Can a Christian Church be abusive?
The short answer is yes in my opinion. Now for the long answer.
First, I can only base this on my experience, not that of hearsay or word of mouth. I refuse to sit in judgement of those that I know nothing about and I refuse to question the motivations and spiritual well being of anyone I don’t know. It is not my place to do so. God will have the final word when the time comes.
I can, however, question the practices, procedures and actions of an organization as a whole.
I was once told that just because the Bible doesn’t tell us to do it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong to do it. Whatever “it” is. Conversely, I say, just because the Bible doesn’t tell us it’s right, doesn’t always mean it is.
My family and I used to belong to a church that was part of the International Churches of Christ (ICOC). It is fairly well known, throughout the Christian Church Community that the ICOC was considered the “bad guy” within that community. Some considered it a cult, others abusive, and still others think that it is near perfect. I believe they were all of the above.
I believe several other things about the church as well. The people there, by and large are sincere and sold out for Christ. They are charismatic and love praising God. They truly do want to evangelize the world and until February of 2003, were well on their way. I believe when this article is published, my family and I will probably be “marked” by the church as divisive and members of that church will no longer be allowed to associate with us in any way, further emphasizing the elitist and separatist dogma of the church.
A real fast history:
The ICC movement grew from the “mainline” Churches of Christ. Traits typifying the mainline Churches of Christ — the largest branch from the 19th Century Restoration Movement — included their goal of restoring” the First Century, New Testament church; their sola scriptura (Bible only) emphasis; their teaching of adult baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins and their aversion to formal creeds of belief or practice.
The ICC also rose from an era of Christian “shepherding” churches, which during the 1960s and 1970s used the practice of putting personal spiritual overseers (shepherds) in the lives of their members. Certain Charismatic (e.g. Pentecostal) groups used shepherding techniques until the idea fell out of favor in the 1970s after repeated problems with authority abuses by shepherds.
Mainline Church of Christ doctrine and shepherding techniques were blended at a Gainesville, Florida church, where a Church of Christ launched an initiative “to penetrate the Campus of the University of Florida with the Gospel of Christ.” The man most responsible for this innovation, campus minister Chuck Lucas, implemented “discipling” techniques such as “prayer partners” and “soul talks,” with an emphasis on evangelistic recruiting and the spiritual accountability of members to other members. Among Lucas’ reported influences were the US Campus Crusade movement, and a book written by evangelical Christian author Robert Coleman called The Master Plan of Evangelism. (Coleman in an interview has since opposed the Crossroads/ICC interpretation of his book.)
Discipling techniques and mainline Church of Christ doctrine proved to be an explosive mixture. Lucas’ campus ministry grew rapidly. By this time known as the Crossroads Church of Christ, the Gainesville church also faced intense criticism from the media and former members for alleged spiritual abuse. Crossroads’ sphere of influence increased nonetheless, as it began training campus ministers for deployment around the United States.
The Crossroads Movement’s most notable convert, future ICC founder Kip McKean, was baptized April 11, 1972 as a 17-year-old college freshman and was discipled by Chuck Lucas.
Source: RightCyberUp - About the ICC
For the purposes of this article, shepherding and discipling are the same thing. From the same author quoted above:
International Churches of Christ leadership requires that every member has a “discipling partner” or “discipler” – a person to go to for “advice”, confession, and guidance toward spiritual growth.
Many churches besides the ICC have used some form of discipling or “shepherding”. The ICC practices mandatory, assigned one-over-one discipling – mandatory because every member is required to have
one, assigned because leadership chooses who disciples whom, one-over-one because disciplers are “over” members “in the Lord,” with authority inherent in the relationship. Each discipler is a link in a
hierarchical chain leading from the bottom rung of membership to the top leader.
Rather than sitting here quoting works already done, I encourage you to read ICOC v. Bible.
Now for my own experience.
I met my wife in the spring of 1999. We began a relationship that was not spiritual nor biblical. In the late fall of 2000, my wife was invited to church by a co-worker. We were living together at the time. She moved out and into the
home of another person who was now going to that church.
