Amos 5:21-24 from the Message

I can't stand your religious meetings.
I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That's what I want. That's all I want.
Amos 5:21-24

It's Not Something You Just Get Over

So you have left a controlling church after months or years of soul-searching. And maybe it's been a while since you left. I'll bet I know what people are telling you: it's time to move on, get over it. You talk to Christian friends, ministers you feel you can trust or family friends and it seems like everybody is ready for you to get over it. Let me assure you, if you don't feel like you are going to get over it anytime soon, you are.....normal!

I have friends who have left controlling churches that have rebounded quickly. Others who were more deeply invested in our old church or in the faith movement had their lives turned upside down when they left and are still recovering.

I personally am still in recovery mode after 18 months. This experience has caused me to deeply question the church's ability to be a social institution and yet remain ethical and faithful to God at this point in history. I am also taking my sweet time committing to any particular doctrinal stances. I definitely believe we can know truth...but me being able to wrap my brain around it is another thing. And I do not want to just accept what anybody says as correct doctrine just because they say so, no matter how orthodox it all seems. That's partially how I got into this mess in the first place!

Despite it all, I am very glad to accept the responsibility of thinking for myself. I no longer feel like I have to see what Pastor So-and-so thinks...or Bishop Whats-his-face...or Rev. Dr. Dignified...or Brother Deep-fried.

So if it takes a long time to feel like you have come out the other side of this situation, that's okay. Some if it we should never "get over" because we are dealing with people's spiritual lives, which is no small matter. I believe it's indicative of the times we live in.

Spiritual Fathers

A doctrine that we heard regularly in our controlling Word of Faith church was regarding "Spiritual Fathers." This is based on Second Corinthians 4:15. What appears to be an admonishment to follow sound doctrine from the Apostle Paul is a pyramid scheme in the Word of Faith that encourages preacher worship.

For laypeople, the pastor is their spiritual father. This means that you, the laypeople, need to be at every church service to hear from the one God placed in spiritual authority in your life. Is it just me or does this sound like a way to develop the people's dependency on the leader? Don't we have the Bible? Doesn't God communicate with the rest us too? With this in mind, I often heard ministers complain about people who missed a service or were "Sunday morning only" attendees. You need to be there as often as possible and tithe (if you didn't tithe, you were in terrible danger). You could miss church a lot of you were gone earning large tithes, by the way.

If you were a full-time minister, you were encouraged to mimic your spiritual father. I heard story after story from the pulpit about how a preacher stuck with their spiritual father despite being rejected, ignored and pushed aside. Then at last, as the story went along, they were finally recognized as a loyal and awesome Timothy-like figure to their leader. Incidentally, this was a large component of what kept us in our church: spiritual people hang in there and don't give up under pressure or misunderstandings. It later dawned on me that we were being told (in not so many words) was that we could expect the same treatment as the protagonists in those stories.

It was said that spiritual fathers retrieve "lost ax heads" (like Elisha), recover lost anointings and help you get your edge back. That sounds very lofty but what was in reality what took place were preachers carnally competing with each other to achieve some sort of status in their cliques. When someone advocates that a fellow Christian is your "supply of the Spirit," it provokes a lot of serious questions? Why put so much weight on the role of a minister? What is the motive for doing so? All this teaching is good for is to build up the public profile of the "Spiritual Father." It makes possible the collection of tithes from entire churches whose pastors are following the "Father" figure. There was NEVER any explanation of what you did if your spiritual father became corrupt in some way. If your spiritual father is insulted at the very suggestion of financial transparency and practices nepotism, are you just supposed to shrug your shoulders? What if he gets into immorality? Go find yourself another “dad” who expects your worship and veneration? Sure, give them free reign to what they want because they will never do anything wrong.

If you are in a church where you hear this or similar teachings, realize that you don’t have to sit there and accept unscriptural doctrines. Take responsibility for your Christian life rather than have it dictated to you. You will be glad you did!

Lesser-known sayings of Jesus

It used to gripe me that the Word of Faith was referred to as a "different gospel" in the book of the same name. However if you deviate a little bit from Jesus' words, the result becomes a very weird Jesus. To legitimize some of the things we did in the WOF, Jesus would have to say some strange things.

For example: "To be my follower, you need to get a lot of cash. That way people will know you have faith."

"Verily I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. So lord over people as much as possible if you are in the 5-fold ministry."

"Call no man father, unless he's the preacher you copy for ministry purposes. In that case, call him Dad and send him a father's day card with a check in it. He's the only way you can get to me or know my will for your life."

