Why there is so much error in the church – apart from all the reasons I have already mentioned!

Well a few days ago I came across this YouTube video and shared it on my Facebook profile:

How The Megachurch Destroyed Christianity – YouTube

I believe that this video explains many of the problems I have with the modern church.

If you use YouTube as much as I do, then you will know that once you have watched one video from a YouTube channel, YouTube will then push more videos from that same channel to you in your feed.

So this particular channel has created lots of videos finding many “big name” Christian pastors and ministries guilty of “apostasy”.  I am not particularly interested in watching those videos because I never particularly followed those pastors and none of it would come as a particular shock to me.

However, there is one particular pastor who was well-regarded in life but whose double life came out very quickly after his death. Apparently he had secretly engaged in gross misconduct, over a long length of time, and at that the kind of misconduct that the Apostle Paul says that we should not even mention amongst ourselves as it is so unedifying. So egregiously bad was what he did, so clear is it that he definitely did it, that people are now suggesting that, barring a last minute repentance, he may not have made it to Heaven. I personally think that many of these pastors are not going to make to Heaven but then my standards are notoriously strict. For even normal, far more lenient Christians to suggest that a pastor might not make it to Heaven shows how bad the behaviour was.

So the channel above had produced an “apostasy” report about this particular pastor, literally just months before he passed, and I was so curious to see what had been said on the video, and what people’s comments were, and whether people had added any new comments after everything had come to light. So I did not actually watch the video itself, but rather read the comments below to get an idea of what the video said and what people thought about it.

And as you would imagine, quite a number of comments were exhorting “Servus Christi” (the creator behind the channel) and saying that he had been vindicated by what later came out about this pastor.

However there were also quite a few comments which were not so congratulatory.
Many of them were essentially saying “You find fault with everyone!  Are you the only one who is right?!”
And you know?  This is something that I too am conscious of with this blog, in that I criticise so many ministries that I have personally been part of, so it might seem as if I think that I am the only one who is right.

I am going to make a very bold claim in this post.  Yes, Servus Christi and many other people like him are right to criticise essentially every prominent ministry.
That is because the entire framework of faith in our times is completely flawed. So it is not surprising but rather entirely predictable that essentially every pastor or ministry that arises from that framework will be unavoidably flawed too.

I am going to list out a number of reasons why this is the case.
You know, the thing is that as Christians these are things that we often overlook even though they are written right there in the Bible. And we say “Well”, we rationalise, we talk about “using modern methods.”

