Fired from NAR Church

hey everybody thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of remnant radio uh man it's it's not necessarily an exciting episode uh it's actually one that's gonna take quite a bit of somber hearts uh it's gonna be a difficult episode to get through as we're talking about uh michael's story and how he got uh fired it's not gonna be a fun story to get through but i do think it'll be helpful and fruitful for conversations moving forward uh but yeah i hope you guys stay tuned and enjoy this video you are watching the remnant radio a crowd funded show where we interview pastors teachers historians and theologians from different churches and denominations my name is joshua lewis and this is my co-host michael roundtree together we want to help you break outside of your theological echo chambers if you're interested in learning about history theology or the gifts of the spirit this is the show for you [Music] excellent excellent thank you guys so much for tuning in today like i said i've got a good episode looking up in front of you but before i tell you hey this is what you can expect in this episode i'm gonna turn it over to michael to let you know about the things that you can expect uh coming up in the coming weeks very soon yeah you almost have to clarify you've got the michael and the michael but um yeah so coming up uh tomorrow uh we have dr spiegel coming in from dallas theological seminary and we're going to talk about the shepherd of hermes uh and it's a early christian document it was not part of the scripture we're going to talk all things shepherd tomorrow and then wednesday really excited about this episode i've been working on it talking about jonathan edwards on manifestations of the holy spirit he sort of did an evaluation and a review of how do you know when a manifestation whether it's convulsing whether it's visions whether it's you know the crazy things that seem to happen in revival sometimes how do we know it's of the holy spirit or of the devil or somebody's making it up and so jonathan edwards did a whole work on that called the distinguishing marks of a work of the holy spirit so we're going to talk about that on wednesday on our series uh to be continued at 4 pm but for now really this is an interesting episode uh a different kind of episode i should say for us and um michael miller is gonna share some of his story and as uh one of michael's uh good friends for a very long period of time something that he and i have processed uh over the course of what two plus years and um michael has not been public about this uh about this story he's just now sharing it and um and even michael before you share this story we just would would like to hear more like why do you want to share this story why do you feel like god's calling you to share this story um maybe just kind of lay some preliminary groundwork for why you're talking about where you're talk what you're talking about because you were silent about it for a long time yeah um well silent ish i would say like i've never like preached a sermon where i talked about it or uh shared it on the remnant and i think um i mean i have talked about it but it's been mostly with people who have sort of defected and left the same community and even those who are in it that are leaders i've talked to them about it that are still friends of mine because i think it's good that they know this kind of stuff um and so why today well i mean there hasn't been i mean hardly a month has gone by in the last two and a half years since being fired where i haven't had somebody reach out to me who's left and is trying to make sense of the pain that they've experienced and then um personally it was such a painful time for my wife and i and our kids and and i learned a great deal because of it and so i think what i've learned from it is probably the most valuable part to what i can share today um you know i have to get into some of the the details to help you make sense of like uh why i would share this or or like or to make sense of the lessons themselves so that's probably the biggest part my hope is that those who are on the inside of that church organization or church organization like this uh that that and we we use the word gnar obviously and we'll define a little bit what that is what that isn't why i would term this church that i was a part of gnar um but my hope is that those are on the inside would see it and go wow yeah that's wrong and maybe there's some reform uh and if there's not reform hey where can i go to church that's gonna be uh healthy and and have the the right kind of ecclesiology to promote health as best as we can now i know on some level that every ministry every church is going to create pain because we've got people who are sinners in the midst of it right um but what can we do as best as we are able to mitigate that pain and so i think this episode will help do that uh i also think uh for those who have been hurt um and church hurt to me is some of the worst kind of hurt you can experience um that it'll help make sense of their pain and help them to go oh wow this is why i experienced what i experienced and i now i know what what is healthy what is not and how to avoid that kind of pain in the future not that we can avoid all pain obviously we're gonna have plenty of that in this life but um again it's about mitigating that pain okay so so this is an episode here you're wanting to help mitigate certain people's pain who are maybe going to a church that resembles some of the features that you thought were were not good in this church so you've kind of talked about what this episode is going to be about what is it not going to be about maybe you could give some clarification on that sure because i could understand how somebody watching this might say well okay you get fired church guy and he wants to go on and he wants to tell everybody all the bad things about you know his church that he went to and this could be like a scorched earth session this could be sure uh a vengeance session and fired employees usually don't have positive impressions no doubt the organization that they just departed from so um so help us understand what this is not help us understand your heart and this and uh even your heart for your former church yeah absolutely so and you know i imagine the accusation would be well he's just bitter and hurt and that's why he's sharing the story and um on some level i'm gonna say i have been bitter and i have been hurt uh and there are things that i've done even in my bitterness i'm not proud of um but in this i'm i've done the best i can and i've waited i mean you guys have wanted me to share about this for a lot longer than uh uh you know like last week or something um and i've refrained from doing that partly because i wanted to make sure as best as i'm able that my heart is clean before god in doing that knowing that it's never going to be pure that i don't expect a that i have some sort of entirely 100 pure motivation in what i do but as much as i'm able to to see myself rightly and then i've asked the input of others to help me see myself rightly that i'm not to to to do this in such a way that it's not going to be about punishing the organization so um this is not that this is not a character assassination of anybody um this is not about defaming them um this is mostly about what i've learned and what i think is healthy so okay and what i guess we think is healthy and some of the discovery process of having been fired and what i've learned is healthy after the fact so okay so michael do you want to should should we spend some time kind of trying to define what what is the nar what is in the nfl stands for a new apostolic reformation um the kind of where you're categorizing this as loosely norm because again you see many similarities that have been identified by doug and hawley in their books on the new apostolic reformation and the similarities in which you found yourself uh in with your your former church uh yeah and actually i'll kind of lean on you to help define what nar is and what art isn't uh you know i i when i first heard that term it was on michael heiser's podcast yeah and i was sorely offended because i felt like there were broad strokes being painted people being misrepresented i know that my mentor jack dear was called nar and i'm like he is not rar right uh you know jack preaches a plurality of elders um i know because i was in his church when he preached on it um and so you know the reason uh so yeah why don't you do that josh why don't you explain what nar is and what gnar isn't yeah so if you know because i think it's a helpful category but it's not necessarily official organization right so so there's there is a bit of confusion when we talk about the nar the new apostolic reformation um some want to say hey the nar is not this like shadow clandestine organization that exists you know that they keep denying that they exist but they actually really do and there's a group of people saying no you guys really do exist that's not exactly what's happening um uh i like to use the illustration of you go to evangelical church somewhere in the west and you ask an average person of the church that's been raised there their entire life say hey man are you dispensational they go what's a dispensational like i don't know what that means no i'm not dispensational i've no clue i've never heard of that and then you go do you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture and they go yeah like what's god's plan for israel they're god's chosen people you're dispensational right like like you know you can ask a couple of questions and get the answers even though they don't have the category right so there's this category of thinking called the new apostolic reformation there are people who have been placed in that category again by certain belief systems uh and in doug and hawley kind of coined those a lot of people have taken that label nar and have used it as this broad brush stroking everyone as nar and even we would agree that doug and hawley trying to look in on the pentecostal charismatic movement often get people in their cross hairs that don't actually qualify under those standards you mentioned jack dear he was mentioned in their book as someone being nar very far from that it is it could not be the furthest associates with nar people sometimes because the reality is in the charismatic pentecostal community there's so much gnar going on that if you're going to have associations within the charismatic pentecostal community you're going to run across that sometimes we're going to have nar guys on this channel there's just that tender balance of like you like you don't want to just not associate with everybody because you just have such a thin definition of what's permissible what's okay and a lot of times people want you showing off your coffee mug yeah i am that is pretty impressive um anyway so yes we thought we we loved doug and holly's book but we