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.

Micke Bickles Dream

I find that the person receiving a prophetic dream is often not the best person to interpret it. Gene Redlin drew my attention to a dream by Mike Bickle that illustrates this problem.

Mike’s presentation of the dream makes another common mistake. He mixes his interpretation into his description of the dream. This is unwise as it minimises the communication impact of the dream. Prophetic dreams should be allowed to speak.

In the version of Mike Bickles dream below, I have cut out all the interpretative comments and just left the works that describe what he saw. Reading it this way the message is much clearer.

A. I was speaking at a conference in a baseball park inside a large fairground. About 40,000 people were present—many leaders from different “charismatic” streams, and people from all these groups. I saw one particular leader who was representative of other leaders in the Body of Christ who seek to walk in God’s power and who have an excellent spirit. We were enjoying warm fellowship together.

B. I preached on prayer, God’s power and end-time judgment. I spoke at two afternoon sessions. In the break between the sessions, people were debating what I was preaching. Some IHOP-KC people debated each other, while others were speaking to believers from different ministry streams. They were discussing God's power and His end-time judgment in a friendly way; there was no hostility, only sincere dialogue with humility and love. It was enjoyable and intellectually stimulating but none of the different points of view stirred up real faith or revelation.

C. Immediately as I finished the second session at 5 PM, I saw (some) large snakes (over 100 yards long and 50 feet thick), each having a huge head that looked like a dragon, and many of them were coming from the sky down to the earth.

E. Everyone at the conference was filled with panic; most were terrified. No one had understanding or faith that was mature enough to respond in the power or confidence that I had just preached on, myself included. I ran as I felt the terror of the event. The leaders and their people were terrified; everyone wanted to get out of the fairground quickly. Most people were in confusion, including those from IHOP-KC.

F. These snakes were filled with rage against the people. They were angry and even humiliated about being confined to the earth.

G. Soot like wet, muddy, thick ash was raining down from the sky. It darkened the sky as it fell on the people who were running. I ran out of the vast fairground to the park offices at the entrance. Wet ash was all over me as I ran. Many did not get out; they were bitten by the large snakes.

H. There were evil policeman at the entrance. They told me, “You have to go back into the fairground or we will put you in jail.” They were callous about the danger I would face if I went back into the fairground. I was in a dilemma. I thought, “I just escaped from the most intense danger imaginable and now I have to go back in!”

One thing stands out really clearly. These people were keeping up to date with the latest teaching and the current moves of God. They had just listened to an afternoon of teaching by the “best” end-time teacher in America. Yet when evil appeared in their midst, they were totally unprepared for it. They were “filled with panic”, “most were terrified”, “no one had understanding”, “their leaders were terrified”, “people were in confusion” and “everyone wanted to get out”.

There is a serious disconnect here. People listening to “prophetic teaching”, but totally unprepared for what happens to them next. Something is seriously wrong.

The core message of this dream is that end-time teaching is not preparing people for the evil that lies ahead.

Most of the snakes came down from the sky. This suggests that some were already their in the stadium. This is very disturbing. God’s people are so busy discussing the power of God and the latest end-time teaching that they are blind to the evil that is already emerging in their midst.

Heads represents political power (Rev 17:9). Large heads represent excessive political power. End-time teaching blinds Christians to the idols of state power economic power and military power that are already at work in America, and will suddenly manifest themselves in a terrible way in the future.

All the different “charismatic streams” were present at the stadium. Many of the leaders who “see to walk in God’s power” were there too. This means that the problem being exposed by the dream affects all these Christian streams.

Mike Bickle does not mention the soot in his interpretation, but it is clearly important. Soot represents shame. The dream is warning that fear and confusion will eventually turn to shame, when people realise how they have been side-tracked by misleading teaching. Shame is dangerous, because it makes people want to get out. Many will be so ashamed of their foolishness that they want to give up being Christian. This would be a disaster if it was allowed to happen.

The policemen at the entrance made Mike Bickle go back. I was really touched by a prophetic word that Mike Bickle received many years ago.

I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in the earth in one generation.

I was also really encouraged by his efforts to assist in restoring the prophetic ministry to the church. In recent years, Mike seems to have morphed into an end-times teacher. I sense that the Spirit is telling him to go back to that early calling: transforming Christianity to something totally different and restoring a vibrant prophetic ministry. His end-time teaching is producing confusion and distracting Christians from the important stuff. If continues with that he will end up where he could end up constrained and shut down.

PS: In his interpretation, Mike Bickle refers to Revelation 12. This passage does not describe a future event. It was fulfilled at Jesus ascension into heaven.