I’m not in control of the agenda.
I logged into my WordPress account with some other post in mind and was confronted with yet another thoughtful-yet-misguided comment on my LifeChurch review post. It’s been a year and a half, but that post still draws pretty heavy traffic (79 views in the past seven days). From their comments, I surmise almost no one who responds has read the previous comments. Precious few folks at all chase the links in the post itself, where I explain things in more detail or more clearly. By far, the majority of those who seek to dispute my claims refuse to actually engage me in conversation, but drop verbal bombs, using propaganda techniques astute readers will recognize quickly.
This is the way it goes for me here. That’s also the way it goes when I encounter other churches and religious organizations. I went to LifeChurch knowing it was a shallow entertainment operation. It’s not that I have no objection to that, but it’s what I’ve come to expect and I’m willing to look past that so I can exercise my own calling and gifts. I’m not a secret reformer sneaking in to upset things and make everyone behave according to my personal beliefs. I went there hoping I could operate on the margins. Every church has that group of people, usually not a major portion of the membership, who have unmet needs. Some portion of every population chosen at random will include folks facing pretty serious moral and spiritual afflictions. It’s no surprise any given church will have a similar proportion suffering unusual stresses.
Some churches do make an effort. Precious few are effective, but at least they try. Plenty of pastors at churches I’ve attended in the past have been only too happy when I made an effort to deal with such things. Once I describe my background in counseling psychology and my own healing experiences, they are ready to at least let me try. That background is also pretty strong on ways to avoid any of this spilling over into the rest of church activities. With a little experience you can usually tell when someone is just gaming the system and you can keep them from eating a hole in the organization. People with real needs can be steered to real solutions and begin to change.
The means to change has been the subject of a majority of my other posts on this blog, both in the behavioral science discussions of the likes of Dr. Thomas Szasz and in the discussions of culturally induced neuroses, to the discussions about fleeing the mythology of Western society and a host of similar posts. The point is: I’m not afraid to try. I have no hesitation in diving right into the needs of people who ask for help, regardless what it is. My God has consistently shown the path to victory and I am eager to offer it to anyone else.
But LifeChurch is not alone in setting a new trend of simply silencing the cries for help. The methods are many. Most often you’ll get a smothering effect by high volumes of empty happy talk, where the preacher blandly insists if you just believe, it will all work out eventually. That’s partially true, but a perversion of how it actually works. You have to persist in chasing God’s Justice and His divine moral character in Creation, then things will work out eventually. This bland and empty Christian talk that merely plasters Jesus on the outside of PMA (positive mental attitude) and secular self-help crap is not good religion in the first place. Craig isn’t unorthodox, nor does he fail to draw people’s attention with his presentation. He’s a very effective entertainer. However, his material is shallow, and his own staff says so (see the comment from the staffer on the original post). That so many people find his stuff instructive simply reflects how thin is the stuff they’ve had before. Mostly I think it’s just a quality presentation of pretty common evangelical orthodoxy, and it’s used by lots of other churches to smooth over serious problems.
What shocked me was the concerted effort by the staff at the Midwest City campus of LifeChurch to crush any efforts they didn’t fully control. Not just my efforts, but other folks got the same treatment. If you are familiar with internal organizational politics, you’d recognize immediately what I described in my original post. That’s a whole field in psychology, studying how people jockey for power and how the organizational leadership work to maintain control. The mere act of having a modern corporate structure is a problem of one kind; doing it with ugly internal politics is a problem of another kind. What I wrote about was the second issue, the use of manipulation and small group politics to prevent anyone doing anything at all that wasn’t controlled from the top.
There was collection of women who gravitated to one particular small group meeting supported by the church. These women were facing genuine tragedies, stuff Craig and his books never addressed because he sticks to pretty mundane issues. As it was explained to me, a couple of those women recalled once seeing a book that discussed tougher issues like that and wondered if the staff at LifeChurch could help them find another like it or some other source that would attack these serious problems with Scripture. The staff responded by handing them a bunch of copies of Chazown, Craig’s simplistic outline of very basic teaching. Then the staff moved the group leader to other activities and the alternate leader was told in no uncertain terms not to depart from the curriculum given. The group dissolved over the next few weeks.
That is one of several examples I experience, witnessed, or learned about from someone directly involved. The staff didn’t just ignore serious needs, nor simply sweep them under the rug; they actively opposed any effort to meet those needs. No one was permitted to suggest they had a need that Craig and his friends were not already addressing. Craig doesn’t have to play rough; his staff did it for him. So long as things fit on the script, all was well. Try to deal with stuff like incest, gambling addiction, or even just help finding a job, and you were silenced if you didn’t fit in the current program somewhere.
Is the whole organization like that? I don’t know. The shock was too great and I was unwilling to pursue things any farther. Has it changed since then? Maybe, but God isn’t leading me to check into it. You see, I stand by my original post as things stood back then, and I suspect the nature of what Craig is doing there will continue along the same lines. While I do get a little weary from defending what I wrote, I am fully at peace about it. Would I be willing to discuss it with Craig and friends? You bet, but they know what I have to say and the reason I don’t bug them about it should be obvious to anyone. I did what I could and got pushed out the door. The ball is in their court now.
Are there other churches where I might exercise my calling without the creepy control-freak stuff? Probably, but it’s now a losing proposition. I researched LifeChurch and read up on the denomination supporting them (Evangelical Covenant Church). Then I read up on the history of LifeChurch and researched the comments folks had made about Craig and his operation. I was aware of the complaints as well as the praise. I thought it might work out in spite of my misgivings. The result was a stunning disappointment. Other churches in our area are considerably less open in those terms, so I would have a harder time even seeing them tolerating my peculiarities.
I’m okay with saying I’m too much of a screwball for most churches. That’s the result of seeking to obey my individual calling. A part of that calling is sometimes saying things bluntly, of verbally slapping down whiners and propagandists. I’ll continue defending what I wrote and answer questions from folks who comment here, there or by other means. What continues to irritate me is that almost no comment so far has addressed any part of my core complaints about LifeChurch. I can set aside my entire rejection of Western Christianity long enough to show up at places like that so I can meet human needs, but to have an organization attack those efforts is hard to believe. I can even understand how folks don’t think Craig’s stuff is shallow, but I’ll be rough on them because that’s well within the bounds of what you can see in the New Testament. I’m not going to be nice to folks with tender feelings if they use those feelings as a weapon meant to silence me. So if folks want to label me as evil or whatever, that’s fine. It’s not my problem.
What I cannot do is remain silent when I see other kinds of evil; that’s not an option for me.
