People in Glass Houses Page 14
Puritan and Calvanist Jonathan Edwards did it first in 1735 at Northhampton, Massachusetts church meetings that were heralded as ‘the First Great Awakening’. He worked the crowd into a frenzy of evangelistic terror, preaching a turn-or-burn message that would make any Southern Baptist proud. His failure was that his dramatics incited too much fear, and several people went on to commit suicide. Presbyterian minister Charles Finney outdid Edwards four years later using the same methods, inspiring the crowd but implanting messages of hope and salvation in people’s minds rather than damnation and punishment.
He had much more favourable success and retention rates. Originally, preaching was the focus of the Pentecostal church.
When a musical item was performed, pastors sat alongside the stage to watch. Piece by piece, the preaching proportion of the stage was reduced, and the musical elements expanded. The pulpit is now the visitor to a platform arranged around instruments and sheet-music stands. Hillsong’s new building was acoustically designed for album recordings.
Hillsong has done for Christian music what the Dixie Chicks did for country and western: made it blond, sexy and mainstream. This is no accident. As the Hillsong music conference became more successful, so did the ‘church’. When musical director Geoff Bullock left in 1995, it was a perfect opportunity to throw young, fair, female Darlene Zschech out of the back-up frying pan and into the leaders’ fire. The gracious and lovely Darlene replaced Geoff’s masculine profile on the frontline with one that had never been so damn cute. Darlene is now an international Christian star in her own right, a preacher, and still calls Hillsong church home.
Neither Darlene nor any of the spin-off music ministries were around for Hillsong’s real ‘praise and worship’ beginnings. Geoff Bullock and some friends were dope-smoking musicians before they met Jesus. They used to sit around and try to recreate the music of ELO and Genesis. When they became Christians, Geoff simply recreated the same music style for ‘praise and worship’. As the eighties progressed, music teams adapted to the tastes of the public using similar styles and riffs. Pub rock was big in Australia at the time, and the music team used as much of it as they could to keep the crowds rolling to church.
Hillsong ‘worship’ music takes up between a third and half of the time spent in the building at a service. The ‘bring them to church’ instruction is not just to get them saved. When you are ushered into the auditorium, like entering a giant concert stadium, you are in a completely controlled sensory zone. The music is useful for getting you to the building and keeping you there long enough for recruitment purposes.
American hypnotist Dick Sutphen says that the techniques used in ‘trance-inducing churches’ are the same as the ones he uses to induce patients into an hypnotic state. The difference, he argues, is that his patients are aware they are being hypnotised.
A repetitive beat, ideally ranging from 45 to 72 beats per minute (a rhythm close to the beat of the human heart), is very hypnotic and can generate an eyes-open altered state of consciousness in a very high percentage of people. And, once you are in an alpha state, you are at least 25 times as suggestible as you would be in full beta consciousness. The music is probably the same for every service, or incorporates the same beat, and many of the people will go into an altered state almost immediately upon entering the sanctuary. Subconsciously, they recall their state of mind from previous services and respond according to the posthypnotic programming.
Very simply, the basis of persuasion is always to access your right brain. The left half of your brain is analytical and rational. The right side is creative and imaginative. So, the idea is to distract the left brain and keep it busy … Thought-stopping techniques are used to cause the mind to go ‘fl at’. These are altered state of consciousness techniques that initially induce calmness by giving the mind something simple to deal with and focusing awareness. Continued use brings on a feeling of elation and eventually hallucination. The result is the reduction of thought and eventually, if used long enough, the cessation of all thought and withdrawal from everyone and everything except that which the controllers direct. The takeover is then complete. It is important to be aware that when members or participants are instructed to use thought-stopping techniques, they are told that they will benefit by so doing: they will become ‘better soldiers’ or ‘find enlightenment’.
There are three primary techniques used for thought stopping. The first is marching: the thump, thump, thump beat literally generates self-hypnosis and thus great susceptibility to suggestion.
The second thought-stopping technique is meditation. If you spend an hour to an hour and a half a day in meditation, after a few weeks, there is a great probability that you will not return to full beta consciousness and you will remain in a fixed state of alpha for as long as you continue to meditate. I’m not saying this is bad—if you do it yourself. It may be very beneficial. But it is a fact that you are causing your mind to go flat. I’ve worked with meditators on an EEG machine and the results are conclusive: the more you meditate, the flatter your mind becomes until eventually, and especially if used to excess or in combination with decognition, all thought ceases.The third thought-stopping technique is chanting, and often chanting in meditation. ‘Speaking in tongues’ could also be included in this category.2
After 45 minutes of music, a message is repeated to a ready audience. Is it coincidence that Brian used the word ‘purpose’ 124 times in fifty-three minutes during his opening address to the public at the 2005 International AoG Conference? Possibly, until I counted Pastor Ashley Evans from Paradise Church doing the same thing at the same conference with the word ‘authority’, this time 141 usages in fifty-two minutes.
