Church or Circus: The Stage Act of Modern Christianity

Music Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship, an author of three books, The Latest of Witches, some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, we were just talking right before we started about the family circus comics of all things. Now, you start down this topic and you're just dead focused on that topic, but I'm like, Billy, I'm going all over the place with history and milestones and I make it so hard.

So we have, for the audience who doesn't know this, we've had three main points that we've tried to hit for who knows how many of the last episodes, and I keep pulling Bob and other things.

So I'm actually going to take a step back and I'm going to let Bob lead this. I'm still going to probably do the thing like Billy and his family circus, but he's going to keep reeling me back in. Well, we'll try. That's kind of like trying to, you know, put a saddle on a wild horse, you know, it just doesn't work. But yeah, for those of you that may have just turned in now, we had started a discussion at least a month ago, maybe almost two months ago, about a dramatic cultural shift that's happened in our generation. Now, when I'm talking about

our generation, I'm talking about the boomer generation, which starts in 1946 and sort of ends in 1964. Our generation is very unique in some of the dynamics that happened. And I think a lot of us are maybe very aware of it. Some of us, maybe not so much, but that shift, that cultural shift in America that really came into play in the 1960s has had a huge impact on church culture.

The way we look at church, the way we do church, you know, all of our concepts of church all got

retooled, reshaped, reformatted, whatever, because of three, what I consider three huge shifts. So the first one we discussed was the culture of narcissism. And what we talked about was how in our parents generation, you know, what's they call the greatest generation, the idea of self-promotion was not a thing. In fact, it was culturally frowned upon. You promoted a product, you promoted a service, you did not promote yourself. Your sense of self was based on your sacrifice to the whole. Hence, over two million young guys between the ages of 16 and 30 ran down to the

recruiting stations when World War II started because they saw it as their civic duty to lay their lives down for the sake of the nation. That's a mindset that doesn't exist hardly anymore. I mean, there's still pockets of it, but by and large, what's happened to us is that we've adopted a whole culture of narcissism that's become so normal that we even have apps now like Instagram and TikTok where we just keep publishing all these videos that say what? Look at me, look at me, look at me, right? It's just this attention seeking culture that completely infiltrated the church. It's become

so ingrained as normal now that we don't even notice it. So we've got all kinds of people now in pulpits and on television and primarily on the internet all going, look at me, listen to me, look at me, right? We've become so normalized that we don't even see the shift. The second thing we talked about was we've adopted a culture of entertainment. Part of the reason that happened was in order for that to happen, technology had to come, right? In other words, our parents generation listened to the radio. You couldn't really see anything. Once television

came into play in the late 50s by the 1960s, a whole new avenues opened up. Then the internet opened up, right? And so now we've become very focused on being entertained. We love entertainment, right? We sit at home with ginormous screens on our wall, right? With our 260 to 300 stations and movies, we have more options of entertainment in front of us than probably all the rest of human history in terms of just access to visual images, right? And that's again infiltrated the church world.

So, to the point where, in my view, church services have become entertainment, right? There's a whole strategy, be how we're going to do the church service, which of course is going to have a cool band with cool music, right?

We have to have cool effects, cool visuals, cool videos, you know, cool, everything has to be entertaining. You have to keep everybody excited and happy and thrilled, right? And that's become, again, so normal that we don't even realize what's happened to us.

The third piece of this, which I'd love to discuss more today, is that there's been a significant shift from a rural church model, which is very relational to an urban church model, which is very, I don't even know what you want to production oriented, right?

And just to give you an idea here of the shift, if you went back and looked at the census in the 1800s, like just 1800, 94% of our population lived in the rural areas, 6% lived in the cities.

A hundred years later, 60% of our population lived in the rural areas and 40% lived in the urban areas. You see this shift, 1940, you know, 44% rural, 57% urban, right, and then you see the shift.

By 1980, there's only 25% of people living in the rural areas and 75% are living in the cities. Five years ago, it turned to 20% of people living in rural areas and 80%. So basically in 200 years, there's been a complete flip from rural culture, right, to an urban culture, which is affected how we think, how we interact, our whole mindset, and of course, the church culture has to adapt and so we've, you know, basically adopted this very urban mentality about a lot of things.

