on TBN.

Once nice thing about God is that he tries to improve me. He doesn’t try to convince me that Christianity is about money and miracles. He shows me the infected places on my heart. He shows me what I’m wrong about. He gives me motivation to admit fault and change.

The pastor at New Dawn was obsessed with grace. He rejected the idea that our own corruption causes problems. He believes that once you’re saved, God thinks you’re wonderful, and he does not expect you to show a lot of interest in repentance or improvement. He thinks our problems are caused by lack of faith, not iniquity or lack of obedience. He sees talk of repentance and correction as legalism.

If you tell him fat type 2 diabetics who eat everything in sight are sick because they’re gluttons, he won’t want to hear it. If you tell him we give evil spirits authority over our bodies, to cause disease, by hardening our hearts toward God’s correction, he will think you’re self-righteous.

It’s remarkable, really. He thinks talking about repentance and obedience is legalism, but he says God rewards tithes and offerings with wealth because of grace.

In the Old Testament, God told Malachi he would reward the Jews financially for giving to the priests. The people who got this promise were under the law. They had financial problems because they disobeyed the law. Restoring the offerings was a legalistic move. Obvious?

If you’re tithing, you’re obeying the law, not the Spirit. It shouldn’t be necessary to point that out.

He tries to get around this by saying Abraham tithed, but as far as we know, Abraham only tithed once. And the Jewish law of the tithe was never applied to non-Jews. Abraham was circumcised. Do we have to do that too?

I made myself unwelcome by telling people God expected us to fight our iniquities and obey the Holy Spirit. I said the prosperity gospel was a crock. That was helpful information people needed to have.

Now I don’t have to sit in the sanctuary wondering if I should say something because Albert or Rich wouldn’t like it. Or worse, because their wives, who are out of control, wouldn’t like it.

I don’t have to sit through an endless series of pastor appreciation events. I don’t have to watch the church give money to the pastor’s son, who treats older people like children and needs a boot in the rear.

It’s very good.

In the past, when I got away from church, I lost my relationship with God, but I have reached a point where churches interfere with that relationship. America’s churches are extremely screwed up. I’m sure there are good ones out there, but I don’t know of any. Definitely not around here.

The people who run our churches are doing tremendous harm. The prosperity nuts may be the worst. They fill people’s heads with promises that do not come true. They treat them disrespectfully. They use churches as their personal mad money funds. They promote their idiot relatives and give them money taken from poor people’s tithes. They even try to make churches cut people off socially for correcting them.

They do things people in the secular world go to jail for.

These swine on two legs are poisoning people against church and against God. I would hate to be in their shoes when it comes time to face him.

How can we expect people to trust God if the preachers who claim to represent him hurt us and lie to us? Is it really worth it, so you and your wife can quit working and buy things your skills and knowledge could never bring you in a secular setting? Many of the people you hurt have very little. Many were holding on by the skin of their teeth when they came to you, and you kicked them in the mouth.

I’m not sure when I’ll set foot in a church again. It seems like God has to work some positive changes in me, and he knows that every preacher within driving distance will only hinder him.

If a church has hurt you, and you don’t know where to turn, the best advice I can give you is to spend a lot of time praying every day. Ask God to correct you. Ask him to fill you with the Holy Spirit and the gift of prayer in tongues. Then use the gift as much as you can, and listen.

I don’t know what to think about the blood-drinkers in the pulpits. I assume their piglike behavior will be used to justify violent persecution eventually.

Don’t be too absorbed about serving at church. Be absorbed in knowing God and correcting yourself. The other stuff is much less important.