Sometimes the visiting pastors yell so harshly, I’d do anything they say to get them to stop screaming at me.
MYSTICAL MANIPULATION
There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
All thought-reform programs use mystical manipulation. Pentecostals are defined by signs and wonders and, whether or not they abound, you will be convinced they’re there anyway.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘When Pharaoh says to you, “Perform a miracle”, then say to Aaron, “Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh” and it will become a snake’.
So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned the wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians who did the same things by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said. (Exodus 7:18–13)
In the holy-roller days of the fifties and sixties, evangelists had demons flying all over the circus top. Crowds were sweaty and excited, all revved up for revival, leaping out of wheelchairs and sickbeds. It was easier then to demonstrate the power, the greatness and the wrath of Almighty God.
These days, as long as the conference is running smoothly and the sound system doesn’t fail, it’s evidence that God is here tonight, Amen? Can’t you just feel him? I tell you, he’s doing some amazing things tonight and he’s already done some powerful works in the lives of people tonight. Our God is a great God, isn’t he? And all the believers said? Amen.
God shows up the most at the end which is why, traditionally, it’s always kind of okay to be late for church. It’s always after the people have worshipped that the signs and wonders follow. The 2006 Colour Your World conference invitation arrived from Hill-song with the news that the final week was already booked out.
No surprise. The biggest blessings come as a finale, like the closing night of a concert tour.
In the small church times, it was easy to prove that God was there. Someone would prophesy something, the choir would sing with extra heart, someone would start speaking in tongues who never did before. Modern times made it harder to get people to do these sorts of publicly embarrassing things when from out of nowhere came the most unusual phenomenon. Then the games began.
Like the origins of World War I, there is debate about at which moment the Toronto Blessing started. What is certain is that Dr Rodney Howard-Browne, a South African evangelist who settled in the States in 1987, made it internationally famous in the nineties. Howard-Browne is reported to have been preaching just outside of Albany, New York in April 1989 when holy laughter broke out. People began laughing, swaying, crying and acting as if they were drunk: ‘Worshippers are overcome by laughing, weeping, groaning, shaking, falling and, to the chagrin of some, noise-making that has been described as “a cross between a jungle and a farmyard.” But of greater significance are the reports of changed lives: healings, restored relationships and increased fervor for God.’3On 20 January 1994, several revival meetings were held at a small church located in a Toronto industrial complex. The ‘holy’ laughter broke out there as well. Preacher Randy Clark had spent time with Howard-Browne the previous year. Following this, it was believed that whosoever visited the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church in Canada would receive the Toronto Blessing. When they returned, they would bring back Godgerms, and all the people in their home church would start laughing and crying and rolling around as well.
This international Christian Mexican wave infiltrated the majority of Pentecostal churches around the world, with the endorsement by all of Pentecostalism’s big brass as the twentieth century’s best Sign and Wonder. The Christian channel TBN broadcast it, televangelist Benny Hinn sold its mysticism to his audiences, and the Vineyard Movement capitalised on it. It was marketed as a cleansing of God’s church before his return and as a more liberal alternative to the moralistic Assemblies of God.
‘My little nine-year-old daughter Jordan came to the first night service and Rodney laid hands on her,’ said (Oral Roberts’ son) Richard Roberts. ‘She fell to the ground and laughed for an hour and 45 minutes. When we tried putting her to bed, she fell out laughing. We finally had to put her in the bathtub.’4 The Toronto Blessing re inforced every participant’s belief that the Spirit was alive and well and living in their church. It spread like wildfire, despite being denounced by other Pentecostal churches, until the late nineties when it burnt out, although outbreaks are still reported in small congregations.
Spontaneous eruptions of the supernatural are unmeasurable, and not directly profitable. Prosperity is the real Pentecostal stigmata: money in the bank shows that you’ve had a tangible spiritual encounter with God and church leaderships hope it rubs off like Toronto.
DEMAND FOR PURITY
The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
Good Christians are supposed to be in the world, since God made it for everyone to enjoy, but not of the world, meaning they shouldn’t share its flesh-driven values. You can mix with the sinners, but you mustn’t wish you were one of them.
Fundamentalist Christians have brought the demand for a spotless Bride of Christ to a new and improved, stain-removing best. It’s no longer about getting down to the sinner’s level, it’s about making sure the doors are locked so tightly none of the bad guys can get in.
It was always a case of Us vs Them. The difference now is that We used to feel sorry for Them, and cheer on the day when They might be converted. Now, We are threatened by Them, the Great Unsaved, because They might take Our Freedom, Our Families, Our Profit Margins.
