Or, who guards the guards then?
Or, at a church in which you want to check out the woolfish sensation you feel underneath someone's sheep costume, yet rather than asked, you're denied a right to speak.
There’s a church near me that’s no longer there.
It hasn’t devolved, seeded, transmutated; nor was it Taken Up to the divine bosom. It’s just not there. In fact, there’s not even the sighing of wind or the rustle of tumbleweed that would sadly attest its former greatness, let alone an Ozymandian eulogy.
It honestly was an actual church, a living body, with oh-so-hip praise and worship, a creche, Sunday School, families and all other stuff. Even Jesus was about. Truly, it was a vibrant, growing organism, seemingly deep-rooted and well-watered.
Thing is, slowly and almost below a discernible level, it fell apart. A few people seemed to move on then suddenly no new ones showed up; the creche closed, the Sunday School was whittled away: when the church moved to a larger building, it was a glaring embarrassment, a barely-animated corpse whose life started to slough away in tatters.
There had been no Single Bad Thing, just several seemingly disparate events resounding like final hammer-blows on a recalcitrant nail: vague rumours of financial impropriety somewhere in the church’s corporate structure far away; a steadily increasing heaviness to the whole church experience; the Next Big Idea not being prayed about or pursued, until all of a sudden the Next Big Idea After That came up(that of course God had said)...yet that wasn’t built upon either.
Finally, there was this dark and almost sick sense that something just was...well...rotten, somewhere. And one of the most terrifying dimensions to all of this was that, somehow and somewhere along the way, it became simply difficult...to the point of actively being discouraged when attempting to do so.... to even say anything about one’s concerns.
So. No one dared say anything: the very few that did were dealt with as if they were a rogue virus, a “disunifying” presence. Eventually, when the people supposedly entrusted with the worship, one day gave a month’s notice to attend a Christian festival, their pastor merely said “no, you can’t”. Just like that.
And guess what?
From that day on, there was no more live worship at that church. Plenty of singing along to CDs and happily rowing along in denial, until the vast congregation finally were down to around 8. Then finally, these bruised yet faithful people were effectively dumped, as the corporately international beast driving this little Stroud church loosed its stranglehold: if there’s one thing that stuffs a megalomaniac, it’s when no people turn up.
As is so often the case with human institutions that make use of fear, the law of Catch 22 became the guiding principle. It goes like this:
1. Someone gets convinced that God is telling them something. Well, no problems there: pointless having a relationship with God, or anyone, unless at some stage they speak and listen, discuss, follow, join forces.
2. Someone gets convinced that God is telling them something and that they are to do this thing. Again, fine: how would one’s character change unless one becomes obedient to different strokes.
3. Someone gets convinced that God is telling them to do something that exterts control over the lives of others. Ah. You see? A “pastor”, an “elder”, anyone: God has told me to do this...thus I’m telling you that your life needs to change in line with what I’m saying.
Right. So, the terrible inevitability of human nature harnessed with self-justification:
The final vile piece of the jigsaw is, then:
“God has told me I’m right to tell this body of people what to do: it’s thus His Will. If you disagree, you are thus outside; you are the voice of disunity. In fact, even your very concerns are themselves an indication of your troubled nature, your disunifying spirit.... ; you are in rebellion which is as the sin of witchcraft, etc;”
See? And you’re shafted. Even when you see something that you feel is potentially unwise happening in front of you: a collection of vulnerable, searching people are firstly being told the Favourite: “If you’re not experiencing God’s freedom, it’s your own fault,” followed by, “God has told me not only that you are in some way lukewarm but that I am to light a fire amongst you to this effect.”
Now, all the rest is plain sailing if one has a spouse who is also working the same agenda: hubby and wife can then use the “ooh, I thought that as well,”: in fact, in our situation gets rubber-stamped very quickly: hubby says he has a dream of fireworks...thus this is of course “confirmation” that they are “supposed” to be setting us all alight with some spiritual incandescence.
Now, if one dares raise an objection that anything whatsoever about all this might actually need to be either prayed upon, or left and considered over the following weeks, one is already bleating darkly in “disunity”.
Imagine then, if one has been already exposed to “christianity” that has devolved into coercion, if one has already experienced a church in meltdown because of unrestrained and unchallenged mind control: One knows already that peculiar sinking deja vu, that feeing of extreme caution and wariness, that certain heaviness that just hangs there when you just darn well know that something does not test true to one’s spirit. That awful knowledge that I’ve seen this before and it was ugly then.....which is rendered nightmarishly terrifying by the realisation that no one will listen to you if you open your mouth and advise caution.
Remember the Lord of the Flies?
As the thin veneer of society and religion fell away from the boys on the island in the novel, the boys’ notion of control was bound to whoever was holding the conch shell: if you held the conch, you had the right of speech.
It’s the same in “real” life: histories written by the victors; opinions given weight not because of an inherent content of truth, but because he who shouts loudest convinces the others that to him belongs the Ministry of the Microphone.
Well, to put it another way, beware those who say that God has given them a ministry to be a hammer...because, sure as eggs is eggs, they then assume that all others apart from them have their ministry of being a nail.
