IFB No More

Switching Churches

2010-06-29T13:44:00.001-07:00

Around 2006/2007 I switched churches. Several reasons prompted this switch (please be aware I am only writing from experience at this time and am not yet addressing issues. I just want to share my back story first).

i) Self loathing - if you have been reading this blog, you should be aware I struggled big time with the flesh. Being in a loving environment (the pastor and his family) only made me hate myself more, and some of the sermons he preached on sin condemned me so much, but offered little hope (to be fair, like I said, he wasn't the screamy ranty type, and had I told him my sin he no doubt would have helped me). I decided I needed a church that "preached hard", so that I would be so convicted and stop sinning.

ii) A desire to be different - every IFB that I know has this desire. They want to conform to the IFB church, but inside the church they also want to be different. Usually it is some pet doctrine that they hold on to that makes them feel superior to others. I went through a few myself. For a while, I held that you could only be saved by the King James Bible.

iii) Closer to home. I had a 45-1hour drive to get there and the same back, so I was looking for something closer.

iv) A fresh start. Instead of taking my problems to God, I thought I was out of fellowship with God, so a new pastor, a new start would help me get back on track. Or so I thought.

v) Laziness - I was starting to get disillusioned with the "soulwinning". Hundreds of converts and maybe 1 in 10 would ever come to church, and hardly any of them stayed. This new church was a bit different. They didn't do it. Which was fine by me at this time, because deep in the sin that I was, I never felt loved by God, therefore how could I share his love?

So I ended up switching churches. I only stayed at this new church for about 4 months or so, before I left for another country and got married. And that's where most of my IFB problems started. Up until this point, you'd rightly notice that I was my own worst enemy (and still am), but I didn't have another enemy in the guise of an ally until I moved overseas.

I still have IFB friends (and some issues looking back)

2010-06-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Let's face it. Not every Independent Baptist is Phil Kidd or Steven Anderson. There are many (a great many) IFB men who do try to emulate them. And yet, there are many more that do not.

However, the first IFB church I went to, the people there were mostly friendly. Actually, I am sure they were all friendly, but I didn't get to know them all. It was quite big for an IFB church in that part of the world (about 150 at most) and so while you kinda knew everyone's face, you had a small group that you knew better. I was one of the "preacher boys". For those of you who don't know, a preacher boy is one of the young men in the congregation that the pastor occasionally calls on to preach 5, 10, 20 minute sermons on special nights. The pastor never called us preacher boys. It was what we tended to refer to ourselves (mockingly, in a humorous imitation of Hyles Anderson College). Most of my friends were around my age, 20-25, single.

I have nothing bad to say about any of the people in the church, in terms of personality. They had doctrinal issues sure, which I will touch on in future blogs, but as far as I remember, every one of them was of good "christian character". I love them dearly and still consider them my friends.

These young men that were my friends (and young women too), were all godly men and women, much more so than I was (or am today). They were a positive influence on me. Had I not known them, I would not have known Christian fellowship, as my previous (evangelical) church consisted of gossiping over juice after the service finished.

In my mind, that IFB church was what I wished they were all like in terms of pastoral care, and friendship. Sadly, they are not.

I still have good friends who are IFBs. Some of them have gone on to complete degrees in colleges, and yet others have been kicked out of their churches (not the one I have been speaking about), for various reasons. I remain good friends with one of them and we chat often. It's quite amazing how God has led us both to the same viewpoints on many things. He and I have not had real life fellowship for some time, and only occasionally chat online, but we both slowly realised a lot of errors in the IFB church. He still attends (no, it's not the guy who commented on my last post!), well, he wants to, but got kicked out for questioning authority.

Anyway, I still love many IFBs. I don't love their doctrines, their teachings, but I love the friendship of some. Many are rational, loving, and compassionate Christians, and not the all too familiar preacher who screams and rants.

Now, I've said what I still appreciate about the IFBs, although I guess I said I just like some of the people in those churches and not neccesarily the churches themselves.

When I think back on the fellowship we had, there were two kinds. We had some great prayer times together and some of the guys who were what I would call "spiritual giants" organised some great get togethers for the guys (I don't say that sarcastically. I would call them that now. These young men were so humble and full of humility and passion for Jesus Christ, and yet it wasn't a big show for them. They never got up and did the whole ranting and raving in the pulpit. If they got up and spoke, it was quiet, meek, and you really learnt something about God.). That fellowship was great, and I wish I cared more about it at the time (I was fooled into thinking that preaching WAS ranting and raving. I even had one of those guys that were humble and quiet come and ask me how he could be more bold in the pulpit. I don't remember the advice I gave, but it was no doubt bad, and to my relief today, he never took it on board).

However, the other kind of fellowship was horrible, although at the time I enjoyed it. This fellowship didn't involve talking about God, but talking about others. It was essentially gossip, but with facts. We would sit down and talk about how right we were and how Catholics were this or that and how this guy we met on visitation was a UFO cultist and we would all laugh and have a good time laughing at others deception. But what deception were we in ourselves! That was not Christian behaviour. We should have been praying for them, not mocking them. It was just a huge pat ourselves on the back session for being so good and right and true to God's word.

I have a lot of good memories in that IFB Church (mainly the friends I made, the good fellowship, the emphasis on prayer and the compassion and love of the Pastor, but I also have a lot of bad ones. Most of the bad ones involve me preaching, as I tried to emulate the big boys (Hyles, and Greg Locke was a favourite. I could preach almost as fast as him and make about as much sense too). I think I'll cover that in the next blog.

