So yet again, I was invited to another cult meeting when I was at work today. As I was helping a customer look for new clothes, I received a personal invite from this man to attend his classes. He wanted me to see parts of Christianity that the Bible does not tell me about and to further explore the metaphysical side. He told me to check them out online, and I did, and strangely enough when I typed in the title on yahoo search, the word "cult" was attached to it before I could finish the sentence. Hmm...
I can't help but think of my church history class in which I was introduced to stories of movements that started out with good intentions but somewhere they went off the beaten path. It is not a matter of deciding the age of baptism or view of charismatic gifts, these have to do with complete violations of scripture.
So where this brings me today is thinking about the church today. For instance, there was a movement in church history called the Montanist movement. I will give a brief outline, but you should read up on it if you are interested. In this movement, a charismatic man circumvented the church and its rigid rules to become a leader when he was roadblocked by the rules. He gave power to women by having prophetesses. He allowed for the practice of spiritual gifts, which were suppressed. All of these things sound good. Balance was needed, until you realize that all of these qualities were abused and the movement was very extreme.
How does this work today? People still go to the furthest extreme, whether they realize it or not. Recently, I have heard my peers talking about throwing out teaching from our services in favor of prophetic worship, wanting ordination requirements to be simplified to the point that unqualified people can lead freely if they feel led, and that Apologetics should not be practiced since we should not need to defend our faith and instead by more concerned with sharing the gospel. Yes, these views draw attention to needs in the church... the need for prophetic worship, more opportunities for people to lead, and the need for a stronger effort in evangelism. My word of caution is not to be reactionary and completely throw out concepts because they have flaws, instead, integrate them properly.
I think it is significant to understand that even though extreme measures are needed at times, we must remember that extreme measures are harder to recover from. This is why many sports teams fail to succeed. When I look at my home team, the Cleveland Browns, they have been bad since they change coaches too frequently, and they tend to go with complete opposites with their coaches. One guy is a dictator, the next is too buddy buddy, the next is arrogant and aloof, etc. They all are opposites. This sets the team back for years, especially when the roster gets purged by every new coach to bring in their guys. Churches are similar... if we drastically move back and forth from ideas emotionally, we can often times go so far the other direction that it turns to heresy.
Just because we may not agree 100% with something, we need to sit and find the good even if there is a lot of bad. From there, you can weed out the bad and create a better concept. If we continue to go to the furthest extreme instead of creating balance, we will attract extreme people who are either too passive or too destructive... thus creating issues. A church full of aggressive people will be far too combative and impatient, while a passive audience will languish if not properly motivated. This is why balance is needed, because it keeps us safe from extremists taking over.
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