It's Simple

I was reading a Abu Dauod's blog who is a Christian of Arab background who lives in the Middle East (hope I have that right). He happened to bump into a mercenary named Steven and were discussing Steven's experiences as well as events in Iraq. As the conversation took on a more spiritual tone, he makes a simple and profound statement about Christianity.

Stephen said "he was in Nashville once, and had nothing to do, and the only book around the hotel was the Bible, so he started reading it and found many contradictions…

I said, traditionally, I would ask you what those contradictions were and try to explain each of them away. But let me tell you that my experience is that Christianity works because I lived it out. When I became a Christian, I just did what I was taught: respect your parents, or, be kind to those whom no one else likes or respect—the unpopular kids at school. So I started trying to live out these Christians teachings, and saw that they really worked. So, it’s kind of like a puzzle—you don’t need to solve the whole puzzle before you can understand what it portrays."

I think that says it all, doesn't it?

http://islamdom.blogspot.com/2006/11/meeting-with-mercenary.html

Feedback Outside the U.S.

Can those of you who read The Autonomy of the Believer outside the United States recommend any blogs that deal with similar topics originating in your country? Even if they are not written in English, I would like to know about them in order to network with others, as you can translate web pages into English.

Also if there are bloggers in closed/restricted countries, I would love to know about them.

On either account you can e-mail me at autonomybeliever@gmail.com .

Your Pastor Might be a Narcissist if...

The Power 2 Serve website has a great article on Narcissistic Personality Disorder called Narcissism In The Pulpit. The details of the article may remind you of the pastor of a controlling church you have attended.

http://power2serve.net/narcissism_in_the_pulpit1.htm

Your pastor might be a narcissist if...

He keeps reminding you from the pulpit what a good teacher/leader he is....but nobody has heard of him.

When faced with a personal problem that you need his council on, he snaps "What do you want me to do about it!?"

He removes associate ministers from the church that become popular with the church family.

He does not conduct funerals unless he absolutely cannot get out of it.

He thinks people will lose their blessing if they don't get a chance to donate to his ministry.

He only accepts correction from ministers of equal anointing or higher, so don't even think about it.

He doesn't visit people in the hospital unless he absolutely can't get out of it or God tells him to go, which is not often.

He tells stories from the pulpit of people who were healed through his prayers and none of them go to his church.

He removes associate ministers who can preach as well as he does.

He is rarely seen in the company of low-income congregants.

He believes you should compete against each other to 'get around his anointing.'

He feels his adult children are owed big church salaries despite their lack of experience at, well.....everything

He returns from headquarters and hints how he corrected their doctrine, taught the leaders back their own sermons to them and was generally Joe Cool when he was there.

He becomes VERY upset if you don't call him by his title.

He tells you that as your pastor he is your 'anointing connection.'

He thinks sneering at pastors of smaller churches is acceptable.

He hints that higher profile ministers come to him for advice.

He tells you outright that all his peers come to him for advice.

He maintains he is the one that God sent to preach his favorite doctrines to the area: he's God's man for your town. Someone preaching a similar message in the area is not God's man for the area.

He competes with other ministers to be top dog in the eyes of those he admires and imitates.

He believes the type of ministry he does (teacher, prophet, etc.) is the most important.

You may NOT ask how money is spent in the church.

He regularly suggests there are other preachers/congregants trying to undermine him.

Congregants are charged for copies of his Sunday sermons.

He cannot take a joke. And if you try to tease him, he MUST retaliate.

He feels that the church is riding the coattails of his faith.

Match each of the above examples with the characteristics taken from Narcissism In The Pulpit below. There are no wrong answers.

You are welcome to post comments of other examples of "Your pastor might be a narcissist if..."

1. Feels grandiose and self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements & talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion.

3. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique &, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention & affirmation - or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply).

5. Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special & favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations.

6. Is "interpersonally exploitative", I.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends.

7. Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others.

8. Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her.

9. Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted.”