1. Money
   This is a big one, and I have already discussed it endlessly on this blog.  It is not that money is bad. It is a misquotation when people carelessly say that “(the Bible says) “Money is the root of all evil.”” What the Bible actually says is that: “The love of money (rather than money itself) is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy 6v10 (The verse I have linked to also mistranslates this by saying “the root of all kinds of evil.” This softens it. In modern English, “all kinds of” means “many, but not all”. In Greek it literally says “all” evil – panton ton kakon”.)Well money has a huge negative impact in the church for at least two big reasons:
   1. Firstly, it has been accepted that people can make money from the ministry. The Apostle Paul allows that people who preach the Gospel should make their living from the Gospel. However, this has been skewed beyond anything that looks remotely Biblical. Where Jesus and the Apostles and the early church lived lives of humble simplicity, many modern pastors use their fat earnings from the church to live lives of luxurious and lavish wealth.  How can people not understand that this is not Biblical?Basically, even though the Bible clearly warns against the love of money, the church now actively attracts people who love money.  They come into the church, they start churches, they put themselves into positions of responsibility not out of any deep love of Christ, or even basic understanding of the gospel but simply because they just want to make money from the church, in ways they have seen televangelists do. In one particular church I attended for far too long, even though I could see right through everything, I cannot even begin to tell you how ignorant the pastor was about basic theology. And he would stand at the front and literally command his members to give hundreds, thousands of pounds at a time for the privilege of accessing his fake “anointing”.  And you know what?  People actually went along with this, including my own self! Not because I believed in it in the slightest, but rather for the sake of just going along with everyone while I remained in that church. And what a surprise, they did not have any established means of accounting for what happened to all these funds that were raised. No accounts that you could check for years.  No-one could give you a clear answer about how the funds of the ministry were allocated. And they were astonished that it would actually occur to you to ask.And yet with this particular church, this particular pastor, it was far from all bad. With all the unflattering things I have said about him, his heart was in the right place. He was not acting from malice, which is one reason why I believe there was so much love in that church, and why ultimately I left as gently as I could, not wanting to wound that part of their achievement which was beautiful. He was also extremely hard-working. He sincerely, genuinely thought that the Bible existed so that he and his family could make a comfortable living from his church members.  When I gently challenged him about some outright lies, he laughed and gave examples of people in the Bible who lied and got away with it. Yes, but the fact that they got away with it does not mean that this is the correct behaviour for Christians to pursue. So apparently he was one of those pastors who did not understand the difference between these things, that there are some things that are recorded in the Bible that people got away with, even though they are not good. We are not supposed to copy these things! Rather we are supposed to strive after that which is truly holy, and truly righteous.And there are lots and lots of these churches, with each pastor angling for their own cut of the fat pie! So if the Church historically used to be characterised by love, kindness and mercy, now it is overwhelmingly characterised by people who are out to make a quick buck, and regard their congregants only as means to extort money. So they don’t care about you , they don’t care about your life, they don’t care about your spiritual growth. They only care about what you can financially contribute to their church. Your only value to them is your financial value.  If you don’t believe me, or if you think I am exaggerating the scale of the issue, you need to go into some of these churches and see it with your own eyes. The church I have spoken of above was flawed regarding this. And yet I was still deeply blessed as a member of the church, because the members were all so lovely.There was another church I went to, where the senior pastor made a big song and dance about the fact that they were not a prosperity gospel church. And yet he too treated me as if I was nothing because he guessed that I was not giving any money to his church.  So even though he made a big deal about not being a prosperity gospel church, his heart was exactly the same as the actual prosperity gospel churches, and he also reduced my value to the financial contribution I was making to his church.None of this is what the Church should be about. And yet, because of the prevalence of these churches, it has become everything that the church is about. So in a huge number of churches you will find this: people sizing you up based on how much money it appears that you have, so that they can deduce how much respect that they need to give you, in the hope of getting some of that money into their coffers.2.  The second way that money negatively impacts the church is this:
   As Christians we have substituted the power of money for the power of God. Our faith is supposed to be ratified by the supernatural power of God that pulses through our lives. But in our days this is very rare in any church. So when in the early church, they drew people through supernatural means, nowadays we use slick lighting, professionally produced presentations and literature. None of this is bad in and of itself, of course. However we as Christians are called to simplicity. To be able to spend all this money then clearly the church needs lots of money in the first place. So as Christians many of us spend our time working to earn money rather than working to immerse ourselves in the presence of God. And this is what is encouraged.

   If we walked in the true power of God, then we would not need all these slick, expensive props. That does not mean that we should instead do things shoddily. Rather my point is that these things should not be the focus but should instead be sitting quietly in the background, while the power of God is always the main event.  And truth and righteousness, and love, and grace, and everything else that Christ stands for and the Holy Spirit brings with Him.  The power of God is not just about supernatural miracles, but also includes things such as a diverse group of people getting along and the Church being a fortress of peace in the midst of challenging times.
   Where there is no power of God then you have to substitute for it with bright lights and loud music, and look! The more that the Church turns to these dramatic man-made ways and means, the more that people turn away from the Church.  People who are deeply yearning for truth can obviously tell that none of these bright lights and loud music arrangements fulfil their yearnings, anyone can see that all of this is empty and false.

   2. The structure of the church:
   Moving on beyond money now, this is one thing that I am sure I have mentioned a number of times on this blog too:
   In the New Testament, churches were a lot smaller, and also* (*on rereading this, I am questioning it so I will go back to check in the Bible) a lot more fluid. There were not lots of different distinct churches in one city, but rather because there was a lot more unity there was literally just one Church, with different branches in different cities. So it was implied that if someone left their home city of Galatia, say, to travel to Ephesus then they would automatically fellowship with the church of the Ephesians.

