I wish to expand upon and clarify what
I wrote in my previous blog,on ARROGANCE.
I could picture that to some people, I
am accusing many leaders within the church of Jesus of a negative
quality that is not a part of them, which is, of course, silly.
To this effect, I will mention a
quality in me, which isn't necessarily a positive, and is sometimes
clearly a negative, which is that I am a sports fan. One sport that
I an not a fan of is hockey. At the highest level, the degree to
which intentionally breaking the rules, even when caught, is helpful
to winning the game, is irritating to me. In this, I am referring to
the idea that physically intimidating the opponent gets one as little
as a two minute penalty, when in other sports it gets one ejected
from the game, and that fans of this game defend this quality, I find
abhorrent. This is in spite of the paralellism that I come from
Michigan, and the team from Detroit was dominant over about a twenty
year period of time. One of the years they didn't win, the team from
New York did. Some marketer that year came up with a catch phrase
for their team, while on the way to the championship, “Nice Guys,
Mean Game.” I personally doubt the accuracy of the first part of
the statement, but the last part alludes to the way the rules are set
up, as I referred to above. The way the rules are set up bring about
an attitude of personal meanness to the atmosphere around a hockey
game that is specifically different from the other major sports—one
can start a fight with a player on the other team, and instead of
getting thrown out of the game and possibly getting suspended for
more, one gets disqualified (possibly offset by the player on the
other team getting the same) for two, five, or ten minutes. One has
to do this maybe three or more times before actually getting tossed
from the game.
Why I bring this up is that it occurred to me that, in most of the
western church, the arrogance that selectively ignores certain
directives of scripture is not personal, but systemic, but not all.
Matthew 18: 15-17 states, "If your brother sins against you, go
and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to
you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take
one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by
the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to
them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the
church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” Let me
give two examples that I see are exceptions to the rule. There is a
famous Christian personality that goes by “Dr. ...” He overtly
tells the story that he and another young believer started a Bible
study in college, and, when it was time to graduate, i.e. Bachelor's
degree, it was formed into an institutional church and moved to a
building nearby. It eventually grew to be very large. Leading such
a large organization, when did he get time to get a doctorate? Yes,
I know that, at least a few years ago, one could buy a “doctorate”
in theology from a P.O. Box in California for $75 and signing a
statement of faith. Actually, it was $25 for a bachelor's, another
$25 for a master's, and a third $25 for a doctorate. Clearly, it
isn't accredited, but that's not the point (unless one moves to
Germany, where that kind of thing is closely regulated). This man has
claimed, in the course of a sermon, that it is in a type of
counseling, which implies a doctorate that takes real time and work
to get. Where'd he get the time? More to the point, from where? As
best as I can tell, that question has never been publicly answered.
I don't know this man; he lives hundreds of miles from me. Even if I
was nearby, could I actually get an appointment to talk to this man?
Let me put in this way—in many of today's megachurch's, even if one
is a member, it's difficult to talk to the head person. If one calls
on any common reason for talking to a church leader, one gets to
speak with an assistant. Now, it just so happens that a few years
ago, I happened to send an email to the above person's organization
to ask where he got his doctorate from, just to see if I would get a
response. I did! They politely thanked me for interest in their
ministry, hyped what they were doing for a couple of paragraphs, told
me how to send money to them, and promised to add me to their mailing
list. They have proceeded to send me neither emails nor paper
materials. Not that I need more bulk mail nor bulk email, but just
that, while they didn't answer my question, they did make an
unsolicited promise on their own and didn't follow up. Might I just
point out that, in most times of history, and even many cultures
today, I wouldn't know this man existed.
I wish to touch a second example.