You know, I remember, I started KCF with Mike in 1982, and I remember vividly as the church was growing, almost everybody that I talked to had grown up on a farm. It was really interesting, right? It's like wow, you know, they all had farm stories But we're in you know metropolitan Kansas City and you begin to realize even at that point that we're just like one generation From this huge shift, right In 1990 I you relocated to Orange County. I Go work do some work, which I'm when we're in the vineyard, right?

Now think about this when Disneyland and I think it was 57 1957 when Walt Disney Decided to build Disneyland he built at 25 miles Outside of the urban areas was in the middle of an orange girl, right people laughed at him Said oh my god, it's like what are you doing like who's gonna drive out there, right?

Well, I live there. It's a massive city. Now it's like you know what I mean? It's like they all that orange girl, you know So in 1950 in Orange County. There was two hundred and like 15,000 people living there, right?

In 1980 30 years later, there was two million people living there It's such a crazy shift and I don't think people realize and recognize how vastly different the church has become Because they don't a lot of people, you know, the younger crowd wasn't even alive back then But a lot of people as the shift is happening. It's happening so gradually that they kind of forget where they came from You know what I mean? Yeah, the interesting part about this is I grew up with the same farm stories and I was in churches that were in cities

But we were in a cult that was so destructive that they It was like one step away from the Amish. They wanted to reject the change Change they saw as evil very much like the Amish and they they rejected all of my older friends Had farms or had grown up on farms, etc But there's one thing that I that you said that I want to go back to I forgot to bring this up in the past few episodes But you're talking about how the change is Significant with regards to the narcissism how you today's world you promote yourself. That's just common

Think of the healing revival is back then back in the forties and fifties even before that I mean you can go back as far back as you want to go in the papers Not many people recognize how vastly different they were from society because in today's world It's common to promote yourself But back then these guys were like freaks and the churches who saw this they saw it as blatant Narcissism and you can find newspaper articles where they're condemning this narcissist They can't really put words to what they're seeing which is interesting because they haven't yet seen the world that we live in where everybody is promoting themselves

All they know is here's some Bozo that instead of focus on God They're focused on themselves and they're drawing these massive crowds tens of thousands of people are coming to attend this. And where it ties into this episode, so you mentioned the shift from rural areas to metropolitan.

Well, these guys were targeting rural areas back then. So they came into these areas where they're promoting themselves as the next thing to God, which is unusual for its time. And they're bringing like, it's like a circus that comes in town, we've mentioned this in the past few episodes.

What they're doing is they're showing a display of defying the society and the norms and standards of their era. And what's really odd, if you study that history into the shift into the urban areas today of the church, that defiance of the cultural norm has become almost a doctrine as they shift and come into the metropolitan areas.

They want to defy the norms if you're in this type of religion. And those who are in mainstream churches or even non-mainstream, but has some sort of a balance of power where they can't have a central figure.

They look at all of this and they say, what is this mess? Just like they did back in the 40s and 50s. Well, someone that I'd be curious to hear here perspective on is Amy Simple-McPherson because it's interesting to me because to our point, she's a bit of an anomaly when you look at where the church culture was because you didn't self-promote.

And yet she completely promoted herself. She developed a whole persona. So my question was always, why? It's just so unusual. Then it dawned on me based on some conversations I'd had with Paul Kane about the interaction between the latter rain guys and Hollywood and all that that when she was launching her ministry, you're in the early heyday of Hollywood, right?

People don't realize that the studios, right? Which are just on the other side of the mountain range there or the Santa Monica Mountains, right? That whole area, which is not, you know, what's called the valley, I guess, or whatever.

That, you know, I lived in Tarzana. Tarzana was named Tarzana because Edgar Rice Burrows, the author of Tarzana, owned all that land, right? Lucille Ball on land up there was all orange groves and, you know, nut farms and all that.

I was all agriculture, right? But because of the fact there were, you know, like Lawrence of Arabia, you know, which the whole setting is Arabia. No, those were filmed in the sand dunes up there, right?

I mean, it was like she was right there, you know, kind of, you know, modeling herself after a Clark Gable type or Greta Garber or any of these, you know, early Hollywood stars, right?

So. In some ways, she just simply adopted the culture of Los Angeles. Absolutely, and right before her, a lot of people missed this. This is really actually one of the most fundamentally important elements of all of this history.

