This was unfortunate, sad… in the middle of an otherwise routine, already-inspiring, somewhat Advent focused service, the worship band got up and started with this…
"Before we get started, I just I want to invite the Holy Spirit with us.. Invite the Holy Spirit down this morning, God. He's calling to us… I want to rebuke the fear of man in some people. I want to rebuke that spirit in Jesus name. I want you to embrace the spirit this morning, the Holy Spirit and worship - as it doesn't matter… cuz God watches. He cares…. [strumming, mood music throughout this] I also wanna warn people - if you’re gonna stand here and judge people that are dancing, they’re doing things that you don’t think is right to praise the Lord, just remember what happened to David’s wife..she became barren because she hated the way David danced before the Lord. I just pray against that spirit of judgement, God [.?.?] in Jesus name…"
[They do 1st song and then another vocalist tries to get the kids up and dancing…some did, but not all. I think what they really wanted.. was almost everyone! Old and young… Some of these band people have been in this church their whole lives and they still haven’t figured out that God has called some people, by calling or personality or life experiences! to other ways of spirituality, other ways of relationship with God – instead of their preferred hyper-charismatic way! If this is what their holy spirit disciples them to be, he’s a real clueless, unhearing and unseeing, discernment-free spirit…]
“For this next song, we just want to invite all the kids to fill the aisles or come front in front of the stage here… it’s the song about praise…I’m sure many of you know it; we haven’t done it here before but I know a lot of you know it and love this song. We just invite you, yeah, to just to come to that spirit that, um, Mark was talking about, [the one that threatens and condemns? Yeah…] and just let go and give praise to the Creator, the Savior, the God of everything. We ask you to just come into his presence with joy and thanksgiving and if that’s not you’re feeling today… we ask you to lay down those burdens at his feet and allow him to take them and carry them for you so that you can jump to your feet and praise him…”
Condemnation… in the first few lines, he’s saying there are people in the audience who “have the fear of man”… What is he/they trying to do? Bring down a guilt-trip? Threatening people?!? Immaturity? Inappropriate? Divisive? (Dividing the ones who join the public hoopla and the ones who don’t?) The threatening tone is not conducive to moving people to worship God. How is this the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit would not do this… Why do THEY do this? I wonder if they should have read some of the wise counsel from this gal before they took the stage… The Endless Pursuit of God’s Presence…
Here are a few pull quotes; “And even as a worship team member, I vividly recall earnestly beseeching God for His presence whenever it was my turn to lead worship. (In truth, I was hoping that my singing would create an atmosphere where the congregation would be totally lost in worship through tears or hysteria. It was a big deal because we equated it to the move of the Holy Spirit).“
“Having a relationship with God becomes synonymous with the intensity of emotional fervor or the frequency of spiritual encounters. This dependency can result in a skewed perception of faith, where believers constantly seek the next spiritual high to feel close to God.”
“Many modern worship songs are centered around inviting the Holy Spirit to manifest His presence in a tangible and emotionally satisfying way. Lyrics often contain repeated appeals such as “Holy Spirit, come,” “fill this place,” “move among us,” or “saturate the atmosphere” reflecting a desire for a palpable and intense experience of God’s presence. However, Scripture does not teach this emphasis on invoking the Holy Spirit’s presence. As a result, worship has become more about creating an emotional atmosphere designed to elicit certain feelings rather than focusing on God who should be the object of our worship. Not ourselves or how we want to feel.”
It very much felt like someone was at a really hyped up concert or megachurch worship event the night before where everyone was hopping/dancing to blasting loud music and they had an onFire! spirit “experience”, and so they felt ‘led’ to somehow recreate the same feeling/vibe again? Is this caring for the people and understanding the context, or is the band (or band leaders) wanting to do something that benefits themselves and makes themselves feel onFire!/close to God and important? One wonders…
Jesus offers a different kind of relationship. A relationship characterized by rest rather than striving and exhaustion. Moreover, nowhere does Scripture command believers to constantly seek after more and more of God’s presence in the hyper-charismatic sense. Instead, it encourages us to walk in obedience, to abide in Christ, and to pray. Not as a way to manipulate or conjure up spiritual experiences, but as a natural outworking of our relationship with God. – Wanjiru Ng’ang’a
During our testimony/prayer request sharing time in church, our most charismatic inclined sister announced that she is being asked by the Spirit to exercise the special gift God gave her some years ago (ie speaking in tongues) Funny how there’s always lurking, a sense that they’ve been ‘specially’ blessed/gifted as opposed to everyone else… Or that they’ve been given or acquired more of the Holy Spirit, more gifts, just ‘more’ than everybody else… I know it’s not intentional, but that is how it always comes across and that alone is red-flag time. So she is now going to lay down her fears, and pray her special prayer language in public now… but she did ask that we pray for interpreters…
This will be interesting… What extra! extra! special word will we be receiving from God now, that couldn’t just be given to all in plain English? Do we even need this kind of ‘special’ prayer/words to understand what God wants for us? Is it going to somehow be different than what we might read in Scripture? Or hear from a well-trained, studious Bible teacher? We’re so deficient in those areas already… How much public hoopla will this generate and take time away from other more edifying things? (But that’s kind of the point for charismatics isn’t it? They don’t seem to accept or grasp that God’s Spirit is already working and present, unless there’s some big sensational/emotional hoopla going on.)
This comes at an interesting time. As I’ve reported earlier, I sensed a move away from this kind of charismatic elitism and a return to the Word; to deeper study of the Bible. At least 2 of our leadership team seem to be leaning that direction… Our recent renewal meetings definitely called for more reliance on Bible study and discipleship through the Word. (See my post on the message from Tim King and some post events…)
So if I’m in conspiratorial mode, this feels a little like a counter-punch… Do the charismatic enthusiasts feel a power shift and are trying to regain the high ground of ‘spiritual’ authority/influence? Do they have to keep the focus on public hoopla and experience, because as I’ve observed, they place a LOT of authority in that realm. The whole point of this public announcement is about a possible future public occurrence… Sometimes I wonder if they believe the Holy Spirit can only act publicly… If it’s not sensationally public, then they don’t think the Holy Spirit is even doing anything? (In other words they put Him in a box! This is a Limit on the work of the Holy Spirit btw… if He can only act when extrovert types put on a public spectacle, he’s a pretty weak being!)
