How Did I miss that?

Just a note to say that I apparently totally missed publishing "Aftershocks Part II" which is a pretty important part of the story in my mind. I added it between parts I and III where it should go.

:o)

Accountability?

This is just a very short post to remind people to ask one very important question.

Who is your pastor accountable to?

If the answer is anyone but the congregation, you have a problem.

This is a serious problem at Milestone (as well as thousands of other churches).

Who is Jeff Little accountable to? To whom could we turn if we felt we were being unfairly put out of fellowship with our spiritual family? Did we have a number to call?

Was Jeff Little responsible for answering to us? No way. His "accountability" is some other pastor in a different state. That guy never called us to ask how we thought our pastor was doing.

And this brings me to another point. Are you afraid of confronting your pastor? Many people are. Why? What will happen if you do? Will you be pushed out? Will you be "in the loser box?"

Just some things to think about. You might want to go back and read the gospels again (particularly John) and see what Jesus has to say about leadership and authority and how we are to relate to one another.

Five Hallmarks of Spiritual Abuse

This was taken from a spiritual abuse group on the web. After seeing these, I'm convinced that in some way or another, Milestone fits each description.

There are five hallmarks of abusive religious systems. Those hallmarks are:

Authoritarian: unconditional submission to leaders is expected.

{There's really not much to say here. "Yes" is about it. We were constantly praised for being "teachable." Which is really code for "easily influenced" and "obedient to leaders." It's ironic how we could be so "teachable" for four years and then start thinking differently about something and become the enemy.}

Averse to criticism: the person who dissents becomes the problem rather than the issue being raised.

{I would say that this one probably hits the closest to home. It makes me sad.}

Image conscious: protecting the reputation of the leaders or church is more important than truth or justice.

{Image consciousness is a hold-over from Maranatha/EN. It is an understood rule that we are to look GOOD as leaders. Be sharp, look sharp. After all, we want to be appealing to those around us. Things are to be done "with excellence." The tricky part of this is that, of course, things should be done well. Of course, we don't want to look like slobs all the time. It's hard to explain the differences, I guess. I knew women in leadership who were like a revolving door for the latest fashions. Expensive jeans, expensive hair cuts, expensive manicures, etc. The same was true for men. Everyone who was in any kind of leadership caught on. You would just watch people morph from, when they arrived at Milestone, to wearing just kind of plain-Jane clothing to getting really "hip" and becoming very concerned about how they looked.}


Perfectionistic: individual worth is determined by performance; there is no compassion for weakness or failure.

{I addressed this more in the post on Dysfunction and Brokenness. I wouldn't say that this was as bad as other aspects or as severe but there was still a very strong push to be hush-hush about your weaknesses. I was told once to quit broadcasting my struggles to the Mom's group. The idea is that you only talk about them after God "heals you" from them. The premise is that this will give people hope. While just sharing your struggles makes people despairing. CR has taught me that this is utter nonsense. In fact, the most effective leadership says, "I'm just as broken as you. Let's walk this out together."}

Unbalanced: they will try to distinguish themselves from other groups by putting excessive emphasis on some minor point of theology.

{I think I saw some of this as well. There was obviously a lot of emphasis on the Great Commission/making disciples (harkening back to the EN roots) but an equal emphasis on building "family." Again, this is tricky because those are both good, valid things that every Christian should be concerned about. The difference is there was this attitude of "we are better at this than most people." They should be taking lessons from us.}

Hiding and Hypocrisy

This is a postscript to the post on Brokenness and Dysfunction.

Hiding

What you have when you live in this paradigm ("we are not broken") is a need to not look bad on the outside (see the post on Spiritual Abuse) so what you get is everyone really trying to hide what is going on. People are hiding what's going on in their marriage. They're hiding what's going on with their kids. They're afraid. They want to be "good" like they see their pastors being "good," not realizing that their pastors are simply hiding how bad things get in their own lives. Or perhaps the pastors really don't have any real problems (right). But the rest of us do!

