There Aren't Enough "Thank Yous"....

I am on chapter 12 of the novel "So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore."
http://www.jakecolsen.com/contents.html

I have found myself crying and flooded with....gratitude.

Yes, I was kicked out of an institutional church.

Yes, it hurt like hell.

And it was THE BEST thing that ever happened to me.

For over a year I've been wondering if I did something wrong to get "punished" by God. I have turned over every possible angle in my mind about HOW this could have happened to us, to our family. I have thought of it as a tragedy.

It is only now that I am beginning to see it as the beautiful, marvelous, grace-filled, glorious gift of my sweet Savior.

God wasn't punishing me. He was delivering me.

He wasn't just "there in the midst of my pain." He was hearing and answering my deepest heart cries of knowing Him and walking intimately with Him.

Am I saying I'll never be angry again? No.

Am I saying I won't keep realizing more and more of the false thinking and doctrines that I experiencing? Probably not.

But I think I am finally beginning to see that this wasn't to my detriment. It was for my glorification and His.

I'm free.

Free to live in Him and move and have my being.

Free to answer to Him and live for Him. Free to focus on Him and Him alone as my spiritual "judge." No games. No gimmicks. No emotional hype. Just free.

Ever since I was a little bitty girl, I have loved Jesus. I would read the big family Bible that no one else did. Look at the pictures. Get engulfed in them. I would talk to God and Jesus and Mary and Joseph. (Hey, we were Catholic.) I have always felt so close to Him like He was my playmate. I have always felt His nearness. I haven't ever really even doubted His existence or presence. I've always been pretty secure in hearing His voice and knowing His will.

And now it's finally dawning on me that trying to cram that type of relationship, that type of true love into a boxed package was silly and unnecessary. Not only that, it was STIFLING to that kind of relationship. Detrimental. Suffocating. I was moving backward. Away from maturity and intimacy in Christ and toward legalism, religion, and being a Pharisee.

My God loves me. He always has. I have always felt it. He loved me no less when I was at Milestone. He showed Himself no less faithful to me there than He ever did anywhere else. It was His faithfulness that allowed the sins of others to propel me out of bondage back into freedom. It was His love and mercy that was drawing me closer....to Him. That's not something to cry over, now is it? It's something to throw up my hands and dance through a sprinkler over. It's a party. A joyous occasion.

The God of the universe loves me enough to hold me through the worst pain of my life in order to draw me back to Himself. He is my lover and my best friend and He is jealous of my attention and affections. He will have no other god before Himself. He will allow no other lover or idol to lure me away. He will have my complete and full attention in order that we might live closely, intimately, side-by-side as we did in my youth.

Lord, now that I'm looking at this thing the right way, let's get on with it! Let's stop looking forever backward and begin looking forward to the future. Where would you like to go today? What would you like to talk about? To do? How can you and I grow closer? What do you have for me? How can I learn, again, to be intimate with you? To whom can I minister to? Whom can I help connect with You and Your infinite love?

Forgiveness is looking a lot easier at this point. How can I withhold forgiveness from those that actually HELPED me? They didn't harm me. They HELPED me! Sure, they didn't know it. But that's irrelevant! I'm free just the same.

It's hard not to feel pity for those still stuck in that big boxed version of our faith. Hard for me not to talk down to them as though they are brain-damaged. But being condescending will do no good. I will have to keep praying about that one. Have to keep looking to Him to help me show His love and mercy and grace to those deeply embedded in a system that caused me so much pain. And to keep from becoming arrogant about what I "see" that they don't.

Lord, help me move forward with grace and trust you with the results!

Jeff Little on Women

I am here posting the full length audio clip that we found from Jeff Little about marriage, women, leadership, etc.

I will here dissect it just a bit and talk about errors and ramifications on marriages.

The difficult thing about this audio is that it is full of half-truths, whole truths, and non-truths all jumbled together. This is part of the explanation of how reasonable people can be sucked in by erroneous teaching. If you mix a little bit of bad doctrine in with some good, it goes down a lot easier.

I've placed quotes from the audio in a slightly different shade for ease in reading.

"The Bible ties that leadership [as a husband] to THE qualifying leadership for God to promote you."

Well, in case you were looking for some proof that Milestone is a hierarchy of positions in which you need to get "promoted," there you go.

