Challenging Organisations

A reader asked told me about their experience in a Christian organisation that had gone off the tracks. He asked the following question.

How should a ministry deceiving the public, the community and its members be treated when one is discovered?

This is a good question, but a difficult one.

I think that the response will depend on the situation of the person who has become aware of the person in the troubled organisation.

Leadership
If the person is in leadership, they should have the right to speak to the other leaders of the organisation. If the person is trusted by the other leaders, their warning might be heard. However, if the problem begins with the main leader, the other leaders are more likely to line up behind him, and the person challenging will be perceived as a troublemaker. Their message might be rejected.

Resigned Leader
If the leader has resigned from their role due to their concerns about the organisation, they will have less credibility with the other leaders. Any criticism of the organisation that they articulate will be seen as “sour grapes.” The remaining leaders of the organisation will attempt to dampen their influence. They might be able to give a warning to the people in the organisation with whom they have strong relationships, but outside that group, they will have very little interest.

Members of the Organisation
A member of a Christian organisation should be able to raise the concerns with its leadership. But there is a big risk that they will not be listened to. The recent history of Christian organisations indicates that whistle-blowers will frequently be ignored and, worse, will be treated badly.

If the leadership bring their power against the person who gives a warning, it can be very unpleasant for them. Many followers of Jesus have suffered terribly when they attempted to challenge the leaders of their organisation. I cannot think of a situation where warnings have been heard, and the organisation changed when the leaders understood the problem.

A member of an organisation can speak to other people in the organisation that they know and warn them of the problem, but they will be seen by the leadership as troublemakers. The leaders will speak against them and portray them as disloyal. The people who they speak to will have to choose who they trust. Many will side with the leadership, against the member expressing concerns.

Members who have left the Organisation
People who have left the organisation will have greater freedom to speak, but they will have less credibility, except with people who know them and trust them. That is likely to be a small group. So, even if they speak out boldly, their influence will be limited.

The leadership will portray the person speaking as betraying the organisation and trying to undermine it. They will describe the person as bitter. They will say that they are deceived because they were challenged by the leadership and are speaking out of their hurt.

They will be attacked by the leadership in an attempt to discredit them before they gain any influence. If the person speaks out publicly, the leaders of the organisation will attack them in order to dull their influence.

Hard to Prove
The person who is concerned about the spiritual state of an organisation will have difficulty proving their case. The experience in many organisations dealing with accusations of sexual and spiritual abuse shows that they will often be ignored, even when there is testimony from several people. Many cases that have been raised have been investigated by lawyers appointed by the leadership team and discounted or ignored.

The people who have raised the claims have often been ostracised by people they have been connected with over many years. These attempts to challenge the leadership of an organisation have mostly failed, even though justice was on their side. Experience in the United States shows that “victim-shaming” is a very effective tool for shutting down people who are criticising an organisation.

If the challenge is about an evil spiritual influence, it will be even harder to prove to a leadership team. The challenger can describe what they have discerned in the Spirit, but the leaders will be able to reject their claim by saying they have discerned something different. The leaders will have people they trust who claim to have the gift of discernment, and will take their word over that of someone that they don’t trust.

The leadership will often denigrate the character of the whistle-blower to undermine their discernment. Leaders tend to take criticism as a sign that they are doing the right thing. Attacks on whistle-blowers by leaders and their supporters have frequently been vicious.

Prophets
In some regions, people who are recognised as “a prophet” by several churches might have emerged. Agabus is an example (Acts 11:27-30; 21:10-14). A prophet to the churches in a region like Agabus might have sufficient respect to successfully challenge a church or organisation that is going astray.

The problem in the modern world is that very few prophets of this type exist. Prophets get ahead these days by being attached to a megachurch, or by joining a group of prophets. Most churches are led by pastors, and the prophet is expected to submit to the pastor, which tends to undermine their independence and leave them too compromised to freely challenge error.

Conclusion
In most situations, there will be nobody who can challenge an organisation that has lost its way. God will have to deal with the problem. This is a pessimistic conclusion, but it is confirmed by the experience of those who have tried.

Building Right
In my books, I explain how the prophetic ministry should be pushed down to the eldership level. Every church should have several elders, and though most will be pastoral, at least one should be an evangelist, and one should be a prophet. Having a prophetic ministry built into its DNA should help a church or organisation stay on track.

The prophet will have a strong relationship with the other elders. If one of them seems to be taking the church in the wrong direction, the prophet will be able to challenge them. Having a balanced leadership is the best safeguard against an organisation losing its way.

The problem for IHOP KC was that the “Kansas City” prophets were unaccountable itinerants. They had joined together to support each other, but in practice, they were probably condoning and covering up each other’s sins. They were not in a place where they could challenge the direction that the organisation was moving.

