Post by Daniel on May 4, 2016 9:30:22 GMT -5
Inside the Popular, Controversial Bethel Church
Martyn Wendell Jones/ April 24, 2016
I have seen a man dance holding a translucent scarf, the fabric billowing around his spinning form like a garment made of stars. I have prayed for strangers’ healing from high-blood pressure and unspecified neurological disorders. I have wept with salt-faced abandon as four women prayed over me; I have walked through a “fire tunnel”; I have seen a woman bob in Hasidic fashion over the Bible app on her smartphone.
I experienced all this at the increasingly famous (and, to some, infamous) Bethel Church, and I did so as an evangelical Christian of Reformed persuasion. My parents named me for the Welsh pastor-theologian Martyn Lloyd-Jones. My father is a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Jonathan Edwards is one of my guiding lights, Wheaton College is my alma mater, and I attend a Presbyterian church in Toronto where I have never heard anyone speak or pray in tongues.
Yet Bethel has been on my mind since a friend prayed for my healing at a campground in Wisconsin in 2010. She introduced me to the teachings of Bethel’s senior pastor, Bill Johnson, and gave me a few of his books. As Bethel grows, you might very well hear from a few people in your congregation who have traveled to Redding to find out if Bethel is “real”—and who come back proclaiming that revival is under way.
When I set out for Bethel Church—a hub of a global revival movement—I half-expected to discover a rogue organization of hucksters intent on subverting the faith. And I half-expected to discover a community of believers more earnest and devoted to God than anyone I’d ever met. In the end, what I discovered in Redding, California, didn’t fit either narrative neatly.
Bethel Church sits atop a hill with a view that encompasses the mountains of Northern California. International flags flap at the ends of tall poles lining both sides of the road up the hill. I take a left just after passing the Israeli flag and enter the parking lot. The sky is bright and striped with a handful of skinny clouds. In the distance, Mount Shasta interrupts the surrounding range, its profile sharp like the beak of a bird of prey.
Four sizable ministries share a joint foundation here. Founded in 1952 by Robert Doherty, Bethel Church was affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination from 1954 until 2006, when the church voted with near unanimity to become an independent entity. With an average weekly attendance of 8,684 and a yearly operating budget of over $9 million, the church provides offices and facilities for Bethel’s other ministries.
Among these, iBethel is the church’s international platform, and it has given Johnson and company considerable influence among charismatic Christians all over the world. Those who follow Bethel’s teaching at a distance come to Redding to enroll for anywhere between one and three years in the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM), an unaccredited program where students are trained to be become “revivalists.” Johnson and Kris Vallotton founded the school in 1998 with 36 students; today more than 2,000 from 57 countries and 45 states are enrolled.
In addition to iBethel and BSSM, Bethel Music was founded on this hill. The worship team produces tracks that rival Hillsong’s in their uplift and production values; at the time of this writing, one of its live albums was the No.1 album on iTunes, above Adele, Justin Bieber, and Coldplay.
Revival is the unifying theme at Bethel, and the word means far more here than increased personal piety. At Bethel, I had heard, people are healed all the time. The church keeps a log of healing stories on their website. YouTube videos seem to show glittering clouds of material falling from the ceiling that Bethel people identify as “gold dust.” They also report an occasional admixture of “angel feathers” and a “Shekinah glory cloud.” There are those here who cast out demons and raise the dead.
At least they claim to. Throngs of Christians argue that Bethel is a damaging presence in the American church, and that the miracles are false. Bart McCurdy, an evangelical in Redding, told me that in the church’s preaching and teaching, “there is never a call for repentance or faith in Christ—never. It is all about experience and signs and wonders.”
At John MacArthur’s 2013 Strange Fire conference, dedicated to exposing excesses of the charismatic movement, Phil Johnson said of Bethel, “There’s so much nonsense coming out of Redding that I frankly don’t have time to catalogue it all for you.” When I later asked him to elaborate, he said Bethel “constitutes a whole different message from biblical Christianity” that is “totally devoid of any true and consistent proclamation of the gospel.”