Before Amy Semple McPherson, before the Azusa Street Revival, one of the first places that John Alexander, Dauy, landed and targeted was in that area. He first goes to San Francisco and he sets up his gimmick, and the way that he did his con was, he would say, I have the satchel of testimonies of people who were healed back across the ocean, and all of these people are healed, you too can be healed, and he would read these testimonies, testimony after testimony, which if you look at it, this is showmanship.

That's what he was doing with showmanship. Pretty soon, people started to catch on, wait a minute, every single person he's healed is somewhere else. What about the people here? And so once he burns out San Francisco, he goes to LA, he goes to Oakland, some various different places.

Well, he was well received in the places until they caught on, but by the time that they caught on to his scam, he had already amassed so many converts that he had primed the region basically for this type of showmanship environment where you're coming to church basically to see a show.

And that's what he had done. So he primed the area, and people like the Kardashian family, I've mentioned their ties to Latter-Rain, and they, one of the early sponsors of the Korean and all that, yeah.

Exactly. One of the other sponsors in Mob, and the Armenian Mob, right? Well, they're tied to all of this, and they're in the same area. Like you said, as Hollywood is developing, well, before it turned into what we, you know, the massive Karrismania thing we see today, they were priming this with all of the elements that they saw powerful to Hollywood.

If you can take that and harness it and then apply it to religion and create a more entertaining form of religion, you can convert the world. That was the mentality. It's not necessarily a bad thing what they were trying to do.

The difference is balance. Like I said, everything must be in balance, I've said this a few times in the podcast. It became so heavily balanced on the entertainment side that it, that carried forward.

Now apply that to what we see in the metropolitan versus urban areas. The same entertainment forms that worked in the rural areas do not work in the metro. Yeah. So you start to see the shift in the church.

Well, I mean, in a few future episodes, you and I are going to discuss an interesting phenomena that happened in the late 1800s in upstate New York, right? Where we had simultaneously like three or four major movements, all, you know, even cults all developing at the same time.

Well, California is like the same thing only it you know 100 years later right because when you stop and think about it what was the most influential state in the 1960s right so we'll always go back you know people talk about the summer of love 1968 San Francisco I mean you're a musician you understand California was sort of the epicenter for creativity right I mean all the big bands that we you know that we boomers love or you know so many of them are you know came up through California right what also came out of California in 1960s on the church side the Jesus people movement

right so it's interesting to me the most influential cultural stuff is coming out of San Francisco and then the most influential um spiritual thing is coming out of Orange County right which is Chuck Smith's Costa Mesa Church and for people who don't know Chuck Smith was at one time Paul Cain's business manager during the latter reign so it's kind of funny you got a latter reign guy Chuck Smith right who's a horrible preacher like not very good not a dynamic guy at all but they were you know he had Lonnie Frisbee the weird Lonnie Frisbee in his church

and that thing blew up right but think of all what was going on there right you have the Jesus people movement well what did the Jesus people movement launch Christian music industry right that there's only came out that came out of the Jesus people movement the whole idea of TV broadcasting ministries you know oral Roberts and Rex Humberter kind of considered the the pioneers on the Christian side but then you got you have Chuck Smith at Maranatha you got John Wimbert right out in your Berlin with the vineyard you got Ralph Wilkerson at Melody Land you got Jake Jack Hayford

four-squared church you got Robert Schuller Crystal Cathedral Charles Swindell and Fullerton which out of that you know Rick Warren John McArthur you know there were 70 Christian radio stations in California this all happened at you know around the whole at the same time there was just suddenly this explosion out of the West Coast that just literally went right across the whole country right that changed so much of our church culture right absolutely and one of the things going back to Amy Supple McPherson she almost set the standard for this she had this massive massive radio tower installed in Angela's Temple I saw I went there one time when I was out

that was so curious about her I went and visited the the temple they still have old crutches and things hanging on the wall, but yeah. So the question then, if we wanna drill down kind of underneath this is like, what's the difference between urban and rural?

Cause we're talking about it as they're two different things. Well, I mean, I'm generalizing, of course, but urban life is vibrant and dynamic, right? Rural life is more serene and about close knit families, right?

