The New Denominations!

from The Patmos Paper E-magazine

God recently woke me up from an afternoon nap and as I lay there he spoke to me the words “Come out from among them and be separate”. I know that Paul was talking about God’s people coming out of idolatry but as I lay there I asked the Lord to explain what He was saying. He said “Denominations are dying because they have left my precepts and squelched my Spirit.” I remember having recently read how thousands of people had left the Presbyterian Church denomination since the 1970”s because they slowly compromised the Word by embracing abortion, homosexuality, and abandoned the doctrine of the deity of Christ and had ruled against many cardinal foundational biblical truths. The problem with denominations is that they have a central headquarters that often speak for or control the local church.

The Lord then shocked me as he continued to speak to my heart. “The time has come when many so called non-denomination churches are going to become denominations.” I thought to myself “How is that possible?” and the Lord began to tell me that it will be worse because now one church will control many churches and many churches would give up their autonomy so they could have the look and feel of big churches.

Then he simply said the word “campuses”. I had recently heard that word and knew that this was becoming the new pattern in many churches. In our area it started with a local mega church called 12 Stones. They got so big that they started opening up other churches but instead of setting up a local pastor to preach and lead the services they bought expensive lighting and screens and remotely patched in the pastor of the main church so that members basically came to church and watched the sermon of the main pastor on a screen.

I thought this was crazy but soon many mega churches followed suit and now instead of local independent churches there were large churches in one city with “campuses” in others. They streamed the same sermon and often insisted that all the campuses play the exact list of worship songs. Now I am aware of at least four mega churches that are following this pattern in my city.

As I lay in bed with all this going through my head, suddenly my iPad on my night stand dings and it’s a notification. When I look at it I see it is a video notification from a world renown TV prophet and teacher announcing that the following day in his church it would be historic for they were officially setting up his multi-million dollar church and youth ministry to be more than a church but an organization with plans to set up “campuses” in other cities later all across the nation. Wow! Talk about confirmation.

This led me to do some research online. I was shocked to see how many non-denomination churches are doing this. From Free Chapel in Georgia to Rick Warren’s Saddleback church you see the trend of campuses being set up rather than churches. Now there are a lot of variations and different levels of autonomy but clearly the pattern is as the Lord told me. Non denominations have become denominations. I went to one of their websites and was surprised to see the heading: “The same church, many locations”. Many are even making “online campuses” as well for those who can’t make it to their services (although their money sure can).

It saddens me to see this trend because it eventually is going to make it harder for the Spirit of God to work. I see the youth flocking to these with all the hype, show and entertainment. Though today you may see the hands lifted up and the name of Jesus often spoken it will only eventually lead in the way of the Presbyterian and Methodist and other denominations. Many started from great revivals by Finney and Wesley and were sparked by great moves of God but sadly often in time spontaneous revival turns into organized religion.

Paul and Barnabas were called by God to go preach the gospel and raise up churches (initially in homes) so they could be led by the spirit and godly men not organizations. They were never intended to be controlled by the church in Jerusalem or Rome or anywhere else. This is a time when we need more small churches to get involved in and less big churches to get lost in. We need to tone down the music and tune in the Spirit. We need revelations not sermons. In other words we need to hear from God more and man less. The gifts of the spirit have given way to plays and production and concert like entertainment.

We tickle the ear rather than prick the heart. We mingle with the masses at the foot of the mount worshiping the golden calf as we play rather then climb the lonely mount to hear His voice and tremble at his holiness.

The Jesus movement took three letters off and it became the us movement. The charismatic movement left the gifts and power and became the charisma pastor and all star band. Perhaps we should consider that much of church has become and idol and heed Paul’s words to “come out from among them and be ye separate.”