Introduction, Preface, Index, End

Welcome to my blog, TH in SoC. This, my introduction, is actually the last post I will write for this particular blog. Why put a blog introduction at the end? Because this is most likely the first page a first-time visitor will see.

The beginning of this blog is about my experience in an abusive, aberrant “Bible-based” church over a period of several years, and about my experiences in trying to find a “healthy church” after I left my old abusive group. As a result of these experiences, I formed certain conclusions, which I state in the main body of this blog. My conclusions can be summed up here thus: I am an orthodox, Biblical, evangelical Christian. The Faith of Christ is not to blame for the difficulties I encountered. But there are certain leaders within American evangelicalism who have spread an unsafe culture throughout the American evangelical church by preying on its members. This preying is manifested in the craving for money, power and the indulgence of fleshly lust. The latter pages of this blog state possible solutions to the unhealthy culture of the American evangelical church.

A rough “table of contents” for this blog would look thus:

Part 1: Where I Came From – Posts written from 2005 to March 2007

Part 2: Who Broke My Church? - Posts written from April 2007 to July 2008

Under this second category are sub-categories as follows:

A. The Church and Money – December 2007 to February 2008

B. The Church and Political Power – February 2008 to March 2008

C. The Church and Ecclesiastical Power – April 2008 to June 2008

D. The Church and Lust – June 2008 to July 2008

E. Summation – July 2008

Part 3: Who Can Fix This Mess? - Posts written from August 2008 to September 2008

The tone of this blog is forensic, because it is very much an indictment of certain trends, people and practices in the modern American church. One might say that TH in SoC is my handful of theses nailed up in a fit of pathos on the Church doors. In this, I am hardly original, since both Martin Luther and much more recently, Steve Camp, were pushed by circumstances to draft theses condemning the excesses of those who claimed to be servants of the Church, and to nail them up for reading by any who had eyes to see.

If you are a survivor of an abusive church experience, or if you are a Biblical Christian who sees the excesses of the present American church culture, hopefully my blog has some helpful insights. If after reading these posts, you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please feel free to post them, since I will continue to monitor this blog for comments.

And now it is time to move on. I am shifting my focus from an indictment of dangers in the American church to the process of recovery from church abuse. Therefore I have started another blog, From SoC to Points North. (It's at http://soctopointsnorth.blogspot.com. There is also a link under the “Links” heading.) It will be my personal “recovery journal.” I am posting it on the Web because I think it's helpful to read the experiences of people who are seeking to recover a Biblical Christianity from the ashes of an abusive church experience. Hopefully, my experiences will be a help to someone. I'd also like to recommend two other very good “recovery journals,” Gale Warnings (http://galewarnings.blogspot.com/) and The Blog of Lema Nal (http://lemanal.blogspot.com/).

For those of you who followed TH in SoC from its beginning to its end, thanks for your readership. I greatly appreciate it. See you at Points North!

Missionaries to the First World, Part 2

In my last post, I wrote that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is powerful, curative medicine for a sinful and sin-sick world. I also wrote that the preferred method for the delivery of that message has historically been through the words and deeds of spiritual men and women who earned the right to a hearing from others by living a blameless life among others. However, as modern Western society became more industrialized and advanced, those in the West who claim to be preachers of the Gospel have moved away from these historical, personal methods of delivering the Gospel message and have moved toward large-scale, high-tech, media campaign-driven methods of broadcasting Biblical truth.

This has reduced the preaching of the Gospel to a mere sound bite or bumper sticker or shouted slogan delivered by means of a slick marketing campaign – a campaign which lacks any opportunity for those hearing the proclamation to examine the proclaimers to see whether the truths proclaimed actually work in the lives of the proclaimers. This has also reduced the public perception of the Gospel to that of merely one more amplified voice, one more slick high-tech marketing campaign being pushed on a nation that is being advertised to death. This perception is especially prevalent in America, a society which has seen that the ministries of some so-called preachers of the Gospel are really nothing more than means for these preachers to get rich or gain political power by defrauding their hearers. The result is that high-tech, slick, mass-broadcast means of preaching the Gospel are becoming less effective in the First World, because fewer people are willing to trust the proclaimers enough to listen to them.