The Benefits of Favoritism

A common feature of controlling Word of faith churches I have observed is nepotism. Nepotism is defined as favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship. They really seem to go all the way with it too. The pastor makes his son the worship or youth leader, a daughter or daughter-in-law oversees the kids, the wife co-pastors and everyone is on full time payroll somewhere somehow. I know of cases where a pastor's family members replaced more qualified staff members or volunteers, which shores up the pastor's control in the church.

As a PK myself I certainly could not recommend a minister putting their 20-something aged kids on a paid ministry position just because of their relation, no matter how good every one's intentions are. Even when there is not an expectation to meet from parents, minister’s children can struggle with their own sense of personal identity. This is largely due their lives being in the context of church and the potentially confining attitudes of congregants. I would not want to put pressure on a young person to lead teens when there are still personal convictions and chooses to be borne out in their lives.

These are the pressures normal people in church deal with. In the Twilight Zone atmosphere of a controlling church, the minister usually holds his family up as a model of faith and virtue. Reinforced by preacher-exalting doctrines about authority, personal anointing and prosperity, the pastor and his family are celebrities in their own church. I don't think any reasonable person would think that this is a healthy emotional environment for the pastor's kids to grow up in. Yet they have jobs there, in some cases, being payed a disproportionately high salary for the position they occupy.

So you have family members employed in positions they might otherwise not have the inclination or desire to do. They are really just in the family business. And the family business is riding the prosperity gravy train, exhorting people to give while they live the extravagant lifestyle of the nouveau rich. And I hear story after story of the adult children or family members in these churches falling in to sin (in some cases staying there). Leaders in a controlling church must be confronted over such issues. It seems like I remember Jesus rebuking the religious crowd far more often than the sinners because of their corruption and pride.

People get upset (or should) when politicians pack appointed positions of grant contracts to their cronies and family.

Why accept any lower standards from church leaders?

The “Convenient Doctrines” of Preachers in Sin

Rich Vermillion at his Kenneth Copeland blog (which he calls a "loving rebuke", by the way) discusses some of my favorite topics in the Word of faith.

I am encouraged by the criticism and calls for reform that he and Mel Montgomery have made from within the WOF movement but we still have a long way to go.

http://kennethcopelandblog.com/2008/10/22/the-%e2%80%9cconvenient-doctrines%e2%80%9d-of-preachers-in-sin/

Excerpts from my list of Post-WOF do's and don'ts

During my post-Word of Faith church-search, I have devised a handy list of do's and don'ts to guide myself through churchy waters:

1) I don't do awesome.

Awesome is an overworked word in the Christian lexicon.

It gets tossed around quite bit, e.g., we have an awesome church...the worship time was awesome...awesome youth group. You get the idea.

With that in mind, I have sworn off all things awesome, since that's usually a sign that the object in question is not awesome.

The awesome comes from the word awe. Awe is defined as "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime." I have a hard time seeing myself feel that way about the youth group.

2) I don't do 'vision.'

At our old Word of Faith church, we started each year writing our "Vision list" (also called a to-do-list). The pastor was renowned for his teaching on vision (even though nobody had heard of him). He would exhort us to raise our sights regarding our vision on essential spiritual issues: more money, bigger house. What lowered my enthusiasm about 'vision' was how our vision list was mostly comprised of suggestions that came from the pastor or his family.

Once I got out of the WOF, I realized how much talk there was amongst Christians about vision, such as "finding your place in your pastor's vision." Huh? Why, does he wear glasses?

Right, I'm sure Jesus will be quizzing me about how well I executed my pastor's vision in heaven, or ask for my tithing record and did I appropriately shun offended ex-church members.

3) I don't listen to 'life coaches.'

I don't know if they dress like high school football coaches but it just sounds cheesy.

4) Partial Contemporary Christian music ban

There is a worship song about being free to dance that sounds like U2's Where The Streets Have No Name. I am free of being required to like to contemporary Christian music just because I am a Christian. In some quarters it appears mandatory, no matter how atrocious the music is. Whoo!! Freedom!!