did think it painted with too broad of a brush to stroke sometimes anyway let me get some of those categories what what does the the new apostolic reformation stand for um they have a hierarchical system of leadership that is pinpointed on one senior leader so that's point one right that one that one senior leader is the senior pastor the people that are underneath that senior pastor come up underneath his vision his mission for that local church and oftentimes they will have an apostolic oversight that is over their church some big charismatic leader um maybe a bethel maybe an ihop maybe a some kind of external guy that everyone in the community looks up to that kind of is like they call them spiritual oversight they have no real authority inside of the local church but there is a believe to be like the spiritual covering that comes on the church secret powers and manifestations that happen when you submit yourself to a local apostle i apologize that again again i'm painting with a broad brush here but it's just nar-ish these are some of the gnar-ish things that go on um so it's not to say that every church um you know believes that there's some kind of powerful manifestation when they come underneath but you will if you start talking about spiritual overflow lots of them are like yep i'm submitted that's the guy that i'm submitted to i have spiritual overflow from his life you'll hear them talk like this frequently another marker so you've got apostolic leaders you've got you know a senior a hierarchical structure within the local church in addition to that they're typically spiritual practices that are formed that are exterior from the scriptures um so you know they mentioned in their book things such as governmental warfare spiritual prayer the spiritual mapping the courts of heaven was categorized in their book which i think was well within the realm of the new apostolic reformation another thing that they mentioned that i i thought was helpful as well when they were going through their book um i mentioned it just a second ago um i'm it's slipping from me uh you ever have those thoughts that are just like they're right there okay well uh uh spit something out i probably remember but yeah yeah i know it's cool so no so uh oh yeah that's what it was prophets and apostles have unique unique authority like this ontological authority to do specific things that normal christians people can't do so like you have to warfare in spiritual heavenly places but only certain prophets and certain apostles and prophets can do that that's right only apostles and prophets can like speak over certain geographical spirits not not average christians can do that they have a special kind of authority and power so all of those are nar and i think within that you mentioned the hierarchical structure and i think it's really important to mention on that that the plurality of elders submits to the apostle that's right and and so what happens in a gnar church is there's usually there's pretty much one person who's over the church now there are churches outside of gnar world outside of charismatic pentecostal world who do that too that's right right uh and there are people who may technically have a plurality of elders but they're all yes men and um and there's one de facto leader who it's like you submit to that leader's vision that leader's vision is the only thing that goes everything submits to that nobody can push back on vision nobody can push back upon the leader's behavior if the leader does something questionable no one can question it the leader is basically god to that congress no i mean it's just uh a mini pope it's a mini pope it's a mini pope yeah yeah they just have a they have a smaller sphere of influence but they speak excellent and again that can happen outside of gnar that's right as you mentioned roman catholic that's right but um but in my personal opinion that's maybe the most dangerous aspect of the nar is uh is a singular individual with uh mass authority one pylon of authority and and with all of this when we talk about those there can be a lot of things that are gnar-ish that aren't really the gnar and again like to explain jack dear did he hang out with guys that are in nar absolutely is he still friends with people that are in the nar absolutely does jack dear believe that apostles and prophets have unique authority no does jack dear have a a plurality of elders at this church that you are now pastoring at yes he did you know does he believe in spiritual mapping and spiritual warfare no he did not right so so literally it's no strike on every single one of those and there might be some of us that that go to churches that might have one of those things that are in error and we would just say hey go confront those things um but man if there's all of those things that are in place that's a very very difficult conversation in a culture that's going to take a lot of time to upright yeah it might be easier i don't think we mentioned about like gosh we could just keep on going but um maybe let's make this the last thing but just uh the way the bible is taught oh yeah there's there's not um there's not an expository element to it really it's uh often like you know god showed me and here's a verse for that yeah here's the season that we're in right now i just i've got this feeling you know i'm reading these verses about mary and elizabeth giving birth to these two children and and mary she gets this revelation from an angelic encounter uh because she's whole and pure and and you know so we got to posture ourselves in holiness and purity and then we'll birth a season of revival in us and there's another group of people they're like elizabeth and you know elizabeth she gets a birth because there's an angelic visitation for her too but that comes in between the altar of incense and the table of showbread so you've got to be in a position between the prayer and the word so that you can so they just spiritualize everything it's really convoluted it has the appearance of bible teaching so but what it really is is it's somebody's prophetic word using the bible that's right and so what happens is people will go to a church like this week after week and and we're putting we're just talking broad brush stroke about gnar churches and miller we'll hear about your experience here in a minute but um but at our churches it's prophetic words with bible verses kind of smattered in but there's not really a respect for um here's the grammatical context here's uh here's the historical context here's what this verse meant to its original heroes and therefore means for us it's just straight to here's my church vision yeah and and i used a story about mary to share my church vision right right right you know so all that to say that's what we were going to say that's in a category that we're using for nar there's a lot of people who would hear those things and say i believe many of those things but i don't want to call myself gnar like i get it it's just a helpful category for thinking i'm just saying and and just as doggy doug and holly said the nar aren't heretics they're actually christian brothers that are actually playing with a level of error that is concerning to the rest of us and that we want to say like hey that's not helpful and like we would like to see this changed using their language and their vocabulary kind of as the authors in the nar space we're not saying that nar people are heretics we're not saying that they're unbelievers we're saying that they're they're believing things that hurt people that rob god of glory and they don't benefit the body of christ so we want to try to confront those things in love to say that there is a better way more of a priscilla and aquila teaching apollos more accurately not so much a you know repent and believe you know i want to make sure that we have that kind of clearly we want to i'm going to bless the body of christ with this ultimately so so miller let's let's get into your story a little bit and um i don't know do you want to jump right into your story do you want to share why your church you feel like fit these categories maybe just tell your story and kind of talk about the categories there you go it'll come up sure sure um well i i want to say also on the front side that i don't think everything you guys just described not all of that was a part of the church i was a part of um there were certainly elements of it that very much were a part of the organization and and so and the other thing is is even though we highly disagree with some of these in our churches um or organizations uh that doesn't mean everything they're doing is bad either like in the organization i was a part of there was a lot they did right when it came to prayer and worship they they i love that and i would love to emulate in my own church today what i learned from that there so i mean they really do knock that out of the park and and it's worth taking note of um so yeah it wasn't it's not like it was all bad um uh and and i think that's worth mentioning so you know i'm not entirely sure where to start in my story um i i sort of give some background to what led up to me being fired because that sort of explains all that took place um and this was an incredibly difficult thing for me so i don't know how well i'll get through it and how concise i'll be and my hope and my prayers that that i share the necessary details and leave out the unnecessary ones um for the sake of it not being about uh character assassination right so that's right um so i i had i was pastoring i was part of the organization from from very beginning um you know back when we were just meeting in an apartment and to be fair like one of the i bought into a lot of this stuff you know one of the first books we all read was culture of honor and uh and we thought wow this is the vision god has for the church today um you've got to have this five-fold thing with an apostle at the top and and then um and a prophet so that they can get the special vision from heaven so that we can get everything we need from heaven here on earth and and the the message is also the and again not that danny silk the guy who wrote culture of honor is wrong about everything i think he's very wrong about this and i think it leads to danger because the implication is if you don't have that kind of ecclesiology then you won't actually get all that heaven has for us today and so um you know what was happening in the language that's being used is is god has given us a blueprint for a new kind of community and uh this this new blueprint this new vision is is gonna be what ushers in revival on some level and so uh and realize that i bought into it and anybody who bucked up against it i i would you know be the guy the theological guy to kind of come at them and and really show them why they were wrong and so there's a lot that i i have regrets about uh from my time there um now what happened was i i had moved i've been a part of all the churches