It’s been awhile since we’ve added anything to the site. That’s because, in most respects, we feel like we’ve moved on from our experience at Living Word Church (a pseudonym). We’ve now had a year to process what we witnessed and went through, and after awhile, it’s easy to feel like we’ve figured it all out.
But the funny thing is, right when I think I’ll never have another new thing to add to this blog, I’ll get to pondering our time at Living Word, and suddenly, I’ll be hit by a realization. That happened to me last night.
My husband and I were reminiscing about Pastor Smith’s (another pseudonym) preaching last night. As I’ve said in another post,
The thing was, when he’d stick to Scriptures, he was a great preacher—insightful, original, wise, and articulate. When he’d veer into a slightly questionable area, such as seeming to use the pulpit to pump up his own importance, it was easy to cut him some slack. He was, after all, a very dynamic individual with great force of personality that was coupled with a sharp, curmudgeonly sense of humor. When he preached, he conveyed a unique earnest sincerity. I still don’t doubt for a moment that he himself believed in everything he preached. I still think he was honestly convinced of the validity of his own prophetic gift, and of how much the people needed his ministry. His earnest sincerity made you WANT to cheer for what he said, made his audience WANT to show their support for him.
When we first started this site, I often remarked about how Pastor Smith’s preaching was usually pretty Biblical. He always included a lot of Bible verses and really seemed to spend time putting his sermons together. Even after we first left Living Word, I still believed that if Pastor Smith had just stuck with Scripture and stayed away from talking so much about his prophetic abilities and the “Prosperity Gospel,” his preaching would have continued to be stellar.
But recently, while organizing my closet, I stumbled upon a collection of sermon tapes from 2003. Figuring that it would be good entertainment to reminisce – and also figuring that maybe I might be reminded of something edifying while I finished my cleaning – I popped one of the tapes in the stereo and gave it a listen.
I have to say, I was surprised to realize something. And that is, even back a few years ago, before Pastor Smith became fixated on money, his sermons were still not like the sermons we’ve been hearing lately at the more generic Evangelical church we’ve been attending. Rather than discussing straightforward Biblical principles and acceptable, obvious truths, Pastor Smith’s preaching was, essentially, all about reading a verse and then telling us what he thought it meant.
“So what’s the difference,” you ask.
Well, actually, there’s a pretty big difference. Especially sometimes.
You see, the kind of preaching that focuses on making a larger point or a life application by building on basic truths clearly spelled out in the Bible is not the same as making a declaration and then pointing out how this declaration could be supported by a verse here or there. And it’s certainly not the same as reading a single verse and then explaining to your audience how you know, because “God told you,” that this verse is true in a new and different way for the people you’re addressing.
Case in point: some years back, pretty early in our time at Living Word, actually, Pastor Smith preached an entire series of sermons on God’s favor. His text? – Psalm 102:13, which says:
Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come.
Pastor Smith spent weeks telling us, usually for more than an hour at a stretch, that the time had come for all those connected with Living Word Church to experience God’s favor. He had a slogan for this sermon series: “Dream big, and believe God for favor.” After a couple of weeks, this slogan was professionally printed onto a gigantic banner which stretched all the way across the second-floor railing in the church foyer, so that it was almost the first thing you saw as you made your way toward the sanctuary entrance.
I remember that all of those sermons were incredibly uplifting. Pastor Smith used every bit of his sincere, enthusiastic, and utterly convincing style to convey to us that the Lord had given him this verse as a “fresh word for the house.” It was time for all those under the sound of his voice to get ready to dream big and believe God for favor, because God had told him that the “set time” for favor had begun.
In other words, if you were hoping for a certain job promotion, perhaps, or wanting healing, or looking to buy a bigger house, your time had come. Even if you might not be the most qualified person, you would find yourself receiving more than the typical consideration for that career advancement, because of God’s favor. Even if the doctor had told you there was nothing more the medical profession could do for you, you did not have to give up on good health, because of God’s favor. Even if you weren’t sure where the extra money would come from, if you had a dream for a larger house, you could get ready to see it fulfilled, because of God’s favor.
These sermons had a big effect on the congregation’s mood. People were cheering and applauding. Pastor Smith’s preaching would be interrupted by frequent standing ovations. And it wasn’t just an immediate emotional response, either. I remember talking to friends and listening to them earnestly musing about how God was finally going to bring their favorite dream to pass…because we all were soon going to be hit by an unusual time of God’s favor.
Last night, as I thought back to this sermon series, and also to the tapes I’d just recently listened to again, I was suddenly struck by something. Why did we believe Pastor Smith when he told us that we were all about to experience God’s favor?