   Furthermore, even though the churches were smaller, they were presided over by not by a single pastor, but rather by a group of elders. This meant that the metaphorical weight of the church was divided amongst all those people.

   Not so in our days! In our days, so many people want to be the boss, which is why so many pastors cannot work with one another, but must rather start their own churches. The idea of there just being one church in a single locality is laughable, even a single church of a particular denomination. There is so much theological variance between Christians and church denominations that many times we as supposed Christians regard one another with real enmity.

   Furthermore, to maximise each individual pastor’s potential financial earnings from the church and also his power, it makes sense for each pastor to grow their congregations to be as big as possible. To enhance their power, they anoint themselves as heads over their churches, doing away with the idea of boards of elders. As a consequence of all this, the following things happen:

   Because the pastor can be dealing with such a huge and unwieldy number of people, the pastor can often get stressed. It is recognised that being a pastor is a stressful job and pastors often complain. Because they are so stressed and time-pressured, spending time reading the Bible and pouring out their hearts to God, listening to God can often seem like an unattainable luxury. So, many times, such pastors will fall into sin and spiritual error. It is all but inevitable, especially considering that the devil is real and he truly attacks. You know, I have spoken a lot about my own struggles with a particular sin on this blog of late. But you know what else? Years, and years and years ago, I actually offered on this very blog a solution to that very sin. And I recently thought to myself: “I have had this answer for ages, before this thing actually became a real issue in my life! Why have I not been applying it?!”

   You know why – time. I was thinking to myself (yesterday?) that I am routinely trying to squeeze 48 hours of life into only 24 hours of the day. This is why I so often cheat on sleep. But it is also why, when praying, my mind will often be elsewhere, mentally rehearsing countless other things (like my next blog post!) This is stupid, and it is like mocking God, and I am so grateful that God in His mercy has been merciful to me despite this. If you are going to pray, then you need to make sure that your mind is truly present with God and you are truly focusing on Him, otherwise the only person that you will be deceiving is yourself.

   So then, this solution to erotica that I proposed, which is simply reciting the Bible, does 100% work. However, it requires your mind to be present, and your active concentration, not just the unthinking recitation of some verses that you have memorised. Otherwise it is just meaningless, and it has absolutely no power. And like anything else you also have to invest enough of your time into it.

   If so many pastors are so busy, trying to wear all the relevant hats for a huge church because they want to retain all the power, how many of them will truly have time to immerse themselves in God and His word?  This is also why so few pastors are walking in any true supernatural power.

   And then a false understanding has arisen in our days, that no-one ever spells out but which in practice many people hold to: that what you as a person believe is defined by what your church teaches (rather than the Bible) – so the doctrine of your particular version of church essentially defines what you believe as an individual. So, many Christians go around saying “My pastor says this, my pastor says that”, where the true weight should instead be given to what the Bible says. So in a church where there is only one pastor, the congregation grows up to mirror the theological quirks and eccentricities of that one pastor. However, if there was a board of elders, then many such quirks from the various different elders would cancel one another out.

   3. Biblism versus Churchism:
   These are terms that I have recently made up on this blog.  Biblism means an attitude of making God Himself your career or the main daily focus of your time and effort, and working to earn money in your spare time, whereas “Churchist” is a term I have invented to apply to all other Christians. This is so controversial in the modern church. Yet I believe that this is closer to the New Testament church for a number of reasons.
   Historically, people have been more self-sufficient in a number of ways. Many people would have grown their own food, or woven their own cloth, or built their own homes, or did all that in small collectives of families, or in their villages. So where we today take it for granted that we exchange our time for money and then exchange that money for goods that we need, and we spend most of our time doing that, that would not necessarily have been the case in the New Testament church at all. It usually comes as a shock to people to realise that people have historically worked far less than we typically do.
   Additionally the New Testament repeatedly calls us to simplicity.  I believe that this is so that we spend less time working for the things of this world, which will perish in this lifetime, or which are only relevant to this lifetime, so that we can focus on the things which will have eternal value. So if people of New Testament times would typically have worked less than we do (except the poor slaves, of course) then the instructions of the New Testament are asking them to work even less than that.

