[Here Am I]

Originally Posted by peopleoftheway

As the LORD move you sister, as the LORD moves you.
When you add yours, I will add my experience, then maybe together in the will of God we will encourage those on the forum that I know are struggling with ecumenism in their present church, and need the word of God to guide them in their decision.

Okay, I’ll try to keep it succinct:

We’ve been members of an independent Baptist King James church since 2001. I was active in choir, AWANAs (later Master Club), Reformers Unanimous (RU), Soul Winning, sender of birthday/anniversary cards for my Sunday School class, and even serving as ‘librarian’ for the choir materials. My dh was first drawn to audio/video ministry, then RU and Master Club. He felt led to teach Sunday School a couple of years ago, and within a few weeks after he told our pastor, a couple had to stop teaching due to health reasons. I assisted my husband with that ministry, to 4th graders. We were regular with our attendance, and willing to volunteer as needed. In 2004 we went on a Missions trip to Montana for a week. We were very happy with the worship, the fellowship, and the teaching.

About three years ago the music director resigned, reasons unknown aside from saying that the Lord wanted him elsewhere. We interviewed many music directors, but none were what the pastor thought we needed, or we were (as one candidate told us) expecting too much from one man. Finally, after about eighteen months of fill ins and interviews, the pastor said we had the man that God wanted to serve in the music ministry. He was (and is) a very friendly man, and took on the role of music director/orchestra leader and associate pastor with energy and ambition.

In August of 2007 the choir members were given the new music for the Christmas program, in a CD and a book. We were told to listen to it in preparation for our first rehearsal. I put the CD into my player, and listened to the entire musical, and sat there, unbelieving as to what I had just heard. I listened to it again, and felt extremely grieved. I even read the musical numbers in the book, and could not believe what I heard…it was not about Jesus, it was about Christmas, like any ‘Wonderful Life’ sort of secular production. I doubted myself, wondered what was wrong with me…and I went to the first rehearsal, determined to not let my feelings sway me into doing something wrong. We practiced the first number…”The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, a song I despise since I was born again. I sat there, numb and upset. The lady next to me said “Why are we singing about ‘ghost stories’?” So, it wasn’t just me.

I went home, and I prayed, and prayed. I cried and begged the Lord to help me…and then, I felt as if there was His still small voice inside me, asking me “Does it honor and glorify Me?”, and I answered “No, it doesn’t, Lord.” I knew then that I had to quit choir, for the duration of the musical. I told the music director that I was taking a sabbatical from choir, to which he asked me to stop by and explain after church. I stopped by, but he’d already left, and he never asked me again why I had dropped out, so I never told him.

In the meanwhile, there had been an increase in ‘demands’ for money, constant ‘nagging’ for more money, more tithes, and both my dh and I were disturbed by it. Every week I faithfully tithed, and gave cheerfully above my tithe to missions, and love offerings, but now there was a constant “Give, give, give…” chorus from the pulpit. If we’d not been giving all along, I suppose we could have been upset because of a guilty conscience, but it wasn’t that at all. At one point, the pastor suggested we give our stimulus checks to the church, to help reduce its indebtedness. One deacon took over handling the paperwork to enable us to leave our money to the church when we died…this was new to us, and it upset and confused us.

There also was an increase in self-praise: “Isn’t the choir doing a great job? Isn’t pastor doing a wonderful job? Isn’t our preacher a great man of God? What a wonderful and great man of God so and so is" …etc, etc. There seemed to be a lot of glorifying men going on, but not glorifying Jesus Christ. The adoration of the Sword of the Lord people was especially pronounced.

Also, there was an increase in ‘praise and worship’ choruses being sung instead of hymns. We had the words to the hymns and the choruses printed in the bulletin instead of using our hymnals. On more than one occasion, I could tell that the words to the hymns had been changed in the bulletin, and I even looked them up in the hymnal to make sure. Why was it done? Plus, we kept singing “Majesty” all the time; once I learned that the composer of that beautiful song was promoting his ‘Kingdom Authority” heresy by it, I stopped singing it, I could not sing it.

The Sunday School classes over the last few years were being ‘standardized’ with each and every adult class (this was a big church, we had about six separate adult Sunday School classes) being required to follow along with the latest ‘book’ printed by some wonderful ‘man of God’. We had some great teachers, and it grieved me to see them shackled by having to follow some pabulum as required by the pastor and associate pastor.

Do you see a pattern yet?

I did not sing in the Christmas program, but as choir librarian, I was invited to the January ‘thank you’ dinner for all choir members and their spouses. At this dinner, I was horrified when the associate pastor/music director mentioned that we would be hiring professional musicians for the next Christmas program, even though we already had our own members' orchestra! Also, he spoke about making the choir members ‘uniform’ (robes??) and, this might be insignificant, but he kept misquoting Philippians 4:13. Four times within one speech to us he misquoted it! Four times! He said “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me” and I wondered why he kept using a modern version of that verse.

As you can see, there were a lot of things that upset us, a lot of things that worried us too. My dh and I were praying, for the better part of a year, until we believed that the Lord would have us move on, to leave our church. I cried, I loved the people, I loved my pastor, and I didn’t want to leave. But…what do you do when you see apostasy, at least the first signs of it, in your church, and realize there is nothing you can do to stop it?

We eased out of our ministries, and started visiting other independent Baptist churches on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. When we finally found someone to take our Sunday School class, we left, entirely. That was in July, almost a year to when I first had serious misgivings about what was going on. I told only a couple of people face to face, and wrote short notes to a few close friends about us feeling the Lord wanted us elsewhere. I didn’t make any announcement as to why we were leaving, because I was so afraid of saying something that would cause division.

Word got back to the associate pastor/music director, and he emailed me, asking why we left. I was polite, and gracious, but I gave him the facts, basically what I have written above. I never heard back from him, or the pastor, to whom I mailed a hard copy of my email.

We’re now members of a small, independent, King James Bible believing church. The pastor preaches from the Bible, only. The choir sings hymns and plain gospel songs, nothing fancy or like a ‘praise chorus’. We are thankful that the Lord not only moved us away from our old church, but into this new one.

And in the old church, someone is spreading the rumor that we’ve joined a ‘Ruckman’ cult, and the associate pastor is telling people that we left, ‘bitter’. Hmm. Why?

I meant this to be short, but there was so much to share, to explain, so forgive the length.