I mean, it certainly wasn’t because he “proved” it to us through Scripture. Using the Bible alone, just as it’s written, it’s really impossible to “prove” such a thing. Even though Pastor Smith took Psalm 102:13 as his “proof text,” it really was nothing of the sort…UNLESS YOU TOOK PASTOR SMITH’S WORD FOR IT. Psalm 102 on its own, after all, was written thousands of years ago and is about Israel. Although Pastor Smith made a passing reference to how the Christian church has now been “grafted in” and thus has a right to all the promises made to the Jewish people, the fact still remains that nothing about Psalm 102:13 itself states that it held specific truth for those of us in that sanctuary at that moment. Really, the only reason anybody would ever get that sort of message out of Psalm 102:13 was because Pastor Smith had told them they should. And they believed Pastor Smith.
Actually, the majority of Pastor Smith’s preaching was just like this. He did use the Bible a lot, but it was almost always in a way that focused on HIS INTERPRETATION of what a particular passage was saying, rather than what the passage simply SAID.
In other words, almost all of Smith’s sermons hung on Smith’s credibility.
Or as my dad would say, “The whole big picture hung on one rusty nail.”
Honestly, to really get anything at all out of the preaching at Living Word, you first had to buy into the assumption that Pastor Smith somehow heard directly from God. And then you had to believe in his authority as “God’s mouthpiece” to the congregation. Otherwise, his sermons would all be little but empty Tony Robbins-style “rah rah” motivational speeches.
How did we all “know,” after all, that the “set time for God’s favor” had come upon us? Was it because of Psalm 102:13? No, not really. Instead, it was because Pastor Smith TOLD US that this was what Psalm 102:13 should mean to us.
“Rusty nail” sermons are really kind of a scary thing, in retrospect. Especially because of their potential to do serious damage to people who buy into them and then find themselves blaming God when “favor” doesn’t follow. I wonder how many of Smith’s listeners back then gave offerings they could not afford because they thought that doing so was a sign of faith for the favor that they’d soon experience? I wonder how many people ended up bitterly disappointed when they were passed over for the job promotion that “God” had promised them?
Yes, “rusty nail” sermons are dangerous, I think. And unfortunately there’s no such thing as a spiritual tetanus shot.
Welcome back! 🙂
You’re absolutely right on here. Much of what we were taught was ‘hung’ on one proof text and not much else.
We’ve been out of charismania for 7 years and God is still revealing things to us about our experience there. I figure if He had showed it to us all at once, we couldn’t have processed it all. It takes time, and grace. Thank God, He has plenty of both!
Our situation was similar to yours, and we’ve been removed from that church for well over 3 years. We attended the Charismaniac church for over 5 years and our whole social network was there. We hosted small groups, served in childcare, church bookstore, music ministry, sent our child to their private school, and because we were there so much, we moved across town to live by the church.
We’re still trying to get over the hurts and deceptions. The pastor was entertaining on the pulpit but he also chose verses to support his point of view. We watched him and his wife change over the course of a couple of years as they flew across the country to attend Oral Roberts University for their Masters’ Degrees. It was as if they suddenly cared for their image and status more than their congregation. They bought new cars, bought a new house, and said as they prospered the church would also. They began to say God would give our church property to build a newer bigger facility. When that didn’t happen they decided to do an “Extreme Church Makeover” and update the sanctuary. It wasn’t necessary, but they wanted a tv ministry and wanted it to look good on tv.
We got caught up in the “give till it hurts” and we did. We hoped it was true that we’d be given back in the measure we gave, and that we’d receive 10x or 100x or 1000x more. Our giving was 20% of our gross income, we didn’t have savings, investments, and the credit cards were building up. We believed we’d have the favor of God. We were sinking financially and couldn’t figure out why.
It wasn’t until we started listening to a well known financial show that we realized nowhere in scripture does it say to give sacrificially, tithes are 10%, but the offering was given from your abundance and in love for God, knowing you’re just a steward of his money.
It took getting involved in a different church that strives to live and teach as Jesus did in the New Testament for us to realized how far off base we were. It really saddens us to think about the heartache we went through willingly. It angers us to see how gullible and superficial we were to take pastor at his word even when we knew it didn’t match what we read in the Bible. Pastor commented in his sermons that tv preacher so and so said … and we started watching them too, then giving to them because they also said God would prosper their partners. We didn’t prosper and were getting more and more discouraged.
The new church was different – it gave to the poor, homeless, widows, and offerred hope in real life. The church had it’s own food and clothing bank, and even the local government sent people there for help. The small groups were different too, not just social clubs, but times together learning about God. The pastor said we do what the Bible says and the things that aren’t salvation issues aren’t going to be allowed to tear apart the church. We realized that this particular church was growing by leaps and bounds and every single week there were baptisms, every week! This church grew from 12 people in eight years to over 7,000.