McCurdy, Johnson, and other critics believe Bethel to be instrumental in leading some Christians to embrace tenets of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement known for dominion theology and a belief in the continuing ministries of apostles and prophets alongside those of evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Bill Johnson is regularly listed as an NAR leader. He believes in the apostolic and prophetic ministries, but says the church does not have any official ties to the NAR.
Even still, more local controversies have involved Bethel from the moment in the mid-1990s when Johnson assumed his role and led the church’s singular, unyielding emphasis on revival.
In 2008, a decade after Johnson cofounded BSSM, two students were involved in an accident that left a man stricken at the base of a 200-foot cliff. Believing the man had died after falling off the cliff, the students spent hours trying to reach the victim in order to pray for him to be resurrected. They waited until the next morning to call emergency services. Recovered from the bank of the Sacramento River, the victim survived but remains paralyzed.
More recently, Beni Johnson (Bill’s wife) and other Bethel leaders have been said to practice “grave sucking” or “grave soaking,” purportedly a means of absorbing the spiritual anointing of deceased Christians by lying atop their graves. Accusations of mixing New Age practices with Christianity are also common. Accusations in general are common.
...
Matriculated students are organized into “revival groups” of about 60, where they come under a pastor and recent graduates who coach them through nine months of training. First-year students meet Mondays through Thursdays in this auditorium, spending two hours in worship before receiving several hours of teaching from staff and visiting speakers. Weekly assignments include large amounts of Scripture reading, although the school is not meant to function as a discipleship program. “We’re hoping that folks have already been through discipleship before they come into our program,” Farrelly says.
I ask Farrelly about the cliff tragedy in 2008. Were those BSSM students acting out of beliefs they had acquired at the school when they tried to resurrect their friend? “It was very, very sad,” Farrelly says via email. “If someone gets sick or hurt in our environment, we call 911, look for medical help, and pray for healing . . . . They were not acting in accord with our teaching or practice that night.”
read full article
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/may/cover-story-inside-popular-controversial-bethel-church.html?utm_source=ctdirect-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=9471290&utm_content=434251039&utm_campaign=email
Martyn Wendell Jones/ April 24, 2016
I have seen a man dance holding a translucent scarf, the fabric billowing around his spinning form like a garment made of stars. I have prayed for strangers’ healing from high-blood pressure and unspecified neurological disorders. I have wept with salt-faced abandon as four women prayed over me; I have walked through a “fire tunnel”; I have seen a woman bob in Hasidic fashion over the Bible app on her smartphone.
I experienced all this at the increasingly famous (and, to some, infamous) Bethel Church, and I did so as an evangelical Christian of Reformed persuasion. My parents named me for the Welsh pastor-theologian Martyn Lloyd-Jones. My father is a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Jonathan Edwards is one of my guiding lights, Wheaton College is my alma mater, and I attend a Presbyterian church in Toronto where I have never heard anyone speak or pray in tongues.
Yet Bethel has been on my mind since a friend prayed for my healing at a campground in Wisconsin in 2010. She introduced me to the teachings of Bethel’s senior pastor, Bill Johnson, and gave me a few of his books. As Bethel grows, you might very well hear from a few people in your congregation who have traveled to Redding to find out if Bethel is “real”—and who come back proclaiming that revival is under way.
When I set out for Bethel Church—a hub of a global revival movement—I half-expected to discover a rogue organization of hucksters intent on subverting the faith. And I half-expected to discover a community of believers more earnest and devoted to God than anyone I’d ever met. In the end, what I discovered in Redding, California, didn’t fit either narrative neatly.
Bethel Church sits atop a hill with a view that encompasses the mountains of Northern California. International flags flap at the ends of tall poles lining both sides of the road up the hill. I take a left just after passing the Israeli flag and enter the parking lot. The sky is bright and striped with a handful of skinny clouds. In the distance, Mount Shasta interrupts the surrounding range, its profile sharp like the beak of a bird of prey.
