Mark Byron

The Disgruntled Bapticostal-Part II-Alpha Groups and High Beta Churches

Jim left this interesting comment on the first post in this series-

Sounds a lot like balancing a portfolio or finding the right investment. Some have no risk [tight control of theology]but to you little return—the mainstream churches. Others appear to have the potential for great return but a rather large risk of being led astray.
Good luck in your search. Might be an interesting paper there in the balancing the risk/reward and the information available.

There are a number of analogies that come to mind. The portfolio thought plays to the finance professor in me, where your hypercharismatic churches would have high spiritual betas and non-charismatic churches (garden-variety evangelical) would have low betas with relation to the spiritual "market."

A quick finance-for-dummies; beta is a financial statistic out of the Capital Asset Pricing Model that measures sensitivity to the stock market. Stocks with high betas go for a roller-coaster ride; when the stock market is up, they're really up, but when the stock market gets a cold, they get pneumonia. Low beta stocks are less risky and have smoother returns but generally have a lower return.

Not all spiritual market changes are charismatic; even conventional evangelical churches can get sucked into the trend of the day, whether it be 40 Days of X or Willow Creek-style church growth models. Willow Creek has shifted focus from being seeker-friendly to discipling their believers; they've discerned that a more spiritual-mature flock will draw people into the building better than catering to the unchurched directly. That means that a lot of churches that were adopting the Willow Creek model were barking up the wrong tree in 20/20 hindsight.

However, the charismatic DNA has an especially-strong love of the novel, of the next new thing. A new and good change can help things. For instance, charismatics led the charge on modern worship music; it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it reaches people that have more of a feel for Crosby, Stills and Nash than Fanny Crosby.

Charismatic churches can be very transformative; they generally take people wherever they are and nurture them, pray with them and help show how drawing closer to God can allow the Holy Spirit to do things in us that we can't do on our own. When they're working right, they are providing a big impact in parishioner's lives, more so than a garden-variety evangelical church.

However, a new and bad change can screw things up. Chasing after God's new thing can get one into some things that are theologically dubious. The modern-day "prophets" like Rick Joyner or Mike Bickle can get people wired up over their next vision, but their next vision might be as much their own imagination as a message from God. Todd Bentley gets regular visits from his spokesangel Emma, but I'm fairly sure that some of the more outlandish visions are products of a wild imagination rather than actual impartations from God.

An effective revivalist can play to the desire for more, more of the Holy Spirit and get a self-fulfilling feedback loop; people come to them to expect to see people knocked to the floor and many people coming get wobbly by nature during a good service. The folks that get "slain in the spirit" are often either preconditioned to go down or bowing to peer pressure to take a fall rather than make the preacher look bad and they being the lone person who didn't feel that anointing; I got more than a bit of that feeling at Toronto when I went in 1997 and in Brownsville when I visited in 2002.

In such settings, the Spirit may not be moving much more (if at all) than in a regular service of a charismatic/Pentecostal church (an Assembly of God church is sponsoring the Bentley revival), but the people going to the service are looking for a good spiritual show (they'll state it in kinder terms than that, but there's an entertainment aspect to such revivals) and come expecting things to happen. Thus, the visiting preacher may not be much better than their normal preacher, but has a more vibrant style that gets people psyched up and looking for something special.

The problem with chasing the prophetic and the next big revival is that it take away from other spiritual endeavors, like reaching the lost or ministering to the needy. The money spent on hotel rooms and gas money/plane fares to get to Lakeland or Toronto could be spent on other church functions and the time could be spent on more fruitful activities. Also, if the activity takes away from the basic Gospel message, it can sap the spiritual growth of the parishioners; seeking after new gifts and new experiences may take away from what God may want them to do with what He's given them.