Grandparents live with you. Grandparents die in your house, right? There's history, there's connectedness to the past, right? Your life is, your rhythms are based on the growing season, right?

Your life is, you know, which takes time. Everything just takes time. And so people just aren't in a hurry. An urban life, it's like we're just like nutty squirrels and the fall trying to, you know, get ready for the winter and we're spastic everywhere, right?

And it's just like, this is crazy, right? Urban areas, they offer infrastructure, employment opportunities and access to services, right? Rural areas, they provide a sense of community, lower cost living, right? Closeness to nature.

So they're so different. You know, urban communities are more diverse, cosmopolitan, sort of blending cultures and values, right? Rural, the rural world, we're, I can't even say it. The rural world emphasizes traditional values, right?

Family ties, local customs. In other words, rural culture is very connected. Urban culture is often very disconnected and it was never more apparent to me that when we moved to California in 1990 because I was so used to Kansas cities, even in our city, we still, you know, because people are only a generation away from the farm, it still has a lot of traditional values.

And when you would, when people would come to your church from out of town or whatever, people were quick to say, hey, you know, we're getting together, you know, we're having a family meal, why don't you come?

Why people would invite you to their home, right? They would invite you into their life. I got out to California and I realized over a year of every time I interacted with someone, I had to do it in a restaurant that I had never been to anybody's house, right?

I was like, wow, this is really wild, right? This is so wild. And then as I, you know, because I'm so curious, I start drilling down and asking questions and I sort of realized nobody was from there.

It was a whole culture of transplants, right? Which is what cities are. Right? And that happened only after World War II. Well, since it only, it took a quantum leap after World War II. This massive migration from the farms to the cities, right?

And there's another interesting thing that should be injected here. So you're right. Right after World War II, you start seeing this big shift and this change. Things change significantly in the culture of America after World War II. But what happened was in the years leading up to World War II and largely before World War I, like you said, they're all most people, most people rule areas. Urgency to a farmer is like, if something urgent, it might be five months.

Five months from now is urgent, right? And that's the mentality. That's their mindset. And when you preach to somebody like this, it's an entirely different sermon than somebody who's on edge because they've got to run to the office. They've got to get on to the train. They've got to get on to stay on time, right? Keep at it. Keep marked with time limits. Yes. We got to get these people out of here in here and out of here, you know, in one hour and 15 minutes.

So what you find is before World War I, you find cult leaders like Frank Sanford, is a good example. He picks this Doomsday date. He said, we're all going to go stand up on the rooftops and God's going to sweep us away. And interestingly, he is part of the reason why Pentecostalism exists if you don't know that history. But he was a Doomsday cult leader. And his urgency was simply, in a few months, this is going to happen. We're just going to be prepared.

It's going to happen. And there wasn't really a strong sense of urgency. But when the latter ring hit, especially after everybody had just been hyper focused on World War II, the urgency shifted to Russia has a bomb with your city's name on it. You will die if you don't come into our religion. That's what they were doing. The shift and mindset, the urgency was an instant urgency. I remember, I would listen to these recordings from Branum during the Laterane years over and over. And he would say things like tomorrow might be the day. You might not live through

the night. Come up here to this altar. He was doing forced altar calls. And he's literally planting the fear of destruction in their minds because of that urgency. If he had have had that same exact message back during the rural days, that urgency, like I said, urgent is five months.

Well, is it going to happen? Nothing happens tonight. Will you, Branum? Well, I remember I grew up in Wisconsin and Milwaukee. And I remember people building bomb shelters. Remember that? Hold the, it's like, you see this thing and people's back yards and they're like, digging a hole. Like, what are you doing? You know, think concrete walls and stalkers. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. You know, that's really crazy. Wow. Yeah, I think I think the other thing that kind of contributed to the shift, if it were, was the GI Bill.

And I'll explain that to people if they don't understand. So the nearly three million young guys that signed up for World War II were predominantly rural and not highly educated. The government comes along and says, hey, you've served four or eight years in the military, we are going to pay for your college education.

So my dad and all my uncles, they go to college, right? And they're taught, which was interesting, because what the business community did was adopted the military model, the military structure. All these guys fit in really well, like it's like, yeah, yeah, president's a general, you know, Lieutenant, like, and they had, it was the same exact structure.