So, just to record for accuracy and for posterity sake, here’s a rough transcript of this announcement: “I feel God challenging me to ask for prayer for myself from you all there’s many years ago God gave me some different prayer languages that I use generally in my personal time with him and he’s been challenging me to use it around other people and so I have been in some occasions and then just this week two different people came to me and said I believe God is asking you are you willing to pray in the language he gives you even if those around you don’t understand and the other person said God is giving you new languages that he’s asking you to use for him and so part of this is daunting and overwhelming because it’s something relatively new in this congregation and so I’m I’m asking God as well for to raise up people who interpret other tongues because if he is asking me to pray in them he will provide someone to interpret and that can feel like a lot but many times interpreting tongues is just speaking what comes to your mind as the other person is praying in the language that God gave them so I’m asking you all to pray for me and pray for you guys what is God asking of us in this.”
YWAM… apparently they now do more than DTS / overseas short-term missions trips. It seems some must also emulate Bethel, Redding California, and run another income/revenue collecting tool, the hyper-charismatic ‘seminaries’ more commonly known as Schools of Supernatural Ministry. The internet and Youtube are littered with warnings and critiques of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, but maybe this YWAM Colorado school of supernatural ministry (or good ol power seeking divination?) is different than Bethel; I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out when the young person returns from the school…
Presently, the young person has a placard up in the foyer/commons area asking for donations to pay for this school (3-5 thousand dollars?… money, money for the school and its teachers I suppose… probably most of which are grossly under-educated in doctrine/theology/church history/Bible etc… but I’m sure are full of zeal! and charismania!)
I found it fascinating what is listed on the placard as the school’s goals and areas of study… Here is the list:
Spiritual worldview(huh? Different than a Christian worldview? Sounds like a neo-gnostic emphasis on the ‘spiritual’ that hyper-charismatics are always obsessed with…)
Passion for partnering with God in the supernatural(Hmm? What about real life, here? God made you physical/material earthbound for a good, holy reason! God is with us in the material/physical and wants us to work in that now – not be off in some never-never land of the invisible! Sounds like heretical training in being so ‘heavenly minded they’re no earthly good’… )
God’s power over the enemy(Yes, Satan was defeated at the cross…)
I Corinthians 4:20 “…the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power…” (Odd translation?)
Students cover a variety of topics… healing, prophesy, deliverance, spiritual warfare, intercession, spiritual worldview, and supernatural church planting. (These are all the focuses of hyper-charismatics and seemingly their only obsession at times… What about the ethics and character of Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit? Seeing this/listening to this makes you wonder if anyone with all kinds of character failings / bad habits / addictions, etc could ‘pass’ the class at this school as long as they demonstrated public manifestations in these other areas… It’s so odd to me at least, how these things are elevated over the emphases of real discipleship in the Gospels and the rest of the NT… No wonder the charismatic movement has so many ethical/corruption/immorality problems; they spend so much energy on these tertiary things…and seem to or maybe forget to just work on becoming good, righteous people, but instead try to be become wizards of sensational power and public hoopla! (Could this by why so many charismatics are attracted to a reprobate like Trump or Trumpism in general? They’ve been discipled out of a real Christian moral/ethical reasoning or paradigm?)
“My big concern within this third wave is that we can’t and shouldn’t treat Jesus like a drug. If we don’t feel Him, that doesn’t change His reality. It shouldn’t. But if we have been raised into Christianity on a steady diet of signs, wonders, miracles and spiritual gifts, immersive worship experiences and communal expressions of faith, then if our faith suddenly becomes rocked by an estrangement from church or community, and those feelings go away or we pray and don’t get healed – who is God? Where is God? Did He disappear? Am I going to Hell now?” – Clare Heath-Mcivor
This space has often documented the worrying creep of hyper charismatic ideology into our midst, ie bad news. Thankfully, God brings other voices our way sometimes, and I’m happy to report that I’ve seen numerous signs in our church that show the limits of or even push back against hyper charismatic thinking/practice. This post is another good news report, with an ending caveat though…
What this post focuses on occurred on the last evening of a series of teachings brought by a local pastor, Tim King. These renewal meetings were a quick study of the gospel of Matthew, and in particular its theme of discipleship. (See the links below for the whole series). It was the last evening though where some subtle and gentle push-back was presented against the “experience” orientation (idolatry?) of our culture and by implication, hyper charismatic theology/culture as well. Tim explicitly alluded to our secular culture’s infatuation with “experience”, but he also subtly challenged the obsession with experience that some Christians tend to base their spirituality upon. As you’ll see soon, this was revealed by the reaction of one of our leading* charismatic attendees and their response to the message! They knew that Tim was addressing their ideology in a round about way and didn’t seem too pleased by it.
So here’s a brief bit on this specific topic of experience in Tim’s own words… This is a rough transcript, so if you want to hear it for yourself, see the Wed. evening link below.
This is the problem with betting on experiences to create Faith experiences matter I want you to have an intimate relationship with Jesus I want you to experience his passion and his compassion but that won’t be enough experience doesn’t create Faith all across scripture that’s the story and so scripture doesn’t call you to an experience it calls you description here’s why experience can always be questioned in light of other experiences. right if John’s saying the only reason I know Jesus is the one is because I had that crazy baptism experience well now he’s having a crazy prison experience experiences come and go experiences change I mean you get older things change in you chemically you have a hard day physically you get sick if experiences the basis then you need to manufacture and perpetuate experience after experience after experience and there are things you cannot control so what do you do in the experiences get rough the problem with experience being the basis of faith is you can always have another experience to doubt your first experience. […] the other thing I would say is that experience can be shaped by prejudice you’re not a neutral Observer we looked at this we’ve got these crowds who’ve seen stuff we’ve got these cities who’ve seen stuff and they seem to have a prejudgment already in place they were going to reject Jesus no matter what He did.