Sadly, at our church, the time when people are wished to be the most emotionally engaged(and thus in a state of being ready to listen, to believe...thus vulnerable and actually in need of something more balanced than entertainment-driven fleshly hysteria)...this time is that special phenomenon, the Family Service.
Despite kids being saturated by screens, graphics, superfluously applied “I.T” and sensation in their daily lives, churches actually believe that they are doing something worshipful by using the very same with families in church. The “logic”, misplaced as it is, seems to be that by cranking up hysteria, “ineraction” and emotion, this somehow is hip, or Wiv De Kids.
In other words, the belief is actually that children and young people are not trusted to be able/ready/grown up enough to be able to speak and listen and respond to God. No, “ if we don’t entertain them, we’ll somehow lose them.”
Well, if this is the case, you’ve already lost them: if you’ve decided that God or the Word is not able to speak with children engagingly without you having to render it as your expectation of what motivates children, then you’ve already belittled them by failing to trust either them or God that He wishes to relate with them.
There are a couple of further points here:
You see, in any “secular”(ooh, ungodly) institution like a school or a workplace or a club, there are people in positions that have experience and qualifications to do the work in front of them. There are also failsafes that allow discussion and questioning, at the same time as ensuring that, say, emotionally-led and domineering types who go off-topic and are given to inappropriate utterances, are restrained, or made accountable.
And there’s the rub: how on earth, when any form of coercion is pretty close to abuse, control and bullying in the secular world, is it subject to regulation and restraint...yet in churches you are made anathema for daring to question a practice that you have the God-given right to feel is wrong.
Of course, this is where love is misunderstood...in fact, the very ones who bleat from the front about love and peace, are the very people that deny one the right to pursue them.
You see, for these people, “love and peace” are powerful and good until you use them in a way that they are uncomfy about: you will then have these “peace-lovers” getting so defensive as they treat your own God-given caution and discernment(that actually is born of a love for the Truth and a desire for people not to be lied to), that they turn on you as if you’re the one who is being in some way “unloving” and “disunifying”. They assume that feeling good is good enough: in other words, love cannot ever be challenging, love can never seek to protect: also, they assume that making peace is the same as keeping it. And it bloody well is not: they actually are so convinced that remaining in denial is good because it is comfortable...woe betide you, me or anyone else if you are a lone voice who believes, guesses or discerns that there is a cause for caution or wisdom or discussion. You then have to undergo the very thing that they swear blind they do not do, which is to be shushed and marginalised as a lone voice in the wilderness...as the wilderness is a sodding dry and lonely place.
And what is the happy ending?
Er, there isn’t one.
Because, let’s imagine that you, after sensing caution, advising restraint, have tried to talk your concerns through with the Great and the Good(or those who think they are). After you’ve been cold-shouldered, treated as foolish or divisive....if you dare even show any chagrin, anger, or anything else approaching frustration, you know damn well that they do to you exactly what the rest of the pharisees did to lone voices in the Bible: mock, insult, anathematise, believe as mad...then finally kill.
My concern is, of course, this: at my church are some other human beings. They are not in the queue for paradise in front of me. It is my belief that on several occasions, and at times in which people are vulnerable or emotional, one particular couple are given to inappropriate utterances.
These are, as I’m sure you can guess, “words” from God, little “prophecies”, unrestrained and emotionally-led divergences from what was being explored.
Their input, when it happens, is awash with dramas, graphics and gadgets....the attitude is even that books and an OHP are in some backward sense a “fallback”(they actually used this word); the tone is forceful and strident..akin to the hectoring emotionalism of 90s Godchannel fraudsters; “words” and “prophecies” are spouted without restraint or prayerful caution. Whereas, a week prior to their Family Service, will see them “preparing” by telling the person in charge of worship they they want the songs earlier, then they are in full sight and at full volume for the service.
And yet, such is their devotion to and interest in, the Body, that you will not see them for 3 weeks, as they squeeze in another holiday or just cannot be bothered to support anyone apart from themselves.
Now.....what would you do?
I’d have though that merely voicing a concern with friends and/or other church members, might be a good thing, no...?
I’ve already seen and wept for a church that is now no longer there. The very church I mentioned at first, that is now gone, was once peopled by gifted and unique folks needing looking after, yet led by “leaders” who did not even know how worldly, denial-ridden, prideful, unlistening, arrogant and controlling they had become.
And in the presence of dodgy practice and absence of dialogue at my present church, it looks set to happen again.
The absolute crap I hear too: “ooh, we hate religion, we do; you have to stand up against evil...” These are the very same people who in one breath laud me for my honesty...yet if it’s ever tuned against them, they oddly do not like honesty any more. Yeahright. I’ll be your friend as long as you play the way I do.
Well, the proof of a church no longer being there is that the people who were in it, are now gone.
And, they’re gone because God’s spirit also left.
And have you heard the clamours before the whimpers in such churches? God’s spirit goes because they left Him; the humans remaining do just what the Israelites did: cranked up a load of waling, coercing, moaning at God to “do some signs and wonders”.
Jesus’ opinion? Signs and wonders are for the unfaithful[who need gadgets, “proof” and flashing lights] Shake your feet clean of dust at them...and watch the swine when you are looking after your pearl of great price, as they will turn on you and trample you to pieces.
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