steve26 (steve26)
09-03-2005, 05:41 PM
This topic area is for discussing the controversial practice of "spiritual unions" or "connections" taught by the Chapel and by Don Barnett's present church, COA (the Church of Agape). As an introduction, I offer this excerpt from my Web page The Journey (http://home.comcast.net/~sr_born/Chapel/journey.htm):<blockquote><font color="0000ff">...the doctrines and practices at the Chapel became odder and odder, slowly at first, then rapidly. Singing in the Spirit, demonic deliverance (detailed histories of what demons thought and did, histrionic, theatrical prayer sessions to cast demons out of people), dancing in the Spirit, finally (in the spring of 1985), connections.
"Spiritual connections" started during the "dancing in the spirit" move. The dancing had started out individually, but soon couples found themselves dancing together, "worshipping God." It was probably inevitable that sooner or later, the eyes of the two people would meet and they would each feel that a powerful spiritual bond had formed between them. Soon it began to be formally taught that this was a new way in which Jesus was visiting his church and perfecting love in it. It also began to be taught that we needed to get rid of "legalistic" ideas about marriage so that our spouses would be free to take part in this "move," because of course, connections were seldom between husband and wife. It was taught that too many hurts had been built up over the years of a marriage for this to be possible. Instead, we must have these hurts healed in a connection, and then return to the marriage to make it even stronger with the love we had received in the connection.
Not surprisingly, it became common to see men and women sitting in church services with someone who was not their spouse. Special nights were set aside for "worshipping" (dancing) with one's connection. One Sunday morning there was even an adult Sunday school lesson on "Is it OK to French Kiss Your Connection?" The answer was a somewhat ambiguous "No" but enough leeway was left so that this, and more, was widely practiced in private. All sexual expression was supposedly off-limits in a connection, but of course it happened anyway and the church eventually crashed in a big way when it was revealed the pastor was sleeping with at least three different connections.
I never took much part in the connection "move" and in fact, starting with the "demonic deliverance" move I had been gradually coming to feel that something was going wrong. When the connection move got into full swing, both my wife and I began going to church less and less, without really talking about it much with each other. Other things made it easier. My wife was pregnant, I had graduated from Bible college and was looking for a full-time job and not having much success, and I was wrestling with the decision whether or not I should return to school yet one more time.
To make a long story short, I did once again go back to school, this time in computer engineering, first at a nearby community college, then back to the University. I graduated in 1993 with a degree in computer engineering and also in history, finishing up what I had started more than ten years before. Since 1991, when I was still at the UW, I have been working at a large software company (not Microsoft, by the way), where I have been very satisfied and grateful to God, here in the Seattle area.
During the period I was going back to school and completing my computer and history degrees, the Chapel completely fell apart and we left it to begin a nine- or ten-year trek through (mostly) charismatic and Pentecostal churches, looking for a new church home. During that trek I gradually became convinced that the entire charismatic and Pentecostal movement represents a major wrong turn in the history of Christianity. The rest of this document details why I think and feel this way.
I had long been concerned, even while at the Chapel, with what seemed to me to be prominent examples of bizarre or unbalanced behavior within the Pentecostal and charismatic churches; at the Chapel for example, with the extremes of the "demonic deliverance" movement and with nearly all the behavior seen during the "spiritual connections" movement. A current, non-Chapel, example would be the behavior associated with the "laughing revival" which is centered on the Vineyard church in Toronto.
Many of these things were (and are) justified with the argument: "These movements may well contain some extremes, but this is what God is doing and we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. We don’t want to miss it just because some people react in inappropriate ways. As long as we stay in the move of God, He will purify and watch over it." The picture that was presented was one of successive "moves of God" visiting the church. It was important always to be "in the move of God."