that we had planted on some level and had moved back to the the the area where it all started to help oversee a new uh church community and when i got there i realized pretty quickly that things were not what i thought they were and things had changed quite drastically and i found myself seeing people get hurt and trying to reconcile why it is that they're getting hurt and how this could be taking place and i was being hurt as well and there was a whole series of exits of people that had been there since early on um you know guys that i very much loved and when they left uh you know the the explanation given to me was well they just didn't get the vision of the church and i'm going well maybe i don't get the vision either because i don't see that with them like it was very confusing and i and then i would sit down with those leaders and just hear their side of the story and then when i would hear what they had to say i would go oh man i i'm experiencing that too uh and some of those things were that the apostle at the top things like he doesn't listen and um and when i try to confront him it just gets dismissed and there's really nothing i can do about that and so it was just it was a painful thing and so hold on didn't y'all have elders though uh yeah well that's an interesting thing so yes we had elders but it depends what you mean by elders so in that community an elder really just served as a a deacon at the end of the day like i would have i would biblically i would say that they weren't really elders that they were functionally deacons they were responsible for just uh pastoring people meeting with those who are hurting um but they had no decision making power um and if they did they didn't know it uh and so that's you know kind of truly they were local church servants who did not govern either the day-to-day or the overarching mission or direction of the local church that they were deacon is table server um elder is overseer holding people accountable leading and guiding they shepherd the church acts 20 28. so um so yeah they're shepherds involved in leading things in the church leading people in the church laying down their life for the church very intimately intricately involved in the church and its leadership first timothy 5 17 the elders are to direct the affairs of the church and so what it sounds like what you're saying is the elders served but they didn't do those things yeah so i i mean let me clarify here so i was i uprooted my family i moved them to a different city and i was asked i was put on the uh the board that oversaw sort of the whole organization and two weeks into it i i guess maybe one or two meetings into it i realized pretty quickly that there's only one person on that board that has any decision-making power and that was the apostle and um uh yes and no uh he would certainly say he was apostolic and people certainly recognized him as the apostle in the way that we would you know when you read culture of honor that person is the one responsible for determining the vision of the community and that was definitely his role um now would he call himself an apostle like one of the twelve no um so but but but the point is there was only one person making decisions uh and everything was under that and and that person having the sole responsibility for determining vision gave him the uh the uh trump card for all decisions that could be made so uh you know here i am at overseeing a church a church that that nobody on that board was actually at except for me and um yet and i was supposed to be responsible for hiring firing making those decisions for that community and and then when i would try to make certain decisions i would get overridden um if if the apostle felt like that wasn't the right decision to make and so i found myself trying to do my job with my hands tied behind my back going okay here's what i think would be healthy but you know i have to submit to that person and their vision okay so cool and i know you to be somebody who's not afraid of confrontation so what would happen that seems fair what would happen when you would bring this to your to their attention or did you keep it silent what what happened because you brought a couple things to their attention yeah i did um so i i made a decision i watched two big exits of of leaders that were a part of the community and well three sort of um and when those leaders left and i heard their story i was like this is wrong and i had also mentioned some things that i had experienced in one of the communities that felt like bullying i felt like the people who were being chosen as leaders and as oversight on some level uh were not being chosen based chosen based on a biblical criteria or any sort of like on-ramp of training but it was usually done through the prophetic word that the apostolic leader had and so when i tried to mention the bullying bullying i experienced it was just like it fell on deaf ears and the subject would change and so i finally decided okay i'm going to write an email and in that email i'm going to confront the the main leader about three particular areas that i saw that were problematic um and and then one particular thing that i had an offense about like that that was literally hurting me and because i wanted to deal with it and those issues were that i felt like we didn't have any um discipleship uh or outward expression in the community to fill the great commission um that the language that we use was stuff like you know if jesus is raised up he'll draw all men to himself and that was sort of prophetic way of talking like if we just worship god and we pray then people will magically get saved um and so there was no formal uh form of evangelism uh what we did have at one point was now gone and there was no room to to bring that into place that everything was being prioritized to serve prayer and and worship which was sort of the vision that this the apostolic leader had so that was a main issue um another one was that the board itself didn't have any decision-making power that they were all a group of glorified counselors and um and then uh uh what was the third issue and then you know part of it was also how leaders were being chosen uh being done by prophetic utterance not really by by any kind of scriptural rubric and then um the personal offense was that i just didn't feel like i was being listened to that when i mentioned the abuse that i had gone through and the dysfunction i had experienced under certain leaders that that got just blanche ignored and never addressed and so i sent this email and then i had a meeting and i sent it to the apostolic leader and one of the other elders that was on the elder board and the wife because the wives were also elders or at least his wife was and so the response i got was this you just don't trust me somehow there's been trust that's been broken and you just don't trust me and you're not addressing that now when i wrote that email i actually trusted him completely i uprooted my family and moved my family across the country twice because of how much i trusted that leader i really did believe that a leader was apostolic and and was a visionary that i should get behind and and and so when i wrote that email i thought i was addressing a friend and the concerns i had about my friend but it was met with you just don't trust me and then everything i had said was just dismissed and and it was like they just fell on it and when you say everything sometimes when we're in yeah it's a conflict we want to say everything or nothing did they never you always did they received some of the things that you said was there anything where they said you know what i see some truth in that uh well one of the things i mentioned was i felt like that apostolic leader didn't trust me and one of the other elders pointed that out and say i think there's truth to that and uh but it never got addressed it never got owned um and then when it came to the outward expression like that issue like the the lack of evangelism that was not addressed when it came to the personal offense i had of that person not listening to me that was not addressed and um and at the end of the meeting the other elder that was there basically said well it sounds like this is unresolved and had to leave and so then there was never it was never really picked up um one of the other elders and when i say elder i gotta remember these functionally elders right like they're they're not real elders they're functionally deacons you're identifying them by their title not their actual office yes yes exactly and so you know i had another meeting with one of the elders from my church who was there and and that one just as well got dismissed oh i was also bringing up stuff about my salary and having been underpaid for years and just struggling to get by and feeling like that was a common problem um so yeah i i mean to this day the only thing i can think of that was really addressed was at least by one of the other elders but not by the person i was bringing the accusation against uh was the bit about him not trusting me michael remind me didn't you have like the elders didn't they switch elders like overnight in this story yeah like you came in one day and there was just like one overnight but yes can you explain that process to me because that's going to play into this reconciliation meeting that's about to happen yeah so um in that time there was a couple of things that happened i wrote the email uh i get a phone call and i i remember this this like it was very vivid because my wife and i were driving to uh austin for thanksgiving and i was given this phone call on a tuesday and i was basically told by the apostolic leader hey you're you're talking about me and you're dishonoring me and that needs to stop and i was like okay okay yeah yeah if i'm if i'm dishonoring you that absolutely needs to stop and uh and when it came to the future there's a hire i wanted to make and the person was like i'm okay with this higher i'm not okay with you moving into the next year and i'm thinking to myself okay and i just repeated the words back okay you're okay with this higher you're not okay with me moving into the next year that sounds very serious and he was like yes that's very serious so right around the same time that that conversation and there was no clarification it was just the end of the conversation and i was just like okay um around the same time like i guess a few weeks later after we we do meet and uh have that that initial confrontation after the email i'd sent and that board that i was on is dismantled so the the board that's supposed to oversee the whole organization no longer am i a board member no longer are any of them board members and i watched little by little as my own authority began to get diminished and so i was one of the guys that would go to the other churches because we had a few churches in our organization and i would teach i was known as sort of the teacher and the fivefold thing right and