I couldn’t agree more with what Tim is bringing here. We need this. Our young people desperately need this grounding in something more objective than their feelings and experiences… The secular culture and most of american evangelical ‘christian’ media bombards them with the idolatry and authority of ‘experience’. The very activist, enthusiastic movers and shakers in our Lancaster county’s church world are also aggressively appealing to them as well. (predominantly the charismatic to hyper-charismatic churches) My prayer is this short word, a blip in time at our church, moves in the hearts of people and especially our young people. I hope it works like a bug in their brain and hopefully a little bit of disease fighting inoculant as they face all the other noise and hoopla coming their way.
Incidentally, one of the leading charismatic proponents1 in our church district happened to also be there and he and I happened to talk a little afterwards… He implied disagreement with Tim’s teaching. He said he was hoping to ask Tim if he’s ever “experienced a miracle?” He went on to say that experience IS really important, that the Word and experience go together and that God/Jesus use experiences… He implied that he disagreed with Tim’s cautions about experience. He implied that Tim’s still stuck in that ‘lesser’ level of Christian who hasn’t “experienced” the full “manifestations” of the Spirit…
This did not surprise me; charismatics have to cling to/place what they think/perceive as ’supernatural’ experience in the place of top authority or their whole concept of ‘faith’ and the Holy Spirit starts falling apart… In other words, there’s a LOT of sunk cost into experiences… especially the sensational and ecstatic… but as is evident in many, the heavy reliance on experience shipwrecks and disillusions many – because, as Tim rightly points out, the idolatry of experience, the dependence on experience, rather than the focus on Jesus and His Word, leads to giving up, walking away! He’s right and the charismatic man who questions him, is wrong! Ironically, too many real life experiences (and church history) show it over and over again. The idolatry of hoopla, “manifestations”, and religious experiences are rapacious masters that wreck most people except for the few whose personalities can handle the constant thrill seeking.
A healthier more stable faithful walk comes from being under the authority of King Jesus and His Word and lessons learned earlier in church history! Experiences are not equal to those, but are subservient and need to be further down the pecking order on the ladder of authority! Hyper charismatics struggle with this right ordering and tend to place their subjective, ecstatic ‘supernatural’ experiences too far up the ladder. The chaotic crazy land of their wing of Christianity proves this over and over again…decade after decade, century after century… yet the hunger to idolize the thrills continues.
“Faith includes our experience and our intellect but is deeper than both of them.”
Shiao Chong2
“The common doctrinal vacuum of Charismatics makes them vulnerable to false teaching. The pursuit of sound theology and doctrinal precision are often ridiculed by such Charismatic preachers. Instead, they emphasize connection with God through spiritual experience which may not be rational, logical, or even reasonable. […] This is despite the New Testament encouraging both self-control (1Corinthians 9:25; Galatians 5:23; 1Timothy 2:9, 15; 2Timothy 1:7; 2Peter 1:6) and using our minds to rationally evaluate what we are being taught.”
1 – Yes, our denominational district leader! who has graced the pages of this blog before because of his work trying to turn our corner of the denomination into a hyper-charismatic crazy zone… He was in attendance at this particular session and he smelled out Tim’s gentle challenge to his spirituality immediately, and it seemed he did not like it! Which is actually good news! I’ve been hoping and praying for a long time that the tide would turn in our church particularly and that more of us would follow the real Holy Spirit and His Word rather than the noisy obnoxious hoopla, experience (miracles!) obsessed ideas of our denominational bishop!
I feel torn when it comes to dancing… I appreciate the artistic expression of dance… I love ballet and the music that goes with it. I can appreciate the deep relationship to beautiful music and moving with it. Unlike my fundamentalist / plain Menno upbringing, I can see a place for music/dance in the kingdom of God… But I struggle with the low-church american charismatic attempt at the artistry and self-expression of bodily movement, ie dance. Their ‘worship’ music, which more recently is generally not very good artistically or musically, coupled with the individualistic spirit of emotionalist expression, and also happening whenever, wherever they feel led, regardless of context, continues to bug me…
Well, this kind of ‘worship’ has now come to Metzler Mennonite Church… Our past Sunday morning worship set, which I actually liked for once because it was more laid back, quieter, less drumming up, less perfect, less of a performance, but was nonetheless sincere and heartfelt… But one of the youth, recently back from YWAM, obviously pumped up more spiritually / expressively than before, began to gyrate/dance in the front on the other side of the worship team… Thankfully not up on stage, and thankfully too, our ccm worship bands are down off a stage and to the side – which is better than most churches who explicitly put on a show. *This arrangement keeps us in check somewhat… although I’m sure there are some who would prefer it up on stage, front center like all the other ‘spirit’ filled! churches have it.
So this dancing comes via youth; it comes via YWAM; it comes via a stirring mood that I’ve noticed and recorded here before… that of an urge, a sense among some that the ‘old must be done away with and the new brought in/experienced!’ and that this IS what the Spirit wants. For them it is beyond a question anymore; they must have this because they believe God Wants them to have it. They must have new, exciting, loud public events /expression… If they don’t get it, then they won’t experience Revival! or feel like God is doing anything at church! But besides the discomfort I might feel about dancing, there’s all the assumptions, many that are unBiblical, that are at play in our midst, and that most likely inspired this public religious spectacle..
