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/

Why did we do it?

Why did we do it? In the posts preceding this one, we describe an unflattering picture of the Word of faith church we attended faithfully for 10 years. What drew us there, and why did we stay so long?

There are several reasons why. The first being that there was nothing to keep us in our old churches. The churches we had grown up in seemed to be in a rut. Congregations had their local and denominational identities and for the most part, church seemed, ...well.... almost discouraging. In contrast what we heard in the Word of faith was an aggressive Christianity. God had not relegated his more overt activities to the past ages. Mark 16:15-20 was a reality. We heard messages about the blood of Jesus, spiritual gifts, miracles, about an active and aggressive faith. The Bible came alive to me at this time. The accounts told in it seemed real and vital.

One thing also to consider is that Christians believe what other Christians will tell them. They don't call us 'Believers' for nothing. When you think about it, it's a beautiful thing, to believe. Isn't that who we really are? Aren't we blessed for believing without any other evidence than on the basis that Jesus said so? But we are sometimes gullible, sometimes too quick to believe anything (anyone care to discuss chain e-mails that people forward?) without verifying. Then you begin believing wrong things.

We were looking for spiritual depth. In the old churches, you knew the history and you knew about the squabbles over petty issues. The pastors would gripe and moan from the pulpit about the church people, news headlines or hopeless negative societal trends. In contrast, the Faith churches emphasised growing up and being a mature Believer (although this got paired with authority and offence teaching). The way the prosperity message was administered to us was that Christians should prosper in order to send the gospel into the world (check up on your definition of 'Gospel').

So we went expecting to get direction from God in the church services. We were seeking to progress in spiritual things. We were not expecting to be taken advantage of. We were not expecting that strange things would be slid in doctrinally between familiar topics. I've recently watched DVDs of old church services. My wife and I have noticed things that we just did not see before: arrogance, doctrinally questionable statements, and just plain bad logic.

At least we know now. Never again!

"Suffer the Little Children" not "Make the Little Children Suffer"

One of many disturbing things which I observed during my ten years at my old church was the attitude towards children. Whether it was church services or social functions there seemed to be an underlying disdain for kids. (I am automatically suspicious of someone who treats his pets better than he does his own children.)

The church had, what I like to refer to as, "baby police" patrolling the sanctuary looking for the ever offensive, gurgling, cooing, or crying of small ones. With these officers in control, we needn't worry about some unthoughtful baby destroying the anointing in the service by burping or laughing. What a relief that we could focus on the most important things in life(making more money or looking good to the world)! Countless times I thought to myself, "If only there were no children allowed in the church building at all, then we could really get serious in our worship." Fortunately for us, the baby police kept the disruptions to a minimum.

Then there were the social functions or "special meetings" where kids weren't allowed. If you really wanted to offend someone, just slip your child in the door with you. You'd be swiftly ushered right out the way you came. In one case a person asked a mom to bring her husband to sit in the car with her NEWBORN. Dad could "give him a bottle of water if he starts to cry"(since mom only nurses the baby). That way, no one at the meeting would have to even look at a kid while they were "being fed" The Word.

I understand now that this attitude came from the pastor and his wife. These are things which were important to them. No doubt that helped explain the behavior of the pastor's adult daughter. She became the teacher to the young kids. Many sweet children had the misfortune of being in her class only to be yelled at and intimidated. One mother described her son becoming very anxious every time he went to class. He refused to go to class without going to the restroom out of fear of angering the teacher and being embarrassed by her in front of the entire class. Another small child reported, "Mom, I don't want to go in there. She yells at everyone all the time." A certain lady helped teach the class on one occasion. She was appalled at how the children were spoken to. She said, "I wouldn't talk to my dog that way."

I believe now that the pastor's daughter was only imitating her father. I look back and marvel that some angry mother didn't set her straight.

In spite of the bad behavior of the pastor's family, many workers in all the children's classes were kind, gentle, and devoted to the kids. That would definitely be the character of Christ shining through those Christians. I am so thankful for those people.

It flows from the head

One of the things we noticed when began going to our Word of Faith church was the often disturbing character of the congregation. Although there were exceptions, our church was consistently unfriendly. A relative who also attended church there with us for a while maintains it was the most unfriendly church he's ever been in. When we began attending there, we felt as if people kept us at arm's length. At the time my wife and I were in our early to mid-twenties. I would introduce myself to people and have what I could only describe as comically bad experiences. This happened time and time again...the usher who looked past me the whole 5 minutes I tried to converse with him or the guy who didn't like what my infant son had on...after a while you are asking yourself if you are on Candid Camera. It was such a common occurrence that it became a running joke with my wife and me; we'd introduce ourselves just to see how bad it turned out.