"Have faith in God and your man of God. For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall write on an index card things that he wants and says it over and over and over, regardless of that person's ethics or moral conduct, will have whatsoever.....because he says so."

"Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and give and give and give without question into the pockets of a minister who says he is good ground."

"Go ye into all the world and build churches larger than the next guy and take up large offerings."

"Peter, when I said 'Feed my sheep' I meant from the pulpit. I wasn't expecting you to spend a lot of time on people or do counseling. Just spend time with your key people and your large contributors."

"Arise and go thy way. Thy faith has made thee whole. Now be careful where you go church from here on. It can be life or death where you go to church."

"The Good Shepard stayed with the 99 and shunned the one who left because the shepard did not want its offence, doubt and unbelief to rub off on the others. And if any of the 99 sheep ran into the one sheep or his family in the grocery store, they acted like they didn't see him."

"Simon, make sure that in the ages to come they preach tithing hard and strong. It's the most important message. If they don't tithe they are under a curse."

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.

I heard a preacher once say....

Sin will take you further than you want to go,

Keep you longer than you want to stay,

And cost you more than you want to pay.

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

Borrowed Offence

The Offence teaching is one way that people are controlled in WOF churches. This teaching also causes people to stay in the churches for fear of the disasters that might follow them.

I can recall asking about people who I had not seen in church for a while. The response was whispered, “They were offended.” Uh-oh. That was as good as saying they were backslidden and in a perilous spiritual position.

Visiting ministers would come to our old church and tell horror stories of those who became offended. I’m thinking of one in particular who told stories of disease, car accidents and death as the result of being offended at a pastor. Our own pastor told a story about a man who “borrowed’ the offence of another man and nearly died. He went on to say offence was like the flu, that you could catch it from others. The pastor was keen to point out that unlike a flu patient, offended people want to spread their offence and share it with others. As a result, if you left our church, you were usually shunned if you met congregants away from there.

The strange thing is, when groups of people would leave the church, the pastor would let everyone know his displeasure. They would become a cautionary tale for the rest of us. When a large number of people began to leave, the pastor heaped disdain and scorn upon them from the pulpit for many weeks. They became responsible for every problem the pastor had (funny how such Stalinist moves never caused them to come back or draw new people).

Sounds to me like the pastor was offended! Didn't he realise the peril he put his congregation in?

I have a hard time understanding how you could have bad luck if you got mad at a preacher but if a preacher got mad at a lay person, he was perfectly within his rights to chew them out from the pulpit. How is it okay for him to share his offence with the congregation?

I guess he misunderstood what the expression "bully pulpit" means. It's not "be a bully in the pulpit!"

Be Silent No More

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

Matthew 18:6-7

The Word of Faith has a couple of teachings that I am offended by..

One is the teaching on Spiritual Fathers and the other is on Offence.

Both of these teachings have a common element: intimidation.

In these teachings the pastor says that if you become offended at a preacher or if you break ties with your Spiritual Father you are in danger. During the sermon he cites various unnamed examples who "got offended because I got blessed." To him, "blessed" means he got money, a car, a house, or an airplane.

He claims that the offended ones eventually suffer various calamities: divorce, bankruptcy and even death. (Even though these very things happen to his own congregation.)
I have even heard a pastor explain how an individual can 'borrow' another person's offence, so a person shouldn't even talk to offended brethren.

You are taught that if you separate from him or church that you will lose your blessing (for laypeople, that means promotion at church). Don't get offended, he says. "God wants to promote you, just be mature and go on despite any offending behavior." He tells you that if you leave you could find yourself outside of God's plan for your life, as if to insinuate that serving the pastor is God's plan for your life.

You would think that your salvation rested on the one in the pulpit. It appears your life is in jeopardy without him.

That is intimidation and control.

How does this behavior reflect Jesus? He did not use intimidation tactics to maintain a following.

Good Christian people stay in these churches because they are afraid that what the pastor is saying is true.

If you go to a church where you hear this kind of talk regularly, you don't have to accept it.

It's not true.

People become offended in Word of Faith churches because the ministers are not accountable to anyone and behave offensively.

Churchgoers become 'offended' because of financial misconduct, immorality and just plain unkind behavior.

If this is your church, don't let intimidation silence you.

Do not accept unrighteous behaviour from your leaders.

Do not allow injustices to continue , do not be silent.

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

Matthew 18:15-17

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.