Again, I do not personally know this man, do not live near him, and
probably couldn't get to meet him if I tried. I will say that I do
know two persons who are in institutional church ministry who do know
him (my understanding is that at one time they looked to this man as
a mentor, but no longer do), and I have heard him speak twice. He
started by working in music for two big internationally known
ministries, started a church, and shortly after was asked to take
over a large church lead by another internationally know name who is
known for being spectacular. This man teaches “prosperity
message.” With my own ears, I have heard him say that he has been
given three gold(-color) Mercedeses. Other writings say that he has
been given a house in an expensive suburb of the city he lives in,
and a pool, and pool service, and lawn service. His wife filed for
divorce (I am not close enough to know more than that), and put in
the filing, which is a public record, so the local newspaper could
get access to it, that she told who was so generous. The church
corporation, of which he was in charge. That is, he gave all this
stuff to himself out of donations. That's not at all a level example
of “believing and receiving.” Once again, I can't go to this
person and talk to him about it, he doesn't know me. That's why I
would not mention his name (although, in this case, you can find it
if you search the net). Also, in any time other than this culture
now, I wouldn't have heard of it. These are two examples, in my
opinion, of personal arrogance. I personally do not believe that
this type of thing is the norm, but, the persons who engage in it are
likely to be the most famous.
I will go back to when I was young to
give what I see the norm as being. My parents did not “go to
church,” but, when I was eight, decided that I should go to Sunday
School. As I lived in the country, the nearest church was about
three miles away. It was in a town of about a hundred people. There
was one diner. My dad dropped me off at the steps of the church,
drove a couple of blocks to the diner, got the Sunday newspaper, and,
as he was a farmer working by himself all week, got to talk to other
men hanging around the diner for about an hour plus. At the end of
Sunday School, I walked to the diner, and he left and we went home.
As I grew up, at about age 15, I came
to faith in Jesus. I started going to the church service. There was
a young pastor who had just graduated from seminary. He was the
right person to come across my life as a young believer. Over time,
I come to realize that part of the reason he would up in this little
church was that he finished in the lower part of his seminary class.
I came to know that to be a “minister” in this denomination, one
had to have a seminary (master's) degree and ordination. The morning
and evening services followed an order of worship. The denomination
had six approved orders of worship, all of which were similar.
Except for an occassional visit by a missionary looking to raise
support, the person giving the sermon and leading the service had to
be ordained by the denomination, with two exceptions. One was if the
minister fell ill or injured so late before the beginning of a Sunday
service that there was insufficient time to get a replacement, at
which time a designated elder would lead and speak. As, just before
I came to faith in Jesus, this church had a pastor who was in his
80's, this actually happened once. The second exception was if there
was enough time to get a replacement, in which another “minister”
or a seminary student could fill in. As the church I went to was
about thirty miles from the seminary, twenty miles from where the
denominational magazine was published, and near to many other
churches of that denomination, most of which were doing financially
better than this small church, this method of having a substitute was
normal. One problem I didn't realize until years later was that the
seminary was notable for demanding more Greek courses than any other
seminary, so it attracted persons who wanted to become Greek
professors, and didn't necessarily want to be pastors, or even agreed
with the denomination's theology. I remember hearing a student named
Roger speak, and getting the feeling that he wasn't even saying
anything.
At that church, I remember sensing
something special happened every time, somehow, the service did not
follow the order of worship. The pastor, during my senior year in
high school, one day when speaking to me personally (this church was
small enough that, in addition to his standard duties, he taught a
Sunday School class that was 7th grade until one either
gets married or moves out of town) suggested that, when I went to
college, I check out Inter-Varsity. There, I met other persons my
own age that desired to follow Jesus, from a wide variety of
backgrounds. I sensed the Holy Spirit move in meetings and
situations that had no “order of worship”. Some of these
persons, including a sister than came from the same denomination as
I, had some involvement in what was called the Charismatic Renewal.
I learned about the work of the Holy Spirit, and met some persons of
Roman Catholic background that desired to follow Jesus. Near my
senior year in college, I looked at going to seminary, but struggled
with my church's implied teaching about a minister being “called”.
It seemed that that was a special experience, and I wasn't sure that
I had received that revelation. I applied anyway, and was accepted.