What is needed is a return to the historical methods of delivering the Gospel, methods which depend on the testimony of holy and blameless lives lived by those who proclaim the Gospel. It is necessary for members of the Church to return to a local, personal, low-tech emphasis on being genuine in relationships, being a genuine blessing to the men and women with whom they interact on a daily basis. It is rumored that the Catholic order of St. Francis of Assisi was given the command to preach the Kingdom of God, “using words if necessary.” (Biographical Sketches of Memorable Christians of the Past, “Francis of Assisi, Friar,” http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/258.html)

I believe that words are daily necessary, but that they are best spoken by people whose lives are an obvious reflection of the Word they claim to preach. The problem of the American evangelical church is that as that church has moved away from personal witness to high-tech proclamation, it has also moved away from a blameless, authentic testimony. Most of the posts of this blog, TH in SoC, have discussed how the American church has allowed its testimony to be corrupted. As Aaron Tate once wrote, “There's tarnish on the Golden Rule, and I want to jump from this ship of fools.” How can the testimony of the Church be cleansed from its tarnish? That is a very large question and I am sure that there are many answers; but I want to focus on three particular answers.

First, I believe that the Church must become a real and tangible blessing in the world. I don't mean this in an abstract or “theological” sense, but in a practical and material sense. Matthew 5:16 says, “Even so, let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” James 1:27 says, “Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” James 2:15-16 says, “And if a brother or sister is naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you tells them, 'Go in peace, be warned and filled'; and yet you didn't give them the things the body needs, what good is it?” The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) tells of the practical duty to the poor which is owed by everyone who is called Christian. Matthew 25 and Luke 16 tell of the punishment which awaits those who refuse to provide material help to people in material need.

It's easy to absolve oneself of personal responsibility by saying, “Well, charity is the pastor's job,” or, “Our church has a ministry that takes care of that,” but the Bible seems to indicate that this is the responsibility of each Christian, to the best of his or her ability. And it is the testimony of people who live as a practical blessing which opens the door for speaking the Word to non-Christians. Consider the testimony of Rich Mullins, who made a lot of money as a successful contemporary Christian music artist. Yet he gave most of the money away to the Quaker church, which administered several charities and paid Mullins the average salary in the U.S., year by year. He also lived in a hogan on a Navajo reservation where he preached the Gospel and taught free music classes. There is also Dr. Paul Brand, an extremely talented and insightful physician who received many awards. He was the first to discover the neuropathic nature of leprosy, and invented a number of successful surgical procedures for restoring limbs and other body parts damaged by neuropathy. His discoveries helped not only people afflicted by leprosy, but also diabetics and others at risk of limb damage from neuropathy. Yet for much of his life he was content to serve in India as a poor missionary doctor whose services were largely free.

These two are not the only examples I know, nor are they the most radical. I know a man who used to teach free guitar classes at a local public library in a working-class neighborhood. At the beginning of each semester, he announced to his class that the reason why the lessons were free was that they might be a demonstration of the free gift of God in Christ Jesus, available to anyone who repents of his or her sins and believes in Christ. Though he never mentioned the Gospel in words after that, he made sure that he gave the best guitar education he could provide in the ensuing classes, going so far as to even bribe his students to do their homework assignments by rewarding them with Starbucks gift certificates. There are opportunities like this waiting for any Christian whose eyes are open to see them.

Second, the American evangelical church must stop giving its unquestioning support to rich elites, particularly the leaders of the Religious Right. By that support, the Church has given Christianity a bad reputation, namely that of a mere tool to justify oppression by claiming that God condones it. This is seen in the insistence by people like James Dobson that American evangelicals must support the Republican party in all of its agenda, even though there is abundant proof of the harm done to poor people and poor, nonwhite members of other nation by that agenda. There is also the push by the Right to rally all evangelicals behind supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though in the case of Iraq at least, there was no good reason to go to war, and the behavior of the United States in Iraq after the invasion shows a clear intent to rape and loot that country's resources for the benefit of rich American elites.

