Category Archives: reformation

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16 and Part 17.

As with most walks with the Lord, my journey out of the traditional church system has not been a straight line. There have been a few left and right turns along the way.

One such detour happened in the fall of 2001.

Honey was selling furniture in Yorba Linda, California, and a Christian couple invited her to attend their church for a Sunday service. She wanted to please them and felt we both should go.

Now, the couple’s church was the mother church for a denomination which is famous for worship music, casual dress and laid-back style. The denomination’s founder had recently passed away and another had replaced him. And to be honest, the denomination was one which Honey and I usually searched out in the many cities we had lived in.

So, I was eager to visit the church.

The couple greeted us at the door and led us inside the sanctuary to where they were sitting. As we sat down, the husband leaned over and said, “The new pastor mentions finances a little more than our founder did. It’s probably because the church has dropped from 5,000 in membership to 3,500. ”

My antenna went up, as did the hairs on my neck.

The service began with worship music, followed by the taking of the offerings, a few prayers, and then, the pastor strolled to pulpit. He was forty-ish, dressed in Dockers and had a pleasant voice.

“I was going to speak on prayer today, but I felt a pressing need to speak on a different subject,” he said, looking around the sanctuary.

Now, what subject do you think had jumped over prayer to the top of his sermon docket? Was it salvation? Or healing? Or love? No, no, no!

It was finances!

The pastor explained how the church had just spent millions of dollars to purchase a parcel of land next to the church for planned expansions in the future. The additional expenditures increased the church’s total debt to $13 million. $13,000,000.

“As always,” said the pastor, “our goal is to help the poor, but until we pay off our debts, the poor will have to be put on the back burner. Then, when the debt is retired in twelve years or so, we will be in a strong position to help the poor and others.”

Yipes! Yuck! Yowie!

Now, you might be thinking this left turn experience is the exception for the traditional church system, right? Sadly, not so!

The Barna Group which is known for their extensive surveys on Christianity and churches has conducted yearly surveys on church finances. Their findings for all of the Protestant churches in America are that 85% of the tithes and offerings are spent on mortgages, construction, salaries, building upkeep, special programs and miscellaneous. Less than 10% is given to the poor or foreign missionaries.

For me, this last church experience was the dot at the bottom of the exclamation mark after the words, “Pull the plug!“

(Starting Monday a new series will begin on the callings. Stop back if you’re interested.)

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13 and Part 14.

Let’s say that we conduct a survey of every Christian in America, asking, “What do you believe is the number one duty for church pastors?”

Do you have any ideas on what their responses might be?

Well, I would guess that 95% of the Christians would say something like, “Feeding the sheep.” And of course, what this really means is, “Pastor, bring on the sermons.”

What’s the scriptural logic behind this answer?

He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” And he said to him, “Lord, You know all things; you know that I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.” (John 21:17 NKJ)

Out of this single discourse between a newly resurrected Jesus and a broken, discouraged Peter has grown the tradition of pastors preaching sermons in today’s traditional churches. So ingrained is this tradition that few of us even question its scriptural validity.

But wait a second! What was Peter’s calling? Pastor. No!

Peter was one of the original twelve apostles, chosen to be a part of the foundation for the Church, with Jesus being the corner stone. He was never a pastor, restricted to a local assembly; but instead, He was a traveling, church-planting apostle. This is an important point, one which is usually overlooked when this section of scripture is studied.

So, what was Jesus’ main purpose in His “Feed My sheep” discourse with Peter?

I believe our Lord’s main purpose was restoring and reconfirming the apostolic calling on Peter’s life.  Do you want to know why I believe this? The answer can be found in a prophecy spoken by Jesus to Peter a few days earlier:

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren. (Luke 22: 31-32 NKJ)

How would you like to receive a prophetic word like this? And then, have it come to pass? Wouldn’t you be so discouraged that you’d believe your calling had been tossed out of the windows of heaven? Forever and ever!

This particular discourse between Jesus and Peter is the most personal and intimate conversation recorded in the New Testament. It reveals the compassion and love the Head of the Church has for an individual and his unique calling.

