Disparate doctrines and practices were tolerated at the church for the sake of peace and unity. This was the pastor’s primary policy. When he took over the small church back in 1979, it grew from about 20 people to about 150 in just a few years. His ingratiating and easy-going manner, his excellent organizational skills, plus his easy-to-understand sermons attracted a wide variety of charismatics and some fundamentalists. The largest percentage was ex-Roman Catholics. This demographic oddity kept him from being seriously challenged for anything he did or allowed because Catholics, especially, treated him with the same reverence as they did a priest. He was next to God. People who disagreed simply left.

Not too many people were saved directly through the ministry; we were mostly absorbing curious or dis-enfranchised people from other local churches. The local Catholic charismatic churches were losing their people to us. So, in order to keep them coming, keeping them at peace was the main philosophy.

A disturbing reality was that unstable “squeaky wheels” were often, but not always, granted platforms instead of being disciplined or silenced. This led easily to the excesses of aberrant practices that became so commonplace.

The pastor relied heavily on best-selling authors to disciple him. He was a voracious consumer of books on prayer and leadership and other hot “pastoral” topics. His autonomy left him as a child who was blown about by many winds of doctrine, little realizing that the trickery of men lying in wait to deceive was behind their fame.

I am not excluding myself from this, though. I too was influenced for a long time by authors like Hagin and Judson Cornwall, Malcolm Smith, Derek Prince and others. But, my dedication to them was more casual. My bible reading and study was actually making me agitated with these man-made philosophies; but its effect took a long time to bring me to my senses. One of the things that had to be eroded in me was being more loyal to men than to God. My sense of duty to the church kept me from taking the stand I knew was coming. When my pastor asked to stop naming names in my public ministry, it was my moment of decision. He was adamant. With that request, I had been placed between God and man. I left without incident or fanfare. My 25 years of dedicated service there was over. Along with service, I spent well over a hundred thousand dollars there in tithes and gifts. I don’t so much regret its loss. I take it like paying tuition in the school of spiritual hard knocks. I may as well take the education I “paid for” and not repeat such foolish mistakes ever again. Just let me do my work. No titles, no money, no numbers, no programs, no building projects to supervise.

Once out, I could see things clearly. I began a zealous and happy campaign of cleaning out all the leaven of strange doctrines. Those 25 years now seem like a fading dream. I guess that’s how awakened people see their past.

Supposedly, we were on the cutting edge of using these discoveries of victorious Christian living that the poor, dead churches around us were so behind on.

You know, I noticed that about false teachers. In their eyes, their “church” assembly is “the one” getting the big time “revelation” and others are supposedly dead. It gets you thinking you should never leave, because outside of that camp is supposedly nothing good. That’s a terrible way to think of fellow saints in Christ when I look back on how they had us thinking.

It does sound like some really nasty stuff regarding some of the things you folks were getting into. That “circle of protection” stuff is straight up Wiccan. My eyes were bulging at the screen when I saw you were at a place where that was accepted activity. Praise God in our Lord Jesus He got you OUT of that.

That place was without a doubt a case of 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 leading saints towards the pit.

Thank God we started reading our Bibles free of delusion! Who knew the evil “strongholds” were in some cases right were we were sitting when under that false teaching. Only the Lord Jesus helped us see clearly in finding Him in truth by God’s grace, because we certainly were not seeing clearly on our own.

It wasn’t always like that. In the early 80s, it was a pleasure to go to church. I believe the trouble can be traced to the introduction of, then the eager promotion of, Spiritual Warfare theories starting in the mid to late 80s. These theories and techniques seemed a plausible way of getting difficulties solved. Just rebuke the interfering spirits and the problems would clear up. We were doing our part to facilitate the answers that came from God. After all, if Gabriel got held up for 3 weeks coming to Daniel, answers coming to people now could have the same difficulty getting to them. Through Spiritual Warfare, we could now provide what Daniel did not know. We could cancel the assignments of these interfering spirits and facilitate the answer that was sent from the day the prayer was made. There were other clever theories to back up such thinking: The Old Testament wars of Israel served as types of how to defeat our New Testament enemies we wrestled with. Wielding our swords of the Spirit coupled with binding and loosing and praise and worship were some of the weapons that shattered fortresses and released their captives.

Yet, all those promises of deliverance were shattered consistently by the realities of what was really happening, and no one admitted that the “emperor had no clothes at all.”