There is the insistence that the Republican Party is the party of godly Christianity, and we must support the Republicans because they are our best hope for restoring America as a Christian nation – even though the Republicans have long been known for corruption, dishonesty and greed, and that reputation has grown much stronger during the Presidency of George W. Bush. (Need a recent example? See “Sex for Oil Scandal At Interior Department,” CBS News, 13 September 2008, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/10/national/main4436263.shtml) There is also the insistence by leaders of the Religious Right that “Evangelicals MUST NOT believe in global warming!!!” But there is overwhelming evidence that global warming is real, that it is happening much faster than even the most pessimistic scientists guessed, and that it is caused by human activity. When the leaders of the Religious Right insist on pushing an agenda of denial, and when the American evangelical church swallows that agenda, it causes the world to say that the Church in America is simply another tool of the rich to control and to deceive the masses. “For 'the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,' – just as it is written.” – Romans 2:23-24. (By the way, I intend to write a post very soon stating all of the scientific evidence for global warming. I will probably post it on my other blog, The Well Run Dry.)

The American church must therefore regain its powers of discernment and its sense of social justice, and must begin to actively speak out against oppression and the destruction of the earth, even when that oppression and destruction are being carried out by American and Western elites.

Lastly, the Church must become more discerning in taking care of itself. Many posts of my blog have dealt with how selfish and unscrupulous people have taken leadership roles in the American church for the purpose of fleecing their flocks. The fact that we continue to allow this, that people are still allowing themselves to be hoodwinked and abused, does not speak well for us before the world. As St. Paul said, “For you bear with a man, if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, if he strikes you on the face.” – 2 Corinthians 11:20. When the world sees churches full of people who gladly submit to that kind of treatment from leaders who gladly seek to dish out that kind of treatment, what sort of testimony is that?

The American church – including each member – must become much more active in rooting out abusive leaders. Members must insist on holding church leaders to a high standard of humility, trustworthiness and godly conduct. Much damage has already been done, and wolves in leaders' clothes have made much of the American evangelical church unsafe. When unsafe leaders and shady practices are found, the Church should be first and foremost in exposing the sin. As Ephesians 5:11 says, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.” (See Ephesians 5:12-13 also) As strong sunshine is a powerful disinfectant due to its ultraviolet component, so corrupt leaders in the church are cleansed away by exposing them to the light of day so that everyone may see what kind of people they really are, and so that those who engage in corrupt practices may have no more place to hide in which they can continue to practice evil.

This reminds me of an Internet bulletin board created by members of my old abusive church for the purpose of talking through issues related to recovering from that church. In my early days just after leaving that church I used to visit the bulletin board (or BB) site regularly, but I stopped for a long while until recently, when I began reading the posts of a man who was working through some issues concerning abuses he had suffered in our cultic church long ago and which he was just now facing. He also posted a number of news items relating to corrupt pastors of other churches who were exposed and in some cases arrested this year. While I didn't agree with everything he said in his posts, I acknowledged the therapeutic value of being able to get some things off his chest.

The reaction of others on that BB was interesting. When he expressed pain and anger at the realization of some of the subtle abuse he had suffered years ago, a few other BB members jumped on him with both feet, accusing him of being “unspiritual” because of his anger, and communicating clearly that their idea of acceptable behavior was just to smile and deny the pain and anger. To me, this is an unhealthy expectation (I don't have time to explain why now, but for an insight, please see the excellent post by Stormchild on the blog Strange Mercy, titled “Unilateral Forgiveness and Cheap Grace” (http://strangemercy.blogspot.com/2007/05/unilateral-forgiveness-and-cheap-grace.html)).

The thing that was really strange was a challenge issued to this poster by one of the other BB members who told this poster to take six weeks to write posts only on ministries that are doing good in the world, since it was “obvious” that this poster had a problem because he could only see the bad that was being done by false religious leaders. But to me, such a “challenge” illustrates an even more unhealthy attitude – namely the idea that it is wrong for someone to criticize corrupt practices in the Church, even when those corrupt practices have become rampant. Almost all of my blog has been such a criticism, as well as the blogs of many others who have been burned by religious power abuse. And the criticism – healthy, constructive criticism but criticism nonetheless – must continue until structural, functional changes occur in American evangelicalism which make abuse much less likely. As long as there is abuse in the American evangelical church, I intend to criticise that abuse, and I encourage others to do the same. I am not going to put up with any more of it.