Here are a few that I think are leading people around by the nose… to who knows what…
simple, plain unseen discipleship and confession/repentance change in people’s everyday lives isn’t enough… it’s got to be Big, Public, Loud, Ecstatic, Exciting! and over all – just extroverted somehow… It’s almost like they believe God can’t or isn’t doing anything unless it is a public spectacle…
a companion assumption to that last point is they must think the stories in Acts are prescriptive, not descriptive… they read stories in the Bible and wrongly assume that if they’re not experiencing similar or the same, then something must be wrong… they’ve either failed or God has left the building for some reason…
forms and contexts don’t matter… dancing provocatively in a traditional styled church is ok because all that matters is the good feelings you’re experiencing inside you; nothing else and nobody else matters… there is no context, there is no appropriate/inappropriate/good/better/best form… there’s no community…there is no sacred space…there’s no reverence… there’s only you and God having a wirly good time.
public worship times are the time and place in ones life where one gets the closest to God…
None of these assumptions are really Biblical but I can only believe they are prime motivations for many… because of the way they talk about the practices that hinge on these assumptions, or how defensive they will get if those practices are questioned, or what lengths they will go to in order to make those practices happen, or how they disparage people who don’t practice those things…
What does this moment in our journey suggest? Probably the relentless drive down a path that tugs us towards more worship weirdness and out of place individualistic ecstatic expression… A path of charismatic hoopla and expressions of the spirits of the age (rather than Biblical, real Spirit leading…) Time will tell. We shall wait and see. I do sense there’s not much point in fighting it too hard, especially if a majority really wants it and feels they MUST have it… they have been discipled a long time by populist/low church, individualistic, subjective-focused, anti-intellectual revivalist/sensationalist-inclined american protestantism for a long, long time. Being disgruntled and condemning their good intentions and good feelings isn’t going to go very far… they’ll need to experience the chaos, the emptiness/shallowness and the disillusionment that such a religion may bring upon them, before they’re ready to seek a different paradigm on a number of foundational Biblical principles and practices….
“In much of modern American Christianity “worship” can be just about anything that happens when Christians get together to do explicitly Christian things. But worship has a definite shape for ancient Jews, and it certainly did for the early Christians. Indeed, it has a definite shape for almost all Christians throughout most of history, and that shape is liturgical and solemn. Here’s a typical quote from St. John Chrysostom when addressing the kind of spirit that should be in church: ‘Nothing so becomes a Church as silence and good order. Noise belongs to theatres, and baths, and public processions, and market-places: but where doctrines, and such doctrines, are the subject of teaching, there should be stillness, and quiet, and calm reflection, and a haven of much repose.’ ” – From his Homily XXX on the Acts of the Apostles
* UPDATE: Unfortunately... this has now changed. Apparently the 'worship-can-only-happen-when-a-band-leads-it-from-a-stage' crowd have their performance stage now... on the right of the pulpit. So the band is now up, in its rightful 'worshipping' place... 😦 They, the ccm-ers never give up... even after it was clear in a church business meeting that there wasn't agreement about a stage and that numerous people didn't really want it...
This left me wondering… and asking God, why? The talk / message was good; is good…and I love this person and wish her the best and am excited that she’s in a training program… but then at the end it devolved into something so sad…(Jump to about 40min mark) What does she want from us? I’m not sure. It seemed that there was an expectation that Everyone would come forward… but then that didn’t happen… and so then some pressure had to be applied… what seems like a guilting was implied… another young person applied some more, weepy pressure… and still not everyone came forward…
This breaks my heart… Why God, why? Would the Holy Spirit / Jesus do this? Publicly invite but then publicly pressure and imply that coming forward and participating is what God wants you to do, and not doing it is some kind of failure on your part? Did Jesus or the apostles do “invitations” like this? Did this happen at the end of Peter’s sermon in Acts (or did the people hear a message and ask Peter what to do; instead of Peter controlling everything and suggesting they do something?) Why do these charismatic types, who seem to imply they have Sooo much of the Spirit, do such – dumb – things like this? Where are you Holy Spirit in these people’s heads and why don’t you stop them from doing things like this? Why don’t you teach them and reveal to them the silly and damaging tactic this kind of thing is?
I fear for our church and this new era of public, charismatic expression. Will this kind of “invitation time” become a regular part of services? Will my children be subjected to this kind of emotionalism and manipulation often and to what end / purpose? I expect most people will go along with it… because of the natural psychology of group dynamics and crowd manipulation (which education-hating charismatics and fundamentalists don’t want to know anything about…)
Unfortunately, I kind of went along with it or at least pretended to ‘participate’, with the only motivation being to ‘fit in’… But maybe it’s a good thing this happened… my radar is in full tune now, and I will make a point NOT to participate in anything similar in the future, especially if it’s being used by the charismatics of our church…
I also have to make the point; that this kind of thing seems to be loved and most encouraged by extroverts… They must LOVE this kind of spirituality… and they must assume that God wants everyone else to LOVE it too, as much as they do. I’m not actually bothered so much by that. If extroverts feel closer to God by doing these kinds of things, I’m happy to let them (I’ll even encourage it!) But they NEVER keep it to themselves, nor do they ever have the brains or Holy Spirit insight or grace to realize that maybe God doesn’t want everyone else to do the same expressions! They always, always seem to assume that their most comfortable expressions of their faith are also the same thing God wants for everyone else too…and then they pile on even more by suggesting you’re failing God and failing as a Christian if you don’t go along with their public expressions and sensationalisms! This kind of thing is so uncomfortable, so painful, so confusing and always, always! so condemning for people who are not extroverts or extrovert leaning… but the leader / A types / charismatic extrovert types seem to have no clue of this and so they just charge on, claiming they’re getting all of this from the ‘Holy Spirit’ and being ‘Spirit’ lead… while they run over, condemn, confuse, manipulate, abuse their brothers & sisters in the faith with things like this… Just soooo, so heart breaking, so wrenching…
This event has also made me remember a favorite blogger and his numerous rants against american evangelical / charismaticy public hype and show (like invitation time or similar things…) Here’s a link to a piece he wrote more than 20yrs ago… (See parts II & III for more).