No one, including myself as a teacher there, understood the connection between this gross error and the troubles that began to beset many in our fellowship. The women were the most affected. At the time, I noticed a sizable number of women who were experiencing perplexing and chronic maladies, including depression, eating disorders, nightmares, suicidal thoughts; auditory, olfactory and visual hallucinations; physical ailments that resisted medical diagnosis; but which ended up being called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Epstein Barr (even though blood titer tests were often inconclusive on this point). A health food craze hit us, again, promoted by Christian authors. Supplements and diets were employed to stave off the afflictions. One poor woman related having a blackout while driving at night and found herself coming out of it in a local department store she had no intention to be in. She was totally baffled and alarmed but could not explain what had happened to her. Marital problems/divorce were another issue in this group.

I’m not making this up. I wish I was, but this is what was going on back then. Statistically, there are always troubles in any group of the size we were (about a 150); but this phenomenon seemed to me to be too spiked. And, for a group claiming gifts of the Spirit and effective warfare techniques it seemed all the worse. Supposedly, we were on the cutting edge of using these discoveries of victorious Christian living that the poor, dead churches around us were so behind on.

The diagnosis was that these were attacks from Satan due to our successful incursions into his kingdom. We were stealing from the great thief. We were plundering his spoils. And, he was fighting back. The cure was to redouble the efforts. Let Satan know we weren’t licked by him. He was a growling lion with no teeth. We could do all things through Christ who strengthens us. He teacheth our hands to war. There is power, power, power in the blood, in the blood of the Lamb. Let God arise and His enemies be scattered. Yet, the efforts remained ineffective. A lot of them have left the church or the area by now, and I don’t know how they’re doing.

They were developing even stranger methods of warfare. Sometimes, they would draw circles on the floor and get inside, claiming the were safe from Satan inside of it. Or, they would sit in circles, chanting in tongues, rocking back and forth for hours. They would prophesy and see visions and make declarations of deliverance for whichever person or difficulty they were praying for. They would pantomime violent gestures mimicking slashing with swords or chopping with their hands or shouting in English or in tongues with grim determination at invisible entities. They would go through events that mimicked birth, straining and grunting until there was a release and a peaceful feeling that came over you. This was called “birthing” or “travailing” to “see Christ formed in others.” I remember doing that once too back then.

The occult nature of these methods done “in the name of Jesus” with imagined biblical backing appealed to many of them, for they had practiced witchcraft prior to being saved. But, now, they had become entangled again in these olds ways that were “sanctified” for them through the error coming in through the celebrity ministers and authors of those days.

It was common for the pastor or some leader who was leading prayer for the service to publicly rebuke Satan from the building or from the people they were praying for. The sanctuary chairs were prayed over; Jericho marches were employed to counter the work of local covens who we were convinced were sending curses against us from their meetings. After all, we were such a threat. We took their efforts especially seriously. Little did any of us, from the pastor to the congregation, realize that what we were accepting and teaching were things which would evoke rather grievous judgments from God. We were tampering with the spirits He had placed over sinful mankind or sends to judge our ways. He had set them up and we, in our hubris, were “pulling them down.” Oh, what deception, what spiritual nakedness this all was. No wonder there was such confusion and affliction among so many of us.

I see that this has gotten way off topic and a lot longer than I intended. It feels good to get it down in writing. I wanted to mention Toronto and its effect on our group and the strange, mystical rock and repetitive mantra-style music that was introduced on Sunday mornings, and the banners and anointed dancing and the Healing Rooms ministry started at the church, based on the gnostic/mystic John G. Lake; but I’ll just close with this: I was finally brought out of all that. In retrospect and with clear, wakeful eyes, I could see what had happened. Now, I wish to keep myself alert, by God’s grace and warn anyone I come across to flee these lying vanities and “keep in memory” the Gospel of the Apostles, by which we are saved.

It is more than sufficient.

Stan hit every point I hoped would be noted and then some.

I’ve pointed out issues with Warren’s plan in posts at:
Rick Warren Asks the Money Changers to Partner With The Church. This Could Be Worse Than Faith Based Funding.
and
What’s the Matter With Rick Warren? A Lot!
(In that 2nd write-up I should have noted that it was needy SAINTS that Christ was speaking of. I’ll add it as a comment.)

I must thank the Lord for bringing me to understand things the way they are in recent years. He woke me up to the deception I had been ignorant of for so long. It was a sobering, yet liberating awakening.