There is evidence also that some of that criticism is beginning to have an effect. One thing I have noticed is the increasingly strident and desperate tone of some champions of the undemocratic “staff-led” and “elder-led” forms of church government. I think that the exposure of abuses perpetrated under these forms of church government is causing some religious empire-builders to sweat a little. But there is an even more encouraging sign: a number of blogs, including City Business Church and An Inside Look With Pastor Burt, have carried an e-mail apology for the excesses of a particular Charismatic church (http://pastorburt.lifewithchrist.org/permalink/42856.html; http://www.citybusinesschurch.org/blog/2008/09/04/dutch-sheets-apologizes-for-failings-of-the-charasmatic-church/). This apology was put forth by Dutch Sheets, a well-known Pentecostal pastor. I can't help but think that constructive criticism from the blogosphere is playing a helping role in ridding the Church of corruption.

Note: All Scripture quotations are taken from the World English Bible, a public domain translation. No royalties are owed to anyone for its use, and it may be freely quoted in all settings, public and private.

Missionaries to the First World, Part 1

The Bible states that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is “...the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.” (Romans 1:16.) Because God wants all to be saved, Christians are commanded to “Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15.) Acts 1:8 also says, “...you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

The Gospel is powerful medicine, a powerful cure for our sinfulness. But like all medicines, it requires a proper method of application in order to be effective. In speaking of physical ailments and their cures, doctors use the term “modality” to describe “a method of application of, or the employment of, any therapeutic agent, especially a physical agent,” or alternatively, “the technique of applying a therapeutic regimen or agent.” (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/modality) One may prescribe the correct medicine for a particular condition, yet if one prescribes the wrong modality, the medicine will be ineffective. So it is that some medicines are applied externally, some come as pills to be swallowed, some are dissolved in alcohol because they are not water-soluble, others must be inhaled, and yet others are injected.

The historical modality for the delivery of the Gospel has always been by means of spiritual men and women who earned the right to a hearing from others by living a blameless life among others (Acts 20:17-34; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-10, among other passages). But like every other aspect of life in the times leading up to the Industrial Revolution, this approach took a great deal of time and human attention. Because humans naturally tend to look for labor-saving shortcuts in their endeavors, it didn't take long after the invention of the printing press for prospective Gospel preachers to begin to rely on printed tracts and books in addition to face-to-face talks with people. The Industrial Revolution and its aftermath added other tools to the evangelist's arsenal – tools such as radio and television and massive “Gospel crusades” which drew thousands of attendees. These methods were all energy and technology intensive. Yet because the First World was experiencing continued technological advancement and had access to ever-increasing supplies of concentrated energy, these methods – mass broadcasts of Biblical truth and the Gospel message through printed and electronic media – became the methods of choice for those seeking to evangelize the First World, particularly the United States.

But there are two problems with these methods. First, many proclaimers of the Gospel have become ever more removed from personal contact with their audiences, preventing the members of these audiences from observing these preachers to see whether the truths the preachers espouse are actually working in the lives of the preachers. In other words, it has become much harder for people to tell whether these preachers who talk the talk are also walking the walk. Secondly, the methods of mass media have been used by many people, not just preachers. Many of those with access to the media have been caught using their access to manipulate and defraud their audiences.

Consider the pervasiveness of advertising in present-day America. According to the article, “Marketing Advertising and Branding: A Critical Analysis of Commercial Advertising Strategies,” a typical American is exposed to at least 1500 advertisements per day (Source: http://advertising-influence.suite101.com/article.cfm/advertising_tactics). The Association for Consumer Research has performed studies which show a positive link between the amount of TV a person watches and the extent to which that person is a materialist (http://www.acrwebsite.org/topic.asp?artid=351). More and more people with postgraduate psychology degrees are discovering market research as a viable career field (http://www.apa.org/science/nonacad_careers.html). This market research is being used to unlock the soul (and by extension, the wallet) of the typical consumer.

