Each new post now seems as though it might be the last in this blog--at least for the time being. Perhaps the church elder who said we have not done a very good job of raising awareness of the religious spirit in the Santa Maria valley was right after all. There are just 16 followers of the blog, although more than that read it from time to time. Our Facebook group, Sunrise Ministries, has 27 members, but several of them have only a curious interest in what we are doing. In any event, we have been faithful to our calling, and we are not quite done.
If memory serves, Colossians 2 has been referred to in these pages, but we did not get as far as verse 21 which reads, "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle." That is one of those verses of scripture that make little sense out of context. Space does not permit us to do the exegetical teaching on the whole chapter which would take us into Chapter 3, so we are simply going to cut to the lesson and give a few examples of how we have seen this worked out in some local churches. We do recommend Colossians as a good read for those of you who might be interested. (Yes, that was written tongue in cheek.)
Over the course of the 23+ years we have lived in this valley on this tour, we have been part of five different churches for varying amounts of time. At the first one we were, not so politely, shown the door. The last one we were more politely asked to not come back. The other three we left on mostly amicable terms. Recently, we have been attending a church outside the valley.
Those of you you know us might guess what churches these are, but do keep in mind you would only be making educated guesses. I have actually had to defend a church after I published an uncharitable comment and a person wrongly guessed which church it was. The intent has never been to detract from any church or ministry--only to point out the workings of the religious spirit in the valley. With that said, we can go on.
We were shown the door at a church because of a conflict over elders. We said variously that women cannot be elders, that elders do not judge prophecies, and that pastors do not choose elders who disagree with them. That last statement seems to be self-evident. The first two are found verbatim in scripture (1 Corinthians 14:29, Titus 1:5-6). The pastor and church council did not see it that way.
We were asked to not return to a church because this blog was "disturbing" to the pastor and elders of the church. This was also where one of the elders is the one mentioned in the first line of this post. That was seriously the primary reason given for their request although we were told the pastor was hurt by another writer's comment that was posted to this blog. In this case he correctly surmised the commenter was referring to him. Even then, it seemed we could have stayed had we agreed to take the whole blog off the internet. I wonder who (what spirit) could possibly have been behind that request? Maybe we actually did raise the awareness of the working of a religious spirit.
I was not told this would be a two-part post when I got up early to write it. I might have lobbied harder for more sleep. So much for this being the last post to the blog. Now I have add to the title and say, To be continued...
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It seems that often what God envisions for us isn’t what we envision for ourselves. Just like reading the first part of your post. You thought you were going to be finished writing for a while, and then the Holy Spirit told you, “hey guess what, you were incorrect, there’s more to write.” You should know it’s going exactly as the Holy Spirit has directed it. Detours and vista points and all. It may not look like you want it to, or like your wife has wanted it to, or like we wanted it to. But you have to ask yourself, Isn’t it exactly what the Holy Spirit wants it to look like at this point? As far as the religious spirit goes, that is an ongoing spiritual battle that we see casualties of all the time. Just recently we were at a church where one of the primary leaders of exegetical preaching, along with their spouse, had a heart to heart with their pastors and mentioned that perhaps the pastor needed to preach more about what the bible says. They were shown the door, asked politely not to return, said perhaps they should find a new church, whatever phrase you want to use here. I will just say exactly what happened. They were kicked out of the church. At least in this situation the pastor did the kicking out himself; he didn’t conspire with his elders and then have his elders do it.
ReplyDeleteYou also talked about a pastor who correctly surmised that our post on this blog was about him. Not that he guessed that it might be him. But that he recognized himself. That is to say he felt convicted. What makes this even worse is that what probably happened is that one of his elders read the blog post and comments and told him it was about him. So not only did someone write it, but one of his own recognized him in it. We did not do that to him. The words on this blog did not do that to him. And rather than going to God in prayer, and relying on the Holy Spirit to address that, he went to his elders and his wife and then he put all of it out at his next Sunday service. If you have a hard time remembering this, I’m sure you could go through his podcasts and find the date. And then he decided for himself, that he must not do those things. It’s sad that at a time of conviction he did not go to God in prayer. He felt conviction and he sought justification through his appointed elders. This is not my truth, these are just facts. The religious spirit doesn’t use semantics to soften blows, people do. Whether you are shown the door, asked to never come back, or kicked out, those will always be tiny victories for Satan. The saddest part of all that is that in the church they’re direct victories against God.
ReplyDeleteBut what we need to keep in mind is that our defeats make us stronger. Without them we do not gain strength. They should weaken our resolve, only strengthen it. The bible says that the second commandment is to love your neighbor, second only to loving God. The bible never puts in any caveats, .such as love your neighbor only if he agrees with your theology, or only if it doesn’t hurt your pride. We, as the body of Christ, are supposed to uplift one another. And if one of us is going astray, we are supposed to take and counsel them personally. If that doesn’t work, we are supposed to go with a group of people, etc. etc… If pastors/shepherds can kick us out to whom are we, as sheep, supposed to go to? Who ever wants to do spiritual battle? We know we don’t, it would be much easier to say it’s somebody else’s job. The problem is, when you’re called to do it, as faithful Christians, we can’t question that. Ask the Holy Spirit for reinforcements, we’re going to need them. Because, guess what? He promises victory. His victory, not ours. We must remain faithful in what He asks of us. By the way,after reading this blog, that pastor may delete that podcast from the library.
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