I was uncomfortable with a few doctrines of the church I grew up in.
I realized that, if I became a pastor in that denomination, I would
be responsible to defend those points of view, and I wasn't convinced
of them myself. For the record, these included infant baptism, that
this denomination had just taken the position that the gifts of the
Spirit were for today, but no one taught about this doctrine, and
many non-leaders in the churches opposed it, and that there was so
much taught in the seminary and done in the churches that just
weren't useful to help persons grow in following Jesus, such as doing
things the same old way just because that's the way it's been done.
I could go on with my story, but that
last phrase is systemic arrogance. It doesn't matter if there is a
Biblical basis for doing a thing, just do it. One can see in the
world that almost everything has minimum standards—the power of
current down the electric lines, a level of training for a certain
job, the procedure for trading stocks, or livestock, or repossesed
property. God's standard gives us humans fits. God ordains, as He
looks in our heart, and not by academic standards, so someone, almost
assuredly an unbeliever or really deceived believer in the late days
of the Roman Empire, enforced standards like the religions of the
world in those days had. I have observed that if one keeps a
tradition in force for more than two full human lifetimes, such that
no one remembers how it used to be, the new tradition then seems like
the normal one. Therefore, there are many brothers and sisters in
Jesus through a wide variety of systems that have accepted whatever
system they are in as being the norm. Even among those of us who
left the system we grew up in (and that's almost half of all
believers in this culture), we moved to another system. Even the
“undenominational” institutional churches copied some of the
structures from the traditional churches.
I think of the line in Larry Norman's
“Right Here In America”, a song woefully dated to the times of
the late 1960's-early 1970's, “And we don't have the time/To build
nice little churches/Besides, we don't need them/We're holding our
church in the streets.” Maybe, where Larry was in southern
California, it happened somewhat, but, for the most part, it didn't
happen. Pastors got tossed from their denominations, and started new
organization's with the form they were familiar with. Those who were
young respected older leaders who taught and guided them. Calvary
Chapel (and a few other associations) stand as representative of how
Larry's line above was not the rule in the 1960's, and all the
pentecostal churches stand as representative of how it wasn't the
rule in the 1880's to 1910's, and this point can be developed back
and back.
Personally, I am kind or hard-nosed on
the idea that persons learn more about following Jesus from open
discussion Bible studies than from sermons. Being stuck in a room
attempting to prepare one to one and a half hours of teaching per
week is a poor way to know what questions need answering, and
questions can be better answered the smaller the group is. Also, the
smaller the group is, the less likely the leader is going to get off
track, and if he/she does, the fewer persons will be harmed. The
problem with the two persons described in the beginning of this
writing is that both lead organizations of thousands of attenders.
I can understand why. I love and
respect education. If one is a pastor, married with kids, and one
realizes that one has no skill other than running the system, it
takes immense courage to step out of it, and it oftentimes doesn't go
well. Getting accredited and having the skill to form a new group of
believers are two widely different things.
Lastly, I must tack on that, in North
American culture, where “Christianity” is somewhat status quo,
there are a lot of people going to church, having learned the phrase
“I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Lord”, who may believe in
Jesus for salvation, but are unwilling for Him to actually be their
Lord. You nor I know who is on the side of Jesus, and who is faking
for personal cultural benefit. Some may clearly look like a fake,
but then repent. Some may seem sincere, but only they know inside
they are not actually committed, and maybe they have deceived
themselves. Only when the culture turns overtly hostile is it
clearer, but that's not pleasant.
I struggle with the idea that it is
difficult to be a part of a church that doesn't collect money to
advertise its way to growth, but it oftentimes looks to be the only
way that works in this culture. The only thing is that having a
bunch of upbeat musicand a motivational speech needing a budget that
precludes sending people and money to that part of the world that
doesn't have believers isn't a good trade off.
But then, maybe I'm just looking at
things from the distorted angle of a person who is old enough to be
unable to earn anymore.....
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