One of the things to ask about things like Lakeland is whether it's good for the church; even if the theology is OK (it's a notch or so out of my vision of orthodoxy), the activities can lead people towards a good spiritual show and away from fruitful things that they might be doing at home. Spending a Saturday helping at the local homeless shelter is less sexy than bopping down to Lakeland for the weekend, but it may be more helpful for the Kingdom of God.

Back to my Beta analogy: if charismatic churches are sensitive to the spiritual market and reflexively bite like a Doberman after the next new thing, they can underperform as a church if the next new thing isn't fruitful; when the market is down, they go down with it big time. Churches that are more traditional and less subject to the whims of the spiritual market aren't exposed to those changes and are less volatile; however, they might lack vibrancy and underperfom their charismatic peers.

However, there isn't any reason why churches can't independently figure out things that help expand the Kingdom of God; high betas are nice, but high alphas, where you outperform stocks with the same betas, are what we need to be striving for as a church, looking at what works for our church rather than having to adopt the latest trend.

The Disgruntled Bapticostal-Part I-Being Driven Away by a Bentley

Before moving to Lexington, I had soured some on charismatic churches. The independent charismatic church we had attended from 2005-2006 had turned perfectionist and somewhat word-of-faithy; we went to a good Free Methodist church for the first half of 2007 before we moved to Lexington last July.

I managed to find a good Southern Baptist church, Victory Baptist, just a quarter-mile from our apartment complex on the southeast side of Lexington; it takes us longer to get out of our apartment complex than it does to drive down Armstrong Mill to the church. It's a good, vibrant Baptist church, with good preaching, good worship music (albeit a bit too centered on the latest praise music to the detriment of more traditional contemporary stuff of the 80s, 90s and early 00s) and very solid Sunday School (a.k.a. "Life Group") classes.

However, while it's a good Baptist church, it's still a Baptist church. With my emotions, I find being prayed with to be helpful, and the Vineyard or Vineyard-style churches that we had predominately gone to for the last half-decade were good at prayerful counseling; "ministry time" would take the place of altar calls, where people would come up for prayer, even if it wasn't in response to the sermon's denouement. In the Baptist setting, neither the service or the Sunday School class had such an outlet beyond the standard prayer request at the beginning of your Sunday School class.

We also missed the fellowship of a good home group/small group; a good Sunday school class can do some of that, but it's time-limited and people scatter after the alloted hour; you don't have the extended time to hang out and get to know and be known. We were hoping for some more fellowship than what we were getting and gave the Vineyard church downtown (or at least towards the center of town compared to our outside-the-New-Circle-beltway location) a try last fall.

Here in Lexington, the local Vineyard church leans a bit too much into the Emergent/post-modern realm, with an extra emphasis on helping the poor and an almost Goth sanctuary with no windows, negligible lighting and leaf-less trees on the dais up front. We tried it last fall for a couple of services, but the mood seemed a bit too dark for our spirits; the preaching was interesting and dynamic, but the overall mood wasn't for us. Also, since they moved to a Sunday night alternative service (an alternative to Sunday morning rather than an addition to it), all their home groups that fit a mature married couple were on weeknights when I was teaching.

We cycled back to Victory, but the Vineyard bug, or a good home-group bug at least, didn't go away.

 A trip to visit Eileen's conservative PC-USA pastor friend in Missouri back in March lead us to give a nearby PCA church a try; they had good home groups, but the liturgical nature of their services left this low-church evangelical guy a bit cold. I lasted two weeks before I needed to move on.

It was speaking to Eileen's Presbyterian roots, but it was also hitting cords from my Methodist roots, where I was used to people mouthing creeds they didn't really mean. Even if the rather evangelical Presbyterians actually meant what they were saying, those old creeds and that liturgical, confessional style smelled of the "hypocrites" of my Methodist youth; my Methodist peers were worse-behaved than the other kids in school, which soured me on the brand.

