Is It Possible? Is It Probable?

[votivesoul]

In The Winds of God by Ethel Goss, she records her husband's biography, and in it, it is stated that a great many of the brethren back then were absolutely opposed to "organizing".

But what happened is that so many were going through, pretending to be a preacher, promising some great revival, for an upfront fee, and churches and saints everywhere were getting fleeced.

This is what caused the brethren to finally decide organization was the correct way to go, as it allowed those who carried membership to prove to any church or saint, who he was, what he believed, and if he was a good fit for them as a pastor, evangelist, or etc.

Essentially, the effort was to protect brothers and sisters in Christ from false prophets.

It seems like a noble ideal. But for me, it raises the question: Where did Jesus ever say we needed to piggyback a man-made organization onto the church in order to protect the saints from false prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing?

It seems to me the way churches and saints do that is by knowing the Word for themselves, to keep the commandments of God, and obey the Lord, and if they do that, the Spirit will lead and guide them into all truth without so much as a single organization necessary.

My conclusion, as it stands now, is that, these many decades later, the attempts and successes of organizing the Apostolic Pentecostal movement was not the correct approach.

Now, it is rare to find churches full of people who know their Word, who are actively ministering their gifts and callings, who are engaged in their community to win the lost. So many churches are full of passive people who desire that someone else do all the ministering, so they can have therapeutic experiences while doing nothing else to bring the catharsis about.

The fires of revival that existed back then, the zeal to evangelize and disseminate the Gospel was so much more powerful and all-encompassing. Now, saints are trained to simply invite someone to a building on a particular day so someone can sing at them and someone can collect their cash, and someone can give their commentary about the Bible, and the person who did the inviting either thinks they've shared the Gospel simply by inviting, or feels like the ones who don't come at the appointed time must not have a hunger and thirst for righteousness, for truth, for God, because they decline the invite.

I think organizing has led to a lot of good in many notable ways, but like anything else, if the heavens are going to be shaken, then so shall everything else, including organizations and effort to keep the monolith the way it is.

But it's also led to a lot of cloistering, minister worship, ministry coveting, unsanctified laziness, stress and burn-out at lack of "results", strife and division over who can and cannot serve in the Kingdom of God, foolish building programs and arguments and fights over money, and other such things that are completely incongruent with the commission the church received on the Mount of Olives.

I do not think the creation of the UPCI was the "will of God", since there is no clear command in the Holy Scriptures for the creation of such. Sure, we should "know them that labor among us", and all of that, but that can be done simply by communicating with each other through organic networking over the phone and internet.

When I was a part of a UPCI affiliated church, we had a lot of card-carrying members come through, who were recommended by the "org" because they needed to raise funds to get back to wherever, or to get themselves to the next church somewhere else, and in many cases, they ended up being nutters and frauds who caused us to have to do damage control after they did their thing in the pulpit.

In this way, organizing hasn't helped much. Rather, it has caused a lot of obligation and blindness of problems in and among the brethren, because we don't want to dare say a word against another member of the organization, even if they are off the rails wack-o. People in my wife's extended family are in the UPCI, and whenever we were around them, it was always "no one likes a bad report", and whatever other excuses for licensed ministers who were more problem than solution.