- Apotheosis of the leadership -- exalting them to God-like status in and over the group;
- Multi-level authority/government hierarchy;
- Absolute authority of the leadership;
- No real accountability of the leadership to the corporate body;
- Hand-picked sub-leaders based on their demonstration of loyalty to the ultimate leader rather than on the basis of their leadership skills, spiritual acumen, and anointing and appointment by God;
- Pervasive abuse and misuse of authority in personal dealings with members;
- Paranoia and insecurity by the leaders;
- Abuse, misuse, and inordinate incidence of "church discipline;"
- Personal materialism, covetousness, and self-aggrandizement by the leaders;
- Members/and or sub-leaders must either sign a covenant agreement or make a "spiritual covenant," pledging their allegiance and financial support to the leadership and group;
- Partitioning of the group into smaller groups that are led by internally "raised up" leaders;
- Financial exploitation and enslavement of the members;
- Inordinate attention to the public "image" of the ministry;
- Doctrinal demeanment and devaluation -- the requisite of espousing and teaching "sound doctrine" is demeaned and devalued;
- Theological incompetency by the leadership, especially with respect to the rules of hermeneutics and Bible exegesis employed in the formulation of doctrine, giving license to twisting and adulteration of Scripture in order to provide proof-texts for unorthodox and invented doctrines;
- Spiritualism, mysticism, and unproven doctrines;
- Abuse and misuse of prophetic giftings;
- Devaluation, disallowance, disregard, and displacement of the true Fivefold Ministry within the church;
- De facto legalism, or works mentality, and its resulting loss of the "joy of salvation," though "freedom" is forever preached from the pulpit and the church is constantly touted as being a "safe church" by the leadership;
- Esotericism -- hidden agendas and requirements revealed to members only as they successfully advance through various stages of "spiritual enlightenment," i.e., unorthodox, unproven indigenous doctrines;
- Isolationism -- corporate and individual, especially with respect to exposure to outside ministry sources;
- Performance-based approval and promotion system of members predicated on "proven" loyalty to the leadership;
- Devaluation, suppression, and non-recognition of members' bona fide personal God-given talents, abilities, gifts, callings, and anointing as a means of subjugation;
- Requiring members to perform menial tasks, such as cleaning toilets, setting up chairs, and acting as the leader's personal valet or slave, as a supposed means to humble them and teach them to "obey their leaders;"
- Constant indoctrination with a "group" or "family" mentality that impels members to exalt the corporate "life" and goals of the church-group over their personal goals, callings, and objectives;
- Members are psychologically traumatized and indoctrinated with numerous improper fears and phobias aimed at keeping them reeling in diffidence and an over-dependence on their leaders and the corporate group;
- Corporately, there eventually develops an inordinately high incidence of financial, marital, moral, psychological, mental, emotional, and medical problems;
- Lack of true personal spiritual growth and development, especially in terms of genuine faith and experiencing the abounding grace, forgiveness, goodness, blessings, kindness, and agape-love of God;
- Members are required to obtain the approval or "witness" of their leader(s) for decisions regarding personal matters;
- Frequent "war stories" by leaders regarding individuals or families who left the group and the terrible consequences they suffered as a result;
- Frequent preaching from the pulpit regarding staying under the "spiritual covering" of the leadership;
- Departing members depart under a cloud of manufactured suspicion, shame, and slander;
- Departing members often suffer from various psychological problems and display the classic symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Sound familiar?
17 comments:
God have mercy on all of our souls for the things that we did while under "covering" from our leadership.
Wow! LFF gets a 100% rating on this one. Every single point could be traced to LFF. Way to go!
Where did you get this information?
Did you compile it yourself?
It is interesting the information that is out there.
Thanks for the post.
That is eerie. Having been "trained" as a leader at LFF, I feel at least a small bit at fault for some of the problem. I was never actually given any leadership positions, save crew responsibilities and instruments of worship.
At my new church I was offered leadership positions, but I declined. Why? My head is too screwed up from LFF as to how leaders should act and behave in the church. I dare not exert the influences LFF leaders use and are trained to use on people in my new church! It'll take some time for me to be deprogrammed.