At any rate, it should be mentioned here that the Bible doesn't make marital success the holy grail (pun intended) of "leadership." Jesus, for instance, wasn't married. The apostle Paul was apparently unmarried as well. (However, if you are in the camp that claims he was - he also claims to be "celibate" so he was either: a hypocrite, divorced, or a liar.) And, not surprisingly, this view of "leadership" also leaves out female leaders in the early church such as Phoebe, Priscilla, Euodia, etc. So, no, I wouldn't say that the Bible ties leadership so tightly with being a good husband.

"The measure to me of how strong a leader is is I look in his wife's eyes. My pastors...want to look at my wife's eyes and see how's she doing."

Quite frankly, this just scares me. To think that the measure of any human being's worth or value is found in the eyes of someone else is a bizarre thing to me. I will also comment that while my husband and I were sitting under these teachings, our marriage was a wreck. It hasn't been until we've come out from under all of this and found some solid truth about Biblical marriage that this would even apply to us. I don't guess anyone took the time to "look into my eyes" and take notice. I wonder what Jeff's response would be to find that my eyes look a whole lot more peaceful (and so do my husband's) now that we've discovered the joy of mutual submission?

At this point, Jeff begins to talk about his wife being a garden and how he must tend to her. This is actually a quite biblical image. Again, there is some good stuff here that is plausible and true and it throws people off and confuses them about the intentions and motivations of the speaker.

Next we have the bit about the "emails" that Jeff received from "women" in the church. I addressed that in the Aftershocks Part I post so I'll not do so again here. Except to say this: Baloney. When he talks about how they love opinionated, strong women, that's simply not true. What he really means to say is, "We love opinionated, strong women as long as they get in line, do what we say, and 'submit' to the opinionated, strong men."

At this point, you start really getting into the patriarchal views of Christianity. Subtle language begins to be inserted in the dialogue. Words like "protection" and "safety" are coming up. These are emotional words designed to appeal to warm and fuzzy emotions that we have. Who, after all, doesn't want to feel safe and protected?

"If men build a church and the women aren't involved, they build it strong but they don't build it safe."

Here we have a sleight of hand. Yes. This statement is probably very true. And it implies, naturally, that Milestone is not that kind of church. It implies that Milestone is the kind of church where men and women have equal sway, that everyone is bringing their gifts and nature to the table and that it's very egalitarian. This is of course, a patent untruth. That is NOT how Milestone operates as evidenced in even small matters but most notedly that there are no women in the higher levels of leadership. It is evidenced in about a billion tiny ways in hundreds of different circumstances. But if you've read this blog, you probably know much about that anyway. Let's move on.

Jeff begins to go into this discussion about "processing with your wife." This is such a bad teaching. My husband was also encouraged to withhold things from me that I "couldn't handle emotionally."

This doctrine is very hurtful, honestly, more to the men than to the women. It puts a crushing amount of weight on a man first of all to "anchor to other men." Now what should happen, I ask you, if a man has a difficult time in finding other men to open up and connect with? I saw this happen time and time again. There was a promise held out to the male members that the other men in the church would surround them and help them through life. There was much talk about how 90% of men in America don't even have a best friend. There was discussion about how men needed to learn to connect with one another and lean on one another. The obvious implication was that Milestone was going to fill this need in a man's life. That "the men of the church" would reach out to your husband and straighten him out. It became obvious, however, that men at Milestone were pretty much like men anywhere else. They might spend a bit more time together, but there was no powerful dynamic going on. They were just as emotionally disconnected from one another as any other men.

But the other insidious part of this doctrine is that it's hierarchical. It's a one-up system. Somebody is on top. Somebody is in charge. Somebody has the power. And if you're a woman, it ain't you!

"Men, whatever's miniscule to you is magnified to her."

Well, my husband and I had a good laugh over this as we listened to it again. We have actually not found this to be the case. We have actually found it to be true of both genders in a relationship that if one person is having an issue with somebody or something, the other person can begin to worry about it as well. And sometimes (apparently outside of the "spiritual law" that Jeff is teaching here), I can actually have more perspective (gasp) than my husband in areas where his heart is tied up and can help him gain perspective and not freak out about things. He does the same for me. You see, God has created us to work together as a team. To balance one another. To be "one flesh."

"I'm not saying that you can't have transparent conversation and that you can't be emotionally connected and all of that." You're not? It sounds like that's what you're saying to me. It sure sounds like you're saying that you can't share your entire heart with your wife. Again, it's a sleight of hand. It's "fuzzy math," if you will. He actually IS saying that. But then he says that he's not. So it's all ok, right? Wrong.

At this point, we really get to the crux of the misogyny issue. Please pay careful attention. Jeff Little begins comparing women/wives to 7 and 8 year old children. Not only that, he makes the same correlation about members of his congregation (the "leaders!"). Do you see it? Did you catch it?

