There are many warnings throughout the bible concerning religious leaders and the religious establishment. Jesus exhorted his followers to be on their guard against the ‘yeast of the Pharisees’. And as I referred to in my last post, John calls Christians to ‘test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”
I find the terminology interesting, though. Why ’spirit’, and not just ‘teachings’ or ‘doctrine’? But having been through the ICOC for so many years, looking back on that, it makes sense to me now that the ’spirit’ of a church or leader is what’s important, which includes but is not limited to, doctrine or dry doctrinal arguments.
Back to my campus days, where nearly all the years I spent at uni I was a dedicated member of the ICOC, evangelising for weekly bible discussions and ever trying to set up personal bible studies with other students. And we earned ourselves a reputation. We had an ‘answer for everything’. Baptism, works, faith, judging others, and every other issue, we were taught and trained to have an answer for. Everything our critics threw at us regarding our own practices, we had an answer for. We believed our doctrinal position was solid, air-tight.
Now, there’s not anything necessarily wrong with this. If you believe in what you do, then you need to answer your own questions. You need to be assured that this is the right thing to do, that all the time and effort invested is worth it, and that you’re truly benefitting yourself and others with spreading the gospel. Perhaps in the early days the ICOC inspired a refreshing revival, and that’s what attracted many to join.
However, having an ‘answer for everything’ eventually meant down the line that we didn’t have an honest answer for everything, so we had to erect our own propaganda machine and find ways to silence internal critics. We felt we could ‘test’ every other religion and Christian sect, but we couldn’t ‘test’ ourselves. And I believe that when Jesus warned about the yeast of the Pharisee, he wasn’t just warning us to be wary of exploitation from the religious establishment, but that we should be wary of becoming like the religious establishment in their hypocrisy.
After years of becoming ‘indoctrinated’ by one’s own teachings, it’s difficult to test your own church from doctrine alone. But the ’spirit’ of a church, or a leader is important. And that means everything. Personality, style, manner, charisma, honesty, attitude, atmosphere can all be included. Doctrine may seem all ‘above board’, but the integrity, humility and honesty of a leader is essential, and the kind of ’spirit’ and culture he passes down to his congregation.
Practically speaking, how do you ‘test the spirit’ of a leader or church? That’s a good question, and one I’m not making any claims to be an expert at answering. There’s probably no official answer anyway, it may depend a lot on the particular circumstances you’re in.
Of course, one first obvious answer is to ‘pray about it’. If you really want a healthy relationship with God, and a church that will have a positive impact on this, then you really should pray about it. And serious prayer, if you are in the valley of decision on whether to join or leave a church. Pray specifically and pray for wisdom, which leads to the next suggestions:
Reading the scriptures -as Acts refers to the Bereans who examined the scriptures in light of Paul’s teachings. Knowing your bible is a fundamental, and if you know it really well, I believe it provides wisdom and defence against the range of predatory religious leaders from whatever background who are more concerned about their own ambitions (like building super churches and an international franchise) than individual members of their congregations.
But even a knowledge of the bible is not enough if you are completely indoctrinated by bias of the church your in. That’s my experience in the ICOC. We read an awful lot. We studied the bible daily, we had to memorize scriptures for mid-week services, we participated in extra theology and history classes, but it wasn’t until 2003 when many churches found the freedom to review there beliefs did we get some fresh air. It transpired that we had erred in the way financial contributions were taught, in the control of discipling, the rebuking culture, performance based pressure and exalted role of church stats and the list goes on.
However, for many, 2003 came too late as spiritual abuse had taken it’s toll, because there was no ’stop-gap’, no avenue for members and even leaders to find justice because of the tight grip of centralised control with it’s insecurities and inflexibilities. (And it should be mentioned, some churches changed, others didn’t really. Not everyone wants to give up power. That’s why I warn people to stay away from one-on-one discipling churches either from the ICOC or Kip Mckean’s SODM.)