I was still itching for something more than Victory, so we decided to try the Vineyard church in Wilmore, about 15 miles southwest of us; at first, things looked positive. The pastor wasn't in the Word-of-faith camp and seemed to be level-headed, but some of the parishioners were... a bit out there. One gal had a large prophetic streak, another was a big fan of Toronto and a third was starting to plug a revival in Lakeland that he had been watching via the Web.

The pastor mentioned that he liked the International House of Prayer, which raised a red flag, since IHOP boss Mike Bickle ran heard over a heterodox bunch of "prophets" in the 90s, but the pastor seemed otherwise level-headed. I forgave Pastor Dave Baker down at the Lakeland Vineyard for the occasional Rick Joyner reference, so I was willing to cut this pastor some slack.

We were down at WIlmore for four Sundays; the last Sunday, April 20, the topic of discussion was the Lakeland Revival; note that very few people outside of a few hard-core charismatic circles had heard of Todd Bentley yet, but these folks in Wilmore were wanting to make sure they were a part of whatever God was doing and were talking about making a trip down to Lakeland to check out this new move of the Lord.

I had been vaguely aware of Bentley, who hangs out with the circle that includes Toronto and a lot of the modern "prophets;" my dad, who appreciates a lot of that milieu, came back from a conference in British Columbia in 2001 taking about a real young guy named Todd Bentley with a powerful anointing. Now, he had gone global, and the folks in Wilmore were jumping on the band-wagon.

Eileen and I, after a lot of prayer, came to the conclusion that this church didn't have quite enough quality-control and was chasing after the next new thing a bit too much for comfort. Also, despite how much my dad likes them, I see self-styled prophets like Joyner and Bickle as loose cannons, focusing more on their own imaginations than the Gospel, and I'm uncomfortable fellowshipping with a lot of prophetphiles. They're more likely to be leading folks off on wild-goose-chases than leading them into a deeper walk with God and a better witness.

Dan Edelen has a good comment on this-

We must also realize that a group with odd theology may continue to spawn odd theology even if they attempt to distance themselves from the past error. In charismatic circles, far too much deviant doctrine and practice has come out of the Kansas City Prophets of the late 1980s and early 1990s. One can trace all manner of craziness since 1990 directly back to that group, including the recent Lakeland “revival.” Anything “birthed” out of that movement should have an automatic red flag attached to it, as should any former leaders connected to it. This includes organizations and ministries such as IHOP, The Elijah List, MorningStar Ministries, Passion & Fire, and a whole host of others that looked favorably upon Mike Bickle, Bob Jones, John Paul Jackson, Rick Joyner, Paul Cain, and anyone else who came out of the Kansas City Prophets movement. In fact, since the entirety of the modern prophetic movement in charismatic circles is inextricably linked in a tangle to those groups and individuals, it may be best (and I say this with a heavy heart) to avoid the prophetic movement altogether as a national entity until God purges the corrupted seed.

Edelen is a fellow charismatic, so he isn't your stereotypical heresy-hunter who's looking to bash anything that isn't outside their comfort zone. It's hard to set up a KC-free zone, since you wind up writing off a big chunk of charismatic thought; when you couple that with writing off the Word-of-Faith crowd (TBN, Osteen, Meyer, White, et. al.), you pretty much write off most of the "Spirit-filled" universe.

Toronto goes. Lakeland goes; both Bentley and my old Vineyard church, where Joyner and Jackson were in the reading mix. Even my Vineyard church in Midland goes, with their Harp-and-Bowl worship sessions inspired by IHOP.

Increasingly, the lack of theological quality control in charismatic circles makes it hard to be in that environment. As much as the freedom of worship and focus on prayer ministry makes charismatic churches attractive, the loose cannon nature of things makes problematic.

One of our good friends from our old Vineyard church in Midland has gone PCA; for us, a good Baptist church works for us.

More on this later.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 3:1-5(NIV)

¹You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. ²I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? ³Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? ⁴Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? ⁵Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?

You can't work your way to faith and can't work your way to a larger dose of the Holy Spirit.