I can remember being shocked when I listened to one staff wife talk about how she had been so depressed after the birth of a child that she just kept questioning her salvation. Yet this was never shared publicly. Why? Is it private? Yes. But still would be monumentally helpful to others struggling in the same way. (That is why I love recovery groups so much. Confessing what you struggle with or struggled with is important.)

I was told, in fact, as I mentioned earlier, to stop telling the Mom's group about the depth of struggles that I was having. Privately, I was receiving so much positive feedback from women telling me how much it helped them. In fact, although I was told that the opposite would happen and that I would discourage women, I can't think of a single time when someone said to me, "Cathy, you sharing your struggles is really discouraging me!"

Let's talk about the pressure that puts on women for a second. As one friend pointed out, you had to be hyper-controlling of your children because you HAD to fit in. If my kids didn't act as well as everyone else's, I was out of the club. And that was true. There was a gravitation of the 'functional' families to hang out with other 'functional' families. So if you had a problem child or a hyper active child, you weren't going to get invited to playdates. I saw this reek a lot of havoc with people. They were afraid to let people know the kinds of things their kids were doing and then would just beat the crap out of them behind the scenes trying to get them to behave.

One friend mentioned that she didn't enjoy her small group because it was obvious that no one was going to share their real problems. There was a definition message: We are all ok. You need to be ok too!

Hypocrisy

This system also breeds a good deal of hypocrisy.

There was one particular Victory Weekend where I was just openly chastised for watching the television show "The Medium." The leader in charge said to me, 'It's just another nail, Cathy." Implying that by my watching such an "evil" show, I was NAILING JESUS TO THE CROSS. I totally submitted to this, repented, and have never watched that show since (even though I wanted to a few times).

Imagine my outright shock when this person's seven year old child told me that they loved watching "Pirates of the Caribbean." I swore I must have misunderstood and asked the child to repeat because I simply couldn't believe it! If I watch a show about a psychic, I'm nailing Jesus to the cross. If your impressionable child watches a full-length movie about pirate ghosts who pillage and plunder and kill people then that's ok??

See this is what we get when we decide that we are going to set standards for all Christians based on our understanding of the Bible. And when we decide that we are going to cover up all of our own serious problems and not share them. Image is everything.

(I would like to say, if you are a hurting Christian but are afraid to talk about it, there are some good resources out there to help you. CR is one. New Life Ministries is another. Both of these are solidly grounded in the word of God and much more healthy in dealing with brokenness. I also really recommend the book 12 "Christian" Beliefs that Can Drive You Crazy by Cloud and Townsend. There is healing available but it never comes through covering things up and trying to look good on the outside.)

On Brokenness and Dysfunction

"You know when Jesus says, 'I came to seek and save that which was lost.' When you look up that Greek word that means 'lost,' it does not mean that God couldn't find them. Like, oh humans, check over there by the keys. I think I left them by the front door.

No. That's not what lost means. It means something akin to 'utterly decimated, broken beyond repair.'" - Henry Cloud, Christian counselor and PhD in psychology

This topic is important because it really has so much to do with how we view God and how we view ourselves. That means it has to do with how we treat ourselves and others. And how Milestone deals with this issue is of great importance as well.

The overriding feeling with Milestone leadership seems to be, as one staff member put it, "I think Pastor Jeff would say that you don't lead out of your brokenness. You get healed and then you lead others." (Notice the reference to 'what Pastor Jeff would say' versus 'what Jesus would say' or 'what the Bible says.')

There is a great emphasis placed on the two-step process of achieving healing and then leading others.

This is not, in my opinion, what the Bible teaches at all. If the apostle Paul could say that he boasts in his weaknesses, if he could say, "I am the worst of sinners," then I think we can sort of let our guard down a little bit. We are all going to die broken. "Arriving" is not an option. God is not going to remove our sin-nature until we get to Heaven.

I want to say a few things here that I see as very important.

First, Jeff and Brandy Little both come from homes that appear to be very functional (a rarity indeed). From what I observed, neither of them had issues in their families with abusiveness, drug usage, alcohol usage, divorce, etc. (Although I could be wrong. Who, after all, would know that? See the "Hiding" post.)

