RE3: Rethink Renew Reconstruct

Is my church a cult? In certain charismatic churches it’s a fair question, where deliverance & prophetic ministries can easily become high control groups, because the framework is already built in. When leaders can speak for God & experiences validate themselves - scriptural guardrails can be overshadowed by personal prophecy & big personalities without a lot of accountability. In this episode we’ll look at why the charismatic movement is fertile ground for cults to spring up, Red flags you should look for and tough questions you can ask yourself if you think your church may have crossed the line.Looking for resources on cults & cult like behavior? https://internationalculticstudies.org Spiritual Safety Survey - "Am I in a dangerous cult?"https://spiritualsafetycenter.org/survey

What is a false teacher according to the Bible? The term sure gets used a lot - especially in discernment ministries. But it can be confusing for those who are new to the faith, or leaving NAR / Charismatic movement when everywhere you look someone is accusing another minister, or examining everything with a fine tooth comb looking for any and every little misstep. The Bible gives us a standard by which we can tell destructive false teaching & heresy from an interpretation issue on a secondary doctrine. Truth matters - even when it comes to discerning error. The only way to mature is to learn to see danger for yourself. No one gets everything right - not even in discernment ministry. But the more you equip yourself, the less you’ll have to depend on others to tell you who (or who not) to listen to.

Worship music in the charismatic movement feels so right - until you see how wrong so much of it really is. Bad theology in the music leads to misunderstanding of what worship even is. So once we wake up, it can be difficult to make sense of anything. What music is legit, and how can we know for sure? In this episode, we’ll shine a light on the false teaching in the worship songs we used to sing , ask questions that help us sort the good from the bad and more - to help those struggling with the whole idea of worship learn how to truly worship in spirit and truth.

Deliverance ministry is harmful in many ways. The teaching itself - that deliverance is ongoing, means you’re never truly free. You’ll always need another deliverance down the road.But to those who come out of addiction it can be even more dangerous. Some substitute a former addiction for a new one - and deliverance ministry can easily become a compulsion when it teaches that every bad thing that ever happens could be caused by a demon. Others may break free from addiction but never deal with (or begin to heal from) the underlying issues that addiction attempts to mask or medicate. While maturing in the faith , as scripture leads us to do, does help to heal these past hurts - deliverance ministries actually lead to stunted growth. That leaves us helpless against trauma & other issues that addiction often stems from - leaving us searching for something else to fill the void our addiction used to fill.

Deconstructing from the charismatic movement is hard. We might even wonder, why does God allow false teachers to keep harming people? Scripture gives us the answers we need. And while the truth can be difficult to grasp at times, God is faithful to restore, redeem and heal even the deepest hurts. In this episode we’ll look at what the Bible has to say about why God allows these frauds to continue & give some encouragement for those who are putting the pieces back together.