   So this is the lifestyle that I have embraced essentially since graduating from uni, where I first started thinking these things through at university. And to be candid, there is a difference between me and everyone else. Because I make so much more time available for my faith, there are some things that I have been able to focus on a lot more.
   Top of that is character. This is why it might sound as if I am always bragging about my own character. Long story short – character, and pursuit of Christ needs time!  You need time to bring your heart before God. You need time to read the Bible. You need time to identify your flaws and work on them. Because other Christians do not make this same commitment of time, to be candid many Christians have poor character relative to myself. If you are trying to live your Christian life on five minutes a day, let me assure you that that is not going to make any significant difference to your character.  I am not saying that you are not a Christian, and I am not saying that God is not going to accept you.

   However things have now reached a stage where I simply refuse to closely associate with any “Christians” unless like me they are Biblists and unless I can be sure that they truly invest lots of time to pursuing Christlike character. Otherwise it is just too painful to interact with them. Man, I have ranted, I have vented, I have complained on this blog to the point where I am just fed up.  As a Christian you are supposed to resemble “Christ”. That is what the word “Christian” actually means, that is why it was first applied to the disciples in Antioch, because they were like Jesus. It does not fundamentally mean someone who believes in Jesus, or God, as amazing as that is. Rather it fundamentally means someone who is like Jesus. Acts 11v26 which talks about the disciples first being called Christians implicitly distinguishes between people who were believers and people who were like Jesus.  So I believe that the corollary is that you can be a believer, which is brilliant, but if you want to be known as a Christian then you actually have to be like Jesus.

   This also gives the lie to that silly phrase which I hate so much which is that “None of us is perfect!”. It is definitely true that none of us is perfect, except Jesus Himself. And yet, it is also all too true that some of us are striving and giving our utmost to be like Jesus, and others of us…are not. And believe me, when you immerse yourself in any group of Christians for any significant length of time, it really shows. To be candid, even if you were deeply sincere, there is only so much striving that someone can do in five minutes a day.

   So if a pastor happened to be a 5 mins a day pastor, then that would not give much time for any deep revelation to be found in their ministry. And then to think that a whole congregation of possibly hundreds of people will be relying on this pastor for their spiritual nourishment?! And remember the point is that each individual pastor tries to accumulate as much power as possible by growing their congregations as large as possible.

   So can it be any surprise then that such churches are full then not of righteousness, holiness and all the other lovely things that the Bible promises, but rather of the unregenerated characters of people who do not truly invest time into their relationship with God? Can it be surprising then that the pastors themselves are routinely found with huge inconsistencies such as fraud, stealing from the church, corruption, sexual misdemeanours? Someone is going to shout at me “erotica!” Yes, you are right. However, if any of these pastors had “only” dabbled in erotica or porn, then pragmatically people would not be making such a big deal of it (all the more so if, ahem, the pastor in question was not married!) That does not make it OK, of course, in the eyes of God sin is sin. These sexual misdemeanours from these ministries that do break out, that we are talking about, invariably involving married pastors, include things like outright sexual assault or sexual coercion of vulnerable congregants, often mixed in with a whole load of other non-sexual failings.
   Moreover, my own struggles indicate this: I am a unapologetically, undeniably a Biblist, a Christian by every true Biblical definition, pursuing every sincerity in my faith. And yet my own faith predictably needs big time to deal with my own struggles and no matter how sincere I am, if I don’t give the adequate time, I will and I do crash like anyone else.

   You know, I talk a lot about supernatural power, about miracles, about raisings from the dead. However, even if a church lacked these supernatural things, if it was “only” genuinely full of kindness, love, compassion, treating people with dignity, that in itself would still be deeply noteworthy. And yet we never hear about these churches in our time. If they truly exist, other than the church I attended as a child, I am yet to experience one.

   So in summary, I would say that yes, Servus Christi and others are right to sit and find fault with so many Christian pastors and ministries. If your church or ministry has been moulded by the modern framework of church life, then because the mould itself is deeply lacking, I can guarantee that any church it produces will also be deeply flawed.