I am not as sure about Derrick and Russell Ann. I think, from hearing her speak, that Russell Ann came from a dysfunctional family although it is not my purpose here to delve into their personal backgrounds.

At any rate, the reason that this is so important is that people who do not come from very broken backgrounds don't know how to minister to those needs unless they get trained! Their simplistic answers seem to go something like this: "Here is the plain Biblical answer to what you're going through. Apply it. It didn't work? You must have done something wrong!" There is just no understanding whatsoever of the types of processes that people need to go through in order to actually begin to heal.

It should be remembered that NOBODY on the staff at Milestone has any counseling experience whatsoever. Nor do they have any psychological training to know how to deal with really broken people.

But the worst part is, they don't seem to want to acknowledge that there is a gap here and that they need to fill it in! (To quote a pastor I once knew who loved to quote The 21 Laws of Leadership): "First, you don't know what you don't know. Then, you know what you don't know!" Well, that pastor still doesn't "know what he doesn't know."

So there is this promise held out of help and healing and growth that really only works with a very limited number of people. And if you happen to be someone for whom these simple answers do not work, you're left feeling hopeless and saddened because "What is wrong with me that the Bible isn't working for me?" It may never occur to people that they might need other help or better help or a different perspective on the Bible than what is being offered the at church.

I have found that there is a great gap between what most fundamentalist churches teach and what Christian psychology and recovery programs teach. And, sadly, the churches seem to do more damage than good at helping people really overcome their issues.

It is heart-breaking to me that Milestone would not or could not embrace a different path of healing that many of their members DESPERATELY needed. And, to my knowledge, they still haven't embraced this path today. There is a feeling that you get where you definitely understand that if you are STILL broken after having the "help" of the leadership, then it is most likely you who has the problem.

As one friend's husband recently put it, "There is a 'meta message' that it's okay to be broken when you arrive. But after you get saved and have been there awhile, it's no longer okay."

I remember one tragic conversation I had with a close friend on staff in which she was telling me about a mutual acquaintance that she was "discipling." The two kept having major issues and the other girl was obviously very emotionally disturbed and needed a lot of help. The staff woman's response to the other woman's brokenness was so cold. It was, "Well, I've tried to help her. But if she's not going to submit herself (note the language here) to the process, then there's nothing I can do. I'm just going to have to disconnect from her."

The really sad thing about that particular situation is that I know that the staff woman loved the other girl and wanted to help her. What she was having a problem with was really that her paradigm was failing. She had been assured for years by her leaders that there are RIGHT answers in the Bible. That when they are applied, they will WORK. She was encountering the fact that sometimes all the right answers in the world don't help people. And she hadn't been equipped to know what to do for her friend when right answers didn't work. She was at a loss. She had been placed in a position where she had resolved to help someone and had no tools to do so. The only thing she could do was blame the other person and write her off. What other choice did she have? She couldn't simply accept the fact that people aren't all easily "healed" and that sometimes healing occurs only in Heaven. She had been taught that the system works, darn it!

Another great example of this faulty thinking is a comment that makes me shudder just to think of it. But it really exemplifies the thinking of churches like Milestone. One man at the church was known publicly to have been an alcoholic and was now no longer drinking. My husband, being in a recovery program, decided one Sunday to talk to him about his recovery from alcoholism. During that conversation he asked him about his journey and recovery from alcohol in general. The man's response was very shocking to me. He said something akin to this, "Well, the way I see it, people who can't quit drinking just haven't been serious enough about God. When people get serious with God, then they will quit."

Having been a woman who was "very serious with God" about stopping her horrible behaviors, having been someone who cried out daily to be "delivered" from anger and rage, having been someone who listened to the stories of other "serious" Christians who had tried again and again to stop their addictive behaviors, I was shocked and saddened by this statement. How completely wrong and narrow-minded to label those who do not have your same path of recovery as "not serious enough." (Again, if you need help with this concept, I would refer you to the book 12 "Christian" Beliefs that Can Drive You Crazy.)