America is a nation that is advertised to death. Those paying for the advertising are driven by a passion to acquire money and/or political power, and they will resort to any trick in order to achieve their ends. Their methods are very similar to the methods which the Church in the West has adopted as its methods of choice – particularly in American evangelicalism. But people in the West are becoming increasingly turned off to these methods, concluding that those who use such methods are simply out to get something for themselves.

Do you believe in “street witnessing” by handing out Gospel tracts in public places? Beware, because you may have competition. I remember a couple of times when I used to work in downtown Los Angeles and I ran into people handing out “free” introductory offers for Nextel phone service at Union Station. I can't count the number of times I have been accosted over the years by people handing out flyers for one thing or another at supermarkets. Do you like door-to-door witnessing? You may have to compete with “home alarm system” salesmen going door to door posing as Neighborhood Watch captains. (One such gentleman visited my doorstep a couple of months ago. I invited him to quickly leave.) I can't begin to count the number of letters I received that said “Official Notice – You Are Paying Too Much For Your Mortgage” after I bought my first house, or the number of telemarketing calls I received even after I signed up for the National “Do Not Call” list. When people see someone “open-air preaching” or they see someone approaching them with a Gospel tract in his hand, it is only natural for them to immediately assume that the person in question simply wants to get something from them.

This perception has been compounded by the fact that several big-name personalities who claimed to be preachers of the Gospel have been found to be frauds whose activities were for the sole purpose of enriching themselves. I acknowledge that not all well-known evangelists are fake. But those who are false have definitely made an impression. Thus even such things as large Gospel crusades may have begun to lose their effectiveness. For instance, within the last few months Luis Palau held a large outdoor Gospel campaign where I live, yet to the best of my knowledge, none of my co-workers attended his rally.

The Christian witness in the West has also suffered from the mingling of politics and faith, particularly in the United States, where the Church has been co-opted by the economic elites through instruments such as the Republican Party, which promises to use the power of the state to enforce Biblical sexual morality on the nation in exchange for the Church's unquestioning support of the agenda of the economic elites. Thus there are leaders in the American evangelical community who deny the reality of global warming, oppose any state-sponsored system of social welfare (even including mass transit), and support American military intervention into other countries for the purpose of taking natural resources from these countries by force. This reinforces the perception that the Church itself is simply one more marketing arm of powerful people who are simply out to take as much as they can for themselves. So when James Dobson's radio “ministry” is broadcast, it's not surprising that many people respond with a cynical “Yeah, right – whatever, dude.”

Even the methods of “grassroots” initiatives have been taken over by corporate elites in order to maintain their power or extend their market share. An interesting term has been coined in recent years: “astroturfing,” referring to the creation of a media campaign by corporations which is designed to look like it was started by common people. A good example of this is the “Angry Renters” website (http://www.angryrenters.com/), a site supposedly sponsored by a grassroots network of house and apartment renters opposed to any bailout or government rescue of homeowners who are now facing foreclosure from the mortgage crisis. A closer look at these “angry renters” shows that this organization was actually created by Republican former congressman Dick Armey and multimillionaire Steve Forbes (“Big Money Backs Renters' Campaign,” NPR, 16 May 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90517606; “Armey's Angry Renters,” Full Frontal Scrutiny, 21 May 2008, http://www.frontgroups.org/node/6378)

Americans are becoming increasingly wary and weary of being jacked, weary of being taken for a ride by slick advertising. Appeals which look like corporate advertising, whether electronic or printed, are losing their effectiveness. There is an increasing hunger for what is real and genuine. And proving what is real and genuine takes time and opportunity for intimate observation. Yet the Church in America continues its love affair with the latest and most modern mass-evangelism “methods,” relying on amplified crusades, high-tech tricks, big-name personalities and slogans and bumper stickers that look like they were invented by some corporate marketing department.