This is the heart of the entire matter. When all of this happened to us, I kept asking myself, "Why is this doctrine about authority and submission in the home so important to these people? What is the big deal?" And right here is why. Because in order to maintain authority (power) in the church, you have to convince people that it's appropriate in the home. If you can convince people of this, then you can tell women that they are like little children. And you can tell your congregation that too. And if you're all little children, guess what? You need a big strong adult to tell you what to do. You certainly can't be trusted to handle "big boy" things like problems and struggles. You must be protected from all that evil stuff. You need a hero. you need a Leader with a capital "L!" And, surprise. I know just the person...ME!

"Women...the reason God ordered it that way...is authority is all about handling the crap. You know what I do as your pastor? I handle the crap. That's what I do. That's called being a 'servant' to y'all."

Wow. Just wow. This is one of the most detestable things that pastors do. As much as Jeff said over and over that he hates "positional authority," that is EXACTLY what he's promoting right here. "I am the leader. I am the pastor. I am serving you. Let me point out how much you need me." You know what? Love doesn't boast. It doesn't need to stand up and wave its hand and explain to you how much it's needed. And servitude isn't really about "handling crap." It's about helping you handle crap and not hiding it all away from you because you're just too child-like to deal with it. Even in listening to this again, I can just see the word "ego" floating in front of my eyes.

Now here again, Jeff launches into some sound teaching. (Which basically contradicts everything he just said.) He begins talking about how husbands shouldn't be dictatorial and how wives will rebel against that. Again he starts talking about how other men are the real "answer" to the issues that men have. (See notes above.)

Jeff does slip in some of the "covering" terminology here. More evidence (for those that want it), that Milestone is still operating in the Discipleship Movement whether they care to admit it or not. If you're never thought much about spiritual "covering" (a term that the staff at Milestone love to use), you might want to read this excellent, Biblically based article: www.oasisfellowship.us/spiritual_covering.htm

This one is good too: www.slm.org/trtdigst/articles/covering.html

"She feels safe when you're accountable to other men. The greatest thing any woman ever wants is for a man to be accountable to another man."

Well, I can honestly say that this just isn't true. As a matter of fact, when my husband was "accountable" to Derrick Wilson, it was pretty difficult for me and felt scary. When he was being "discipled" by Jeff, it wasn't much fun and felt unsafe.

I would actually say that, from my experience, the greatest thing that women want is to be connected to their husbands intimately. And, truly, all of this nonsensical doctrine just doesn't help that at all. I think about when Jesus admonished those around him to not "put asunder what God has joined together." It's a big deal to step between a man and his wife and create divisions. It's a big deal to create some kind of false or forced relationship with other men in which the husband gets ideas about how he should be LESS transparent with his wife. It creates really big problems, in fact.

"How many of y'all feel safe at Milestone knowing that I'm accountable to Pastor Steve?"

Where do I start with this? Let's see. First of all, Jeff is not "accountable" to Pastor Steve. In order to be accountable to Pastor Steve, Pastor Steve would have to actually talk to your congregants. I don't remember getting a call from Pastor Steve asking me if I was doing okay or asking me how well Jeff handled everything. Perhaps pastors need a bumper sticker? "How's my driving? 1-800-555-Safe" or something like that.

So we see that here is another half-truth. The implication is, of course, that Jeff IS accountable to Pastor Steve. But he's not! (Jeff is referring here to Pastor Steve Robinson at Church of the King in Mandeville, LA. This church is ALSO a former Every Nation Church so, no, Jeff, that doesn't make me feel really safe.)

"You reproduce what you are. You know why I have so many people loyal to me? 'Cause I'm loyal! Seriously, I'm submitted. So I have people that submit to me."

Well, again, this is simply blowing your own horn. "Let me tell you how great I am and why." Secondly, it's spiritually abusive and manipulative talk. Why? Because the implication here is that "good Christians" are submissive to their leaders. Notice that it's not that "good Christians" are submitted to ONE ANOTHER (something the Bible says also). No. Good Christians are submitted to their leaders. In other words, let me just subtly remind you what we expect of you here. And in case you're having any problems in your marriage and your home it's probably your fault because you haven't submitted to your leadership.

Good people of the world, if you are suffering under erroneous teachings like these, I implore you...please, please, please get out. Open your eyes. This is not what Jesus taught. It is directly antithetical to what He taught. This is a doctrine crafted by men who wanted to have power over other men. This is not God's version of leadership.