I am happy to report, however, that there IS a path to healing. And it's not simple. And it often involves many different elements. And there is hope. And I pray to God that Milestone would pull its head out and wake up and start assimilating some of these concepts into the church to help those who need it!

Oh yes, one more thing. (I can't recall if I've written about this incident before. But I've had four babies so cut me some slack if I have!) There was one Saturday night service (oh blessed day) when the worship leader took a pause in the midst of worship and talked about how he had struggled with a sexual addiction to pornography and how hard it had been on his family. He went on to talk about how he had worked through it.

My heart skipped in my chest. I was so excited! I thought, at last, maybe my beloved church was going to embrace brokenness and get real about what people were struggling with and we could really begin helping people. Sadly, it was not to be. I, of course, don't know what was said behind the scenes but I sure didn't see any great move toward getting real or confessing struggles. And, come to think of it, I'm not sure I ever saw that man on stage again. I thought that he had been asked to be the worship pastor but was told that he was actually replaced with someone else. Although, I have no way to verify that because I, of course, wasn't there anymore!

Cult Test?

How do you know you're in a cult?

If someone says to you, "Hey, you're in a cult" and your response is, "That's crazy! No I'm not. You just don't get it." Well, you're in a cult!

A healthy response will be something like this, "Really? Why would you say that? What gives you that idea? Hmmmm. Maybe I should ask some other people about that and really look into this."

Healthy people aren't defensive about this issue. Their identity isn't wrapped up in a church. It might be wrapped up in Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, they'll be less inclined to defend and more inclined to explore.

On Being Ordinary

One of the things that I have noticed in the world at large, especially in the charismatic church, and particularly at Milestone is the tendency to want to be more than simply ordinary.*

No one in life, for example, aspires to be a janitor: a mere servant. No one in the charismatic church wants a prophecy that declares that they will "live and die in the suburbs in mediocrity." And the leaders at Milestone don't want to believe that they are just another church in a city full of churches who are doing pretty much what others are doing and probably won't accomplish much more than anyone else.

No. There is so much talk about the "vision" and "reaching this city for Christ." There is so much talk about how "they" are different than we are. We are something special. We have a special pastor. We have a special community. We have a special way to deliver the message.

Specifically? Here are some memorable instances:

"There are lots of good churches in this city. I'm friends with many of the pastors in this area. But how many of you noticed something different at Milestone when you walked in the doors? I have people tell me all the time that this is the friendliest place they've ever visited. Why? It's because there's a unity of vision..." (We are special because we are more unified and friendlier than others.)

By the way, I sat through Membership 101 after Membership 101 class and watched Jeff Little ask people to raise their hands if they felt something special at Milestone when they first visited. Month after month, I noticed that the number of hands that were being raised was slowly but surely dwindling. It went from almost every hand going up to just a few smattered around the room. So, honestly, I do think that Milestone had something special. But I think what they had was built around the wrong thing (more on that later) and waned quickly as ideals and community began to give way to numbers and scrambling to find a place to squeeze visitors. But I digress.

"Our youth team has been able to give three presentations at the local high schools and are active and visible on three local school campuses." (We are special because the city has recognized us as such and we are doing things with youth that no one else has been able to.)

"I was sitting at a luncheon with about 30 other pastors and they were asking me, 'How do you get such a high ratio of unbelievers in your church?' You see, most churches get new people who are just moving around from other churches." (I am special because I pastor a church with a higher percentage of new believers as attendees. We are special because other people look at us and wish they could have what we have.)

Again, I want to say that I did and DO think that is a special thing. But I also think that it caused an air of arrogance and superiority and that it really waned as well. I would be shocked now if most new attendees weren't just shifting around from other churches (just like everyone else's new attendees). Something was lost at some point along the way. At some point you trade tight-knit community for more people. At some point, if you get a huge influx of new people in because of some publicity, you just can't assimilate them into your community. Families don't work like that. It's unnatural and not realistic.