Four sizable ministries share a joint foundation here. Founded in 1952 by Robert Doherty, Bethel Church was affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination from 1954 until 2006, when the church voted with near unanimity to become an independent entity. With an average weekly attendance of 8,684 and a yearly operating budget of over $9 million, the church provides offices and facilities for Bethel’s other ministries.
Among these, iBethel is the church’s international platform, and it has given Johnson and company considerable influence among charismatic Christians all over the world. Those who follow Bethel’s teaching at a distance come to Redding to enroll for anywhere between one and three years in the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM), an unaccredited program where students are trained to be become “revivalists.” Johnson and Kris Vallotton founded the school in 1998 with 36 students; today more than 2,000 from 57 countries and 45 states are enrolled.
In addition to iBethel and BSSM, Bethel Music was founded on this hill. The worship team produces tracks that rival Hillsong’s in their uplift and production values; at the time of this writing, one of its live albums was the No.1 album on iTunes, above Adele, Justin Bieber, and Coldplay.
Revival is the unifying theme at Bethel, and the word means far more here than increased personal piety. At Bethel, I had heard, people are healed all the time. The church keeps a log of healing stories on their website. YouTube videos seem to show glittering clouds of material falling from the ceiling that Bethel people identify as “gold dust.” They also report an occasional admixture of “angel feathers” and a “Shekinah glory cloud.” There are those here who cast out demons and raise the dead.
At least they claim to. Throngs of Christians argue that Bethel is a damaging presence in the American church, and that the miracles are false. Bart McCurdy, an evangelical in Redding, told me that in the church’s preaching and teaching, “there is never a call for repentance or faith in Christ—never. It is all about experience and signs and wonders.”
At John MacArthur’s 2013 Strange Fire conference, dedicated to exposing excesses of the charismatic movement, Phil Johnson said of Bethel, “There’s so much nonsense coming out of Redding that I frankly don’t have time to catalogue it all for you.” When I later asked him to elaborate, he said Bethel “constitutes a whole different message from biblical Christianity” that is “totally devoid of any true and consistent proclamation of the gospel.”
McCurdy, Johnson, and other critics believe Bethel to be instrumental in leading some Christians to embrace tenets of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement known for dominion theology and a belief in the continuing ministries of apostles and prophets alongside those of evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Bill Johnson is regularly listed as an NAR leader. He believes in the apostolic and prophetic ministries, but says the church does not have any official ties to the NAR.
Even still, more local controversies have involved Bethel from the moment in the mid-1990s when Johnson assumed his role and led the church’s singular, unyielding emphasis on revival.
In 2008, a decade after Johnson cofounded BSSM, two students were involved in an accident that left a man stricken at the base of a 200-foot cliff. Believing the man had died after falling off the cliff, the students spent hours trying to reach the victim in order to pray for him to be resurrected. They waited until the next morning to call emergency services. Recovered from the bank of the Sacramento River, the victim survived but remains paralyzed.
More recently, Beni Johnson (Bill’s wife) and other Bethel leaders have been said to practice “grave sucking” or “grave soaking,” purportedly a means of absorbing the spiritual anointing of deceased Christians by lying atop their graves. Accusations of mixing New Age practices with Christianity are also common. Accusations in general are common.
...
Matriculated students are organized into “revival groups” of about 60, where they come under a pastor and recent graduates who coach them through nine months of training. First-year students meet Mondays through Thursdays in this auditorium, spending two hours in worship before receiving several hours of teaching from staff and visiting speakers. Weekly assignments include large amounts of Scripture reading, although the school is not meant to function as a discipleship program. “We’re hoping that folks have already been through discipleship before they come into our program,” Farrelly says.
I ask Farrelly about the cliff tragedy in 2008. Were those BSSM students acting out of beliefs they had acquired at the school when they tried to resurrect their friend? “It was very, very sad,” Farrelly says via email. “If someone gets sick or hurt in our environment, we call 911, look for medical help, and pray for healing . . . . They were not acting in accord with our teaching or practice that night.”
read full article
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/may/cover-story-inside-popular-controversial-bethel-church.html?utm_source=ctdirect-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=9471290&utm_content=434251039&utm_campaign=email