One of the problems with many modern Christians is that they either have to work at a list of dos and don'ts of proper living or that they are so wound up in improving their faith that "faith" becomes works. If miracles aren't happening in their lives, they must not have enough faith, or so the Word-of-Faith meme tends to run; people then try to work on their faith in various ways, developing a "By faith" regime that is very work-oriented, focused on reading the right books, listening to the right CDs and praying the right prayers.

Faith is a gift. The "gifts of the Spirit" are gifts, not frequent-prayer rewards that kick in after 5,000 prayers. Some people have them, some don't, and the folks that don't aren't second-class believers.

Lakeland Airport Christian Fellowship?

Here's my lede on my first Todd Bentley post

If you're not a Lakeland, Florida person, you might not get the pun in the title. One of Lakeland's big tourism draws (other than Detroit Tiger spring training) is the Sun-'n-Fun Fly-In, where recreational aviators from around the country show up for a week of flying-related events at the airport south of town.

Lakeland might be on the verge of having another tourist destination, and it won't involve a theme park; a big revival has broken out at Ignited Church on the north side of town, with rising Pentecostal evangelist Todd Bentley (my dad's been taking about him for years after seeing him at a conference about six years ago) being the touchstone of some interesting rashes of conversions and reported healings.

The thing is still going, and my description was prophetic (figuratively) on two grounds; the first is that it has become a burgeoning pilgrimage site for charismatics. That I figured would happen, but not as fast as it did. Cary McMullen from the Lakeland Ledger has an excellent update, covering quite a bit of historical ground on the Third-Wave charismatics and other issues that I covered in my first post, including Rodney Howard Brown's Carpenter's Home revival of the 90s.

The second is that they're setting up shop at the Lakeland airport.

Revival leaders are expected to announce today that beginning May 26, they will hold evening services on the grounds of Sun 'n Fun Fly-in under a giant inflatable "air dome" that will hold up to 10,000 people. It will be the home of the revival "indefinitely," said Lynne Breidenbach, a spokeswoman for the revival.

"Todd is hiring staff and renting apartments. They're setting up camp to stay for three or four months," [host pastor Stephen] Strader said.

Lakeland's airport is non-commercial, so pilgrims have to fly into either Tampa or Orlando. However, it is a bit ironic that they'll be set up for now at the airport, since the host church of the Toronto Blessing was the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship; they had to buy a failed conference center in an industrial park near the airport to hold the crowds they were getting a decade ago.

It looks like they are starting to institutionalize things much like Toronto, having a smaller service in the mornings at the host Ignited Church and a big evening service out at the airport.

However, I'd still feel more at home a couple miles to the east along Pipkin Road at the Lakeland Vineyard, my old church in my Florida days. For folks going to the revival and looking for a break from the high-octane stuff, check them out, although they may be a bit tame by Bentley standards, being founded by a Southern Baptist pastor who got too charismatic for the Baptists a couple of decades back.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Edifier du Jour-Philippians 3:17-21(NIV)

¹⁷Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. ¹⁸For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. ²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

That's the passage that Pastor David used this morning after starting things with a Memorial Day message, including a video of honoring fallen soldiers with Taps playing. There is a strong tendency to play the God-and-country card a bit too heavy on holidays like this, but this passage makes sure to keep it in proper perspective.

Our primary citizenship is in heaven witb God; we're merely naturalized citizens down here on Earth.


 Bene (via Bill Moyers) makes fun of Rod Parsley being "a 'Christo-crat' —a gladiator for God marching against 'the very hordes of hell in our society.'” I'm not a fan of Parsley's theocon-on-steroids shtick, but there is a strong element that we need to stand up for God first and foremost and be citizens of our country second. How tactfully we do it and how it manifests itself will vary from person to person and from country to country, but our primary allegiance needs to be to God, not a red-white-and-blue flag or whatever flag you're being offered where your at..