In thinking about this, I slowly realized I had some reservations about the concept of "the move of God." For one thing, it was not a scriptural term (one never found the apostles exhorting people to be "in the move of God") and I was pretty sure it was not even a scriptural concept. What seemed to be important to the apostles were things like growing in the Word, growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and using a variety of spiritual gifts to build up the other members of the body of Christ, without any one of the gifts taking prominence. In reading the scriptures I did not see a picture, after the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost, of successive waves of unique spiritual experiences which were to be experienced by everyone in the church at more or less the same time. At the Chapel, on the other hand, it was more or less necessary to be part of deliverance, then of singing in the spirit, then of dancing (I remember Barbara, the pastor's wife, stating from the pulpit that "dancing is not optional"), then finally of spiritual connections. Participation in these moves was deemed to be a necessary part of one’s spiritual growth in spite of the fact that all of these are either missing or mentioned only rarely in the New Testament. Likewise, the proponents of today’s "laughing revival" have taught that those who resist such behavior are not going to come into the fullness of what God has for them.
That these things were not mentioned in the New Testament was sometimes acknowledged by Don (the pastor) and the other teachers at the Chapel, but it was taken for granted that God would be doing new things in the church, beyond the experience of the first century church. Certain scriptures, such as Isaiah 43:19 ("Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert") were cited as proof of this. I have to admit that at the time I largely accepted this.
But I also observed that in practice the acceptance of this concept (successive new "moves of God") seemed to lead to the expectation that some new corporate experience ( a new "move of God") should always be on the horizon. And it seemed to me that this expectation of a new move of God was often one of the major factors in the creation of the next move. People felt that God wasn’t doing anything if some unique, external, and (usually) emotional things were not being seen.
Additionally, it was hard to resist the conclusion that peer pressure to be part of a "move of God" (not to mention explicit statements from the leaders that a particular experience is "not optional") could easily lead immature Christians to manufacture in themselves, consciously or unconsciously, the experience they were seeking. Thus a "move of God" might easily consist primarily of immature people who are fooling themselves about the origins of an experience, an experience they see as a work of the Holy Spirit.
I think this was about as far as my dissatisfaction with the Pentecostal or charismatic approach had gone at the time of Chapel’s demise. I still thought the collapse of the Chapel was a special case caused by Don falling into sexual sin and into the false teaching which was the result of it (for of course his sexual sins predated the "spiritual connections" teaching by a long, long time). At that time I had no doubts about the validity of the charismatic (or Pentecostal) movements as a whole.
A few months after the collapse of the Chapel, which took place in March of 1988, I came into contact with the book Agape and Eros by Anders Nygren. Its first few chapters had a great impact upon my view of spirituality. Nygren’s thesis is that the fundamental motif of Christianity is agape and the fundamental motif of the Greek religions with which it came into contact was eros, which Nygren makes clear is not rank eroticism, but a more lofty philosophical conception which permeated ancient Greek thought and religion. Agape is a love which descends from God to man which man can only humbly accept before directing it back to God and to others. Eros is a love which lifts itself up to God -- a self-exalting impulse which is heightened, cultivated, and developed through ritual (the ceremonialism of the ancient mysteries), through experience (altered states of consciousness induced by various means, sometimes including, but not limited to, drugs), through contemplation (elevation through stages of knowledge or spiritual awareness by mental exercises), or through some combination of these elements. Its intersection with Christianity is, however, usually much more subtle than the formal introduction of any one of these elements into Christian worship or practice. It is a tendency of human thought and feeling that is not always clearly dangerous, but in the long run is very corrupting because it tends to focus on what the self experiences instead of on the reality of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Therefore it is usually imported into the church by way of incautious or untaught Christians who have been unknowingly seduced by an attractive, seemingly spiritual impulse or vision.