But yes, there are some other scriptures with a “Feed the sheep” theme.

(Continued in Part 16).

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 and Part 13.

What peerage titles come to mind when you think about the Kingdom of God? Prince? Princess? Duke? Duchess? Baron? Baroness? Earl? Countess? Lord? Lady?

Probably none of these, right?

We only think about the King, the Lord Jesus, when we consider the Kingdom of God.

But as you know, the Kingdom of God is not a democracy or a dictatorship. No one is ever elected to head it or can take it over by a coup d’etat. It is an ongoing, never-ending kingdom with the King being the supreme ruler and authority over His royal monarchy. And royal monarchies usually have peerage titles, right?

So, this being the case, what are the various titles for all the different citizens of the kingdom of God?

But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)

The only title given in Scripture for a citizen of the Kingdom of God is son. No other hierarchical or peerage titles are mentioned at all, as in none, zero, nada and zip.

And guess what?

Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  (Matthew 25:34)

The Kingdom of God was a part of the Father’s plan when He created the world, even before the creation of the first man.  How awesome is that?

And yet, the Father’s plan only includes a King and His sons. No other hierarchical levels were ever envisioned by our Father, as in never-ever-never!

Every believing reader, or at least 99.9% of you, would most likely agree with me so far, right?

Then, if the above is true, why would the King allow feudal fiefdoms known as traditional churches to exist in His kingdom, with lords in the pulpits and peasants in the pews? Is it possible the Kingdom and the Church oppose each other, as in America’s separation of church and state policies?

The answers are simple: the Church was created along the same lines as the Kingdom of God without any artificial hierarchical separation known as the clergy classes or the laity classes. Period.

After all, what is the message of the Church?

This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)

The word gospel is a shortened form of the phrase the gospel of the Kingdom of God. This is the church’s message to a hopeless world.

So, admittedly, we Christians do not really understand the calling of pastor or the role of leaders in the Kingdom of God or the Church, right?

(Continued in Part 15.)

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

In early 1994, I drove back to Illinois to attend a high school friend’s funeral. It was held in a small church and I sat with my parents in a middle row of the sanctuary.

As I sat there on the wooden pew,  listening to the pastor, the Holy Spirit interrupted my thoughts and blanked out all noise from the service and the people around me. I was there, but I wasn’t. Then, He spoke to me:

“My Church consists mainly of a bunch of nice losers,” He said. “They pray for the sick, and if the person dies, they aren’t angry and don’t really feel that bad about it. After all, they did their religious duty.

“Now, in Major League Baseball, both the winning teams and losing teams want to win; it’s a part of each player’s make-up. But after a while, the losing teams’ players don’t really mind losing anymore. They still receive large paychecks and enjoy all the fantastic benefits of just being a Major League player. So, losing is not such a big deal to them.

“But this is not true for the winning teams’ players. Each of these players hates to lose and will do anything and make whatever sacrifice is needed to win games. They absolutely hate losing!

“I want My Church to hate losing!”

The conversation ended and I began weeping so hard I thought I was going to vomit. My sister leaned over. “Don’t you think that you should get a hold of yourself? You’re making a scene,” she whispered.

I shrugged my shoulders. There was nothing I could do, nor did I care what others thought of me at that moment. I was devastated by the Holy Spirit’s description of the Church:  “a bunch of nice losers.“

Now, what’s funny is that I was upset with God for allowing my friend to die. I had witnessed to my friend over the years. Prayed for him. Fasted for him. Invested time in his healing. But still, he died and I was mad at God as I sat there in the pew!

So, wouldn’t you think that God would have corrected me about my anger at Him? And yet, He didn’t. Instead, He redirected my anger toward the Church’s losing attitudes.

From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:16)

(Continued in Part 13.)

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9.