I know that from what I have blogged so far, most of the negative issues come from myself. In a way, that is true. But I also don't want to sit here and write "I am what I am because of someone else". I take full responsibility for my actions, past and present (and future). I am glad that Jesus died for all my sins, past present and future. Like I said before, I don't want to get into bashing the IFB church. I don't want to do that. But I do want to show the mindset that one can get into while in the church. It's subtle. It takes over you. You want to conform. And everyone else does as well. And there would be no problem for that except it sows this massive "us vs them" mentality. And you become almost cult-like. You love everyone in your church, until they disagree with you.

Joining the movement

2010-06-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

I don't remember when I joined the IFB Church. It would have been around 2002 maybe 2003. I do remember the steps leading up to it which probably contributed to me joining the IFB Church.

(What follows is the best I can piece together from my memory. For various reasons, by memory recollection has suffered in the last few years and while I can recall almost everything that happened during the IFB church and leading up to it, I have trouble getting it in the right order. Everything I write happened, but it may not have happened in that order, and I do not intend to mislead).

I was a bit of a rebel. In fact, as a Christian, many would have had reason to doubt my salvation if salvation was based on works. Without going into detail, as a new Christian, I received little in the way of discipling. While I don't blame that for my behaviour, I have no doubt it contributed to it. I've struggled with many sins of the flesh, and still do. However, there was one awful relationship I had that resulted in me searching for something better. I wanted to know God and overcome this flesh. Now, I have seen the truth today, but back then, I was searching. Some might even claim that I was not a Christian, yet I believed the truth, I believed the gospel (some reading this might be thinking - oh you can believe the gospel and not be saved if you don't have works. I will probably post about that soon, but you will have to trust me on this now).

I had been reading a lot of Jack Chick tracts. I had also been reading a lot of Ray Comfort. The chick tracts gave me a desire to find a King James church and Ray Comfort's literature moved me to begin evangelising the lost. Both of these desires lead me to a little church about 45 minutes from where I lived that believed the KJB and went doorknocking and street witnessing. I began attending. I recall I had attended this church previously, once, and felt welcomed but the week following I met the girl that I had the awful relationship with and that lasted about 3-5 months before I ended up coming back to this church.

I also thought that a church like this might help me to subdue my flesh. My previous church (a little evangelical church) was full of people like me, although they showed little remorse over what they had done and some of them even boasted. For a time, while in that relationship, I enjoyed the sin, as sin is pleasurable. But it soon turned to sorrow, jealousy, disgust, distrust and I needed out. The girl in question was a Bible student from another country, and after she left, I broke it off. Even today, despite the great forgiveness God has given me, I still feel guilty that I let myself do what was done. While it would be easy to blame others (I had turned her down several times before eventually giving in), I still blame myself for that sin and wonder what damage was done to her spiritual life due to the time we spent together. I cry as I write this.

The pastor of the new IFB church was very pleasant, and still is to this day. In fact, I only have positive memories about my time at this church and probably won't say much about their practices. His family was warm and welcoming and filled a gap in my life at this time. I had no Christian friends and they quickly became my friends and surrogate family. Even though there were some odd things that this pastor taught, he was never the kind of IFB to brow beat, interrogate, or spiritually abuse. That came later, from other men in the movement.

However, in all truth, while it filled a gap in my life, a huge part of me was still empty. Looking back at this time, I often wonder whether I was saved. Sometimes I conclude I was not, othertimes I conclude that I was. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but I do know that saved or not, I had very little relationship with the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I began attending and quickly learnt a lot of book knowledge. This book knowledge was what I thought was "growth", but I never actually grew in my relationship with God. And other relationships began to suffer (especially with my family).

What is this blog? And what isn't it...

2010-06-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

What a way to start - ambiguous grammar in my blog title.

My name is Luke. I am about 28 years old, although, due to a lack of friends, I have kind of lost track of my age due to no birthday parties. I suppose I could be sure by getting out a calculator, but a guess is good enough.

I was an Independent Baptist. I was in the IFB Church for about 4 years solid, and then 3 years trying to stay in. No, I wasn't kicked out, but I was desperate to be an IFB because I thought it was the "right" way.

This blog is about fallacies, errors and the sad things I saw while in the IFB "movement". I will not be giving any names, nor even my location, because I hold no malice toward any IFB members. I only mean to document my journey into the IFB movement and then out of it.

As of today, I am not an Independent Fundamental Baptist anymore. However, I am still a Christian. I am saved, sealed and secure. Also, at least as of today, I am not reformed. In fact, much of my theology that I still believe was formed while I was in the IFB church. I am still premillennial, pretribulational, etc etc. I have noticed that many people who leave the IFB church often joined reformed (calvinist) churches. I have some stuff to say about that (which might surprise you), but that's a blog for another time.

This blog is not to belittle members of the IFB church. I will try to refrain from using humour in order to explain their oddities, false doctrines and other errors. I intend to be serious. I believe that there are a many great errors in the IFB movement and a serious attitude and compassionate heart is needed in order to show them. If I claim there is an error, I will also give the truth, from the scripture. I still believe the King James Bible is perfect (although I have stuff to say in regards to that as well), so I will only use scripture from the KJB (doing this will also give any IFB no excuse to accuse me of using a modified version of the scriptures).

Prayer: Lord, I pray that you will use this blog as a healing tool for me. Also, I pray Lord that you may open others eyes that may be trapped by the IFB movement, unable to know you as the gracious Father that you are. I thank you that you sent your Son Jesus to die for my sins and pay the price for my salvation, redemption and forgiveness. In Jesus name, Amen.