Now the title is not anything we heard yesterday in church… but it is my reply to a vibe that’s been percolating for a long time in our midst…really ever since I’ve been coming here. A recent anecdote that illustrates this vibe involves a youth currently doing hyper-charismatic revivalism crusades with YWAM Circuit Riders / Todd White et al, and the repeated public implication has been that, we should all aspire to his amped up, charismatic zealotry…
But yesterday I was again reminded of this “in-the-air” suggestion that our church change and leave our more sober / reverent, charismatic-averse past behind. Based on who says it and how it is implied, the direction we are being encouraged to go is towards more hyped up charismatic, emotionalist hoopla! Here’s how the reminder, the push, came again.
A small group who had traveled to Bulgaria on a short-term mission returned and gave a presentation and testimonies. They had quite the time and some really interesting experiences. Apparently the connections were through some past YWAM connection, and the people in Bulgaria they connected with were the growing and dynamic Bulgarian Roma/Gypsy Pentecostal community. This is one of the poorest areas of Eastern Europe and because it’s the Roma/Gypsy community, also one of the most marginalized. (Which this doctoral dissertation by a Bulgarian Evangelical/Pentecostal goes into great detail about!)
First off, I want to say that it’s clear God is at work in and through this community of believers. They are experiencing His power and provision in tough situations that we privileged Americans can’t really comprehend. Our congregation’s travelers mentioned it, and also confirmed in some of my further reading, but this community does a lot of real community action / aid with minuscule resources compared to what we’re used to. (I bet they’re far more collectivist…even ‘communist’ in their approach!) I’m sure we could learn a lot from them. They are a bright light of God’s kingdom in that part of the world. Given the little bit I learned at church and reading some more about this community, I believe I can say that with some assurance. Their praying, their active trust in God’s provision and their self-sacrificial care for their community and their church family… wow we could use some more of that!
But… there were a few things that raised questions and begged for a discerning approach. For starters, this type of Protestant community in Bulgaria is a fairly recent phenomenon, and has only really taken off in the last few decades. There’s a lot of new believers, new churches and apparently some western charismatic influence. One of our congregation’s travelers mentioned a lack of Bibles and Biblical knowledge, so there’s a strong possibility they have a lot of zeal, but maybe lack some mature Biblical knowledge.
Secondly, there was much evidence of long, loud, charismatic services; ie lots of emotive, amped up contemporary worship, praying, etc… Given the Roma culture, this probably makes sense. To their credit, it didn’t seem like the more kooky American charismatic obsession with tongues and slain in the spirit etc was a thing though. But our congregation’s travelers were quite taken / impressed by all of this… including one of the more disturbing things that this community did foist upon them…
They recounted how when they first arrived in the evening, after hours of flying etc, the first thing their hosts did was haul them off to an hours long worship service! I can’t think of a more inhospitable thing to do… our plucky travelers seemed to take it in stride, but I can’t imagine it earned them extra browny points with God (it seemed they felt that maybe it did…) This is not a mature Christian thing to do, to anyone. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, but I would not have felt more spiritual if I had forced myself through it; more likely I would have pled sickness and found a way to be absent… My mind boggles, but this is the kind of thing western / American charismatics will do too – they try very hard to be / prove / show how otherworldly they are; as if they Want to be disembodied, subhuman or something… But it does fit their Neo-gnostic theologocial tendencies… particularly their elevation of the ‘spirit’ over everything else and the subsequent gnostic-like rejection of the material… This foolishness, whether by choice or immaturity manifests in all American charismatic spaces and apparently in this Bulgarian one as well.
So, to the point in the title… The sharing from the travelers strongly suggested to us, the congregation, that we should be trying to be like these people… This isn’t new; I’ve heard the same thing from many overseas travelers and missionaries… And I get it; most times if not every time, we can learn some major things from every culture outside our bubble. I’m all for that!
But I do find it interesting that we don’t apply this same rule to more conservative/traditional/liturgical branches of the Christian faith… With those different ‘cultures’, we usually make a pretty explicit point of saying or implying that those Christian faith expressions / practices are very undesirable. We don’t want to be like them or learn anything from them! In fact we find ways of putting them down. However, anybody that happens to be more hyper emotionalist / revivalist / charismatic; those people we immediately hail as the greatest example and we should emulate everything they do… I’ve seen this repeated ever since my Charity days. Most of our church, excluding me and maybe a few others, have a clear bias towards the emotive, ecstatic, charismatic, mega, folksy, low-church, performance/showtime-oriented, Extroverted! parts of the Christian family, and it was publicly expressed again in this moment.
And that makes me sad… As with other areas of life, prejudiced biases like that usually mean you’re missing something… That kind of bias pushes you towards a monoculture, raises up walls, puts you at enmity with brothers and sisters in other parts of the Christian family. And more and more I’ve come to believe that God abhors monocultures. He does not want us all to be like these or those people! He does not want us all to be drunk on just extroverted expressions of our faith! He does not want us all to be hyper charismatics! His Word does NOT require that we act in these ways to be in deep, intimate relationship with God. He does not compel us to have loud services or dance around or have a service when we’re already completed knackered. He does not need us to pray & sing for 4 hours in order to be heard or to act! He doesn’t want us to be otherworldly supra humans… His burden is actually much lighter; it really is…
And furthermore, just because we can learns things from these people, which we can! does not mean they are perfect! Maybe there’s a few things they could learn from us. And more importantly, just because we can learn things from them, doesn’t mean God wants us to be like them! I’m not sure we could, even if we really really tried… And if we did try, it would probably end up with us forcing it too much and that never works either… Let God and circumstances and life in our unique context lead to the things God wants for us, and that will be most beneficial in our context! I would argue strongly that long, loud worship services would be the worst thing we could do for the kingdom in our culture and context!… But we don’t want to critically think that through; we’re too mesmerized by the novelty and hype of charismatic hoopla…
For more than a year now, a certain young person, just out of high school but now college age has been off in Europe and California (mainly) with the YWAM affiliated school? band? mission team? group called Circuit Riders… I think I may have heard the name before it came up relating to them, but maybe not. But since their involvement, I’ve learned a bit more, and based on the things I heard from this young person, I’m mostly alarmed at the direction this outfit is taking them… Here’s a few in order leading up to the most troubling.