i was told that i would no longer be on that teaching faculty and it's because i don't preach the vision of the organization and uh that's what needs to be emphasized which is worshipping which is worship and prayer so basically i didn't i didn't spend every sermon teaching on this worship in prayer and in the same breath that i'm removed the apostolic leader tells me what i am preaching right now on worship and prayer is the tip of the spear of what god wants to do in this organization and so he he was teaching what was right and what i was teaching was really not useful for this community and so i found myself going just feeling super undervalued um wondering like you know what do i have to do to get back in good graces here uh because i just felt like you know i was spinning my wheels and so when i got that that converse so the board gets dismantled i get taken off of the teaching faculty and um and so at this point and then i get that that call that sort of mis like really confusing like are you threatening my job is that what's going on here are you threatening to replace me with the guy i want to hire i just didn't know and so i start looking for other jobs i'm like this is it he's not hearing me and there's a track record of this i've watched uh you know several people begin to leave and their authority in the same way get diminished or their decisions get overwritten and um and they're gone and and they don't just leave their jobs they leave the church um and a lot of their story gets completely hushed over and their side of the story never really gets told and so so that was that was sort of the beginning of the end for me i guess that email i wrote when you say their story was hushed over do you mean did they have did they sign a non-disclosure agreement were they um strongly encouraged not to tell anybody were they um were they overtly hushed in some way and was there some kind of spin put on it in the announcement like hey these people left because um maybe this that or the other and you knew like it was not a true story or it was an exaggerated story like when you say it was hushed what do you mean i mean the story that was told from the front was not the entire story that uh the first guy to leave who's still a friend of mine to this day he was squeezed out his position was taken from him given to somebody else and then they were told then he was told that he can take this position a position he wasn't really desirous of nor was he uh really qualified for on some level and so uh he just found another job and moved on and so what they said was ah you know god has just called this person elsewhere and never mind the fact that his job was actually taken from him and the reason why is because the main leader i think it scared him i mean again i'm i'm you know giving you my own guess on some level of motivation which probably is not the best idea to do but i would say that maybe just that's what that's what that guy felt sticking with the facts of it the facts would be you knew that i mean i mean so i want to offer some pushback for a moment michael could it be okay like could it be that there was something like just from a leadership level that they didn't want to embarrass him or that they didn't want to you know like put certain parts of his story out there that you know maybe there was something they didn't like about his leadership and they just didn't want to advertise to everybody what they viewed as a deficiency in him was there was there something like this going on or did it in your estimation was it was it really just um trying to protect themselves uh well behind closed doors i was told he wasn't a team player because he wouldn't take the position that he didn't want and that he and there was no real reason given for why his position was taken away from him uh other than it that it was and then the second thing i was told so he wasn't a team player the second thing i was told was he didn't get the vision of the church and the vision of the church i think is probably the main thing um because when i got fired that's abs that was the reason i was also given um they'll be the competing visions okay so that that's what i know tell me tell me about this meeting because you're you're there we're leading up to what you told me was called a reconciliation meeting yes you know hey i was told it would be we're gonna we're gonna fix this we're gonna we're gonna work through it i mean that's what reconciliation means i think uh unpack that story for us and explain to us sure what what that looked like yeah so i get a so this all took place with over like around a five-month span um the board gets dismantled like taking off the teaching faculty and i'm just looking for another job and trying to put my nose to the grind uh at the church i was overseeing and just do the best i can to be faithful there until i found something else um so i get a phone call well first i find out that there's a new board that's been created and that new board has been unilaterally chosen by that apostolic leader just like it was unilaterally disbanded by that apostolic leader and i get a phone call from him saying hey i want to bring the new board into our conflict with one another because you're dishonoring me and you're talking about me and again no examples were given of what i've said who i set it to um and and in the back of my head like i'm thinking to myself well surely i've talked about him uh like there's there's got to be truth to that like i'm trying to process i was going counseling i was sleeping two hours a night trying to make sense of everything that was going on and um and so i started going counseling to kind of figure out like what what is in me that's allowing me to to to be so unsettled and so unhappy in this organization and you know and so i uh i i get this phone call you're talking about me i want to bring the new or new board into this to help us work through our conflict and i'm thinking well this is a really good sign you know hopefully this new board has some decision-making power and hopefully this new board can bring about reconciliation like i so on some level i'm terrified because i think am i losing my job on another level i'm excited because i'm thinking maybe there's hope maybe we will have some really good positive change in reconciliation and so um i mean i could my composure when i was around them was really it was hard to be around that leader like every time i would see them i would just kind of break down and freeze up because i just didn't know what was in front of me so then i get an email from that board saying hey um you know the the apostolic leader has has asked for you to us to intervene and sort of help mediate a reconciliation between the two of you so we want to invite you to a meeting here's the date here's the place here's the time um and uh you and your wife are invited to join us for that so then i i call one of the new board members who i knew and i said hey i just want to be really clear like what is this about uh you know am i going to be heard is my side of the story going to even be heard it's like absolutely and the words out of his mouth were this is not a board of yes men okay then the day before the meeting i get another email from a different board member that board member says in the email uh michael we don't want to talk about the past we just want to talk about the future and what it looks like for you to move into the next year with uh this organization and i'm thinking oh okay well it's gonna be kind of hard to reconcile if we're not talking about the past but i mean moving forward with the organization i mean that that sounds positive and again i'm going to therapy and the therapist is trying to help me think the the best about them and about what's coming up and so uh and you know in the back of my head like there was this whole wrestling like you know i had rejection issues most my life and my am i is this just you know my abandonment issues coming at play and this is why i have this perspective or is there something really off and i'm just not seeing it and so uh so doing the best to to think positively and have the best expectation of those leaders and what's about to happen so my wife and i we come to the meeting and the ground rules have been set we're not going to talk about the past we want to talk about the future and so they said to me michael uh we feel like you are called to do a tannerant ministry meaning traveling to other churches i've been doing a lot of that for some time where i would go to other churches and i'm training the gifts and they're like we really think that's where your future is and so we want to launch you in the ministry and i'm thinking uh okay and they said so we're going to give you a three-month salary sort of a launching pad to get that going and uh and then you know we're going gonna help you get that get that established and uh and then after that um uh we're gonna probably contract you to come and teach at our school uh they didn't say kandra they said we want you to continue to teaching in our school and uh and our in our um internships uh but as of today you will no longer be the pastor of the church that you're overseeing and i'm thinking to myself what uh and my wife has like she reaches over and grabs my hand and i can see she is like suddenly feeling that you know fear of oh no and uh and my my i mean i was my stomach just in knots uh i said guys in the real world they called us getting fired uh getting a three-month severance and then you wanting to contract me afterwards i said no no this is absolutely not what it is i go no that's exactly what this is and i said and where's the other person who's you know given you this decision has helped you made this because i don't see them in here uh because that person was not in the meeting you're talking about the apostolic leader yeah so he didn't come to the reconciliation so so he didn't no he didn't no want to be present for all that reconciliation yeah so you were sorry i hear that tongue in cheek i apologize i apologize you were told it's a reconciliation meeting but he did not come to it no and the the reason they were given was so that i would have a safe place to share um but this wasn't really about reconciliation but then you were told don't talk about the past so what were you going to share yeah exactly um so i tell the guys i go is this is this are you guys telling me that this is the reality like i'm no longer the pastor of my church or because i thought this was a conversation about my future but it sounds like you guys are telling me what my future will be and they're like no we're not telling you what your future be we're just saying what it's not going to be i'm like okay so then my wife says uh am i fired too and they said what do you mean she says well i'm the administrator for the church and they said oh we didn't know that so so this group of elements i said brand new elders were so unplugged from you and how your