Me & Mylon

I know I've shared in the past some of my deep aversion for Prosperity theology, but let me relate the other side of this. Back in 1988 I was living near a little town in mid Missouri. I had just been really turned on to Jesus, with a serious salvation experience and some radical in-filling experiences with the Holy Spirit. My dad told me I nursed my Bible at the time like it was a teddy bear. He caught me running through the tall grass in front of our house, dancing in the Spirit, high on Jesus. When I came inside he asked me what I'd been doing. He said it was an embarrassment to him as he was sure the neighbors were watching. I'm sure he doesn't remember any of this now. Anyway. . . .

With some friends I began a music video TV show on NLEC's Christian TV station. One of the coolest music videos was from this band called Mylon and Broken Heart. Beginning with an interest in the videos I started buying Mylon albums every time they came out. Now you have to understand that when I listen to music I get nutso about it. That started here as a teenager. I memorized every note, every riff of the Mylon albums. (As I did with a ton of CCM music at the time. Keith Green had 24 hour nonstop play in my head. I got all his music on cassette for "whatever I could afford"--- which was nothing. I wore every tape out to where they wouldn't play anymore. My girlfriend's dad made the remark that I could have easily started a local chapter for a KG cult!)

But Mylon was more than music to me. I subscribed to his letters. I was very lonely at 16 and a real struggler. So I wrote to Mylon Lefevre. And the wild thing was that he answered me personally. At first I couldn't believe it was really him. I thought it was a stamp there instead of his signature. So I made each letter personal and asked specific questions. And he wrote back with specific answers. When Mylon and Broken Heart came to Columbia and Jefferson City, I made it to the concerts. Now Mylon was a real preacher in his concerts and he gave altar calls. So it was after a concert there in Jeff City that I went forward to recommit my life to Jesus again. I prayed with Mylon personally and just poured out my soul and asked all kinds of questions about what to do with my life and how to know if I was really following God's will---questions nobody could possibly know given the circumstances. But in a wonderfully personable way Mylon very patiently prayed for me.

A few years later Mylon got out of Rock n Roll. You can read about it on his website. He did a mellow solo album which I don't remember buying. I just read on a tribute site that while struggling with his heart condition he met up with Kenneth and Gloria Copeland. For over fifteen years now he's been hooked up with the Copeland family and has been teaching from Kenneth Hagin. That really pains me. So there you have a little connection between me and prosperity theology. I actually feel caught in tandem between these polar worlds of religious liberal and conservativism. Its an epidemic with Bible teachers. It's never enough to relate the words of Jesus. The audience must be drawn into a Kingdom here and now. Among Liberation theologians Jesus is the "yes" to a new civilization here and now. Among Prosperity teachers he is the "yes" to healing and wealth here and now. While Liberation theologians are content to "imagine" the new realities and act toward a future, prosperity teachers tell the poor that God hates their poverty and wants them wealthy now! Either way the identification with felt need is there. Trouble comes with the realization that God is much more than economics, medicine, and politics. Spirituality that focuses on these is less concerned with God's person than with what God gives. The question that should be looming in the subconscious is "What do we have when we get what we want?" Is there no more need for God? I feel suspicious of any lifestyle that needs a religio-philosophy to justify its' existence. As though its not enough to live, we need the heavens to resound "Yes, thatta boy!"

On the plus side, I do feel that Liberation theology highlights a political reading of the Bible that is intended. I don't feel it needs to be quite so forced, often times the textual criticism involved begins with a bias against history. With prosperity teachers I find it particularly inconvenient that there is a lot of evangelistic witness going on. Yes, many prosperity teachers are less prosperity than they are soul-winners, I must admit. And while I personally have spent so much time in (what felt like) manipulative spiritual meetings, I have to be honest and say that as far as I can tell the gospel is preached. It ticks me off to say that. I get angry at God that he uses people who turn around and malign the very gospel they preach. But its a human problem! I can't think of a preacher who doesn't fall under the weight of the gospel he/she preaches!

Jesus' command to "love one another as I have loved you" is alone enough to humble anyone who takes him seriously.

Tags: Mylon Lefevre, TV, Music, Prosperity Theology, Liberation Theology, Kenneth Copeland, conversion, discipleship

I hear Pentecostalism is 100 this year. I've been changing a lot since I dropped out of one of the oldest and most respected Pentecostal Bible colleges. That was 1995. A lot has happened to me since then. That school taught me how to study. I've learned to think often times in reaction to the classes there. But in all honesty a lot of that learning was really important and good stuff. When I dropped out it was because of my own personal mess and practical direction rather than any serious theological divergence. When my theological interests changed it was years later and in response to American Revivalism as a whole rather than Pentecostalism in particular. Pentecostalism as a historical narrative is fascinating and if anything its' acceptance and popularity within Evangelicalism has made it less relevant. I have never personally taken variance with the doctrine of tongues being the initial physical evidence of the Spirit.
It was and is one of those things other Evangelicals want to minimize and strip from Pentecostals.

More important to me are the early social separations within Pentecostalism. They were persecuted for their insular emphasis on Spiritual ecstatic experience. Early on this put them in a great place to question the State on matters of the economy and War. Nowadays the health and wealth gospel and radical Nationalism are (to the outside world) the most identifiable traits of Pentecostalism. Pentecostals would like to say its their missionary activity. But wouldn't all Evangelicals? Maybe that old story from antiquity fits here:

When Dominic was in Rome, seeking authorization for his order from the Pope, the Pope gave him a tour of the treasures of the Vatican, and remarked complacently (referring to Acts 3:6), "Peter can no longer say, 'Silver and gold have I none.'" Dominic turned and looked straight at the Pope, and said, "No, and neither can he say, 'Rise and walk.'"

Why is the power missing from Pentecostalism that it had a century ago? Because like every other renewal movement throughout time it has emphasized the marketable passages of Scripture and left out the unmarketable. Oral Roberts (who by the way is not claimed by classic Pentecostals) talks glowingly about how when he started out as an Evangelist they didn't have a lot. But when God gave him the principle of Seed Faith he told him that he didn't intend for his children to be poor anymore. This thought, and not the initial physical evidence or Evangelism or Missions has spread like wildfire. It was the magic ingrediant that was always missing. It finally made the Post World War American church a God-blessed, Spirit filled, commercially driven enterprise. It assured its' consumers God's favor, continued security, and of course eternal fire insurance. But for me it has become the wound on Pentecostalism that has been its' undoing. And when that wound spreads to the ends of the earth as I fear it is doing, God alone can heal it.

When I attended Bible college I had a theology professor who honestly listened to the class's horror stories about churches teaching tongues and emphasizing scary unbiblical practices. He taught us that the Holy Spirit's work always points to Jesus Christ. Anything that does not point to Christ's work or even points away is just plain not Pentecostalism. I've heard preachers on television teach how to sing in tongues. I've seen Benny Hinn "heal" a man, "slay" him in the "Spirit" and then laugh at his terrible tie and tell him the Holy Spirit told him to get a better one. God in his mercy somehow sees fit to let people like this use Him wrongly. My theology professors had much less charity. I had one prof. say "If your theology is wrong you're going to hell." I instantly thought of Kenneth Copeland. I'm glad that even good theologians don't have God's power to send anyone to the hot place.

Has Pentecostalism done more harm than good in the last century? I'm inclined to say "No." No more harm than any other movements. But I'll let God alone be the Judge.

Tags: pentecostalism, Prosperity Theology, Kenneth Copeland, Bible College