Rather, the present-day pastor was born out of the single-bishop rule first spawned by Ignatius and Cyprian. The bishop evolved into the local presbyter. In the Middle Ages, the presbyter grew into the Catholic priest. During the Reformation, he was transformed into the “preacher,” “the minister,” and finally “the pastor” – the person upon whom all of Protestantism hangs. To boil it down to one sentence: The Protestant pastor is nothing more than a slightly reformed Catholic priest. (Again, we are speaking of the office and not the individual.) (Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna, Tyndale Publishing; pp. 141)

To have pastors in a church is Scriptural, but the present-day pastoral system is quite unscriptural; it is an invention of man. (The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee)

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional “holy man” doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive, religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalism of the church since Constantine has now been a persuasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Timothy 2:5),  “there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” God simply does not bless professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. (Houses That Change The World by Wolfgang Simson, pp.10)

“Larry is a stubborn believer,” says my wife, elongating the word stubborn so that it echoes off walls.

Okay, admittedly, I’m stubborn. But my stubbornness pertains mainly to when I believe I’ve heard the voice of the Lord.  And if I think I’ve heard the Lord, then I will hang on until something happens or the Lord loosens my grip.

Have I ever erred in thinking it was the voice of the Lord when it wasn’t? Yes, I have my share of wrong presumptions under my belt…and the scars to prove it.

But as Graham Cooke says, “I’d rather err on the side of presumption than to not step out in faith when I believe the Lord has spoken to me. Presumption isn’t a sin, but fear is.”

I agree with Cooke.

And yet, when the Lord asked us to walk away from the traditional church system, I really struggled with it. I felt as though we were the only people in the whole world doing something as ridiculous as this.

Thanks to the internet, I soon learned that millions of believers in the United States were doing the exact same thing. I read books by Gene Edwards, Frank Viola, Wolfgang Simson, Watchman Nee and others. All of these encouraged me on my journey out

In a nutshell, Edwards, Viola, Simson, Nee and others proclaim the royal priesthood of the believers (1 Peter 2:9) and denounce the unscriptural clergy-laity separation in the traditional church system.

Though I agree with the teachings of the above men, I have a different passion for ecouraging people to exit the tradition church system, especially on the West Coast.

(Continued in Part 11.)

Larry Who’s writings and teachings appear on this site on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s  a little of this and a little of that, all written  to encourage and exhort believers in their Christian journeys.

Click on following for earlier articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

Have you ever had a prophetic word spoken to you which made you grit your teeth and hope it was wrong? As in…really wrong?

“You’ve been searching for a home, and the one you’ve found, is not it,” said Jim Goll to us at a meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

If Honey and I could have chosen any prophetic word not to hear, this would have been the one. At the time, we had moved  eleven times to seven cities in six different states in less than two years of marriage. We were feeling like the lost tribe of Israel, looking for the Promised Land.

Our response to  Goll’s words: “He could be wrong, right?”

But he was not.

Since that prophetic word in 1997, Honey and I have moved at least eighteen more times to nine different cities in three more states.

Now, in each city, we have attended some awesome churches. Metro Christian (Kansas City, MO). All Nations Church (Charlotte, NC). Vineyard Churches. Four-Square. Baptist. Friends. Non-denominational and countless others. We’ve met and fellowshipped with numerous believers; all of whom we would have enjoyed to stay around forever.

Yet, while I was driving my pickup truck on West Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia, I had a quick vision. In it, I saw a white iron lung. It was like the machines which were used in the 1950’s to help polio victims support their breathing during acute polio infections.

There was not an individual in the iron lung, but instead, the American traditional church system was on life support. It was barely breathing. I looked toward the back of the iron lung, and what I saw there shocked me. The unit was not plugged into a normal electrical outlet, but rather, it was plugged into bags and bags of money.

As I looked on, a voice spoke to me: “Pull the plug!”

Then, the vision ended.

Later that day, Honey and I prayed about the vision. We felt that we were supposed to leave the traditional church system; and we did.

Now to be honest, Honey and I thought (like Elijah) that we were the only ones who were asked by the Holy Spirit to leave the American church system. But thanks to the internet, we soon learned about millions of others who had similar experiences.

Hey, what about the separation of clergy and laity? Is it scriptural?

(Continued in Part 9.)

Larry Who’s writings and teachings appear on this site on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s  a little of this and a little of that, all written  to encourage and exhort believers in their Christian journeys.