Christians have to be very protective of who they let in. Brian made this confusingly clear when he spoke at the beginning of 2005 on ‘who you should sit with’. He explained that We are supposed to be the salt of the earth, so We should interact with Them.
And it’s all right, he went on to say, to stand with people and talk, as he himself had done at the kids’ footy barbecues where the language turned ugly. You can walk with Them, you can stand with Them, but you can’t sit with Them. When you sit with Them, then you’re a part of Them.
Maybe that was my problem. I was more Them than Us and that became increasingly obvious as the years went by. I liked Them much better. They had aisles of diversity in their super-store. We were so homogenous in our one-shop town, it was like making conversation with drone bees at the hive. The extraordinary part was most of Them said that We could join in Their reindeer games.
Which meant They were more inclusive and understanding than We ever were. And We were supposed to be the ones loving Them!
Nothing much has changed. Jewels will suffer for being in this book. I understand we’re not supposed to be friends with people who aren’t friends with Our Destiny. This has been bugging me.
I have always felt that I was a friend of Jewels’s destiny, whatever that may be. Besides, if We were so sure what Our Destinies were, We’d be fortune-tellers, wouldn’t We?
It takes constant work to stay uncluttered by the rest of the world. It means you have to let a lot of people go. If they’re not for you, they’re against you. Mustn’t let people get in the way of Destiny. Whoever They may be.
CULTURE OF CONFESSION
Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members’ ‘sins’, ‘attitudes’, and ‘faults’ are discussed and exploited by the leaders.
My best friend knew that Santa was coming to town. When she was three, she was so obsessed with Santa’s omnipresence that she thought he could see her everywhere including the toilet, leading to a nasty trip to the doctor’s office.
I was the same about God up until only recently. When you have a biblical worldview, there’s no escape. As a good Christian, I did nothing wrong, so there was nothing to see when people saw through me. As a bad Christian, I knew everybody could see through me and what a hopeless, futile backslider they saw. Either way, I knew that everyone knew everything about me by looking at me. So I’ve always been a great confessor of sins. To anyone who looks at me oddly.
Not ever having been a new Christian, I never went through the deprogramming of my ‘old’ life. Thought-reform programs and fundamentalist churches get new participants to confess all their wrongdoings, so that they can always be recalled as the labels from their past: former alcoholic, former adulterer, former Catholic, former homosexual, all of them crowd pleasers. This inevitably leads to a culture of continual confession. That way, leaving is only going back to that former life like a dog returning to his vomit, the bible says. Everybody else then knows exactly what we’re dealing with. Confidentiality has never been a strong point in the Assemblies of God, and there’s a fine reason for that.
More than life or money itself, Pentecostals love gossip. They couldn’t exist without it. They are the original network marketers. All out of a sincere desire to please God. They don’t call it gossip. The bible says gossip is bad. Initially, when you get saved, they call it ‘confession as a sign of genuine repentance’. After all, repentance means to turn away from your old life, so you better tell us what your old life was like. A few times, if it’s interesting.
Then there’s follow-up to see how you’re going. New Christian follow-up, post-surgery follow-up, new baby follow-up. It’s called pastoral care. Concern. We want to know what’s been going on for you. Because we pray for you. And we still remember where you came from, all that time ago.
Once you decide to join a home bible study or cell group, it’s called sharing with family. You can tell everybody in your cosy home meeting your marriage problems or your financial troubles.
Bible study leaders are able to take their concerns back to leadership because that’s cal
led accountability.
The majority of people will only ever confess once to a superior, particularly if either the superior or the confessor has an important church role in leadership. Most pastors have nothing to offer but their own advice. Their expertise stems from wanting a successful church. Marriage and financial troubles look bad in a church that is supposed to be blemish-free for presentation to Christ. The Pentecostal ideal is that once you are saved, you disappear into an abyss of joy. You’re saved, what else do you need?
You’re forgiven and your problems are solved. The end.
Should you choose to confess to the pastor that you’re still wrestling with sin, it’s unlikely you will do it again. Not when confidentiality expires within the hour, and then you find yourself rostered on less often for choir practice. Luckily, Hillsong is one big family so if you need to unburden, you have plenty of relatives around.
SACRED SCIENCE
The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
Once a Pentecostal convert has been thoroughly disoriented, they must begin a very important phase called ‘the renewing of the mind’. One’s dirty old fleshly mind is full of sinful thoughts that must be cleaned out immediately.
This process of indoctrination has as many arms as an octopus, all vital for survival in this new, previously unrealised spiritual world. We know that Satan will try to get you back any way he can, so you have to keep yourself pure in body, surroundings and thought. Satan loves to attack people in the mind.