church was governed that they were able to fire you and had no clue that your wife actually worked at the church that you were pastoring um yes they were okay their exact words were oh we didn't know that and i said no you guys don't know anything none of you go to my church you have no idea what's going on here and you told me you're not gonna hear my side of the story they didn't go to your church so they were elders over all of the churches over all of the churches is that your campus was not well i'll be real clear i have no idea what their elders over i just know that they were firing me and that they they had been given the authority to do so um like what was your experience with these people before this were you like you guys shared meals together you guys knew each other yeah i knew two of them i knew two of them i didn't know uh i had met one of the other ones and had no real interaction with that person and uh but the two that i knew i mean they barely made eye contact with me would any of them would anyone from that group including the apostolic leader dispute because it's one thing feelings we're talking facts here would any of them dispute any of the facts that you've shared i don't think so i mean they one of the leaders apologized to me in the meeting because he thought i knew i was being fired he thought i knew i was being transitioned and he even said i'm sorry this shouldn't have happened okay but still like there's a difference between i knew you were being fired and i knew you were being transitioned right because even even that that again that's like just pre-packaged charismatic christian language that tries to take the sting out of we don't want you here anymore um the eye of telling the hand we no longer have need of you that's what that is right like we've got a bible verse for this he's literally saying hey we've got a vision right and it's not make disciples preach the gospel teaching them to observe all the commandments it's this specific thing and your teaching does no longer fits in with our specific thing so this is the eye telling the hand no longer have any need of you yeah well i mean that's i would agree with that i don't know if they would agree with that but when it comes to the facts of the meeting like did they did i walk into a meeting not knowing i was about to be fired yes did some of them know did some of them think that i was that i knew this yes did uh did they would they agree that it was billed as a reconciliation meeting yes absolutely and i have the emails that's yeah there's no there's no question about that um and so i think they knew that something bad had happened and that this was not the way it should have gone down and one of the leaders was like hey this is this is the lord's discipline you guys just have two different visions and so hold on the lord's discipline so like you sinned is that what he's saying well i i think he thought i had sinned because he thought that i had been dishonoring the apostolic leader and that's what he'd been told and whether he had examples of it or not i don't know because again i was never given the examples or at least i've if i was given examples they weren't made very clear and and and then and that's just one of the others one of the other elders would say he didn't even know examples of me dishonoring the apostolic leader so you had a reason in that meeting for example no no no so what happened afterwards so so that meeting finishes and suddenly we're just gone i have to i go on a mission trip i'm actually taking a worship team from the community for this mission trip i stay silent the whole time they don't even know that i've been fired from the organization i get back i find out that they've had a leadership meeting with the church that i was overseeing and in that leadership meeting they told him they told them we tried to launch him in the ministry we tried to kick the bird out of the nest and he was offended and left the church so i i hear about this and i'm like you've got to be kidding me like that's the story you're sharing um so they reach out to me to have a real reconciliation meeting with me and the apostolic leader so a month later after i get fired i agree to meet with them one of the elders is going to mediate one of the guys on that board in that meeting there was no reconciliation when it boiled down to it i was told that the way i was thinking about myself and my role in the organization was wrong i i had been saying that i was a founder of the organization they said the apostolic leader said you are absolutely not a founder the way you're thinking about this is all wrong he apologized for not being in the meeting that he should have um and but then he also told me you're not a victim you have been dishonoring me and so i asked him i said can you please tell me what i've said and who i've said it to he says i've told you and i said okay well maybe i just didn't hear clearly or maybe i've forgotten can you please tell me again he said man you're just gonna have to figure it out and i think okay and so that that meeting just went awful they did give me some they extended my severance and gave me a check uh that that helped with that which was good uh and good on them for doing so um so i leave that meeting and i sit down with the guy who was supposed to mediate that meeting a couple weeks later and i asked him i tell him my whole side of the story about promises that had been made oh that was something i didn't mention is that i've made several promises and that those promises were reneged on and i was told that he never made those promises so there's a lot of that happening throughout the organization with a lot of people hey michael so when i met with that yeah let me let me just just for a second we'll pick up right there on renig on some stuff so i'm gonna write that down in my notes but bg has a question that i think is really important because we've been 50 minutes on we've got you know almost 500 people watching right now that weren't here at the top of the hour that are like okay okay what's the point like why are we why are we talking about this just give us a quick reminder of why you're addressing the story why are you telling the story bj's question how could testimonies like this help the church he's like i'm not discouraging this right um we are trying to be contentious but we do need to know again can you remind us really quickly why are we talking about this are we just sitting here complaining and whining about something that happened in the past or do we think there's going to be an actual application to this yeah we haven't gotten there yet um so the goal is to talk about how could something like this happen right right what is going on in an organization that could could write this kind of story for somebody and create that kind of pain um and i i think you know it's gonna take a while to unpack but but sharing these details about how you how a unilateral decision could be made to disband a board a brand new board brought on that board never having heard any side of a story and then a major leader who helped start the church gets fired like how does that take place how can you have a vision that actually excludes members of the body of christ exactly that tells the hand you know hey we have no need of you um if you if you get there then you can kind of then then the lessons afterwards start to make sense so um so anyway i i asked the elder uh what did i say and who did i say it to and he says i don't know i said what do you mean you don't know did you not ask him he said yeah i asked him i said well what do you say he said it was too painful to talk about i said wait a minute you had me fired based upon the accusation and you never thought to fact check him like well that's awful and he said well we didn't handle this very well i was like no kidding and so you know the next several months were just sort of a you know the whole next couple years have just been recovery and still i'd say recovery um but god had done some really sweet things in the midst of it which i could get into but i think that that's kind of the end of it that's that's curious though so when it was announced what did they say to the church i mean you you you were the pastor and then you just stopped being the pastor overnight senior pastor of that campus yeah so what yeah did they told them talk to the church did they talk to the church like what happened yeah yeah yeah gosh man this there's a lot to unpack so for those who are viewing like i really do want to get to the why behind all of this because right now it just sounds like a sob story and that's not the intention um they told the church that we just had a conflict that it was a paul and barnabas and just had to go her separate ways my side of that story was never told uh i did go to the church at their request and just told them i'm sad about what's happened and uh you know i really love this new leader that's going to be overseeing you guys and sort of did the best i could to endorse him because he was a friend of mine and then i i quietly left that was it there was no um none of the real details were ever shared so what do you i think there was some recognition that it didn't go down well but that was about it i mean what do you think should have been said do you feel like something different should have been said um yeah i mean well i mean i don't know i don't know what they could what they could have done was recognize that what they did wasn't right at all uh but they never could have so they could have not done anything well i mean the thing is you have to have ground grounds and a church for firing somebody um and one of the shows you're firing somebody you should one of the grounds for firing somebody is not for having a difference of vision and that really gets into the major issue the the major issue behind it all was a top leader the the leader at the top the unilateral leader right that's the first one and then the second one is that that one leader determines the vision and the third one is that you could have a vision that would be so narrow that people could suddenly find themselves on the outside of it not fair well and i think to your point narrow enough to not include making disciples right because you're saying it was about prayer and worship so i'm curious this will get a little into the ecclesiology surely they believe in making disciples right like what i think so yeah i think they believe in it they just think that other churches are doing it and that's not what they're called to do right so so okay so let's let's kind of get into that i'm not saying i agree with it but that is kind of the the the way it's talked about so how does how the churches are doing this is great but you talk about what we're doing the the this is what happened to you the very next set of questions is how did this happen to you and you talked about a few of those um tell me you mentioned the the guy at the top hey i get to make