Examples of this which I have seen include bumper stickers which came out during the 2004 and 2006 elections which shouted, “JESUS IS GOD – READ THE BIBLE!” There are the “Got Christ?” bumper stickers which rip off the “Got Milk?” ad campaign. There are the T-shirts worn by some gym rats showing the Lord bloodied and bowed under the weight of the Cross, with a caption at the bottom saying, “Bench Press This!” The silliest and most irreverent example I have seen in a while was a bumper sticker I noticed last weekend during my road trip home from Southern California. The sticker said, “Jesus loves THE HELL out of you.” The idea behind all of these is that it is somehow possible to convince a person to become a Christian by shouting a mere slogan at them without providing any sort of relational context for that slogan. But increasingly, this doesn't work.

In my next post, I will make suggestions concerning what I believe does work, what I believe to be an effective Christian witness to people in our modern society. Stay tuned!

Note: All Scripture quotations are taken from the World English Bible, a public domain translation. No royalties are owed to anyone for its use, and it may be freely quoted in all settings, public and private.

The American Church and Hubbert's Peak

The last several posts have discussed the tendency displayed by certain individuals to seek power over others in the evangelical church. In some cases, this thirst for power is driven by the desire some men have to build a following of people in order to achieve secular political ends. In other cases, the seeking of power is driven by a desire some have to set up a “money farm” made of a large number of contributors to finance a pastor's desired lifestyle. Then there are those who seek power simply as a means of building up their own personal empire, to satisfy their ego. Many power-seekers are driven by a combination of these motives.

The Christian church has always had to deal with those who seek power because of eritheia, or “selfish ambition,” as one Bible translation puts it. But most of those driven by eritheia have historically been limited in what they could accomplish in the pursuit of their goals. Throughout history, it has been very hard for individuals to start their own religious empires, since this required making disciples, writing or printing literature, and securing funds to spread one's message, and this all had to be done largely by hand and on foot. Few succeeded among the many who tried, and those who succeeded did so because they were well-connected or because they were willing to suffer a lot.

The printing press, the Industrial Revolution and the technological advances that took place afterward have made it increasingly easy for would-be empire builders to achieve their goals. Instead of wandering on foot or horseback through miles of countryside distributing handwritten tracts to local villages, men could print literature on a press, saving a great deal of time, and as society advanced, they could go from place to place with much greater speed than was possible on foot. Later, they could transmit their statements via wire, and then by radio. This trend of progress has continued to the present, with the Internet, expressways, jetliners, HDTV, and satellite radio, to name a few. It is now very easy for one individual to broadcast his statements to a very large audience – a few keystrokes and mouse-clicks will do it.

The technological advances that brought us the 20th Century to us tended at first to concentrate power in the hands of the few who had the capital to afford the means of mass communication. Yet those advances greatly amplified the power of the owners of those means. For instance, owners of newspaper chains or radio/TV networks were relatively few, and they were broadcasting to a very large audience of people who could not afford to buy a radio station or newspaper chain. Our society came to be dominated by a few voices, heard by all, but not widely contradicted. America was one of two dominant superpowers for a long time, and later America became the sole superpower. During the days in which America was a mighty economic powerhouse, it was also a mighty export powerhouse – and one of the things exported was American culture. Though the American economy no longer produces many physical things of value for export, American culture is still an export commodity. Go to Mexico and you will see people wearing T-shirts with American slogans. Go to China and you can buy bootlegged CD's of music by now-dead swing band artists and living rappers, metalheads, folk-rockers, hip-hoppers and country/western artists, to name a few. Newspapers in England now regularly feature Internet links to articles dealing exclusively with what's going on in the USA. Almost everyone knows where California is, even if they live ten thousand miles away.

American pop culture, with its music and its norms, is increasingly the dominant culture of the industrialized world, and is slowly eroding other, very different cultures that have existed for thousands of years. American pop culture has also taken over the Church in America. Many Christians have their own opinions about whether this is a bad or good thing. Some have very strong feelings about this, and they back themselves up with lots of Scripture and interpretation. I have only a few things to say about the rightness or wrongness of the present American church culture, as I am much more interested in describing where I think the American church is headed.

The power of the technology of the 20th century was used in innovative ways by some of the early “church growth” pioneers. Robert Schuller began his Crystal Cathedral congregation by holding church services at a drive-in theater. Oral Roberts was one of the first televangelists. Billy Graham and Greg Laurie have held huge rallies and crusades in outdoor stadiums, assisted by large and powerful sound systems and multimedia technology. The successes of these men have affected the culture of the American church in general. While some of these men and their methods have been controversial, their results have been attractive.