Nygren’s contention is that through the centuries eros has succeeded in supplanting agape as the dominant understanding of Christian love. The Reformation partially reversed the victory of eros, but it is always in danger of seeping back into the church through one back door or another. Though I could not entirely grasp the full import of what Nygren was saying, and though I have not very satisfactorily summed it up here, I saw immediately that he had hit upon something important. I dimly saw that it had something to do with what had happened at the Chapel, and would see more and more that the charismatic movement in general had perhaps fallen into something that Nygren could have warned them against as having its roots in eros instead of in true agape. Man’s attempt to exalt himself into the presence of God ends in disaster.</font></blockquote>
"Spiritual connections" started during the "dancing in the spirit" move. The dancing had started out individually, but soon couples found themselves dancing together, "worshipping God." It was probably inevitable that sooner or later, the eyes of the two people would meet and they would each feel that a powerful spiritual bond had formed between them. Soon it began to be formally taught that this was a new way in which Jesus was visiting his church and perfecting love in it. It also began to be taught that we needed to get rid of "legalistic" ideas about marriage so that our spouses would be free to take part in this "move," because of course, connections were seldom between husband and wife. It was taught that too many hurts had been built up over the years of a marriage for this to be possible. Instead, we must have these hurts healed in a connection, and then return to the marriage to make it even stronger with the love we had received in the connection.
Not surprisingly, it became common to see men and women sitting in church services with someone who was not their spouse. Special nights were set aside for "worshipping" (dancing) with one's connection. One Sunday morning there was even an adult Sunday school lesson on "Is it OK to French Kiss Your Connection?" The answer was a somewhat ambiguous "No" but enough leeway was left so that this, and more, was widely practiced in private. All sexual expression was supposedly off-limits in a connection, but of course it happened anyway and the church eventually crashed in a big way when it was revealed the pastor was sleeping with at least three different connections.
I never took much part in the connection "move" and in fact, starting with the "demonic deliverance" move I had been gradually coming to feel that something was going wrong. When the connection move got into full swing, both my wife and I began going to church less and less, without really talking about it much with each other. Other things made it easier. My wife was pregnant, I had graduated from Bible college and was looking for a full-time job and not having much success, and I was wrestling with the decision whether or not I should return to school yet one more time.
To make a long story short, I did once again go back to school, this time in computer engineering, first at a nearby community college, then back to the University. I graduated in 1993 with a degree in computer engineering and also in history, finishing up what I had started more than ten years before. Since 1991, when I was still at the UW, I have been working at a large software company (not Microsoft, by the way), where I have been very satisfied and grateful to God, here in the Seattle area.
During the period I was going back to school and completing my computer and history degrees, the Chapel completely fell apart and we left it to begin a nine- or ten-year trek through (mostly) charismatic and Pentecostal churches, looking for a new church home. During that trek I gradually became convinced that the entire charismatic and Pentecostal movement represents a major wrong turn in the history of Christianity. The rest of this document details why I think and feel this way.
I had long been concerned, even while at the Chapel, with what seemed to me to be prominent examples of bizarre or unbalanced behavior within the Pentecostal and charismatic churches; at the Chapel for example, with the extremes of the "demonic deliverance" movement and with nearly all the behavior seen during the "spiritual connections" movement. A current, non-Chapel, example would be the behavior associated with the "laughing revival" which is centered on the Vineyard church in Toronto.
Many of these things were (and are) justified with the argument: "These movements may well contain some extremes, but this is what God is doing and we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. We don’t want to miss it just because some people react in inappropriate ways. As long as we stay in the move of God, He will purify and watch over it." The picture that was presented was one of successive "moves of God" visiting the church. It was important always to be "in the move of God."
