Government deals with evil-doers. Support the government as God’s servant to surround kingdom culture with political freedom. Government is God’s terror to those that do evil. Within the kingdom, the King’s way of doing right attracts the soul of man to a better way of life. Around the kingdom, God’s structures of grace maintain a guard against lawlessness. If the kingdom culture fails, it leaks unrighteousness into the kingdom. Any and every substitute for the King’s right way of living and doing results in a breach. The influence of the kingdom diminishes. His people come under the influence of His enemies through cultural syncretism.
The Roman Catholic error compounds when it meets culture. It syncretizes the existing culture into the church. Worship of ancestors became praying to saints. Idolatry and patron saints made a special place for demons. The hue and cry of the reformation failed to correct this syncretism. A protest of Roman Catholicism emerged. A restoration of the original did not. The overreach of that protest was more humanly-devised ideas for culture.
The kingdom culture was not on the docket for discussion. The response to the Reformation failed to carry through to culture. The Reformation became a “do not allow this to happen again” exaggeration. The Reformation set a form of polity and government that ignores the kingdom culture. The Reformation asked for democracy, accountability to man, and exaggerations of doctrinal revision. It did not restore the New Testament polity of kingdom.
God had a Manifest Destiny in mind – God’s “manifest destiny” is very different from the one proposed by men. God has a manifest destiny nonetheless. God’s way forward never depends upon the imperfections of human experiment. God never intended government to establish kingdom culture. God intended to provide freedom for His people to do so. Instead, church-anity incorporates existing cultures into the kingdom.
Without an understanding of cultural redemption, the church provides a sub-culture. The sub-cultural church syncretizes existing culture into church-anity. The modern church-anity is deeply entrenched in syncretism. We need a new Reformation. We need a new Era.
God restored intercession. Prayer movements arose. Syncretism infiltrated these movements with church growth paradigms. Leadership structures invaded prayer. The best practices of the world system substituted. Human effort overwhelmed Divine grace flows. Disintegration occurred.
Prayer is not a mini-movement. Prayer cannot stand or withstand separated from kingdom culture without suffering grave dysfunction. Malpractice immediately follows.
Kingdom principles, processes, and protocols suffer from human organizational dynamics. Jesus says, “When you pray…” This idea becomes less and less important to an organization.
Jesus says, “Do not make prayer a stage or platform event to be seen of men.” Prayer movements build upon this very practice. The goal of increasing and maturing prayer becomes a whisper. The noise of organizational success becomes a roar.
God restored worship during the very same time He restored intercession. Worship movement arose. Syncretism infiltrated these movements with entertainment expansion paradigms. The sentiment became, “We deserve the same high quality of performance in the kingdom.” The idea of David’s Tent became a quest for award winning professionalism.
Worship is not a mini-movement or recruitment tool to capture the younger generation. Promises to make young people rock stars fills the mini-movements with false expectations. Entertainment dynamics normalize.
The New Testament kingdom platform of Jesus says very little about music. Why? Because the sound to be released is in the land, and the people to release it are the Remnant. Jesus restores music and intercession at the same time for a reason. The mini-movements all missed the point at a fundamental level. They compounded the error in the organizational structures necessary to inflate a following.
The idea of not using a stage for a performance for intercession applies to worship. The call to authentic spiritual worship diminished. The noise of entertainment success became a roar.
Can we see the same parallels in other mini-movements? How can we not?
The point of all Reformation is to form again. The fundamentals must be reset to the originals. The term “radical” must be applied. Nothing is radical unless it restores to the original. We are not radical!
The mini-movements instantly sowed the seeds of syncretism at the inception. We applied the best practices of the very cultures we are sent to confront and influence. We hoped to show off our new-found revelation with all the wrong motivations. We are still hoping for infiltrations instead of influence.
We must restore kingdom culture. Without it, the restored aspects of kingdom leadership cannot function at foundational levels. We have restored understanding and some function. Immediately we applied the cultural principles, processes, and protocols of the world to the restoration, dysfunction and malpractice overwhelmed the rule of the King. We now have a conglomerated mess with spiritual juveniles and jokers running amok. We now have renewed disgust for apostles and prophets. We have untested people father bashing themselves into positions, creating complete chaos. Apostolic and prophetic lawlessness abounds.
The apostolic and prophetic movements syncretize religion into the church. Religion is tradition and superstition. It is a spiritual condition created by the existing cultures. Syncretism puffs up a pillow for it to sleep in the same bed with God’s Beloved.
We need a new Reformation. We need a new Era.
This blog really cuts the heart of our present disfunction Don. It creates a sense of sobriety towards how we handle a restorative or reformation move of God. I think what many people think will happen in a day may take multi generational thinking, building and a sight like Abraham who was looking towards a city whose foundation, builder and maker is God!