Why did we put up with it for so long? In our first months at the church we heard messages on avoiding offence that made an impression on us. We heard another from one minister how he stuck out seemingly bad treatment from famous preachers but was ultimately vindicated for his faithfulness. We felt that spiritually maturity was being emphasized. My wife and I had seen enough petty behavior in the churches we grew up in that these messages appealed to us. We wanted to do the right thing and take the high road in the way we conducted ourselves with people.

Something else that was hard to explain was some of the congregants that were embraced and held up as examples by the pastor. Some were people we knew of through family and they were, well, not very likable people. Actually some were just plain jerks. But we were going to be spiritual about it. After all, everybody puts their best face on at church.

When we first began attending the church, we had no contact with the pastor (Perhaps the presence of ushers who were more like personal bodyguards had something to do with it). But over the years as we were serving in various volunteer positions we had the opportunity to observe him and his family, particularly the adult children of the pastor. We had begun to wonder that maybe the aloof and distant personality of our church had to do with the staff ministers' influence on the pastor. Our church was comprised of several hundred people with several ministers on staff. Surely it was one of them. Then as the pastor's adult children began to be placed in prominent positions (read: nepotism), we saw occasions of nasty behavior in them. Maybe it's was the kids' influence on the pastor? After all they were at the top of the cast system. Then it began to dawn on us the last 3 years there that perhaps the pastor was the problem. The signs were there all along but we did not want to face up to it, although our families had seen it all along.

We were taught a lot about authority in the Word of Faith. It stemmed from the belief of the believer's delegated authority over the devil. It was said that if you were not under authority you didn't have any authority. People would say that 'authority flows from the head.' Apparently so did disdain, snobbery, meanness and manipulation. The pastor's behaviors were echoed in the behavior of some congregants. I learned as a parent that whatever behaviors the parent displays, they legitimize those same behaviors in their kids. It later became very plain that some of the behavior we witnessed at church echoed the behavior of the pastor.

The Caste System

When I first became acquainted with the Word of Faith movement in the 1990s, the ministers were being called 'Faith preachers.' It was during the 10 years that we attended our Faith church that the ministers were being called 'Prosperity preachers' more and more frequently.

Our pastor fancied himself quite the prosperity preacher, too. He would tell stories from the pulpit of how well his prosperity messages were received at headquarters and his various speaking engagements. At this period of time in the late 90's, church services might culminate with a preacher's coat pockets literally being stuffed with money as the congregation spontaneously brought checks and cash to their feet en masse.

At the time I had no qualms about such behaviour. As a preacher's kid myself, I had seen family members treated poorly and taken advantage of. I knew some preachers who had sacrificed a lot and needed to have their coat pockets stuffed with money (still do).

In hindsight, it's hard to imagine that putting so much emphasis on money could ever have a positive outcome. It's almost funny the logic at work in our church: you have faith, you exercise your faith through words...confess what you want and you'll have it. What you do? Confess and believe yourself into a better financial position!

Then we make another assumption, that the people in our church who have more money got it by applying their faith (not by hard work, talent and life circumstances all possibly combined). So who are the most spiritual people in church? People who have money. And as your ministry grows, who becomes your high-value segment of the congregation? People with money.

Now no one in our church believed that money was a sign of spirituality. The pastor even decried such thinking from the pulpit. But in practice there was a caste system in place that became more obvious as our church grew out of it's old facilities into a shiny new building and campus. It was also obvious in the behavior of some (though not all) of the more exalted members of the congregation. At the top of the pyramid was the pastor and his family, then the people with money. The third group was those who worked the volunteer positions. At the bottom were the people who were poor or disadvantaged. Sounds mixed up? It is. If you were on the lower levels of the caste system, you were bound to feel inferior.

For years we could not believe that the caste system we saw in action was real. After all, we were hearing exciting things about faith, about the power of God, about the place God had for all of us at this church. Our pastor seemed to possess wisdom beyond his years. We thought maybe we are the ones who didn't get it. So we ignored a lot of things and carried the water for our church in order to be spiritually mature.

Eventually the love of money was one of the 2 things that was our old church's undoing (more on that later). What kind of Christian place of worship would encourage such thinking? I stopped inviting people to our church because of the treatment they would would likely receive. What kind of Christian leadership would exploit such a system for their own gain? My experience has been that the prosperity message breeds an attitude of inequality amongst congregants that only benefits those who promote this message.

Welcome my friends to the show that never ends....

This is the story of one family's 10+ years in the Word of Faith movement and subsequent departure from our 'Faith church.' Not only have we had to deal with leaving a controlling, manipulative church but we have arrived to see the strange state of Evangelical Christianity in America. These are our observations and comments on life during our time in the Word of Faith and since.

The blog title is a take on a Kenneth Hagin's book The Authority of the Believer. Coming from a controlling church, we place great value in a Christian's responsibility to not follow men or the crowd but to think for yourself.