Restorationism And Beyond Part 6 - What I Saw At The Restoration

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
- Jesus (Matthew 15:14)

And so it happened that I was met by someone from a kind of church I hadn't heard of. And because I hadn't heard of it, and for other reasons that don't seem so valid in retrospect, I decided to give it a try. Keep in mind that at this point I had read the entire Bible, but still knew nothing of church history. To someone with this exact combination of knowledge and ignorance, their pitch seemed to make excellent sense.

I don't want to give real church names, because that will distract from my main point. For convenience let's call this the Biblier Than Thou Movement. If I thought the Baptists were Bibley, then these people were ultra Bibley.

They said they were nondenominational, because denominations stink. That sounded good. Of course, I now know there's no such thing as nondenominational.

They said they were committed to bringing back the Church described in the New Testament, the Body of Christ. I wanted that very badly. At this point, I thought I needed that. The implicit assumption that it could even be done - they and I just sailed past that.

They also had a theory that the one true Church had always existed somewhere ever since the first century, and that they were the latest incarnation. Knowing what I know now about church history, I would call this pseudohistorical at best. But at the time, I found it an attractive notion.

No, I didn't entirely buy all this. But anyone can suppress his doubts if he really wants to believe. At this point I still thought I had to join a church - not merely attend - to be a Christian. And that meant accepting the package deal of church doctrine and practise. The only choice was: which package deal? So in humility, I decided to extend the benefit of the doubt. I knew Jesus' warnings about blind guides, but I also knew "lean not on thy own understanding." And I figured the only way to know which principle applied where was empirically. I resolved to give the BTTM a fair shot.

(I won't accuse them of lying to me. The truth is, we all lied to ourselves. I had already bought into certain key lies before I ran into these people. I do believe the founders of the BTTM were almost as ignorant of church history as I was.)

But here's the kicker: the BTTM was at that time experiencing rapid growth. The air was charged with excitement and social proof. I had never, ever encountered anything like that. Can I be blamed for mistaking it for the Holy Spirit? This is important. Rapid growth was a feature of the New Testament church, and conspicuously lacking elsewhere in my experience. It was compelling evidence... until it wasn't. But I'll get to that.

The first red flag was when they went through studies with me. A whole booklet of them. I thought: this again? Yet another canned interpretation of Scripture? I objected, then acquiesced, for reasons given above.

The second red flag was that their arguments for certain church practices involved list of Bible verses ripped out of context from all over the place and then glued together. I thought back on Bible study leaders flipping all over for seemingly random verses, and thought: deva vu again. I had read the Bible at this point, and I knew the contexts. But without also knowing church history, their interpretations seemed almost plausible.

Then I noticed: a certain mean spiritedness and judgmentalism permeated everything they did. The point was to be a good disciple so we could be the New Testament church, Of course, I know now that it doesn't work that way. And the preacher would talk about all the love in the church, and I was thinking: huh?

And the guidance. It was even more insistent, because discipleship. And it didn't work. The more I did what they said, the more my life and relationships went to pieces. So I pushed back. And the leaders got all out of joint. But somehow I never quite got kicked out. (No one had ever taught me how to stand my ground. I was learning from trial and error how it's done.)

At first I thought: it's just me. I'm a bad disciple. But wasn't the whole point to get better at it? Also, I noticed lots of others had serious sins, not just me. But maybe we all just needed time for the Holy Spirit to work on us. So I gave it time. And then I noticed: hardly anyone was getting better. Some people actually became worse. And the leaders just didn't seem to notice.

But... but... church growth! I would have left much sooner if not for that. And I wasn't the only one. Because guess what. Reported church growth slowed. Then it came out that leaders had been cooking the books. No, not the finances. They had independent accountants for that. I mean the other books. The membership and growth numbers were doctored.

Before this point, unbeknownst to all, membership had been in a slight decline. Growth had reversed, not merely slowed. Now it all fell apart. People in leadership got fired. The reasons depended on whom you asked, but they got fired. A whole lot of members up and left. It was like a penny stock's price collapsing on bad news.

And what was left of the leadership did a great chest-thumping mea culpa, begging all who would listen for forgiveness and promising to do better. Out of Christian charity, I decided to give them a second chance. And I learned something about repentance that I ought to have learned from my own experience long ago: it's not enough to know you've messed up in a general sense. The details matter. You need to know exactly what you did wrong, and also what to do instead. These guys didn't have a clue. All they knew was it had all blown up in their faces, so they must have done something or other wrong. To connect effect with precise cause was beyond them. I think their repentance was sincere as far as it went, but it led nowhere.

I had often pushed back against their controlling ways. Not because I had a problem with accountability as such. I had a problem with accountability to people who didn't seem to know what they were doing themselves. Now, humiliated, they lacked the confidence to be as controlling as before. They seemed almost grateful just that I didn't up and leave. So I kind of lurked, putting in the bare minimum until I saw how things sorted themselves out.

Part of it was they were on probation in my mind. But most of it was I wanted to stay past the closing credits and catch that final scene. I wanted information. My search for the right Church been too random, too unsystematic. I decided that I lacked some crucial datum that would lead me right.

This I don't regret. Only by lurking could I have made the discovery that came next. This discovery led to me researching church history. And that in turn led to my epiphany. Which I will reveal in the next and final installment of this series.