Our old church constantly said they were growing, but the attendance was about the same. New ministry programs were given a big start up show and then silently fade away. The kids/teens groups were always running out of money and the pastor constantly asked for more. It was almost always a tear jerker and I finally stopped bringing my checkbook so that I wouldn’t feel guilted into giving. Because we were involved behind the scenes we found out things most other people didn’t know. Like the one time pastor would spent the benevolence on new chairs for the auditorium and then a family asked the church for help buying tires for their car. There was nothing in the account, so he stood up on Sunday and asked four people to each commit to buy a tire for the family.
When we left we were told we were out of God’s will by the music pastor. The senior pastor was to busy to meet with us, but the second in command did and he said he understood that we felt called elsewhere. Less than a year later he and his wife left to start their own church.
We’ve since moved across the state and have had a hard time not bringing that baggage with us when we look for a new church home. The first church was definately a “Charismaniac” church and when any church feels that way we quickly decide not to ever return. But it makes us sad to see other sincere people in a situation that we believe we had our eyes opened to. The second church was so right on that we hold others to that standard. And nothing quite measures up. Thankfully, we’ve found a church that is close to the 2nd one, but it is in an affluent city and mostly upper middle class congregation. The trade offs have been that the sermons seem good but the community involvement isn’t there. They claim to be “too new” (they’re 4 years old) to have established a benevolence fund to help the community, or that their community doesn’t have the need because it’s so affluent. We’ve been there for 6 months and they have only just begun to support a local food bank.
We seem to carry this baggage whether we want to or not. God is working on our hearts now and I wonder how long it will take to not view churches and pastors with such a cynical outlook.
Thank you for your blog that expresses many things that we have felt but been unable to put into words from our own Charismaniac experience. We don’t want to be bitter and are glad that you seem to have moved past your own experiences. It gives us hope that we will also move forward.
Hi, “Anonymous,” and thanks so much for your comment.
We still try to check in at this blog daily, but sometimes new comments will sit in moderation for too long. Sorry ’bout that.
Parts of your story particularly resonated with me, especially this:
We saw this constantly at our old church. For awhile, I just figured that the pastor didn’t want to “discourage” us by telling the people about why a program didn’t work out. I thought the best of him. But later, I began to realize that it really was more about making himself look good. Rather than explaining where these failed programs had gone, or why they were pulled, it was much better for the First Family’s image to just hope we’d all forget.
For instance, a few years back, this church started what they called an “internship” program. Supposedly they were working on getting it accredited like a Bible college or something, so that people could earn credits and eventually obtain a 2-year degree. The pastor and his sons made a huge deal out of how “God had told them” to initiate this program. They took up a significant amount of time in several services to talk it up. Eventually, at least a dozen young people enrolled in this program. They were charged “tuition.”
Well, although they did require these “students” to take some classes (most of which were taught by the pastor’s mental lightweight of a son), most of these kids’ time was spent providing slave labor around the church. Some of the “interns” probably felt compensated by their special reserved front-row seating, and no doubt some of them were thrilled when they’d occasionally get called upon to pray for folks (this was almost always only the privilege of Pastor Smith himself).
But eventually, most of the interns quit the program, and later, we spoke with more than one intern who expressed extreme bitterness at the way they’d been used. How incredible, to charge these people money for the “privilege” of working what often amounted to 12-hour days at the church, doing menial tasks like cleaning windows! Although I couldn’t help but admire the stroke of genius on the part of the pastor and his sons for thinking up such a slick way of both collecting more money AND getting slave labor, and making it appear to be a privilege to “get” to participate, in the end, it was obvious that this program was diabolical.
I believe it existed for 3 “semesters.” And then it quietly disappeared, just like so many other programs before it…and, just like many multitudes of people.
I suppose they figured it was a rather simple matter to make people forget. The people who figured it out and got disgusted would leave, and the new people who came in through the revolving door wouldn’t know anyway.
Yes, we’ve moved on, but that still doesn’t keep me from being utterly disgusted when I think back on how we were used and manipulated. And how the Smiths continue to operate their own little kingdom, continue to manipulate and use people. Ugh!
Wow – what an insightfut blog!
I served in ordained ministry here in Atlanta for the past few years while attending a mega church and the “son” of a mega church. Not only do our experiences parallel each other, we could probably share stories of what we saw “behind the scenes”.
I know you don’t want to “call out” your former church and pastor (I’ve only been off the plantation for 2 months and I’ve just started calling names), but it could help to open more eyes in your town.
I’ll be praying for your strength in the Lord as He leads you in this journey. Stopy by my blog and share when you can – you might find some familiar experiences as well…
Speaking Truth