CAMPUS MINISTRIES AND HERESY

[ginger1 (ginger1)]

post your experience with Campus Ministries here .

[40days40years (40days40years)]

redemption after the latest news I was looking up past posts about Leo's teaching which are disturbing especially the deliverence stuff, the Peter committing suicide stuff by trying to walk on water to meet Jesus was just pure Christian comedy IMHO. You did say though:

The school of campus ministry and the heresies taught there deserve their own thread and I will repost it there if someone wants to continue along these lines.

Ginger started this thread I am all ears.

[philiprosenthal]

What heresies is EveryNation being accused of? The main one I am aware of is the 'follow authority blindly' heresy that a lot of leaders (but not all) seem to believe - but even this, I have not heard taught formally, but only in an ad-hoc conversational passing comment manner. Thus it is hard to rebutt, if there is no formal statement to attack.
Double standards on moral issues for leaders, they don't seem to have the guts to teach in public - so I would call it hypocrisy rather than heresy.

[ulyankee]

Philip, there may be additional heresies in the campus ministry world due to Leo Lawson's teachings... even though he has been removed due to heresy, what he taught would also need to be corrected and that could take some time and effort. Among other things, LL taught that Jesus was man but not eternally God (became God at his baptism), that Jesus' victory came not at the Cross but in the wilderness... he also espoused the open view of God and the spiritual warfare techniques he taught crossed the line into dualism. Some of the former Maranathans here have stated that some of these teachings go back to Maranatha days... some may also be due to Peter Wagner's influence, particularly the open view of God and dualism "thingys" to use JRJ's terminology.

Also, not all the EN churches have changed their statements of faith regarding the Trinity - several still have the old version that at least allows for modalism. These include top US churches including Bethel and KPIC.

[philiprosenthal]

What do you mean by 'Open view of God'? Does this refer to the view that God does not fully know the future?

What do you mean by dualism?

[philiprosenthal]

What do you mean by 'Open view of God'? Does this refer to the view that God does not fully know the future?

What do you mean by dualism?

[ulyankee]

Answer to your first question... yes. It's considered at least borderline heresy since it denies God's onmniscience and even possibly His omnipotence because it opens the door for God "needing" human agency for His will to take place. Certainly Reformed theologians in particular consider it heresy.

Dualism is the belief that good and evil are (at least roughly) equivalent, opposing forces. The belief that "ALL Christians have demons" and that these demons, curses, etc. need to be identified and cast out before a person can be truly delivered (so even if someone is saved, they're not truly free unless they go through this process), and that this can only be done by another person, credits too much power to Satan and human agency and not enough to God. It also potentially adds works to salvation. I'm not saying that all deliverance ministry is dualist, but what LL taught and practiced crossed that line particulary because he taught that ALL Christians have demons and ALL Christians require "inner healing and deliverance."

[philiprosenthal]

In every denomination one is likely to have a few people with deviant beliefs. If it is healthy, then these people will be identified and dealt with quickly - and kept out of teaching positions. I would therefore suspect that this was more a problem of authoritarianism and governance dysfunction enabling a confused leader to stay in office too long without correction - rather than a real specific problem of heresy.

The issues of abusive behaviour and scandal, I think would not survive open scrutiny, but flourish in the dark. Therefore I argue the need to deal with the governance and leadership model issues - which are a root of these other problems. (see
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/17344.html?1142615747 )

[philiprosenthal]

My feeling is that EveryNation has got a religious disease a bit like AIDS, which has weakened its spiritual resistance - thus allowing all sorts of other opportunistic problems/infections to arise. The religious disease is elitism/ authoritarianism - by which bad leadership behaviour/ teaching or anything else can be very easily protected. Destroy the elitism/ authoritarianism and I think most of the other problems including such heresy will sort itself out over time.

AIDS is not usually identified from the AIDS virus, but from the other symptoms of weakened resistance - such as repeated respiratory and stomach infections. In the same way, this site is full of symptoms of spiritual weakness such as abusiveness, wrong teaching etc - but the underlying weakness itself I think is religious elitism and related idolatry of leaders.

[coppertree]

<font face="arial,helvetica"></font>
Hi Phil, To respond to your post # 33, about the former dean of the campus ministry school in En. I have said this before on these threads, he was not alone in these ideas ,they go back to the beginnings of Maranatha. I think that the foundation is not sound, but this is difficult to see. These thoughts that Ul expressed to you are deep in this church and have yet to be addressed; it was not only Leo.}

[aletheia]

Ulyankee, <font color="0000ff">"Dualism is the belief that good and evil are (at least roughly) equivalent, opposing forces"</font> - do you actually mean "matter" and "spirit?" i.e. matter is evil and spirit is good...this ancient pagan philosophy infiltrated Gnostic heresies and exists today in sects like Christian Science.

Also, re: <font color="0000ff">"open view of God,"</font> are you referring to Pelagianism? I recall Pelagiainism became popular among some of the Shepherding leaders in the 1970's. I once understood a Pelagian definition of salvation (in lay lingo) as: 'not only do you not know if you're saved, but God doesn't know if you're saved either; so work out your salvation with fear and trembling."

peace,
aletheia

[ulyankee]

Hi aletheia,

Those who espouse Open Theism deny (http://www.opentheism.info/pages/information/christianity_today/letter_today.php) that they're Pelagian, but others (http://www.imperishableinheritance.com/2004/debate-with-open-theists) say they are...