Now Jeff goes into a little speech about "unity" in the church and how dangerous it is for men to "not be submitted to" leadership. Is anyone else catching this? Anyone else see the spiritual manipulation going on?

"Men - beware. If you do not submit to us, you will lose your spiritual family. If you do not submit to us, your wife will become disillusioned and withdraw." This is a threat. And, truly, it's thinly veiled. And they mean it. If you do not submit to leaders, you will lose your spiritual family. They will make sure of it. Make no mistake. I wish I had paid attention to this at the time. I didn't realize that it was foreshadowing.

Just for reference, though, this scenario is not what happened with us. In fact, it took a long time and a lot of counseling for my husband to even begin to admit that our "leaders" were anything less than perfect. It was not that "whatever was miniscule to my dh was magnified to me." This is simply more terminology from the Shepherding Movement.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...it does.

"What's my job? My job is to frame properly to Brandy Pastor Steve and Pastor Jim. It's my job as her pastor TO KEEP HER THINKING RIGHT."

Did he just say that?

Yeah. He did. So for all of you who keep thinking, "Doesn't all of this just have to do with Derrick and Russell Ann? Pastor Jeff didn't really play any part in this at all did he?" Well, there you go.

When Derrick Wilson told us that men "frame reality for women," he wasn't alone in his belief as many people would assert.

I know that Jeff Little talks a pretty good game. He tries to come across as pretty egalitarian and pro-woman. But that's not really how he feels. How he really feels about men and women is clear in this audio. Women are basically like small children. Too emotional. Incapable of thinking clearly.

Jeff Little wants to look like the good guy. He wants to appeal to a broad audience. He wants women to think kindly of him. That's why Milestone doesn't teach this stuff on Sunday morning, folks. That's why it's reserved for behind-the-scenes conversations and leadership meetings where only the "inner circle" is present.

And this is what is so key to understand about this misogynistic paradigm. Women are not strong, powerful, beautiful equals to men who lift them up and support them (and are in turn lifted up and supported). Marriage is not a mutual leaning on one another. Marriage is really a parent-child relationship where everyone (even the wife) needs Daddy to take care of them and do their thinking for them. I could really go into great detail about problems that this causes in relationships but I'm not quite done with the audio so let's press on.

"A lot of people want to do great things in the kingdom but if you can't get some of this [referring to authority/submission in the home]...."

Well there's that pesky spiritually abusive and manipulative language again. Are you starting to see it?

Here's the everyman's translation: "If you can't be in charge in your own home, God's never gonna use you. If you don't learn how to submit to us, God's never gonna use you." Is it any wonder that men so easily fall into chauvinistic marriage paradigms? Your pastor whom you love and look up to is telling you flat-out that you are never going to amount to ANYTHING until you learn to treat your wife like a child and learn to obey the leadership. Wow.

That is so much pressure to put on a man. He's basically got to pin his dreams as a Christian on the hook of domination. What if his wife doesn't cooperate? What if she decides that she doesn't want to play the part of a 7 year old child? He's got two options. Forfeit every dream he has of doing something for God. Or MAKE her obey. Which do you think most men choose?

So after all this male-dominating teaching and language, we have this:

"You can't command her. That don't work. Positional authority...out the window. You're on the couch, brother. It ain't gonna work. You've got to love her, influence her."

I look back now and am not at all surprised at how confused I was about submission. I don't think messages could get any more mixed than these.

On the one hand, your wife is infantile and needs you to think for her. On the other hand, you can't just be a bully. You've got to win her heart over. But don't tell her everything. She can't handle that. Because she's your garden. You have to cultivate her. But if she doesn't submit to you, you'll never do anything great for God.

What the heck? Honestly, it appears to me that Jeff himself is a bit divided between how he wants to treat his wife and how he wants to think about her. He wants to love her and care for her but he also wants to do her thinking for her and tell her what she should and shouldn't be thinking.

Well, what more is there to say? I think Jeff Little has spoken volumes by himself for himself. Listening to this makes me sad. There is such a world of missed opportunity at this church and in this man. Someone taught him erroneous things about women and he's perpetuating it. He's damaging people's lives and marriages and doesn't appear to want to come on board with the other 90% of Christians and stop treating women as immature little beings in the body of Christ.