the senior level decisions i get to make those executive decisions the ecclesiology made room for this kind of abuse now that being said there are churches and i'll call it the benevolent dictator they have that guy at the top right and he's actually like a really nice guy right like he's he's really moral he's really ethical he loves people he cares for people he's humble but he's still a dictator right and i would say that that was true here very sure there was a lot that was right about that leader amen amen i if i had been in the same position and had all the accolade that that he probably gets who knows if i would have not done the same thing to somebody like i have no right to judge them and assume that i would have done better that's right um i mean just being honest here i think i think it's the structure that really that we probably are not that person's motivation we're often a byproduct of the machine that we were raised in so a lot of the church pastors that grow up to have these these failures are often just byproducts of the cultures that they've been raised in so so to to this point in a sense god saved you from this um and i remember i remember being with you um and you being in a dark season going through this uh yeah and i remember you coming to me the the week after because you went out on a weekend to a uh to go get some food with your wife and someone was picking up food for her and her husband and she gave you a word a word that you had heard over and over and over again and it started becoming comical yeah yeah tell us that story because i think that's that was really redeeming were you going into your life you showed up to the restaurant yeah okay yeah yeah tell that story so the day that we had the second reconciliation meeting which was really no reconciliation um i mean in all honesty i think i was being gaslighted i was being told that i was the problem and that i wasn't a victim and and i was so in my head just thinking like man have i what have i done like what did i do like clearly on the problem you know like that was and josh you and i you talked to me about this a lot because i would come to you and be like man am i just so off on this have i just have i dishonored the leader and dishonored god and god is disciplining me and judging me from whatever um and if so i want to be able to embrace that and own it and you know and learn from it and grow and so that day i'm supposed to go on a date with my wife that night and we uh but i was so in my head and so confused and it was just like this cloud you know and granted i've been sleeping two hours a night going what am i going to do i got a you know i've got a two-year-old and a brand new baby girl like how am i going to support my family i don't have another job lined up there's just a number of things that were just weighing on me and um we just she says where are we going to go on our date night i said honestly i'm i'm pretty absent-minded right now can we just go somewhere we can go for a walk she's like where do you want to go on that so i mentioned a place that's nowhere near us and it's sort of a downtown square and she's like well why do you want to go there it's going to take forever with traffic it's probably a good shower no i don't know i just want to go there can we just go there please she's like yeah of course i think she knew like i was in a funk and there was no snapping me out of it um and so she just sort of goes with it right so we walk around going to every single restaurant nothing felt right and i remember saying to her wouldn't it be weird if we ran into this this old prophetic lady that i know and she's like yeah that would be weird and uh and we knew that she worked in the area during the day but it was nighttime she wasn't going to be there so the last restaurant we walk into we just decided let's just go there we've been there once before we walk in and there that woman is at the bar ordering take out and i'm i'm looking at her and she goes what are you doing she goes there's first words out of her mouth she goes this is a divine moment and i look at her i'm like what do you mean like now i know it's a divine moment i just been saying to my wife wouldn't it be weird if we ran into this lady and she goes well i'm supposed to be out on a date with my husband it's my birthday and she's like but he got a flat tire on his way to pick me up and so here i am ordering takeout and i was just praying and saying god what am i doing here it's my birthday and she goes then you just randomly popped into my mind and then no more than two seconds later you walk through the door and i'm thinking that is weird that is so i'm like on the verge of tears she goes what's going on with you i said well you just happened to catch me on the worst day of my life she goes what do you mean i said i was fired from my job and she goes from the church i said yes and she goes listen honey this is the lord he's kicking you out of the nest you were too loyal and you would have never left and when she said that both my wife and i just cried because the words that were used that were given to the leaders about uh how they tried to kick us out of the nest and we were offended and left were such hurtful words to us and it was so interesting because it was sort of god flipping the script him saying no no i'm the one doing this i'm kicking you out of the nest and on some level it meant that there was there was more for me and i was meant to fly on like a bird um and that that wasn't going to happen there and so the other thing was it was a compliment right you were too loyal you would have never left it wasn't that i was dishonoring it was that i was being loyal to the very bitter end and and i had six other prophetic people reach out to me randomly none of them talked to each other none of them knew the whole story and they all kept saying the same thing god is kicking you out of the nest literally those exact words okay powerful michael hey um i want to ask you michael what um it's very possible that some leaders from this uh the church that you're talking about would be listening uh to this podcast right now what would be your message to those leaders oh gosh i mean i don't know um you know i hope on some level that those guys would recognize that what they did was wrong but not just to me to others this idea that you could have a vision that would exclude people that there's there's no biblical precedent where you anywhere in the scripture i mean name one church that had a vision that didn't make room for everybody um that just doesn't make sense i mean i just can't imagine you know uh uh paul saying to clement you know you're really really just not getting the vision in rome and so we want to launch you into ministry like that just that's not a biblical argument um and so i i think first and foremost i i wish you guys the best i i really hope that you'll repent from that that and that you would change the vision to be inclusive rather than exclusive um i think you know my hope is that that you would change the format from a single person determining vision to a plurality of elders where uh where there's you may have a person that's sort of the face of the ministry that may be the first among equals but i think that would be worth moving in that direction and maybe you already have and if so forgive me for misrepresenting you um yeah i don't know what else so i mean those are some things i i want them to repent from i think i think there's probably a public apology that's necessary in this i mean i'm i'm only speaking again for me here uh when these kinds of things happen and then we we change the narrative um to cause it to be more appealing to our story right it keeps it appealing to our bottom dollar and our organizational structure um we've manipulated the situation um i think that's that's wrong and it needs to be repented of um michael you know you talked a little bit and actually dawson put together a study guide for us on it's just called gnar hermeneutics um can you tell us like you even talked about hey there's one single leader he's got apostolic vision this apostolic vision overflows it determines you know what we're going to do all of this comes down to the way that we read scripture can you tell me kind of like just a little bit about that about the the gnar hermeneutic we talked about it a little bit at the top of the show again there i updated the link if you just got here it's it's in the description of the video you can check that out a more in-depth guide uh but i really do think a lot of this the sole authority in a local church isn't a senior pastor in scripture and i just i'd love to hear you talk about that yeah so the gnar hermeneutic it's uh so there's an a literary term called reader response theory and it's this idea that you when you read a book the book reads you not you read it and so never mind what the author's intended meaning is it's what is god saying to me right now as i read this and so at this particular church i was known as a teacher and my goal was to teach the scriptures in their context because i felt like that was actually transformational and sanctifying that in and of itself the scriptures taught in their context have this intrinsic work of the spirit that are being done it's a grace that happens um but there it's less they're less concerned with that as much as they are what is god saying to us today so you know you could read like a passage where about zacchaeus coming down from the tree and instead of seeing the magnificence of jesus and how he has a word of knowledge for zacchaeus he knows his name and meaning you know jesus is not just a prophet but he's omniscient and like the real meaning being a message about jesus and who he is and how he's willing to hang out with somebody like zacchaeus um the message would be hey i feel like the church is zacchaeus today and they're all looking at jesus from afar and he just wants to meet with them and meet in their house and really fellowship which is a good message right we wouldn't disagree that we wouldn't say jesus doesn't want to fellowship with us right we would say we would all be behind that um so but the problem is is that the real meaning of the tax is actually lost entirely and the only meaning that's given is some sort of prophetic spin on it and the reason why that's so destructive is because it actually in the very act of teaching you're teaching people how to read the bible you're actually showing them a way to interpret scripture and what you're you're exemplifying is not learning how what what the author's intended meaning is but rather learning how to read the book in such a way that you come up with something new and to me i think that's dangerous because it's very gnostic it's this idea that we can approach this secret text or this ancient text to find some new secrets to unlock new pieces of heaven michael was this ever something that uh that you discussed with the leadership of that church no uh that