Dualism isn't necessarily the same as gnosticism b/c one can be a dualist and not gnostic - depends on what you define as "good" and "evil." If one defines God as good and Satan as evil, and views/treats them as equal and opposing forces, that wouldn't necessarily make one a gnostic. They often have been seen hand in hand (gnostic dualism like what you described) but they're not always the same thing.

blessings,
ulyankee

[maranatha1984]

alethia writes "Pelagianism? "

I would tell you that the Maranatha Campus Ministry was clearly "hyper-armenian" and some teachings : Primarily Bob W and Joe S, IMHO were clearly disguised or neo- Pelagian. Not that they realized they were teaching hereseys-

I refer you to the emphasis in MCM on "be you perfect" the "perfected man" teachings- "be ye holy". the stated and explicit implications were that not only did God desire us to be holy (which is sound doctrine) but that we had it within our grasp to be holy (not the within our grasp) with or without God's help. Because of our ealier decision of "free" (in the Calvin/Arminus sense) we were mired in sin with the curse of sin on us and demons possessing us and thus need and must have deliverance.

These teachings were mixed up with LDR and sonship inherit the earth teachings

Now contrast that with what Pelagius taught"

Pelagius taught that man did not inherit Adam's propensity toward sin, possessed free will, and consequently constructed a system of rationalistic moralism. While accepting the Bible's account of Adam and Eve, but relying on reason and experience, he insisted that a good and just God would not command of fallen man that which was impossible and that anyone could live free from sin, if they just chose to. According to Pelagius, man was autonomous, unhindered, and free to choose for or against God. Further, he also erroneously believed that man's mental abilities were unaffected by the Fall.

[maranatha1984]

alethia writes "Pelagianism? "

I would tell you that the Maranatha Campus Ministry was clearly "hyper-armenian" and some teachings : Primarily Bob W and Joe S, IMHO were clearly disguised or neo- Pelagian. Not that they realized they were teaching hereseys-

I refer you to the emphasis in MCM on "be you perfect" the "perfected man" teachings- "be ye holy". the stated and explicit implications were that not only did God desire us to be holy (which is sound doctrine) but that we had it within our grasp to be holy (not the within our grasp) with or without God's help. Because of our ealier decision of "free" (in the Calvin/Arminus sense) we were mired in sin with the curse of sin on us and demons possessing us and thus need and must have deliverance.

These teachings were mixed up with LDR and sonship inherit the earth teachings

Now contrast that with what Pelagius taught"

Pelagius taught that man did not inherit Adam's propensity toward sin, possessed free will, and consequently constructed a system of rationalistic moralism. While accepting the Bible's account of Adam and Eve, but relying on reason and experience, he insisted that a good and just God would not command of fallen man that which was impossible and that anyone could live free from sin, if they just chose to. According to Pelagius, man was autonomous, unhindered, and free to choose for or against God. Further, he also erroneously believed that man's mental abilities were unaffected by the Fall.

[ulyankee]

Correction to something I said above... KPIC's and BWOC's statements of faith affirm the Trinity. I would have edited my original post, but FACTNet doesn't allow for that anymore.

(Message edited by ulyankee on March 28, 2006)

[bill_mack]

RECENT BOB WEINER PEP TALK SERMON (http://www.churchofgladtidings.com/media/teachings/BT300218_audio.asx)

Church of Glad Tidings, December 18, 2005

Here is a link to a recent pep talk on winning souls for Christ (Bob Weiner's version) in Windows Media format in case anybody on this discussion might think the same false enthusiasm and mind-control tactics were repented of.

[ulyankee]

Wow, thanks Bill for posting the link, the part where he talks about leaving the inheritance of the nations to his kids is very similar to what Jim Laffoon said. I know that EN says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Nation) they have nothing to do with Bob Weiner but the roots of Maranatha's founder can still be seen today, whether they want to admit it or not. Weiner could have spoken this in my former church and fit right in. Also the parts about equating numbers with fruit and about bringing entire nations to Christ in order to bring the Kingdom of God to earth sounded very, very familiar...

In addition to the parallels with parts of JL's talk, a good part of it sounded like World Partners appeals I've heard EN leaders make.

[ulyankee]

Also "destiny," "spiritual DNA," wow, now tell me again why BW isn't part of EN?

He also is still teaching on sinless perfection - equating "grace" with sinless perfection.

[ginger1]

A friend of mine called up Bob Weiner, just recently this year. One of the things he said is that , he still disciples but he let them go immedietly and these people start planting churches. He has no more control over them like he did in Maranatha. No, he did not repent of NOLR, what he repented was Control.

[ulyankee]

Bob and Rose Weiner Ministries gave contributions to the following EN related entities in 2004:

--Bethel World Outreach Center
--Morning Star Christian Church (CA)
--Reel to Real Ministries (this was while they were still based in EN's Brentwood offices)
--Victory Campus Ministries

To be fair, they gave grants to many other organizations, and contributions to EN related entities comprise a minority of all the ministry's grants (in fact, only 12.5% of the ministry's expenses overall went to grants and allocations in general - more went to salaries, travel, etc.). But it would be disingenuous to go to the other extreme and say that there is "no" present-day relationship between BW and EN.