I loved my pastor so much that I was completely blinded to all of these insidious doctrines that were directed at me (among others). There is apparently something so deadly about strong, thinking women that men must debase them and summarily dismiss them. It appears to me that Jeff wants to use women to make his church look and feel a little safer on the outside. He wants to display them, he wants them to look pretty and be happy. He doesn't want them to think for themselves or disagree, of course. This is what we call "objectifying" women. Women become a tool to be used instead of living, breathing, thinking human beings.

Oh, just for reference, some of these exact same ideas were used by slave-owners to justify slavery. Now that should give us all pause.

It Just Keeps Getting MORE True....

Wow. So I'm still reading this Jake Colsen book. Chapter 3 gets more hard hitting. Could this guy be more accurate in his assessment of the modern American church system? I think not.

"Good. Can’t you see that the trail you’re on doesn’t go where you’ve been told it goes? It will make you a good Christian in the eyes of others, but it will not let you know him." John didn’t seem to be walking any place in particular. Aimlessly we strolled past classrooms and occasionally a person rushing through the hallways. I was so engaged in our discussion that I hadn’t noticed the strange looks people gave us. I would pay for that later.

"So I can become an incredible Christian as far as everyone around me is concerned, and miss the real heart of it?"

"Isn’t that where you are? Look at this massive program here. Look at these buildings, the needs of the children, and the demands of the machinery. What does it need to exist?"

"Obviously it needs people and money and an aura of spirituality, I guess."

"And that’s what it rewards doesn’t it? How do you stay a member in good standing here?"

"Consistent attendance, giving and not living in obvious sin."

"All sins?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well I don’t know about this place, but mostly there are some sins that aren’t allowed at all—usually immorality or teaching something the leaders don’t like. Others aren’t even recognized, such as gossip, arrogance or guilt. Sometimes these are even rewarded, because we can use those to get people to act the way we want them to."

Even our sense of sin was selective. I could see it now. I knew people who could exploit the system for their own gain, even if it hurt others. I’d done it myself. We were playing a game of religion for our own sense of success.

"Isn’t it interesting how a group of people who get together regularly will eventually develop an esprit de corps, even down to how people dress, talk, what reactions they allow and what songs they like to sing. Isn’t it pretty clear here what being a good Christian is, and isn’t a big part of that not to make any waves or ask questions that make people uncomfortable?"

He got that right.

Losin' My Religion...

It is becoming more and more clear to me that there are SO many Christians in America who have simply walked away from the institutional church. For good reason. The traditional church itself might try to paint them as "uncommitted" or "anti-social" but this is not, to my knowledge, the case at all. In fact, most of them are some of the most dedicated Jesus followers I've ever known.

A friend who is journeying down this path recently pointed me to Jake Colsen's web site in which is contained his book, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore?

The book has a good quantity of spiritual zingers but this is one of my favorites from Chapter 3. In this passage, the associate pastor of a church, Jake, is discussing knowing God with his new-found friend, John:

"How could it be? We teach the kids about God and his Word, and how to be good Christians?" My voice faded out as it dawned on me that learning about God and what it means to be a good Christian was not the same as learning to walk with him.

"What I want you to see is that laced through the wonderful things you have here is a system of religious obligation that distorts it all. Until you see that, you’ll never know what it means to walk with Father."

"Why’s that?"

"He’s done too much to free you from it to reward it. Certainly everything else in your life might, but not relationship with him. It’s not based on what we do, but what he’s done."

As I read this book, my eyes are even farther opened to what church as we know it does to people. It detracts and distracts people from focusing on relationship with Christ and replaces that love with "little gold stars for Jesus."

It saddens me to think about all the many wonderful, God-loving people who simply cannot live in community in the body of Christ as they were MEANT to because they hold a position of "authority" in the church. They are not free to be rebuked or corrected by those around them, those "under" them. They are not free to be open and honest about their hurts, their struggles, their dysfunction. They are not free to simply be who God made them to be because they are too busy trying to fulfill a role placed on them by someone else.

I think about Jeff Little and Derrick Wilson in this way. I think about how hard it must be (and how frustrating and draining) to live the Christian life that way. My family and I have the blessed and wonderful opportunity to live free. We are living free from the expectations of others. We are living free from the image-conscious, performance-oriented culture that still traps so many at Milestone. We live free from having to DO anything for Jesus in order to get our little gold stars or in order to "lead God's people" to where Jesus wants them to go.

Worse yet, not only are these pastors caught in this environment, they're forced to ensnare others in it to ensure the survival of their species. Of their programs. Of their building. Of their "vision."

Every day of my life, I get up, look around, and thank God for freedom. It is, after all, what He died to give us. Blessed be the person who can find their way clear to walk in it!