was actually something i didn't really understand until after i left and that was probably because of the conversations that josh and i were having um and i didn't i just didn't get it i didn't get that that was okay i mean because michael you and i we we do this on some level we'll take scripture out of context when it comes to prophetic words and so um i just i saw it as well maybe god really is showing them and just to be clear michael goes whoa whoa whoa don't be throwing me under the bus like that yeah you do that don't you mind yeah yeah no you know what i meant i know what you mean but they don't you should clarify well it might be that you have a prophetic word for like to use the zacchaeus example like sure we might say like maybe the lord is speaking to me about somebody that like they have a zacchaeus-like personality and i might reference that story and sure and and show how they have that sort of personality and it's like this word of knowledge that god has given me so i might make a tie to the scripture and i think your point in saying that michael is there like hey in prophetic ministry sometimes you might make those kinds of connections but it's different if it's the ongoing weekly teaching ministry of the church where each week they're not getting scriptural exposition what they're getting is another prophetic word and um and we're all on board for prophetic ministry but if it's just prophetic word after prophetic word after prophetic word but there's no instruction in the word of god or a very scaled back instruction of the word of god and particularly a training in a hermeneutic that says we're not going to worry about what the context of this uh scripture was you know why is the story of zacchaeus told here and why is it told in this way and what's the you know if that's not really important to us and we're training our people that this is just how you read the bible so i think that's what you're talking about but in addition to that if you stand up in the lord's day every sunday and you're giving prophecy and not scripture and prophecy can be errored because you could be hearing wrongly and then you're never teaching anything i've never attended that church but i'm sure that they would say we do teach the bible i think yeah well everybody every church thinks they teach the bible for sure yeah and this one included and there are times when they did teach the bible so let's be clear about that it's not like they never taught the scripture in its context it's just that most often it was some sort of new spin on it and that is what we considered apostolic like to be apostolic you had to be able to do that with the scriptures yeah um okay well let's let's let's get some let's get some closing thoughts in here i'm gonna probably toss it over to michael is there anything else that uh our round tree is there anything else miller that you wanna to bring up before we we kind of put a bow on this yeah so i think the the things some of this i knew on the inside when i was there like okay some problems here but a lot of this i didn't realize it until after i left and you know one of them being a lack of plurality of eldership um and accountability for the senior leader yeah the uh lack of of actual teaching of the scriptures and the the problem with the vision that was so narrow that it would leave people out and leave a lot of people feeling undervalued and something that i just i would put out there because i'm sure there's going to be people from that church that listen to this and and people that on some level i actually feel like i gaslighted and need to own because when people would tell me they didn't feel valued that they didn't feel like their gifts were being utilized i would tell them hey you know you can't get your self-worth out of your gifts yeah and the truth is is that they actually weren't being valued and um and i didn't see it i didn't see that the vision was actually excluding them and and for that i'm sorry and i regret that and i i want to own that as best as i can and if there's somebody like who who experienced that from me please know that i i've i want to do what i can to make it right so please let me know what i can do well on that note is there anything else miller that that you would want to say to the leaders of that church anything that you would like to own um you know i'm sure i did talk to people that that and shared things that probably weren't good for them to hear and in my you know uh or maybe they didn't need to hear it that i should have kept it to more of an upper level leadership discussion and so for that i i apologize um yeah try to think of other things and i know that in my bitterness after leaving i i've had conversations and said things i shouldn't have said out of pain and for that i i really am um disappointed in myself for that um and so yeah i'm deeply sorry about that as well i'm sorry for the bitterness that i've had uh in the last couple years and and i just be honest i don't i don't want that like that's not something i'm proud of no do i want to keep so yeah well um thank you for sharing that michael um as i try to kind of put some thoughts together i think here's uh here's what i would say you know we kind of opened the program we're talking about like you know why is this not just a scorned employee sharing his former employees sharing his sob story with the world it could certainly uh come across that way and and we had some discussion about that and miller one of the things i told you before we uh before we even agreed to do this show was you know i haven't you're my friend i would naturally take your side because you're my friend but i haven't heard the other side and you know and so we kind of dialogued about that but the reason uh we agreed to still do this show is because you know i've been a pastor for 16 years and sometimes i feel like you know wellspring has been this this sort of place where lots of people have come and they've been received healing from church hurt and so i've just heard so many stories over the years of church hurt and uh and as a pastor it breaks my heart and and hey i understand even in healthy churches there's going to be church hurt and if you're a pastor you will be hurt i mean it's just it's just the way it is i mean people hurt each other and so so that's part of it but but i've heard a lot of hurt that that would truly be categorized as abuse and one of the hallmarks of that has been this culture of honor talk where somebody is required either required by a non-disclosure agreement please never sign that from a church or two more informally just highly pressured uh to remain silent and uh and then there's spin put on the story and i've just heard so many stories about it that um you know i just want anybody who's listening who's in a situation like that i just uh i just want to encourage you that like the questions that you've been having like it's okay to leave you know it's okay to go somewhere else where they have a structure that is healthier they have a structure where the culture is not you must remain silent you can never criticize like hey and i know there's this other side right like i i don't think like i don't think it'd be a good thing if like everybody in my church was like man my pastor michael really sucks you know like he's really terrible like that would be a really bad thing too like there's this really fine line between like okay there is such a thing as you want to honor your leaders um but honor doesn't mean zero criticism so what does it look like it looks like we go through the proper channels and we try to bring these issues up with the leader and if the leader resists that then we bring matthew 18 we bring somebody else along with it and if it's continually resisted and we're squashed and squashed and silenced and silenced well if that has happened to you you're part of an unhealthy leadership culture that's right that's when it's time honestly to say it loud if that's what's happened that's when it's time to say aloud i mean i i just i don't like that i really don't i really want to honor but i think that if you go through the proper channels then it's proper to bring it up and we've seen this like with the ravi scandal and all of these other things and i'm not necessarily putting this in the exact same category but i'm just i'm just saying there's a culture of silence and a culture of protect the leader and protect the organization and that's a sure sign of unhealth and and so we want to promote healthy organizations and so i want to encourage people avoid churches where there's a culture of silence and and i want to say avoid churches where there's an ecclesiology of an apostolic leader that has excessive authority over a church solitary authority over church and be discerning enough to recognize when people are elders in name only but not actual elders pay attention to how the bible is taught on sunday mornings now i'm a fan of exegetical expositional sermons i'm not going to say somebody's sinning when they preach topical sermons or whatever we can have that debate but if they are going to preach topical sermons they still need to be expositing that topic exposing the scripture over that topic and so the point is are they using scriptural context and proper hermeneutics or are you really just going and hearing a ra ra sermon where a few bible verses are mentioned here and there and lastly i know i've said a lot but this is just i think some important final thoughts um if the mission of the church isn't the same as what jesus says the mission of the church should be then that's a church you shouldn't be a part of so for instance uh a prayer and worship church okay well the church is called a house of prayer but that's every church is called to be a house of prayer um but if a church is going to say and i'm not saying your church said this michael um i i'm just saying we're not any church okay i'm saying if any church says hey we're not so much about making disciples that's what other churches do we're not so much about community because that's what other churches do we're about prayer and worship or maybe there's something else we're about making disciples but we're just really not about prayer that's what other churches do what they're doing is they're saying you know what certain purposes as defined by the lord of what a church is we don't want we just don't do those because we have a vision that's a business mentality locked into i mean i've read good to great too it's called the hedgehog concept and the hedgehog you know a fox he can do lots of different things a hedgehog does one thing really well well and in the church world we've adopted the hedgehog concept because jim collins says that works really well for businesses and now we've applied it to churches and well hey i'm really good at prayer and worship or i'm really good at this and it actually works phenomenally at fulfilling that one thing but i don't want to as a shepherd stand before