After 10 "hard core" years at LFF I can personally vouch from my experience that all those items are more or less true. It is simply sad.
My heart grieves for those still there, and those who left but must deal with the effects. More importantly I grieve for all – there or gone - who don’t know the truth of the Father's grace as manifested by Christ's finished work on the Cross - but instead are either still trying in vain to "earn" His favor and in reality, their salvation, or have become defeated and disillusioned with trying anymore and don’t know where to turn.
I do pray this blog is used by the Lord to open the eyes of those “trapped” at LFF. The social and theological system there acts as a vice that moves one down a path that bears less and less resemblance to true Christianity the further one goes.
Did you get this list from the book "The Activated Church"?
Or perhaps from "Satan Who?" Dr. Karl A. Barden
It is amazing to see how Living Faith embodies this list.
I'm pretty sure the list is from "Twisted Scriptures."
It's from a book called Captivated Charismatics by Steven Lambert.
http://www.slm.org/pubs/ccbook.html
There is also a book out there called "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse" (can't remember who it is by) but it really helped me in dealing with some of these issues. I really saw LFF in it, too. I thank God I am not there anymore!
The "Captivated Charismatics" makes sense. I went into LFF knowing very little about Charismatic interpretation of scripture, and I left LFF wanting nothing to do with that sort of biblical interpretation.
I briefly browsed through the sample chapters of "Captivated Charismatics", and while I agree with a lot of what he said, as is typical with many modern Christians, he calls the shepherding movement 'witchcraft', 'demonic' etc. when it could just be plain a doctrine of STOOPID.
Yeah, yeah, I know - "We wrestle not with flesh and blood...", but way too many people blame things on the devil, etc. etc., when it's really just them being unwise, selfish.
In its simplest form, Occam's Razor states that one should make no more assumptions than needed. Why do we need to blame demons, the devil, etc. when the behavior can be explained by human nature? I don’t need a demon to make me greedy, thank you very much.
The discipleship movement was based on greed by the perpetrators of it – why not? What insecure person wouldn’t want a system that gives them the power to lord their authority over the ‘sheep’? It’s such a deal and they can have personal ‘armor bearers’ to be their personal slaves.
Well ‘covenant relationship’ folks… I hate to tell you, but slavery went out a long time ago.
And to my former massahs at LFF… You’s ain’t gonna whip dis po’ boy any mo’! Da president o’ da universe sez Ahm FREE! I gonna go get me some land! GLOWry!
(apologies to any former slaves and President Lincoln :-)
http://danielbailey.blogspot.com/
24 and 30 hit home. Wow.
"Yeah, yeah, I know - "We wrestle not with flesh and blood...", but way too many people blame things on the devil, etc. etc., when it's really just them being unwise, selfish.
In its simplest form, Occam's Razor states that one should make no more assumptions than needed. Why do we need to blame demons, the devil, etc. when the behavior can be explained by human nature? I don’t need a demon to make me greedy, thank you very much."
No fricking kidding, dude. We has humans have so much of our own greed sinful desires and that Satan doesn't even need to get involved with us.
I completely agree with you, I really think Satan is far too often used as an excuse for things. In a way, it gives Satan far too much power. Many fundamentalists view Satan as the source of evil. Well, that deises Satan, which puts him on equal footing with Yahweh. Holy crap!
Oh, and props for dropping Occam's Razor
Many fundamentalists view Satan as the source of evil. Well, that deises Satan, which puts him on equal footing with Yahweh.
What you are saying is actually what was taught as doctrine as LFF, if you remember. However, this teaching, that only God could have created evil, is an unorthodox departure from the historic Apostolic faith. Most faithful Christians be they Evangelical or otherwise would rightly regard it as blasphemous. I think it is just plain ignorant, proof texts in satan who? to the contrary.
We were served up a smorgasboard of doctrinal mishmash, and frankly as a system it didn't fit together very well. Then, too, it was in a constant state of flux.
I know, and that's what really makes me sad.
