I am 30 years old, a Marine Corps infantry veteran and former amateur church planter. Before enlisting in the Marine Corps infantry, I earned two bachelors degrees from Bob Jones University. Before earning degrees from BJU, I worked two summers as a counselor at the Wilds Christian Camp in Brevard, NC. From childhood to college graduation, I was a model Christian kid who won awards for being good, and I excelled at preaching competitions.
The Lord has blessed me beyond measure: He gave me a beautiful wife and son; He protected me through a combat deployment in Afghanistan; He worked through me miraculously to point scores of Marines and Sailors to Christ through Bible studies and an "accidental" church plant; and the list goes on.
In spite of these blessings, I and my family are in recovery. We thought that we were in recovery from the challenges of church planting, but as it turns out, we are in recovery from Fundamentalism. You see, we both grew up in Fundamentalism, and the doctrinal misunderstandings of our past are deep and potent. Unfortunately for my family, I naively led them through the quagmires of Fundamentalism while also pulling along a church plant. In spite of so many rookie mistakes, the Lord worked through Sneads Ferry Fellowship Church to begin reaching the greater Camp Lejeune community.
Sneads Ferry Fellowship Church (located just outside Camp Lejeune, NC) sprung from a Bible study of military couples who decided to dream big and pray big. We grew out of a "progressive" Fundamentalist church in Wilmington, NC. This church in Wilmington allowed us to tune in to their web-casted Sunday morning services at our house 45 minutes away in Sneads Ferry. Sneads Ferry Fellowship (the Bible study) grew quickly, and we wanted to become a church. Through a long painful process of negotiations, I learned that the church in Wilmington would not mentor our group into a church plant due to issues pertaining to our casual attire (we met in our home and wore jeans and T-shirts), laid-back manner (we didn't always start "on time"), and musical style (Sovereign Grace graciously gave us permissions to use their worship videos for our worship service). In fact, after over a year of hemming and hawing, the senior pastor of this Wilmington church informed me that he would likely suffer a church split if his church were to become SFF's mother church. We were too "liberal."
In our vulnerable state, we reached out to seminaries around the country for a pastor/planter. Our first choice was our alma mater, Bob Jones University. They would not let us publish our need for a pastor/planter due to the fact that we used Sovereign Grace Music for our worship: this style of music was often heavy on the trap set drums, which was, again, too "liberal." At this point, we learned that many Evangelical institutions cared very little about our music and dress but cared a great deal about our doctrine. These institutions were very kind to allow us to publish our need among their seminary students.
As a church planting novice, I networked with great vitality. I called everyone I knew from school, anyone I thought might want to help us. I cold-called other church-planting churches around the country. To my dismay, I encountered many friends who had become outcasts of Fundamentalism. These friends, from all appearances, became outcasts because they had developed "liberal" philosophies of ministry (such as, proponents of popular musical styles), or because they saw inconsistencies in leadership and asked too many questions. Through networking, we also found our mother church, another "progressive" Fundamentalist church.
The period of time between when negotiations began and our church closed its doors would turn into the worst church nightmare my wife and I had ever experienced. This mother church (who shall remain nameless) liked us for all the things that other Fundamentalists disliked us: style of worship, fellowship emphasis, out-of-the-box methodologies, etc. In the months that followed, our mother church's fascination with our church plant (SFFC) betrayed a dangerous division in the DNA of the mother church between die-hard Fundamentalists and contextualizing Evangelicals. They walked a wild tight-rope that threw us into the middle of endless, time-wasting philosophy debates and exposed our vulnerable church plant to severe (though certainly unintended) mismanagement.
How is it that nearly every conceptual stumbling block in my family's understanding somehow finds its way back to an incorrect view of the Gospel, as aided through discipleship in the Fundamentalist Movement? We certainly cannot blame Fundamentalism for un-Gospel thinking across the US, but there is little doubt that modern day Fundamentalism, as sustained by Bob Jones University and her loosely-affiliated churches/universities, has confused our outlook on much of what the Bible has to say.
We can break ties with Fundamentalism, but the bugs in our heads gnaw at our minds and disable us from the freedom wherein we stand. Killing the wrong thinking is painful, and with each doctrinal victory, we are painfully aware of how many more Gospel-killing mind viruses must be surgically removed.
Will God deliver Fundamentalism from the practical doctrinal errors as He delivered the Southern Baptist Convention from theological compromise years ago? Fortunately, this is not my problem.
Fundamentalist and Progressive Fundamentalist ministries stand in a dangerous place. Many of these ministries have exchanged sound theological teaching for a manipulation of sound theology to attack culture specifics. Many have exchanged discipleship that heals the sin-inflicted conscience with Christ-bought freedom for discipleship that empowers the conscience to scream louder than the "less spiritual" conscience of the "worldly" Christian. Many have exchanged a glorious redemption of internal desires for a death-creating "redemption" of externals. Many have exchanged a love for General Revelation as seen through amazing scientific, sociological, administrative, and cultural break-throughs by saved and unsaved humans alike for a distrust of most things birthed outside the walls of Fundamentalism. Many have exchanged edifying fellowship for petty arguments. Many have exchanged God's love of broken people for an idolatry of self-defined excellence. Many have exchanged mentorship that reinforces the Truth that the Gospel not only eradicates our sin but also covers us with immeasurable righteousness for mentorship which cruelly incorporates tiers of achievement and the adorning of invisible scarlet letters in an effort to superficially motivate "Christlike" behavior.
These realizations do not usually keep me up at night. What keeps me up at night is that I embraced a superficial understanding of Christlikeness that depended upon my ability to stop viewing porn (or other bad habits). I embraced the judgmental behavior that earned me applause from my mentors - they said that I was discerning. I confronted friends and young Christians for "problems" like ear-piercings, listening to music with a heavy beat, hugging a girl, and general immaturity that had nothing to do with spirituality. I shudder to remember those times I accused campers of not loving God's Word (and by implication, not loving God) because they only memorized one passage that week. I feel physically sick remembering how spiritually healthy I felt for memorizing chapters of the Bible perfectly, word-for-word. I drank the cool-aid of conformity so well that I knew everything about others and little about myself. I lose sleep reflecting on the years that I wasted believing lies about what God likes. I struggle with guilt for pain, because I learned early in Fundamentalist counseling that the reason you are in emotional pain is because you sinned first.
None of us means to lead people astray. I wish I could snatch up every person I discipled or witnessed to in the first 25 years of my life and let them know that I didn't mean to say or do the wrong thing. No one in Fundamentalism meant to complicate my relationship with God. But here we sit.
So now if I believe Romans 8, it's time to see what God intends to do with the hurt and the pain.
For more reading:
Amazing Grace
Fundamentalism Breaks the Rules of Organizational Behavior
OCD Theology
A Culture of Protection
An Idolatry of Excellence
The Upside Down Pyramid