We eventually quit seeing each other except for the occasional run by me to see her in the parking lot of her employer, attempting to re-start the relationship. She was advised to break off the relationship entirely, by the church leadership through her discipler.
During one of these visits, she invited me to church. I went.
Then I was invited to a “bible study”, disguised as a “let’s sit down and talk about the Bible” and “have a meal”. It was the start of an indoctrination into the church. I never saw it coming. But that is an entire post by itself.
Several weeks later I was standing in the Atlantic Ocean getting baptized into my salvation. Even at this point I questioned the “point of salvation” that was being taught but figured it was a disputable matter. My teachings up to this point were that once decided you wanted Jesus to be a part of your life, acknowledge His incredible gift, and
believed with all your heart that He died on the cross as atonement for our sins you were in possession of the incredible gift of salvation. Baptism was the outward, public expression of that decision. The church that I talk about here, believes that the point of salvation is the immersion. My argument is that my criteria for salvation was met before the immersion so their interpretation of the point of salvation was not a concern. Some may disagree.
At that point in June of 2001, my wife and I were not really “seeing” each other and in fact had been told by our church disciplers to stop seeing each other and date other people in the church.
That didn’t happen and we hid our relationship from the church. That deceit led to other transgressions against God.
Finally, we decided that regardless of what the church wanted, or felt was best, we were going to get married. We truly loved each other and wanted nothing more than to be able to spiritually and physically be a couple. In May of 2002 we got married, as Katie says, “AKA”. Against kingdom advice.
Within the church, seeking advice was a huge thing. You had to do it in all aspects of your life. If you were going to change jobs, move to a new house, have a baby, you were strongly encouraged to seek advice. I had always argued that it felt like I was seeking permission. Though the leadership repeatedly said, “No, you are free to choose whether you follow the advice or not.”
I am NOT saying that seeking advice is a bad thing. It is not. It is a GREAT thing to do, and having consult with your spiritual leaders is a huge part of making sure your life is as spiritually correct as it should be. But the church
made it “feel” like it was permission, mainly due to the reaction of the leadership if you chose not to follow the advice.
“Advice has been viewed as law, leading to untold interference in many personal areas of your lives, from dating to finances to living situations and much, much more.” Orlando Apology Letter — Spring 2003
Since we were married “AKA”, the church leadership never acknowledged our marriage publicly. This hurt Katie and I a great deal. We were included in “marrieds” events, and of course no one questioned our legal right to be married but we could tell they were not happy with our decision. But it was done.
About this time in my spiritual life within the church, I started questioning some of the practices of the church. The “Top Down” leadership with someone other than God dictating (Kip McKean). I questioned the amount of money being
sent to the “Mother Church” in Los Angeles. I questioned “discipling partners” being assigned by the church. (Please understand that I fully believe in other believers holding each other accountable…) I questioned the tracking of how much money I gave. I questioned the requirements for attendance at events. The mandates. It would not have been outside the true realm of probability that I would be involved in a church function four to five days of the week. Sunday Service, Tuesday Bible Talk, Wednesday Mid-week Service, dinner, visit, lunch a couple more times during the week. Add teen events to this and your week was FULL to overflowing. And if you missed something, be prepared to explain why.
“Coercive giving is practiced, wide-scale. Of course there are may sincere and generous disciples who love to give, but the fact remains, our entire scheme for collecting the contribution is not based on the heart, or about love offerings, or true concern about the spiritual impact our system of ‘getting’ has on the rank and file Christian. That is not what is most important. Accountability, intense scrutiny and follow up and man made pressures are the order of the day. When a Christian is cajoled into a ‘multiple’, tracked down for their tithe, categorized on official spreadsheets for everyone to know so that sector leaders ‘can be on top’ - all to maintain budgets that we have created, this is coercive.”
