Why I left the Calvary Chapel Movement
© Mike Druckenmiller Sr. October 9, 2005
If you look at a blog-like post titled: Passion-n-Worship you will see my chief complaint.
(This and the fact that when writing national leaders about areas they have expressed public concern about I haven't even gotten an acknowledgment from a secretary.)
This is about six months after I delivered a sermon, ‘Stir Up the gift’, at my local Calvary Chapel. Those who have heard this message which can be downloaded by joining: Yahoo Groups misc_bible_stuff, will quickly see that while I am a Pentecostal I do not believe in unbridled emotionalism.
In fact after delivering that sermon, and going on record, I probably have disqualified myself from ever having ‘Papers’ in the Assemblies of God as they are quite adamant that Tongues is the initial evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God.
I do, too. But, I am not always clear in these areas because sometimes the over emphasis on Tongues clouds a far more serious issue of ‘fat Christians’ who refuse the Spirit’s Cleanup and Growth process.
Jesus doesn’t clean the house to let it return to being a pig sty. The Holy Spirit will not remain a guest in a pig sty where there is not at least some effort at allowing the house to be cleaned and continue towards being spotless.
Further, the over emphasis on Tongues often leads one to believe that they have ‘arrived’. Which is patently not true. An old evangelist once said, when asked the question of what you get when you get Filled with God’s Spirit, “Trouble, with a capital ‘T’!”
Bob Mumford shares that there was a time when he thought he had 'arrived' and the Lord spoke to him and said, very gently, ‘Bob, you and I are incompatible’. Bob, answers, ‘Yes, Lord, I know that’. (Thinking everything is cool.) The Lord answers back, a bit more insistent and forceful, “I don’t change”.
Ouch!
Here’s the problem. When the Holy Spirit takes up residence He insists on changing you. You can either agree with the changes and co-operate. Or, He will, finally, move out.
Far too many Pentecostals and Charismatics misunderstand is that the process of Speaking in Tongues in not long term proof of the Spirit’s Presence. Only an initial proof.
When you open yourself to the Holy Spirit, He opens your human Spirit to the Spirit Realm and Speaking in Tongues becomes ‘native’. You can Speak to yourself in Tongues without a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit once the Spirit realm has been opened to you.
(This should also serve as a warning to those who are naturally spiritually sensitive that they routinely test the spirits to see if they are of God of not. And, if they are truly in the faith and in relationship with Christ.)
OK, enough of that… Join the Group, hear my message, and, maybe, my meanderings will make sense.
I had left the Assemblies of God near my house and started attending Calvary Chapel because I had gone on TDY back to the Assemblies in response to a heavenly dream. I had been warned that it would not end well and to ‘steal myself’ against that final eventuality.
It didn’t end well at all with my own resignation after having been back all but a year. Then the pastor's a short time after I left.
I am thankful that the Lord didn’t ask me to prophesy or demand his departure because my own respect for the office of a pastor would have put me in serious jeopardy with the Spirit.
So, with this background it was not ‘strange’ when about the same time that I shared my ‘Stir Up The Gift’ message that the Lord put in my heart that Calvary Chapel was my own ‘Brook Cherith’.
There is one problem with Brook Cherith even though it was the Prophets Respite.
It dried up…
That was something I refused to think on. But, which kept being forced on me by the Spirit both in my heart and by happenstances.
The final straw was when I had heard that my constant encouraging to improve the Congregations Passion for service, Passion in Worship and Passion in Prayer for one another was construed to mean I wanted charity for health problems.
WRONG! I don’t want their money! I want their tears in prayers. Because when health is an issue it quickly snowballs and you can pour funds into such a project day and night without end and without success. No, what I and my family needs is the Miraculous.
(Quite frankly… I am tired of being an object lesson without the compensation of people actually learning from it! And, I now wonder why Paul didn’t deck Agabus when he tied Paul up!)
At any rate it only recently ‘clicked’ that it wasn’t necessarily anything I said or the way I shared that caused the misconstruing of my motives.
No, recent communications with another current Calvary Chapel adherent in Chino have convinced me that it is endemic to the Calvary Chapel Movement.
Writings by Chuck Smith, and others, have convinced me that there is a pathological fear of the Passion of the Holy Spirit amongst Calvary Chapels.
While I highly recommend the constant systematic study of God’s Word there is a need for topical messages as well.
And, even though there has been a 5th column of interest in becoming more overtly Spirit-Filled, I am very concerned that the church culture has already quashed any such direction.
That, what one of their own leaders has stated about their emphasis on Rightly Dividing God’s Word that in all their emphasis on being Right that they are might become ‘Dead’ Right.
I have to wonder if that eventuality has not already been written in stone?
So it is with this backdrop that I wrote my initial meanderings on Passion-n-Worship.
Remember...
people on the outside looking in can only be jealous if they see we have something demonstratably better than what they have…
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