For starters, this group seems to be mostly about contemporary worship events… obviously fronting a band and then doing ‘worship services’ for kids on campuses and churches and other venues I guess. Or better described as ‘get more intimate with God than anyone else through big, loud raucous, hyped-up emotional rock’n music sessions!’ (“Yeah! We know how to get close to God way better than everyone before us in the last 2,000 years of church history! Crank up the volume! Bang that guitar! I’m getting SO close to Jesus now!” Note: this is sarcasm. Yes, I am mocking the immaturity of american emotionalist/sensationalist/revivalist christianity… They can be commended for zeal… but not maturity or Biblical, effective spirituality. The warped theology of ccm ‘worship’ comes from an american ethos that favors all things extrovert, including extroverted religious expressions. Its hidden value/doctrine teaches that one cannot please God or grow close to Him without public displays of extroverted spirituality…See these resources for more detail: If introverts are called…You’re Emotions Aren’t… and Introverts in the Church)
On a number of occasions this youth member has shared in church, usually quite long-windedly…about what and where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing, etc etc. (They now have this reputation… it’s a running joke now… how long are they going to run their mouth this time, even though they said they would only talk for 5min?) Well it was during one of these that we learned their team had been working with Todd White and this traveling ‘revival’ caravan across Europe and Eastern Europe. Hmmm Todd White? Yes, the same guy that has been shown many many times over by many Spirit-filled discerners to be a money-loving, lying, charismatic healing hoopla grifter…. Like here and here and here and here and here and here… In fact I came across a guy who made this video specifically about this European tour with Todd White in the summer of 2022. Our church youth member was part of these events! And possibly witnessed the very sham captured and exposed in this video! (Our zealous youth member did not talk about that though…and maybe he wasn’t there.)
Finally, one of the more egregious stories this youth conveyed to us in one of these updates was about their time in Egypt. They talked about how they were able to minister to a teen from the Coptic church, which according to them(paraphrased) is a dead church that’s just full of people doing ‘religion’ and not having a ‘relationship’ with God like we are so good at!. And so they were able to help / revive the Coptic teen towards a real ‘relationship’ with God and put away that dead religion stuff! Of course they implied all along that our american hoopla P&W style is so much better! than the Coptic version… (No mention of how persecuted the Coptics are and what they’ve endured at the hands of the Muslim dominant gov of Egypt… as if that couldn’t possibly disciple that church into a relationship with God/Jesus that is a whole lot deeper and stronger than the shallow hoopla faith of a spoiled american kid!
And so the kooky charimatic train still trundles along at Metzlers… there’s always someone duped onto the train again and it carries on into the next generation… and exerts it’s poisionous influence. (This youth’s zeal has been highly commended and more than once it’s been implied we should all be like them… Now most of us won’t because we’re different personalities, etc BUT the pressure is there… the push is there and that push will have its influence and other younger kids or even older people will feel the need to dip their toes into this stuff… and will completely miss the vast parts of the Church that does as much or more for the Kingdom but doesn’t do it the charismatic hoopla way…
Well, it’s been some time since I’ve had anything related to charismania to write about, and that’s a good thing! It means we haven’t all completely gone off the rails here at Metzlers yet… As I’ve discovered there seems to be a good share of people who don’t/won’t fall for the charismatic hoopla and theological foolishness I’ve spoken of in previous postings. So I’m a little sad that I have to file this report…
Sadder still is the fact it involves a bright, sincere young man, who shows promise. He’ll remain nameless of course, but he did quite well for standing before 100+ people and delivering his first sermon. He mentioned being nervous, but it didn’t show. He was organized and lead us through Scripture and some insightful commentary. His basic point encouraged us to live in God’s peace because He’s got things under control and is with us no matter what. We can rest in Him and His care. This was particularly poignant as we are nearing the end of 2020, the year of pandemic and all the complexity and uncertainty related to that. But it was in that covid discussion where the insidious influence of charismatic hoopla reared its ugly head.