Many pastors have seen the phenomenal success of some of these pioneers, and have tried to imitate them in order to achieve the same numerical results. The Christian publishing industry has also helped to reinforce this imitation by holding up a select few influential megachurch pastors as models to be imitated by those who want their churches to grow. The message that has been communicated is “Get big or get out! If your church is not HUGE and full of young adults, it's not healthy!” The effect has been to create a large swath of very similar churches whose similarity cuts across denominational lines. Their emphasis is on reaching the “relevant” generation, which is usually somewhere between 13 and 29 years old. The methods used to reach this generation have tended to standardize around praise bands, multimedia presentations, cool celebrities, skate parks, coffee bars, and the like, in order to make church as cool and “relevant” as possible. All of this is necessary to hold the interest of young adults who have been conditioned to have abnormally short attention spans by a steady diet of mainstream, car-crash-per-minute, scene-change-every-few-seconds, fast-beat American media. But all of this takes a great deal of electrical energy, manpower and expensive equipment.

For this reason, “church growth” as practiced in America is in danger, as well as the modern American megachurch. These are being endangered by the same processes that are endangering other large, far-flung enterprises of modern industrial civilization. Our society as a whole is now facing absolute limits on the amount of crude oil available for use, and since crude oil is the basis of our modern economy, our society is facing limits to economic growth. Financial arrangements which depend on assumptions of economic growth are beginning to unravel, since that growth is no longer guaranteed. Globalism is being endangered. Because of Peak Oil and other resource peaks, it is becoming costlier for China and other low-wage countries to import raw materials and energy resources such as oil, and costlier for these countries to ship their finished products to the rest of the world. This is undermining the business model of large big-box store chains such as Wal-Mart. Rising oil prices and foolish biofuel mandates are also making food scarcer and more expensive. The real estate crisis has caused the value of many homes to drop steeply, and banks are far less willing to issue mortgages, leaving many Americans without borrowing power. Americans are being forced to conserve, cut back, be frugal and re-localize their lives.

What does this mean for an established megachurch or a “wanna-be” megachurch? First, membership of such churches is likely to shrink in the days ahead. This will be due to the rising cost of commuting. Most megachurches were conceived under the assumption that energy and oil would remain cheap forever, and this assumption is being proven false. And as the cost of electricity rises, it will also become more expensive to heat, cool, and light the church buildings, or put on a “rockin'” multimedia service. As the cost of transporting goods rises, the gourmet coffee served at the end of the service will become unaffordable. In short, all the technological enhancements that make for an attractive, “seeker-sensitive” church will go away, along with those people who only came to church to experience those enhancements. Also, tithes and offerings will decrease, because members of the congregation already being squeezed by a faltering economy will view church as a “discretionary expense.” Churches that want to transition to megachurch status will not be able to afford the music gear, multimedia system, paid staff, CCLI licenses, and other things required to imitate the big guys. Churches that are already in debt may lose property along with the rest of foreclosed society.

The coming difficulties will have a few good effects. First, they will change the status of the Church from that of an aggregator of consumers with lots of money. This will drive away those who are interested in church leadership solely as a means of getting rich. It will also make things harder for those who want to build an ecclesiastical empire for themselves, since as churches become smaller, would-be empire builders will have to visit more churches in order to have the same effect that they do now by visiting a few megachurches or publishing a book. The range of these would-be empire builders will also be limited, since travel will become more difficult and expensive. Indeed, one of the solutions I see for the present state of American evangelicalism is that the Church must become “de-scoped” so that it no longer presents such a temptation to those who lust for money and power. Peak Oil and the financial crisis will accomplish this nicely.

As the megachurch culture is tested by the demise of a cheap energy economy, many elements of that culture will be tested. Those elements that possess timeless, enduring value will remain, and those elements that are mere fluff will be swept away. It will be interesting to see what songs are sung in church when there's no praise band to back up the singing, or what stories will be told when there are no multimedia special effects to enhance the storytelling. Rather than being mere clones of moderm American McCulture, churches will once again evolve their own denominational distinctives, their own culture. They may well become contributors to vibrant local cultures – a very good thing, indeed!