In testing the spirits, I guess Christians should be ’shrewed as snakes and innocent as doves’. Christians tend to have the reputation for the later, like Ned Flanders, but one thing I’ve learned over the years you have to be shrewed, even in your own fellowship. It’s about finding a balance. You can’t be paranoid, and you can’t go round just accusing leaders because they’re leaders. But you have to consider whether people are sincere or insincere, and then you have to take appropriate action.
For all those years in the ICOC, I realise there were often two levels: one was the superficial level of the church -the propaganda, the sermons, the brochures, the cards, the speeches, the sharing about people and the ‘how ya doing bro’ religo-speak. This all reinforces the notion you’re in a ‘utopia’ and that this is THE spiritual place to be, THE movement.
The other level is all that happens below the surface: the implied meanings, bitter remarks, suppressed emotions etc. But looking back from what people have shared, this level wasn’t ‘unobvious’, meaing it was very much evident. The private discussion you had with trusted friends often revealed stuff really going on.
If a church generally has an honesty about it and both leaders and members are sincere in their beliefs then this is not so much an issue. If the warts are exposed, then this is a good thing. If you feel your church is visibly dealing with this problem and that problem, than possible your church is doing well in that there’s no need for these two levels. But a good test is, if you feel there are two levels, in other words problems and issues are swept under the carpet, potential critics are silenced by shaming -then it’s probably not wise to invest too many years in such a congregation.
To ‘test the spirits’ can be to test for sincerity. Conversely, lack of sincerity is simply deceit, and speaking from experience, deceit is a very bad sign. However, I can’t provide any specific formula to test for the sincerity or deceit. There are many ways, but sometimes you have to start with intuition.
Have you ever been around someone who boasts alot? Or someone who always has to be right? There’s your intuition working. Honest people are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, sometimes have victories and sometimes have defeats. They have no need to lie about either. But you can sense the kind of guy who always has to be right, becuase no matter the topic or the issue, they’ll twist things to suite their own way.
What I’m getting at, is picking up that ’spirit’. And you can pick that kind of spirit up even from a religious leader. I believe boasting is one of Kip Mckean’s issues. But it wasn’t obvious at the time, I’ll admit -back then it was all about ‘giving glory to God’, but he’d use that terminology to cover up boasting as to why people should be in his movement, and not, for example, a ‘mainline’ Church of Christ. The point I’m making is not to blame Kip at all, but rather be wise to the tell-tale signs of a religious movement that can chew you up and spit you out like you’re rotten refuse. This is why you need to test.
It’s not just about testing or looking at the personality of the top leader. It’s about testing the whole culture of the church at the grass-roots level. Again, I’m not saying there are any hard-fast-rules. A lot of it also depends on your personal values as well. For example, do you see a healthy balance of individualism and intelligence with sincere support for the church. An unhealthy balance, for example, is where there’s this feeling that everyone you talk to has the same opinion and creepily says the same things, like church cliches of that culture. A tangible example would perhaps be, everyone supports the same political party and leader. If you get the feeling that there’s no freedom in that realm for individualism, then perhaps it’s not the congregation for you. (I never felt any pressure regarding politics in the ICOC -that was up to the individual).
Finally, regarding testing, it’s not something you have to necessarily have concrete ‘results’ for. I mean, you could use this test to decieve yourself that everything is OK. That’s exactly what I did for years in the ICOC. “We’re the only one’s who evangilise daily, read our bibles daily, and I can’t see anyone else doing it. Kip Mckean must be right”. That’s an example of how I reasoned to myself whenever something didn’t seem right. If your intuition is telling you something is seriously wrong, then you don’t necessarily need to proove it to decide you need to have a break or examine other fellowships. Of course, there’s probably going to be a discipler or member on your tail…
In conclusion, ‘testing the spirits’ is not something I recall ever being taught in the ICOC about looking at our own congregations. We just assumed (and that’s breaking the golden rule) that all congregations under the ICOC fold were automatically the ‘Kingdom of God’. Sure, some churches did better than others and maybe some leaders were ‘more immature’ than others, but it never occurred to us that even leaders within the ICOC umbrella can actually lead members astray and be corrupt, unscrupulous and deceitful. Read the signs, genius. Such symptoms are not heaven bound.