Henry Kriete Letter — Spring 2003
I was told that I should just ‘pray about it”. This effectively told me to stick my head in the sand and sooner or later my line of thought would “come around” to the right way of thinking. I was told to repent and trust the leadership God had provided for me. I had a hard time with this. I questioned everything and checked everything against the Bible. I was told I was not being submissive to the spiritual leaders God had provided for me. I simply quoted Acts 17:11 - Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
In February of 2003, my friend Henry Kriete, former evangelist at our local church wrote a letter that rocked the world of the church. Henry was in London at the church there after not being allowed to re-enter the United States on his
visa.
Within a day or two I was getting telephone calls from friends within the church asking if I had read the letter. I had not at that point but was told by someone I respected and still respect to “avoid the I told you so” mentality. I
have to admit, once I did read the letter, it was gratifying to know I wasn’t the only one thinking this way.
Over the next few years, things chugged along and I was “ok” with what was going on in the church. I saw some changes made based on the “revival” and saw some things stay the same. But all in all, it was worth it to stay connected with the church. We had dear friends there and didn’t want to leave, we were being fed spiritually.
During the summer of 2006, one of our daughters decided she did NOT want to become a disciple (devote her life to Christ). While this saddened my wife and I a great deal, we respect the fact that it is a decision that she must make.
Once she made this decision, and made it known to the leadership of the church, they told us, and her that she could no longer participate with the other teens within in the church. She couldn’t sit with them, go to devotionals
with them or basically fellowship with them. She must sit with us during church.
She would be allowed (graciously???) to talk to them before and after service.
By doing this, the church has created an elitist and separatist group. Rather than trying to use their life’s testimony as a reason for my daughter to come into the embrace of our Lord, they created a situation where they used her
desire to belong as coercion to get her to do something she did not want to do. If she would have followed through with it, it would have been the epitome of hypocrisy. We know of SEVERAL TEENS who went through the motions just to belong.
When I brought this up to another parent who was having similar “teen troubles”, I was told by the leadership of the church that I was being divisive. I explained that I was discussing it with another parent who was facing similar issues and I was again told I was being divisive.
My wife and I spoke with numerous other church members, both inside our congregation and out and without exception, they all said this was a poor decision on the part of the leadership. That excluding a teen from activities that are Christ oriented and Christ centered was NOT the way to encourage them to make a decision to live for Christ.
When the church leadership found out that I had sought advice outside of them, they got upset with me. When I explained that they were the odd man out on all the advice, they disagreed and told me I was obligated to trust and
pray for the leadership of the church. Stick my head in the sand.
What was interesting, is the previous Fall (October 2006???), we attended a large conference in Virginia Beach called
One Body, One Spirit. Promoting the one church (Body of Christ) biblical truism. Yet when I conferred with another member of the body who did not attend locally, I was going outside the church. That other member was a well respected member of the ICOC, held leadership positions within the ICOC (employed by ICOC until 2003), well educated, trusted expert, experienced teacher and author. Though prior to this writing, I have never referenced him directly. We decided to leave the church.
We left the church in the early spring of 2007 due to this issue. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by the leadership and invited to lunch. My response to the invitation was that I would love to go to lunch with him, providing we
did not talk about the church (congregation) or our decision to leave.
His response even surprised me. He said there was no reason to get together. I find it incredible, that two Christians can not get together for a luncheon, and discuss anything but my family’s decision to leave a church. What would we
have talked about had we not left?
By Seth Pickens, August 13, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
I have a very good friend who was a member of that church, or one that was very similar to it. He knew that a lot of their ways didn’t make sense, but he just couldn’t separate himself for a while.
Advice and accountability from those more spriritually advanced is a hallmark of Christian discipleship, but some churches take it way too far. One of my favorite things as a spiritual leader is when a high school kid or new Christian says something wise and penetrating that I never considered before in all my years of school, preaching, etc. I love giving people advice, but people have refused it before and ended up better off as a result. Can’t be mad at that, can I?
Stay on the straight and narrow and the right teachers will come to you as you’re ready. All the best.