What does criticism of our recent history have to do with the cross? Probably closer to the intent of the question would be, How can you say such negative things at the foot of the cross?

On Earth, Jesus did not bring glory upon himself, yet submitted to his calling from God. During his life on Earth, he learned obedience to God through his sufferings. Through his refinement, he was able to become the source of salvation for all that obey him. (Hebrews 5:4-8)

In one sacrifice on the cross for all time, the penalty for sin was paid in full. A priest no longer had to offer sacrifices to cover the sin of the people, Jesus provided atonement once for all. (Hebrews 9:24-28) The connection between God and man was no longer through a caste of men serving as go-betweens, Jesus is our mediator. (Hebrews 9:15) Because of his blood, we can approach the throne of God with confidence. (Hebrews 10:19)

When he rose from death, he demonstrated the working of God’s mighty strength. Jesus did not just overcome sin, but death itself. (Ephesian 1:18-21) Once, we were dead in our sin and in our desires of the flesh. Now, we have also been raised from our spiritual death to demonstrate the working of God’s strength in our lives. (Ephesians 2:4-7) It is God’s grace and our faith that saves (Ephesians 2:8) not any work of any man or priest. It is not even by our own strength we are redeemed.

As this is what Jesus’ death and resurrection represent to me, now the present criticism can be addressed.

It is true that we have addressed our former leader. He had to be first in all things, even harming congregations and carelessly disrupting lives in order to be first. Instead of submitting to God’s call for him, he sought to bring glory and honor only to himself. Anyone that has tried to help him address his sin has been eventually rebuffed. Those that attempted to help him individually includes Sam Laing (RTR 3), Steve Staten, Al Baird, Bruce Williams, and Doug Arthur. I’m certain there were others who’s efforts were never made public.

In the end, a collection of his friends even publicly warned him, but to no avail. He was put aside as he should have been. I was upset that such action wasn’t taken much sooner. With all the warnings and rebukes from the pulpit to avoid sentimentality in regards to sin, it felt hypocritical that leaders used the excuse of grace to mask their own personal feelings for their friend, Kip. In retrospect, this may have been the first warning sign that our old paradigms were in great need of change.

Yet, even in the repudiation of our founder and leader, there was no call to repent of our errant theology. We focused on the man without addressing his message. We cast him out without considering the implications of the teachings we held dear in order to fulfill his vision. While calling over and over for Kip to repent, we avoided looking at ourselves and striving for our own repentance as well.

His reaction to continued rebukes was worldly sorrow and superficial change. Our reaction was little different, and this is the difficulty that I continually address. When I look at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I see the importance of repenting from deeds that lead to death (Heb 5:44) and allowing the strength of God to work in our lives. It is important to address areas where there has been no repentance and where our own agendas replace the Holy Spirit.

I cannot speak to all churches and situations, but I can speak to what is spoken in public. From what some leaders are saying publicly, it is clear that we, as a denomination, have not repented and we, as a denomination, have little interest in doing so. Order, pleasantness, and silence have become idols to which we sacrifice justice and mercy. As a recent example demonstrates, we are still rebuking those we consider weak instead of bearing with them as Paul encourages us in Romans 15. It appears we have no tolerance for those that do not catch ‘the vision’, and so their needs are seen as a burden to be cast aside.

In general, we have not addressed areas of our theology that are opposed to God. We have sidestepped looking at our practices that harm others. We used John 8 to chastise other denominations for their devotion to ‘strange practices’, yet we hold unswervingly to our own traditions without the slightest examination. There are many areas that are in dire need of examination, salvation and discipleship are two of them.

Salvation
We have taught directly and indirectly that our denomination pointed the way to Heaven. We paid lip service to the possibility of believers in other churches, but qualified that to say that we had not met anyone outside our group that was saved. The root of this errant doctrine was our own formula for salvation. From our heritage, we were taught Hear + Believe + Repent + Baptism = Salvation. We added something between Repent and Baptism because of Kip. As he says in RTR1, I taught that to be baptized, you must first make the decision to be a disciple and then be baptized. Even now without Kip, some of us are still adding things between Repent and Baptism. Phrases such as have the heart of a disciple or demonstrate repentance or attend every meeting for two weeks are still taught. The danger is this additional phrases is that we determine what they mean. When we add these things to salvation, we become the gatekeepers for whom enters Heaven and whom does not. (Only Peter had that kind of authority!)

The intent in adding these phrases is noble, we desire new Christians to be successful in their walk with God. However, it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to overcome sin. Should a person have salvation (and the Holy Spirit) withheld from them in order to overcome sin? Do we really make people overcome sin by human effort when it is so difficult even with the Holy Spirit within us? Besides, even our Savior tells us in the parable of the soils that many who hear will have difficulty. Are we withholding salvation from some who would be good soil for the sake of trying to strengthen those we believe are rocky or thorny soil?

Of course, it is silly to think that a man can withhold salvation from someone (John 6:44). The point is that we cannot be the gatekeepers, nor should we try to be. There is more that needs to be examined (Formulas for salvation, rebaptism, and others) but one thing is clear. Through our theology regarding salvation, we attempt to be God or to make decisions for God to others. We need to repent and allow the Spirit of God to work.