Mike Bickle
I witnessed with Mike Bickle’s well-known prophecy that God was going to change the church dramatically in one generation. However, I was puzzled by his response to it. I expected that he would press in to find out how God wanted to change the church, so he could articulate it for believers to grab hold of. However, he never seemed to do that. Instead, he started an intercession organisation that was structured in the same way as the church that God had said he wanted to change dramatically. It seemed like he was locked in the past, not pressing into the future.

I have always been a bit sceptical about intercessory ministries. I believe that the New Testament teaches that every follower of Jesus needs to be an intercessor. This makes our intercession more effective, because we will be praying in areas where we have influence and authority.

In my view, most organised intercession is ineffective because intercessor organisations are praying for areas in which they do not have authority, so there they cannot release God to act. In many cases, a claim to be an intercessor is just an excuse for doing nothing. It is an excuse for never sharing the gospel or discipling new believers. Consequently, intercessory organisations are often an obstacle to change because they validate inactivity. Therefore, I am not surprised that IHOP lost its way.

Complete Message

The message of modern Christian prophets often has two parts.

• God has great things that he wants to do through his people. These are really amazing.
• His people will need to change the way that they are living to receive it.

We tend to focus on the first part, but often ignore the second part. Even the prophets tend to amplify the first part and play down the second.

The consequence is that the changes needed are often not made, and so the promise of the first part cannot be received. People then say that the promise was not true. They reject the prophet’s word.

However, the reason we do not receive what God has promised is that we have not made the changes necessary to receive it.

Ahab Complex (4) Attitude to the Prophetic

Ahab had an ambivalent attitude to the prophetic.

1. User
   Ahab used other people for his purpose.
   1 Kings 21:3-11; 22 1-4: 18:5, 22:26
   He used a woman to do his dirty work
   1 Kings 14:2; 21:5-16; 19:1
   He was willing to use prophets when it suited.
   1 Kings 13:6, 14:2, 20:3.
   
   Vulnerability: Many pastors like to have pet prophets. Some use woman to achieve their goals.

2. Court Prophets
   They can be relied on to support what the leaders say.
   1 Kings 22:10-13,22,23.
   
   Vulnerability: Many churches have tame/pet prophets.

3. Hostile to Prophets
   Ahab attacked the prophets when challenged. He tried to destroy them
   1 Kings 13:4; 18:9, 14, 22:26,27
   He raised hand against the prophets
   
   Vulnerability: Many prophets have been destroyed by Pastors.

4. False Accusations
   He made false accusations against the prophets
   1 Kings 18:17, 21:20.
   
   Vulnerability: It is easy to spread rumours about prophets.

5. Rejected Prophetic Challenge
   Ahab was unable to accept a challenge.
   1 Kings 17:1, 13:4.
   
   Vulnerability: Many Pastors do not like being challenged.

Prophetic Ministry in NZ

My latest book is now available in New Zealand. It can be purchased for directly from Kingwatch Books for $NZ12.00 including free postage at Prophetic Ministry. Look for the New Zealand Only option.

Price Indexes (13) Shooting the Messenger

Some economists are pretty hard on statisticians. They see them as a government tool for manipulating the masses. This statement is a little unfair. Most of the statisticians that I know are very independent thinkers determined to measure the economy accurately. Most have an obsession with detail and a fixation with doing things accurately (other personality types find the work boring). They put enormous effort into producing correct estimates.

Statisticians actually have a prophetic role. They are often the only ones who can expose the full impact of government’s monetary policies. The central bankers are the ones who inflate and devalue the currency. I suggest that we concentrate on getting rid of them, rather than attacking those who measure the damage they do. Until we have sound money and inflation disappears, we will need statisticians to measure the impact of monetary manipulation.

I agree that a government monopoly is wrong and dangerous. The best way to get reliable statistics would be to have various providers competing in an open market for statistics. This is what economists should be arguing for, rather than undermining the practice of statistics.

Developing measures that are as accurate as possible is not easy, and there will always be debate about methods. Statistical journals are full of debates about the merits and problems of different methods, including hedonic adjustment. Rather than complaining about the work of statisticians, economist should be glad that they are exposing the damage done by monetary inflation.

Another good example of the prophetic role of the statistics profession is the manual for Government Financial Statistics. This is a system developed by statisticians for measure government income and expenditure. This system exposes the multitude of sins that are hidden by the cash based accounts kept by most modern governments. If all governments adopted these standards, there economic management would be much more transparent.

To those looking for a conspiracy, I am sorry guys, but I don’t think it is there. You should about be careful about the way you use statistics, and make sure that you understand what they measure, but encouraging conspiracy theories adds more heat than light. Statistics and statisticians actually expose the consequences of politician’s actions.