And was I guilty of this line of thinking? This, "We are special" mentality? Oh yes indeedy. Big time. Hugely. Almost from the moment that we arrived. Because it really was different and felt more loving and communal than anyplace else I'd ever been. I became instantly convinced that we had something special and that if we could just get others to come be involved, that their lives would change for the better.

When friends would tell me about their churches, I would think to myself, "But you don't get it! You don't really have community. You have no idea what you're missing!"

And, sadly, if there was a cool reception to coming to Milestone after a period of trying to convince someone, I would most likely gradually back off of the relationship because I wanted to "focus my energy" on those who wanted to be a part of what we were doing. This was generally approved of. There was sort of a covert air of superiority that we were going to "go on with God" and continue with the "special" work we were doing and that everyone else that didn't want to come along could just manage on their own!! This would never be said, of course. It's an underlying message. One that came back to haunt me as I became one of those who wasn't "working toward the vision" by the definition of some.

Centrality of Christ

Ok. Now I want to talk about the real problem behind all of this. After all, what is so wrong about having a close community and having a vision and wanting to go somewhere together? Isn't that good stuff?

Yes and no.

The problem is that Jesus Christ is the head of His church. He's the visionary. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes Jesus' vision and passes it along to us, His church. He passes it along to the WHOLE church. Not just one guy with "Pastor" in front of his name. Corporately we are the body. Corporately we hear and seek the will of God. Nobody gets to be THE vision caster for a body of believers. Nobody gets to say, "Here's where we're going. Come on!" There is a model for that in Old Testament stories but the gospels and the epistles are very clear in the New Testament that a new day has come. Jesus is the Head. Period. The rest of us are to work together to figure this whole thing out. Injunction after injunction warns us to avoid hierarchy. And yet....

Milestone Church is a place where you come and you throw your hat in with Jeff Little's vision. Granted, you might think it's a good vision and everyone else might agree. So what's the big deal? Two things really. One: What if he screws up? Can you walk up to him and say, "You are really off base here" without being ridiculed in a sermon or kicked out?

Two: "Reaching People and Building Lives" (Milestone's motto) is a great goal. We should all be doing this without doubt. But it's a poor thing to rally a group of Christians around.

In fact, there is only ONE THING worthy of rallying a group of Christians around and that is the PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

Not Bible study. Not prayer. Not doctrine. Not fasting. Not evangelism. Not discipleship.

To Him be all the glory and honor and praise. The bride is obsessed with her bridegroom. Well, she ought to be anyway. She ought to be obsessed with seeking her bridegroom out. Individually and corporately Christians ought to be rallying around Jesus Christ. Not the idea of having a tight-knit community of people who are trying to save as many people from Hell as possible.

Does this mean that evangelism and discipleship do not occur? No! Of course they should. Or there is something wrong. And someone needs to speak up and say something. We should always pair our faith with works. But my how we do put the cart before the horse.

I submit this: any "good" that does not usher forth from a group of Christians focusing daily on Jesus and thus loving one another is not "good" at all but merely distracting.

If we wonder if He is the centerpiece of all we do and all we are, let us ask ourselves these questions: "Do we talk about Him? Do we corporately wait on Him? Do we focus on His being and person? Are we in love with Him? Can others tell? Or do we do a bunch of stuff FOR Him without continually acknowledging His actual presence and personhood?" Remember when you first met Jesus and understood that He died for you? Remember the love that gushed forth out of you? The gratitude? The praise? The adoration? (Many thanks to Frank Viola for helping me see this subtle but lethal distinction in modern church culture. For a beautiful study of this scriptural concept, I recommend From Eternity to Here.)

That is, as it turns out, is the fatal flaw of Milestone's vision and purpose. There is only one biblical standard of acceptance into the body of Christ or a body of believers: the salvation and lordship of Christ.

If being a part of that spiritual family requires attending a certain building or agreeing on all points with a certain pastor, or holding to some ideal about reaching people and building lives, or some other ideal about building a community, it's not centered around Jesus Christ. But it IS centered around a place, a personality, and an ideal other than our Lord and Savior.