He described a local youth “revival” that was coming out of the covid disruptions, where young people like himself began gathering in a backyard to “worship”. This apparently has grown to hundreds of youth gathering to hold these services…(during the pandemic, mind you) Apparently this is also being instigated with the help of the local word/faith charismatic headquarters at Ephrata Community Church, Lancaster YWAM and another partner he called “Circuit Riders” (a YWAM thing). I assume some of the motivation is to drum up “revival”, but there’s probably also a secondary motivation to defy pandemic recommendations. Quite a lot of american christians, especially extreme charismatics consider this to be some great show of spirituality and holy boldness…
My heart grew heavy and I listened to what this young man glowingly described as a great revival and move of God among some local youth. It seemed he has participated, but it wasn’t apparent that others in the church youth have, but it’s very possible some have. So here is the word-for-word transcript of this brief segment, from an otherwise innocuous and even profound talk. (I’ve added commentary within square brackets…[ ] )
If we look at the past year, it’s not actually that hard to find good that’s happened from Corona, because due to all of the shutdown, God has been preparing people’s hearts. Everyone’s felt like they’ve lost the sense of control. [This is not a bad understanding to come to…] They felt isolated, and it’s made people realize that they need more than just themselves. That there’s something more to life, and so locally we’ve seen some youth take the lead. They’ve created a revival in our area. [God “creates” revival… young people do not…] Back in February, Circuit Rider came in, holding a youth rally at ECC. It was before covid. They had probably 200 people show up and then coronavirus happened and all of that was put on pause. Then over the summer some kid seeking God, started to have small worship nights in his backyard just around the campfire. It started small… probably about eight people, and has been growing ever since. Now they have 60 to 80 people show up every Wednesday night. Eventually they decided to hold a youth rally. They partnered with circuit riders in Lancaster YWAM. They met in a field under a tent and it rained… And so, pre-covid they had 200 people show up at these youth rallies, but now after covid [as of this speaking, Dec 2020, covid was still very much around and hotter than ever!] they had 600+ people show up, on one weekend, at the last youth rallies that they did. Often the younger crowd misses, reality, because we’re so caught up with all the things of this world. We haven’t quite matured enough yet. But corona made a lot of us realize that there is more to life, and that we really aren’t in control and that nothing is certain…. that everything can change in an instant. [These are good lessons to learn and a door to God’s grace and guidance…but unfortunately, navel-gazing contemporary worship, coupled with extreme charismatic-ism is the wrong road to go down after being brought to more trust in God!] And it’s made, at least a lot of us, start to really seek the Lord, and it’s brought revival to our area. Lives were changed, and tongues were spoken; prophetic words were given; healings happened… In Joel 2:28 it says, “And afterward I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions.” [This is a great Bible passage, but it’s also the go to passage for all 3rd wave/extreme charismatics… they all quote this one, all the time…]
Unfortunately this doesn’t sound like real “revival”… This sounds like zealous, but immature kids getting together to have a rock’n, gin-up-the-emotions fest to feel onFire! and to forget about the world outside their bubble. It also reflects what their parents’ generation have been conditioned to think “revival” is. For most american christians, especially evangelicals and charismatic types, revival seems to only mean emotional hype, big gatherings, dramatic oratory, rock’n music and the charismatic gifts (tongues, dreams, words and healings).
Now youthful zeal in and of itself is a great thing. We actually need more of it, but directed towards activities that are actually building the Kingdom of King Jesus. But of course their elders, who in this case are the untrained, woefully off-track, heterodox teachers at our county’s bastion of extreme charismatic, word/faith, prosperity gospel kookery, (ECC, Lancaster YWAM, etc) are the ones leading these young people. But given all that; IF these young people are leaving this venue and Doing good works out in the community, literally or metaphorically feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned & lonely, helping someone in need, giving/helping those hit hardest by covid or covid-related restrictions, then I rest my case and can offer blessing.
But… I’m pretty certain none of that is happening… The young man sharing this did not mention anything related to missional outreach or humanitarian aid. As the transcript shows, his description of this “revival” indicates something akin to the Second Great Awakening camp meetings with their sensationalist expressions, fraudulent healings, “signs&wonders” spectacle that’s been besetting and distracting and hoodwinking the american church since then…
Hank Hanegraaff, in his book, Counterfeit Revival, spends some time on the Second Great Awakening and looking at its good intentions, but general slide into sensationalist nonsense and un-Biblical practice. He talks of one participant, Peter Cartwright, who was passionate about Jesus, but decried the extremist manifestations that people mistook for “revival”. Hank says, “The lying signs and wonders that Peter Cartwright prayed he would never see again are today center stage in the Counterfeit Revival. While multitudes clamor for revival, what the church sorely needs is reformation.” Hank then continues with what I believe, in some ways at least, describes real revival
“Only when the church experiences reformation through esteem for Christ, an eternal perspective, expositional preaching, essential Christian doctrine, and ego-effacing love will the world experience revival.”
Hank Hanegraaff
Although I would emphasize that last one more than some of the others, I think Hank’s general point is worth considering. Scripture overall supports his points as well, and does not emphasize the things that today’s so-called revivalists put forward as the signs of revival. In the book of Amos, God describes the economic and social sins of Israel; the sins involving real action/doing versus emotionalist hoopla. Towards the end of the book, God speaks to these people who don’t obey Him anymore, but love to gather and virtue signal with feel-good, ear-tickling displays of religiosity.
“I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.” Amos 5:21-24
Ironically, the Sunday sermon following this young man’s sermon, focused on these texts from Amos. I fully believe this was mere coincidence, than a reaction to this part of the young man’s sermon, because the sermon with the Amos texts was part of a pre-planned series. But it signifies that God is not done bringing mature truth to our church, despite some people’s dabbling with extreme charismatic and misplaced emphasis. So we’ll continue to pray, encourage and hope that our young people grow past these fads and sensationalist understandings of revival, and discover instead, the more enduring, faithful reformations of the church.
Saturday evening through Sunday morning and Sunday night, we were treated to an introductory dose of the modern charismatic movement’s main dogma: the word/faith, speak-it-get-it ideology of their understanding of the Holy Spirit. Thankfully we didn’t experience the most extreme manifestations of these ideas, but a number of times our “teacher” suggested that he was holding himself back from really giving us the full blast of his “spirit” power…. One wonders what that looks like…
Over three sessions, our spirited teacher gave us this: “God is crazy about you! He wants you to be happy and emotionally up and pumped, all the time. And because He’s so crazy about you, like a star-crossed teen lover, He wants to fill you with his Spirit-faith-force so you have the power to be this way all the time and speak into being, sensational signs and wonders! It’s fun! It’s romantic! It’s never boring, like that dumb church tradition stuff… And by the way, the subtext to all this wonderful encouraging that I’m doing…is: I and my entourage of students have more of the Holy Spirit than you do, and we’re so much more happy and powerful than you stuffy, somber mennos are…” And that was pretty much it – for three 45min +/- sessions. It never got much deeper than that. Every scripture read and interpreted returned and circled those themes. Every funny line, every exhortation, every personal experience reiterated that theme and subtext. And at every opportunity, he was putting down Christian tradition/theology that wasn’t as happy-dancing/sensationalist/emotionalism-filled like he was. He seemed to really have it in for the Reformed and the Catholic, with us Mennonites and our culture/traditions being a punching bag too. He was fairly jovial/joking about that, but one wonders how sharp it gets when he’s not actually with Mennonites. Given this guy’s disdain for thoughtful and careful scholarship, who knows what twisted caricatures and perceptions he teaches his students?