Discipling
In order to meet the needs of so many new converts, Kip implemented a system based on an idea from Crossroads. From RTR 1 Kip says, I came up with “discipleship partners.” In these relationships, the evangelists, elders and women’s counselors, after discussion and prayer, arranged for an older, stronger Christian to give direction to each of the younger, weaker ones. They were to meet weekly, but have daily contact (Hebrews 10:24,25). This idea is furthered explained in the 1988 Leadership Conference by Kip when he says:

Friendship is what builds trust. I really believe with all my heart that you will never be able to disciple someone unless you build a friendship with them and thus they can trust you. You see, here is the bottom line and get this down. The person that you are discipling must believe, must trust that you are out for God and their best interest. Because you see there is going to be some advice they will not understand. But if they trust that you are out for God and their best interest, they will obey.

Secondly, they must believe emphatically that your judgment is better than theirs. This is so important. How can you tell someone what to do, when they are even unsure of what is going on unless they will obey by trust that your judgment is better than theirs? I truly believe that in order to develop this kind of trust you have got to have a time when you are contacting that person every day. Hebrews 3:12 and 13 … so the premise seems clear. Friendship which builds trust which allows you to be able to guide them and to mold their lives.

It can be said that this is now ancient history. Things have certainly changed from almost twenty years ago. However, changing how discipling partners are selected does little to address the deeper spiritual issues. We may not have accountability sheets to fill out anymore, but in many cases, we still have deal with our own ideas of trust, obedience, advice, and friendship.

What has been the effect of our system over time? In my experience, I have seen young men and women struggle with many of the following thoughts and attitudes:

• I am not worth very much to the church or to God.
• If I claim any rights for myself, I am being selfish.
• The mission is more important than my own thoughts and feelings.
• I must please other people regardless of the cost to my person or my values.
• I have to put myself at the disposal of others without any protest.
• I need to get my heart right instead of speaking up when something bothers me.

We can change the name from discipling to mentoring, but the unhealthy practices and assumptions go unchallenged. When we look at shepherding Christians, the idea that a person has no value to God or the church is contrary to 1 Corinthians 12. Every part is needed and every part has value. More than any other attitude listed above, the idea that the individual Christian has little to no value has been the most destructive. Sadly, this idea has been reinforced over the years by the very system designed to prevent this attitude in the first place. This occurred more and more as the emphasis of discipling times shifted to the discovery and elimination of sin and away from prayer and encouragement. Even encouragement was given in relation to overcoming sin (real or imagined). This isn’t to say that every relationship operated in this manner – but even if only a few did, it is worth the effort to prevent this from happening again.

The old discipling system caused other effects as well and many do not change after the hierarchy is removed. Specifically, in dealing with sin, James 5:16 is twisted to mean that you cannot be forgiven of any sin unless you confess it to another Christian. This has conditioned in many of us a need to confess our sins to a person or group in order to feel forgiven. It’s not the confession that the issue, it’s the artificial need for the sake of feeling forgiven.

Jesus is our mediator. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. He paid the price for all of our sin. We have direct access to God because he went through the temple in Heaven to grant us that privilege. There is no need to confess to another man in order to be forgiven, Jesus took care of that. There is no need to confess in order to feel close to God, we are already standing at the foot of the throne. We can confess our sins to God himself. Whereas we added to salvation make people perform extra work, we also added to the process of forgiveness to make people perform extra work We have become addicted to these additional requirements to the point that they seem to be perfectly natural.

Though an overused word, it still applies to us. Within the old or new discipling systems we made its participants codependent on each other. A codependent person does not act on their own desires, they react to the perceived desires of those around them. We talk about being proactive, but our discipling system has conditioned us to require a third-party for just about any circumstance in life. For some, this became debilitating. We called this advice, but in reality, it was a request for permission.

A common question to anything perceived to be unusual was and continues to be Did you get advice? There was great pressure to answer YES. Those that answered NO would quickly rectify the situation in case the question was posed again. In my experience, many of us learned to find the very permissive members that would think anything was a pretty good idea. We weren’t looking for direction or advice, we wanted carte blanche to do what we wanted and still be able to say that we had sought advice.

Repentance in this area seeks to provide justice to those harmed. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, justice and restitution should be the starting point of any discussion. Instead, however, we have thrown our own people under the bus, or we have allowed them to drift away. It’s about time we stop punishing those that are still hurting and repent.

Other Areas
There are many more areas left to address. We set up warped definitions of leadership. We did not protect the weak. We see peoples’ needs as burden to the church. We revise our history to the point of incredulity. We lord our authority over others and encourage the same in our leaders. We blame others for our denominations’ mistakes. There are yet more items than these, but we have not even addressed elementary issues. How can we look to more complicated and thorny matters?

Most importantly, we must address our inability to accept help from those outside our denomination. We worry that people in other denominations will water down the message of the cross while we crush our own people underfoot. It’s a false dilemma to ask which is worse, the truth of the matter is that we can get outside help without watering down our doctrine. As mentioned on DToday, one minister, with the help of Abilene University has written a program as a part of his doctoral thesis. Using Paul’s leadership style in Corinth as a model, many issues can be addressed and we can repent.

Overall, we need to repent of our own hypocrisy. We beg God for mercy, yet we offer no mercy to those that dare to call for change. We cry out for bold vision, as long as it is about evangelism. We call for money and missions to save the world for all generations, but we ignore the generations still holding on in our churches. Where is the repentance in all of this?

Where is the cross? It is far away in a distant land.

Jesus said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. God have mercy on us all, I hope we are not too late. The cross compels us to examine ourselves, repent of the hypocrisy and damaging doctrines, and live a new life in the power of God. This is not too much to ask – we would ask no less of anyone that wants to come to Christ.