*I have to give thanks to my counselor, John Smeltzer for awakening in me the awareness about ordinariness.

Blindsided

I thought that perhaps I was simply finished with this blog. I knew that I had a lot more to say about spiritual abuse, misogyny, etc. but I thought that I might just let the story rest on its own and discontinue writing anything else.

And then my husband and I went to see Blindside this week. And I was inspired to write again. I realized a lot of things as I watched that movie.

About ten minutes into the movie, my husband looked over at me and squeezed my hand. "That's you," he said with a smile. (I love that man.) And I knew that he was right. I could 100% relate to the type of woman that before me on the movie screen. Not a bit mousy. Bossy. Caring. Jesus-loving. Compassionate. And the farthest thing from "submissive" that you could imagine.

I realized in that two hours that I had done myself a horrible injustice. I had tried very hard to become something that I was never meant to be - in order to fit in with a group. I had submitted myself to name-calling, chastising, and shaming by a group of women who could NOT relate to the woman on the screen and who wanted to insist that I be like them instead of like me.

Sharing my afterthoughts with other women was really insightful as well. Apparently I am not the only one who has felt this way. I am not the only strong woman who has taken the"submissive" road in order to be a part of a community or who has tried to be something that she is not in order to have friends. The things that women (and women at Milestone) have put up with in order to fit in is ridiculous. One woman related to me how she was sitting in a group of women that she barely knew and sharing some of her family issues. A staff wife immediately turned to her and told her, "You're just not being submissive. That's your problem." (I'm not even going to go into the complete arrogance that this sort of statement conveys). Needless to say, she did not feel that this was her "problem."

That sort of thing is not uncommon and seen as completely acceptable. Why? There is a strong need for cohesion in any group. There is a strong need for me to make you like me, to conform you to my imagination of what a Christian woman is supposed to be. Indeed, it is much more difficult to get along with someone when they are NOT like you. It requires a great deal more humility to say, "Perhaps this person has something to teach me" versus, "I will pray that God changes them into my ideal of what they should be."

I once heard Lucy Swindoll (the sister of Chuck Swindoll) speaking about her life as a woman. She never desired to marry. She never desired to stay home and rear children. She wanted travel and adventure in her life. And that is just what she got. She stayed single and childless and did exactly as she pleased with her life. She thought out of the "Christian woman" box. She refused to be defined by those around her (like her mother) who insisted that she do things the traditional way.

Anytime a woman like Lucy Swindoll or Leigh Anne Touhy or even myself tries to think outside of the "suitable Christian woman" box, she is going to be misunderstood. She will often be maligned and even shamed by other Christian women. She will be encouraged to "get back in line" and play the acceptable role that is laid out for her in the minds of others. And she will be utterly miserable.

How sad. How sad that some women insist that their version of reality must belong to everyone. How sad that there is no room for: working women, liberal women, outspoken women, mutually submitted women, single women, etc.

How sad that we cannot celebrate the different roles that we have, the different personalities, the different expressions of God's femininity. How sad that we must look at anything or anyone who sees things differently from us and judge it and shame it and "pray for it."

Condescension and condemnation abound from these "keepers of all that is right and good in womanhood." What a shame that these cannot be replaced with admiration and respect and even (dare I say it), a willingness to learn from those who do things differently.

My prayer for Milestone church is that they will embrace the full spectrum of womanhood. Not just the "submitted, support-my-husband's-vision" version. My prayer is that they might allow a woman on the "inner sanctum" pastoral team (and not just as a secretary or a bookkeeper). A bossy woman. A pushy woman. Who thinks "submit" is a dirty word. Who has aspirations outside of being so-and-so's wife. A woman who can look any man in the eye and say, "I totally disagree with you on this and I'm not going down without a fight." Someone who doesn't worship Jeff Little as a father figure but looks him in the eyes as an equal. I don't think that there's a snowball's chance in hell of it happening....but it sure would be a sight to see!