It's not that I absolutely don't accept 'contemporary' worship anymore. But for my vantage point contemporary worship looks a lot like karaoke and I can do karaoke at home. And when I do, I can karaoke to songs I actually like.

Incidentally, am I the only one who is burnt out on the Jesus-love-song format?

Also, when does singing along with a band magically become worship? Didn't I do that when I saw U2 or R.E.M.? Well, I was singing then but I wasn't longing and straining like I was at church.

Hope I'm not sounding too abrasive here but if I'm free to dance, I'm also free to ask questions. Who knows, I could eventually come around and decide that awesome is pretty awesome after all. But I am free to ask questions, something you cannot do in a controlling church environment.

What Now?

We have been out of the Word of faith for over a year. What now? After we left the church we visited nearby churches for over 3 months (we live in a rural area, by the way.). I would suggest everyone give that a shot for a while. I had not gone visiting like that in 11 years. It was quite an eye opener.

I could have a lot of fun describing what we saw at these 100-person-or-less churches. I have a sardonic sense of humor anyway and the church search was not helping. We laughed at some absurdities we saw and cried at the same time wondering "Is this it? Are we just out of luck?"

As we left one church, our kids complained that they couldn't figure out what the minister was talking about. This was understandable because my wife and I were having the same problem. It was the ol' spit-cotton lose-sermon-notes ploy, as Inspector Clouseau might say.

Then there were the churches that freaked because strangers showed up. For some it was bewilderment mixed with slight annoyance that strangers broke in. There was also the other extreme: they were so welcoming and READY for you to join the family that it was too awkward.

There was the church that we joked must be where you go if you plan to run for local political office. Having said that, a few days after our visit, someone from that church had a photo on the front page of the local paper promoting their latest civic service.

One church was relaxed beyond all comprehension. The 20 or so people there were so relaxed they were numb. Maybe that's why one really large person was sitting in a recliner. It was too odd to sit through so we tried to leave as discreetly as we could in a crowd of 20. (Fortunately, the noise the recliner made as the lady kept getting up and "plopping" down to fetch her toddler helped distract the congregants as we slipped out the door.)

We visited a church in our area of a denomination that has a very 'soulwinning' reputation. We came into weeknight service and nobody knew where our kids were supposed to go, including the teachers. So do outsiders really never show up there unannounced?

One of the first churches we visited in the area was a 'Mega-Church Lite.' It had the megachurch identity without megachurch numbers (we are in the country, remember). The main auditorium was darkened (for recording television broadcasts) and they had the praise band that played the current popular songs. I also sensed the ambitiousness of the pastors. Their overall presentation was just right for getting larger crows. There were references in the service we attended about how much the pastors were in demand as speakers across the country. This was too much deja-vu from what we had just left in the Word of Faith. Everyone was captivated by their own awesomeness.

We did attend a small church for several months hoping for a little down-home reality and honesty. Nothing spectacular, just a dose of real-life. It was then that we got a taste of how much church has become an odd combination of tradition, self-help and pop culture Christianity. We even saw troubling aspects of the Word of Faith creeping in, which caused us to jump ship immediately.

So for the time being, I'm cooling my jets on church. I'm not even getting to the questions of why do we do church the way we do (I have a lot of those.) At this point I'm just asking the basic question of 'Why am I sitting through this?' I wish we'd taken a break like this a while back. There is not a clear way out on this topic but that's were I am.

Jesus' method in forming disciples

Abu Daoud is a Middle Eastern Christian who write a blog called Islam and Christianity. He has a recent article called "Jesus' method in forming disciples."

Although the article is concerned with sharing Jesus with Muslims, the way Jesus made disciples stands in stark contrast to how it's done in a controlling church.

Actually disciples are not made in controlling churches, they are merely controlled and indoctrinated.



http://islamdom.blogspot.com/2009/01/jesus-method-in-forming-disciples.html