A study of the Hebrew scriptures shows us that up until the time of the Persian exile, scripture overwhelmingly paints a picture of Yahweh as the source of everything: everything good, and also at the same time, everything evil. He alone is the source of everything, with no cosmic enemy. A Satan does exist, but he is simply a member of the bene ha elohim (or sons of the gods) inside the rhelms of Heaven. The story of Job was written specifically to show this, that from Yahweh comes everything. As the Torah was written between 730-530 BCE, the auhtors and editors all shared this similar view.
It wasn't until during and after this exile with the Persians did that view change. The Persian faith Zoroastrianism (or Zarathrustriansim) introduced the Hebrews to many new ideas, such as a cosmic enemy to God (the Hebrews designated Satan as such) from whom all evil came from, the early ideas of a Savior, hierchies of angels and demons, and many, many more ideas that influence Judaism. I'm not saying that much of latter Jewish though, and later Chrsitian thought, is just borrowed, but there's is an obvious influence from the outside faith. Many of the stories from the Torah, such as the Creation story, the Adam and Eve story, Abraham and the Issac sacrifice story, Noah and the Flood story, etc, all had many of their elements borrowed from older faiths and myths, like the Enuma Elish, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Egyptian myths, Akkaidian and Sumerian myths, etc.
Books writted during of post-exile, like Daniel, permiate of the new, Persian-influenced thought that crept into Judaism.
You're right though, LFF would completely write this off as blatant heresy. If I had said this while at LFF, I'm sure I would have been bound and gagged and thrown out. Kind of reminds me of Europe during the middle ages, before the time of Martin Luther.
I applaud everyone who has come to this forum and has said that leaving LFF has allowed them to reread scripture from an objective standpoint and have allowed themselves to interpret it on their level. That's really what every believe of scripture should be doing. It's so dangerous to allow others to determine what the Bible means without ever questioning that meaning. I wonder what LFF would have to say if a member mentioned that they had been studying the Apocrypha (gasp!).
God gave us amazing minds: Minds to think with, to question with, to research with, to expand ourselves with. Not using that God-given brain and just letting leadership spoonfeed you everything is like giving God the middle finger every day for the rest of your life.
This is an interesting discussion. I have wondered where the whole teaching on Satan came from (Both Barden's and Christian). I know that I am part of the priveledged few to have taken Christian History at CMT from Larry Bailey. But I want to tell you that class reshaped the way that I look at history. We were also encourage (actually required) to read the apocrapha and other early Church writings, and draw conclusions of our own from there. I know that this was a small class (besides P. Kev and Sherri auditing it) I think there were only 3 people in the class.
It was a great class and one of the reasons I know to think for myself.
Funny, I can remember P. Sherri saying how she wished that everyone would think for themself. It is easier to accept what people tell you, than to do the research to think for yourself. I am glad that so many of us have learned to think for ourselves!
Perhaps an objective review of all of the questionable doctrines taught at LFF would be in order here. We could look at the doctrine of baptisms, security of the believer, the quiet and loud second coming(whatever that was all about) and certainly satan and "where did evil come from".
However, we need to be careful that we don't repeat the same mistakes and take a view that simply suits our own purpose. We can think for ourselves and come to a conclusion as to what the Bible means but there are hermeneutical principles that guide us into right interpretations. These include literal interpretation within the historical, geographical context and above all, the harmony of all scripture. Beyond that is a faith premise that the scriptures, according to the original manuscripts are inerrant and God-breathed.
Regarding the previous comment that concludes various OT writings were heavily influenced with pagan doctrines, remember how and why God used prophets. They were called out to hear from God and speak on His behalf(Heb.1:1) and correct misleading and false teachings that crept into Judaism. Recall the seriousness of taking foreign wives that resulted in mixture. To ascribe bias to the prophetic writings and bring them under suspicion is to carry water for the science of higher criticism and the liberal theology it has birthed.
Since this dialogue seems to have originated from the notion that God created evil, let me say that evil is the absence of God as much as darkness is the absence of light and if we choose to traffic in it, satan will surely make his presence known. Does there seem to be a correlation? Perhaps this is why Reagan could call the Soviet Empire evil.
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