Who's Going to be Held Accountable?

 When I was the young age of twelve, my church at the time was deeply entrenched in the charismatic movement. Although we were a Baptist church by name, we were fully devoted to the non-denominational evangelical mindset of the mid-1990s and beyond. The movement swept through our city and we were at the forefront. It was told to me by those in leadership that the Holy Spirit was moving in these last times, revealing Himself to His Church in ways not before seen. God was a doing a Nu Thang - excuse me - a new thing in our midst and if we didn't embrace it we would be left behind. The movement of the Holy Spirit was said to be available to all people. All you had to do was at the end of the service go up to the front for prayer and the Holy Spirit would meet you in a powerful and personal way. One thing was very clear to me: by staying in the pew during this part of the service was akin to saying to God - "No thanks, God. Not today". And so, I went up. Week after week. Month after month. I fell down often. I would shake violently. I would sob uncontrollably. At times I would laugh for no reason and not just briefly: sometimes upwards of 5 or 10 minutes straight. There was no explanation given to me for all of these experiences. It was simply told me that this was how the Holy Spirit was working.

This went on for several months. I remember on my thirteenth birthday my Mom and I attended a seminar at our church about praying for people at the end of the service. In order to pray for people one had to go through teaching, because apparently it was important that this prayer be done in a correct manner. Was I excited by all this? - I'm not really sure. I wanted to do the right thing and since this was an important aspect to the Christian experience (or so I was taught) I wanted to be there, to learn all that I could. The biggest takeaway from the evening was some advice given to us by the speaker who was explaining what happens when we pray for people, and what to watch out for. We were told to be careful when praying for people because if they weren't receptive to the Holy Spirit then what could happen is that the Holy Spirit would "bounce" off of them and be returned to you as the person praying. And then you would fall down. So we were to make sure that there was room behind us so we wouldn't get hurt when we fell down.

Yeah, the church split after that.

I should clarify that the split wasn't due to the seminar, but all of this teaching eventually caused friction. Some people went off and started their own Charismatic church, others went off and became Anglican. Others stayed and weathered the storm. Our family stayed. And as time went on, the memory of such things began to wane in the general population. Years past and new folks joined the church unaware of our storied past. But it was never spoken about. When our pastor stepped down, it would be several years until a new pastor came. During that time a team of elders led the congregation, but still, nobody really spoke of the past. I've been away from that particular church for four and a half years now, and up until the final days nobody spoke of it. I heard rumblings in the background that certain people were wondering whatever happened to those days? Why don't those things happen anymore? We surely lost something precious.

I think people forget the absurdity of what was going on. In hindsight, there is much more evidence that this movement was not the Holy Spirit, and what is most troubling to me is that nobody was held accountable for bringing it into the church in the first place. How can a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit that touched so many lives be only for a brief period in the mid-1990s? It makes very little sense.

But we continue on in time. After all of that, in came the "prophets". Prophecy teams from other churches would come to our church in our pastorless days and "prophesy" over people. Nothing ever came from it. It was all designed to make people feel better about themselves. If you were struggling financially and someone from a "Prophetic Team" told you that financial blessing was coming your way - yeah, that would make me feel good, too. But did it ever happen? No. Or the prophecies were so vague that anything could fulfill them. What was the point of the prophecy in that case? Did anybody follow up with us as to those prophecies? No. Was anybody ever held accountable? Again, no.

But we continued on. Then came various dispensational movements about Israel, and blood moons. Yes, those blood moons which were supposed to mark the greatest and most important time in the history of the world. Yeah, nobody ever talks about them anymore. Was anyone ever held accountable for this? No, of course not.

But we continued on. Before I joined the Orthodox Church I found this pattern happen again and again. New teachings would appear. New prophetic ideas. New teachers teaching things we'd never heard about. And in the end, they all passed away, to make room for the next latest and greatest thing. Nobody ever questioned the validity of such a process. Nobody seemed to care. Personally, I was quite fed up with this pattern and went looking for something, anything, that would break this cycle. I quickly discovered that my answers lied not in anything new, but in something quite ancient.

Five years yesterday, I first stepped foot into the church I now attend, and I found within it something precious. In Orthodox Christianity there is no searching for something new and exciting. The Christian life and experience is not fundamentally different today than it was 100, 200, or even 2000 years ago. History is rife with people trying to bring in new and innovative teachings into the church, and you know what? They were held accountable, and they had to either repent or leave, but nothing could be allowed to tarnish the precious teachings that Christ and His Apostles and the Fathers of the Church have handed down to us, generation by generation. In Orthodoxy I found peace and safety. 

Do not get me wrong: there is a tremendous amount of freedom of thought within the Orthodox Church, but there *are* boundaries; boundaries that cannot be crossed. And that's a good thing, because when we are allowed to innovate, we start thinking that the Holy Spirit is something that can bounce off of people.

May the Lord bless you all,

Joey