jesus and say hey well jesus i just valued prayer and worship but i didn't value community and i didn't value making disciples or i just valued making disciples but i didn't value community like what jesus says is the purpose of the church that's the purpose of the church and i want to come on the hill the hail the heel ends of that and say jesus is the shepherd and your local church pastors their job is to admit to his authority and fulfill his commands we don't get to assume the authority of the high shepherd and determine what the vision and mission is that has been determined in the holy scriptures by jesus our shepherd yeah everyone else is just an under shepherd unless it's a para church ministry right if you're young life right hey if you're into radio you can do whatever you want right if you're young life go and do your ministry to high schoolers okay uh if it you know whatever it is but like for a church you know the church is called to worship god the church is called to build fellowship to be the body but i'm also not church called to serve the ministries aren't claiming to be a church like i'm not i am they're not claiming to be right i'm not here offering communion i'm not administering baptism and i'm not doing church discipline what happened at the church that michael was at was church discipline was exercised outside of those grounds because they were led by another right well and you know we've had brad stroup on the show from the prayer room and uh it's called the prayer room in i think they're in arlington right now they've moved locations several times we had him on a show a year ago and one thing i really respect about brad is he says we're not a church and he actually tells people you need to be part of a local church not anyone on his leadership team who's not also part of a local church and he tells them to tithe to their church and he gets the leftovers now i respect that because that took a great sacrifice for him to say but the reason he's saying it is he says we're about prayer and worship we're going to zero in on that and it's not appropriate it's not biblical for me to claim to be a church and get the financial benefit of claiming to be a church when i'm not doing the things that jesus says the church is and does yeah yeah um uh miller you've got something to say in there yeah you know there's a lot that's happened subsequent to being fired and uh you know my wife and i this was a painful thing for us to bring up uh and to share publicly and knowing that i'm probably going to be discredited on some level because of bitterness like that'll be the excuse to use yeah you're going to be a gossiper you're a gossiper you're asleep yeah yeah i'm a gospel i don't know but let's hold our hopes high maybe this leads to good healthy conversations well i say that because it's already been said like i i've had i remember one of the elders from the church this is just a couple months ago reached out to me because he was concerned about some doctrinal things and that elder was told not to talk to me about the church or about theology by the leaders the other leaders of the church and and the reason was given was that i was just bitter and i would and i would be very convincing i'm more convincing than anybody else that's hard for me to hear and that that on some level that's what they're being instructed but but here's the thing like you'd have to say that what i said today is actually not true like everything i said that none of those things happened um and that's hard and i think there's a tendency and i i say this for all church leaders out there um make sure that you're not victim blaming in other words and this is this is pretty common there's this mentality uh from elders that we need to protect our own and protect the church and so the person who leaves that's bitter and hurt is the problem and sometimes there's truth to that sometimes there's not and so the question is is did they have a valid case at all uh and if so um do do we want to we we got to be very careful that we're not blaming the victim for that and this this happens all the time i mean the metoo movement came out and it was sort of like a anti-victim blaming movement in some level it's like finally these voices are being heard and their stories are being believed so so uh there's been a lot of people out there we i've got to wrap up i've got to get going personally but yeah um when michael was going through this there were three books that i was reading we were both in a different place trying to figure out what we believed about eschatol esthetology ecclesiology you need to figure out what you believe about schizophrenia but both of those things were things that we were we were both really trying to figure out at the exact same time and there were a few pieces of material that helped me out tremendously that i felt were also helpful to michael um whether whether he uh he i know he read two of these or or one or two of them um i i definitely these these three i would recommend so if you're out there and you're like hey i'm in this space and there's a couple of you in here already that are like i've had to relearn so much and i don't i don't know where to start there are three books i highly recommend one is luther by eric mataxis the question of conscience the question of authority and the question of the authority of scripture really fleshes out in that and it's a historical narrative so it's interesting it's it's fascinating it's so well written it's engaging so it's like you see the overlording leader trying to push down and crush and and the response of conscience in in alignment with scripture and what's our responsibility in it beautifully written check that out the next one is nine marks by mark dever now i don't agree with absolutely everything in that book but man i would agree with 99.9 of it and i actually recorded a 30 minute episode with mark dever that i have in the can that i haven't released yet so you're going to see that coming out here pretty soon and another one is a plea for expository preaching and that was written by like all of the gospel coalition and together for the gospel it was like there's like 37 authors it's just it's phenomenal and it's a passionate plea for expository preaching um by everyone who preaches well if they preach well they wrote that book hey i want to i want to say one more thing okay we're trying to wrap up absolutely i think my other exhortation to everybody would be don't give up on the church amen if you give up on the church you give up on jesus the way you treat the church is the way you treat jesus i agree uh you know paul's told you know jesus appears to him and says saul saul why do you persecute me like saul could have said like i'm persecuting your church come on but he says but you're persecuting me because whatever you do to the church if you isolate from the church you isolate from jesus keep preaching you persecute the church you persecute jesus and somebody might say well michael you guys are criticizing the church well we we're trying to be constructive yeah we're trying uh to build up the sheep because i have just counseled so many people who've been hurt by the church and i and and i want this to be a purifying for the church i hope for good constructive conversations to come from this but don't give up on the church and one day you're going to stand before jesus and you won't be able to say well i gave up on the church because it hurt me like we've all been hurt by it all of us have if you've if you've given yourself to community you have been hurt every one of you that's just the way it is even in a healthy church but don't give up on it yeah this is uh man i've gotta i've gotta mention this because we haven't mentioned it the entire time a couple of things that i think is really cool we've got a book club coming up um that's in patreon if you're a member of patreon those five bucks a month we're going to be going through kingdom of the colts that book we're going to read the first chapter and we're going to talk about it this saturday the 15th on patreon there's going to be a link uploaded to zoom we're all going to jump over to that zoom chat there's a couple of points that book that we're going to discuss as a group it looks like there's going to be like 50 of you guys on that video that are interested we've got hundreds on patreon but it looks like lots of people are gonna be interested in that conversation it's not too late to pick up an audible or an audio book or a kindle uh of this read listen to the first chapter write down some thoughts and discuss it with us this saturday uh there's also a lot of really great content coming out on patreon we're releasing a series on worship michael and i just finished the demystifying not demystifying where is that one uh there we go demystifying the gifts of the spirit series that myself and michael miller did back in 2019 we released all six episodes of that on patreon the content that's on there speaking of the replacing of theological foundations the theological foundations is coming out my buddy in the comments fruit of the vine ministry's name is john davidson he's got a real similar story to miller we cl we logged that testimony out there we've just got really cool resources there on patreon uh and again if you're out there and you're so broke you're baloney doesn't have a first name and you've got to find a way to squeeze out five bucks each month and there's a video that you're like man i really would love access to that hit me up media the remnantradio.com i'll send you the video for free but man if you can this is the way that we do what we do it's from support like you and we would love to to expand to do more uh and we can't do it without you so we really really appreciate your your generous support guys anyway that's it those are my thoughts tomorrow we've got the svegel in the house shepard of hermann shepherd of hermes it's going to be so cool guys uh this is going to be kind of a fun kind of a fun a really fun discussion interesting really interesting if you're not familiar with the shepherd of hermas real popular book in the first century uh circulated with a lot of the gospels and it it was not a part of the canon so you got to tune in to find out why it's going to be good stuff anyway guys blessings thank you so much for tuning in to this episode we'll see you tomorrow and we'll see you next week uh next week wednesday when we talk about jonathan edwards and his way of judging revival investigations it's gonna be uh good stuff blessings guys we'll see you next time

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 110,015

Keywords: new apostolic reformation, nar exposed, Fired from NAR Church, fired from the NAR, NAR abusive leadership, NAR leadership, new apostolic reformation exposed, new apostolic reformation response, new apostolic reformation explained

Id: 2S0xn8O2v0A

Length: 87min 46sec (5266 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021