In thinking about this, I slowly realized I had some reservations about the concept of "the move of God." For one thing, it was not a scriptural term (one never found the apostles exhorting people to be "in the move of God") and I was pretty sure it was not even a scriptural concept. What seemed to be important to the apostles were things like growing in the Word, growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and using a variety of spiritual gifts to build up the other members of the body of Christ, without any one of the gifts taking prominence. In reading the scriptures I did not see a picture, after the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost, of successive waves of unique spiritual experiences which were to be experienced by everyone in the church at more or less the same time. At the Chapel, on the other hand, it was more or less necessary to be part of deliverance, then of singing in the spirit, then of dancing (I remember Barbara, the pastor's wife, stating from the pulpit that "dancing is not optional"), then finally of spiritual connections. Participation in these moves was deemed to be a necessary part of one’s spiritual growth in spite of the fact that all of these are either missing or mentioned only rarely in the New Testament. Likewise, the proponents of today’s "laughing revival" have taught that those who resist such behavior are not going to come into the fullness of what God has for them.
That these things were not mentioned in the New Testament was sometimes acknowledged by Don (the pastor) and the other teachers at the Chapel, but it was taken for granted that God would be doing new things in the church, beyond the experience of the first century church. Certain scriptures, such as Isaiah 43:19 ("Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert") were cited as proof of this. I have to admit that at the time I largely accepted this.
But I also observed that in practice the acceptance of this concept (successive new "moves of God") seemed to lead to the expectation that some new corporate experience ( a new "move of God") should always be on the horizon. And it seemed to me that this expectation of a new move of God was often one of the major factors in the creation of the next move. People felt that God wasn’t doing anything if some unique, external, and (usually) emotional things were not being seen.
Additionally, it was hard to resist the conclusion that peer pressure to be part of a "move of God" (not to mention explicit statements from the leaders that a particular experience is "not optional") could easily lead immature Christians to manufacture in themselves, consciously or unconsciously, the experience they were seeking. Thus a "move of God" might easily consist primarily of immature people who are fooling themselves about the origins of an experience, an experience they see as a work of the Holy Spirit.
I think this was about as far as my dissatisfaction with the Pentecostal or charismatic approach had gone at the time of Chapel’s demise. I still thought the collapse of the Chapel was a special case caused by Don falling into sexual sin and into the false teaching which was the result of it (for of course his sexual sins predated the "spiritual connections" teaching by a long, long time). At that time I had no doubts about the validity of the charismatic (or Pentecostal) movements as a whole.
A few months after the collapse of the Chapel, which took place in March of 1988, I came into contact with the book Agape and Eros by Anders Nygren. Its first few chapters had a great impact upon my view of spirituality. Nygren’s thesis is that the fundamental motif of Christianity is agape and the fundamental motif of the Greek religions with which it came into contact was eros, which Nygren makes clear is not rank eroticism, but a more lofty philosophical conception which permeated ancient Greek thought and religion. Agape is a love which descends from God to man which man can only humbly accept before directing it back to God and to others. Eros is a love which lifts itself up to God -- a self-exalting impulse which is heightened, cultivated, and developed through ritual (the ceremonialism of the ancient mysteries), through experience (altered states of consciousness induced by various means, sometimes including, but not limited to, drugs), through contemplation (elevation through stages of knowledge or spiritual awareness by mental exercises), or through some combination of these elements. Its intersection with Christianity is, however, usually much more subtle than the formal introduction of any one of these elements into Christian worship or practice. It is a tendency of human thought and feeling that is not always clearly dangerous, but in the long run is very corrupting because it tends to focus on what the self experiences instead of on the reality of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Therefore it is usually imported into the church by way of incautious or untaught Christians who have been unknowingly seduced by an attractive, seemingly spiritual impulse or vision.
Nygren’s contention is that through the centuries eros has succeeded in supplanting agape as the dominant understanding of Christian love. The Reformation partially reversed the victory of eros, but it is always in danger of seeping back into the church through one back door or another. Though I could not entirely grasp the full import of what Nygren was saying, and though I have not very satisfactorily summed it up here, I saw immediately that he had hit upon something important. I dimly saw that it had something to do with what had happened at the Chapel, and would see more and more that the charismatic movement in general had perhaps fallen into something that Nygren could have warned them against as having its roots in eros instead of in true agape. Man’s attempt to exalt himself into the presence of God ends in disaster.</font></blockquote>