Inserted and layered throughout his talks, he gave the basic ideas that animate all of the present and recent past’s Third-Wave, Word-Faith charismatics, from Benny Hinn to Kenneth Copeland to Paula White to Duplantis, etc. He didn’t preach the most egregious prosperity gospel nor did he attempt some spectacular faith healing. (But he did reference his past spectaculars… like growing prostitutes legs!… why God supposedly hands that particular healing out like candy is beyond me… certainly wasn’t the case in Jesus or the apostles’ or early church’s ministry! It also happens to be the go-to boast of faith healers! It was definitely given to impress us!)
Short explanation of the word-faith idea: “[…] supporters of this movement believe that faith works like a mighty power or force. Through faith, we can obtain anything we want — health, wealth, success, whatever. However, this force is only released through the spoken word. As we speak the words of faith, power is discharged to accomplish our desires.” – Gary Gilley, “The Word-Faith Movement”
Besides the constant drum, drum of speak-it/get-it, happy-clappy revivalism, we heard bizarre claims, twisting and butchering of Scripture, boasting of his powers and for confusion’s sake, a few good points as well! That last one is always what is so difficult with the teachers of modern charismatic ideology; they sprinkle in a little truth/goodness, till it’s really difficult to separate the good from the garbage they throw at you. What follows are a number of direct quotes from our teacher over the course of these 3 sessions and some of my thoughts or questions in response.
JC’s unBiblical speak it-get it teaching
“I make, I make…sometimes people say, why do you make us say things and what do you ask us… because the kingdom of God is not silent. It is a voice-activated kingdom. We must learn to praise and preach and proclaim and prophesy…” [Video link starting at this quoted portion] This is a classic word/faith speak-things-into-being teaching. It’s all about talking, talking talking. It’s very american. We talk and talk in our church’s. Our tongues wag out so much extemporaneous christianize, a large database could never hold it all. Hyper charismatics are especially known for this verbosity. How can these people ever actually hear the Holy Spirit, when they’re either blasting their ears with loud rock praise&worship or running their mouth, “speaking” things into existence… (things mostly coming from their subjective gut desires…) And what about the many virtues and fruits of the Spirit that don’t involve any words or talking at all? Well, they get forgotten and deluged by this obsession with speaking and voicing praise… These types of verbose charismatics might actually grow in the faith and mature a bit, if they stopped yammering for awhile…
Immediately following that line, he said this, “You have to be, you have to get used to loud noises cuz heaven’s very loud!” This was one of the crazier claims he made…a very culturally biased, non-Scriptural, bizarre claim that I guess got some attention or kept us engaged for the moment? This was by no means his only crazy claim during these sessions; here’s another one.
Bizarre claims with no Scriptural or logical basis:
“How many know He’s a supernatural God? Yes, so when it… when you remove the supernatural from the Bible… ok, just cut up every page because He, He is so far above and beyond all we could ever ask or think” [Video link starting at this quoted portion] I guess you could say he’s joking here… but really? Every page of the Bible has this magical signs & wonders, supernatural going on… like charismatics of his ilk define signs & wonders? Yes, all of life is a miracle in a sense, but actually most of the Bible and most of real life is just plain normal, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s actually what God created and wanted. God likes plain old, simple things like sitting quietly, eating, sleeping, working within limits like the laws of nature for example. Based on the whole of Scripture, God’s actually not that interested in sensational signs & wonders… Really, He isn’t. It’s much easier to see and gather that He’s more interested in relationship, in voluntary obedience to the ways of God, and in the wonderful way His creation hums along.
Butchering Scripture to make it say something it doesn’t say:
This guy’s treatment of Scripture was truly something to behold at times. He would work his way through a passage and inject some thought or idea with no literal or logical connection to the actual text being read. He twisted and bended the text always towards his overarching word/faith/charismatic Holy Spirit sensationalism/God-is-my-boyfriend theme that he was pushing throughout. (and that I paraphrased in the opening of this post) It didn’t matter how far the text was obviously not connected to his theme in any way, he’d get it there somehow.. And so he would do things like this: […] this is what Jesus says in verse 17, “Stop clinging to me Mary; stop clinging to me… stop thinking I’m the same one I used to be…stop thinking that your traditions are more important than me…stop being your religious bubble… stop clinging to all the books you’ve been reading… I tell you, Mary go tell the boys… in the best Arnold Schwarzenegger moment…”I’m baaoock!” Tell the boys” He sends her in an apostolic mission to go tell the boys he’s back, [Video link starting at this quoted portion] Notice the not-so-subtle insertion of another slam of more traditional faith expressions, and another celebration of anti-intellectualism, into the words of Jesus, to Mary! Would you ever get these ideas from a normal, at face reading of this passage? Of course, not. But our Bible butcherer here takes this passage and twists and adds words to it to fit the theme he’s been pounding on throughout this entire series of meetings. Over and over again he just had to read his, “I hate tradition and God does too…” thinking into any Bible passage he happened to be working through that moment. One can only imagine what his students come out believing after sitting under days and weeks of his Bible “teaching”… Lord have mercy.
So, there is not enough space or time to cover all of the nutty speak it/claim it thoughts, bizarre claims and Bible butchering here. But below are links to each of the night’s talks, as transcripts, with my running commentary throughout each.
And if that whets your appetite for more study, check out this blog’s page, Why I Can’t Be a Charismatic…, where I list multiple links to articles and videos discussing extreme word/faith charismatic ideology and how it measures up to Biblical truth.
A diary of charismatic winds blowing at Metzler Mennonite Church 