In the near future, it is quite likely that a larger percentage of those who go to church will go, not because of some techno-program, but because they truly believe. But one of the dangers of the coming difficult times is that in times of difficulty, rigid legalistic churches and groups might become attractive to suffering, disoriented people looking for certainty in life. This is a problem which the Church has faced since New Testament times, and its cure is education – sound teaching in the doctrines of the Faith, which equip people to resist being enslaved by religious empire-builders. This is the approach used by St. Paul when he wrote the epistle to the Galatians, for instance.

I shall have more to say about education in a later post. I will finish by summing up a few key points: The spread of the Gospel is a good thing. Growth in the Church is therefore good, as long as it is defined as growth in the number of people who follow Christ. “Church growth” is a bad thing to want, if it is desired solely as a means of creating an ecclesiastical empire for some pastor. However, the lust for this kind of “church growth” seems to be rampant in American evangelicalism, both among rigid, fringe cultic groups and among mainstream, youth-oriented, “seeker-sensitive” churches. The cure for enslavement to a fringe cultic group is to educate Christians to understand their freedom in Christ. But the cure for the big-box “seeker-sensitive” McChurch empire is coming from Heaven itself, as we all move to the downside of Hubbert's Peak.

And now, we are through with the discussion of Power. Our next subject will be Lust. Stay tuned...

American Evangelicalism Today

In my previous posts I have described how I became a Christian, and how I was tricked into joining an abusive, cultic church. I have also described how I came to realize what kind of church I was a part of, and my leaving and search for a “healthy church”. To sum up, in visiting many evangelical churches I have discovered many of the same toxic elements that existed in the cultic church I first joined. In addition, there are other toxic elements in modern American evangelicalism which are hard to swallow. Or, rather, they should be hard to swallow if you are trying to find a Biblical Christianity!

Several years ago, Richard Foster, a Quaker writer, authored a book titled, “Money, Sex and Power: The Challenge of a Disciplined Life.” This book discussed the inner life of the Christian and how that inner life could be measured by the Christian's response to the temptations of money, sex and power. I suggest that the present diseased condition of the Church can be measured in terms of these indicators, as well as a few more, which I state below:

Money: The culture and livelihood of people throughout the world is increasingly being controlled by large corporate interests which care for nothing more than their own enrichment at the expense of the masses. Their aim is to sell dumbed-down, watered-down, valueless trash to captive markets at the highest possible price, to gain the largest possible profit. And these corporate interests have taken over the Church.

Lust: I don't just mean sexual lust either, but rather, that craving after a thing which causes a person to do anything to get the thing he lusts after – and to make up every conceivable justification for why he did it, no matter what commandment was broken and no matter who got hurt. An example: the many Christians who get a divorce even though Christ speaks against it, even though spouses and children get hurt in the process.

Power: One of the hardest sins to suffer is the lust for power, the tendency by some people to look on their fellow men and women as potential slaves, as potential property to be owned. This sin is alive and well in the Church, and can be seen in pastors who sue each other for control of a church, or politicians who try to recruit evangelicals as part of their power base in order to get elected to office.

Discernment: The Bible is increasingly devalued among evangelicals, because there are too many parts in the Bible which rebuke the deeds of these evangelicals. So their church meetings become entertainment services in which preachers give positive, “inspirational” sermons from “safe” parts of the Bible. And when people ask, “How can I find out what God's will is?”, they are told to wait for dreams and feelings instead of looking at what the Bible says. This leaves them open to being taken for a ride by con artists – of whom there are now many!

Boundaries: Walk into a lot of churches today and you will be “love-bombed.” That is, a bunch of people will come up to you and hug you – even though you've never seen them before in your life. They will put all kinds of pressure on you to sign on with them, to join their program, to be “one of us.” They will be invasive in their intrusion into your life. If you resist, they will tell you that that's not being nice, and after all, Christianity is all about “being nice.” They have been taught not to respect personal boundaries.

Over the next several posts I will explore these issues in more detail. This is a short list of issues. I am sure that some people could think of more.