You know, my dad would never, ever have challenged the president of his company. Like that was just considered like, you know, what do they call it? He said you did the brig in the military for doing that, right?

My dad, it so was interesting because I was super rebellious and challenged everything and my dad could not get his head around that. Asking why was just considered insulting rebellious, right?

And I realized later why he thought that way, it's because he had been taught like that, right? So what happens then after they finish college, what do they do? They pursue jobs and where are those jobs?

They're in the cities. So I watched my mom's family, my mom had five in her family, right? So they all grow up outside of Chicago together. They're a tight, knit family, very close, all, you know, kind of in proximity and then after the war, after the GI bill, they all scatter.

They go, they're all of the five siblings are all over the, all over the country. So all my relatives were either in Pittsburgh or Florida or, you know, Milwaukee, you know, my dad, mom moved out of Chicago to order Milwaukee to pursue a job, right?

You know, and so that GI bill kind of caused that rural cohesiveness, you know, that relational dynamic of rural life to sort of fragment, you know, it's like dropping a glass on the floor, everybody's scattered.

So that, you know, that became sort of the underlying thing in the church world. So where this goes, which is so interesting, because it kind of goes back to what we're talking about with entertainment, right?

The urban culture, time is of essence, speed, you know, production and all that. What's always intrigued me is this verse in 1 Corinthians, it's in chapter 14, verse 26. This is interesting, because this is, this is the church model.

all, right, in the early church, you know, the New Testament. And it says this, what then shall we say, brothers and sisters, when you come together, each of you, get this, each of you has a hymn, a song, right? Or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church be built up. Well, what you see here is a whole model. That's very rural, right? It's very relational. There is no, you know, superstar, on television, ministry, you know, guy, you know, sitting in an auditorium that seats 10,000 people or the service is being blasted all over the globe, right? You see this community

of people who are expressing the gifts and talents God gives them individually as a whole. You're not seeing this sort of, you know, God, you know, nobody's, you know, driving their, you know, their horse over to the community thing. And I always go back to that and I look, gosh, it's like, that's so relational. That's so kind of this rural mentality again, right? It's like, well, brothers, so what, you know, and it was seemed like we all had something to contribute, right?

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. There's a significant cultural shift that I think a lot of people miss when they read through the histories. When you're thinking of the sudden migration after World War II from the rural areas to becoming urbanites, look before this. Before all of this was created, there were occult leaders, mostly in rural areas because they if they were to go try to target the urbanites it was a completely there were two completely separate and different cultures if you are a cult leader and you're trying to target the or urbanites largely they

would just boot you out of the city but we don't need your nonsense get out of here right so they would go target the rural areas and they could convince people because it was a completely different culture John Alexander Dowie is the one who really defied this but if you think about what he did it was in genius because he didn't actually defy the culture he sets up in Chicago Illinois which is in urban city and the way he does it is so ingenious they had the Chicago world's fair I can't remember what year that was 1890 I think it

was wherein all of these people from rural areas all over the all over the United States are coming to see this world's fair when he sets up this booth right outside of the fair where as you walked by to get in here's this guy who can heal you of all your diseases and so people were just getting snagged but he was snagging people who may have been from the rural areas right and he grew this massive cult following in Chicago and what happened when he did this was they booted him out they say we've had enough of your nonsense and that's how

Zion City came to be he finally after I can't remember how many hundreds of lawsuits that he had against him he finally said okay I'm done with this and he moves to a rural area but that cultural shift changed with Dowie but people don't realize is that or may not have thought this through is that modern medicine like we know it only develops again after World War Two right I mean we had penicillin a few things like that but 99% of all the medical discoveries medicines cures happen after World War Two before that what did you have you

had guys selling elixirs yes so you know you know it sounds weird to us but at the time a John Alexander Dowie would have been normal like they were that's what guys did they had little horse and buggy trailers and they had some toxic you know of course as we know from some of them they were basically selling cocaine in a liquid form right yeah that's like that was their secret sauce okay well Charles Fox Parham who was the father of modern Pentecostalism he had this he had invested in this elixir company that you could you got this vile and you

drop it onto rocks and it would turn allegedly ordinary rocks into gold from God oh really he did this before he went on to you know found the apostolic faith or whatever it was Right. And he recognized that he had been scammed after he got into it, but he was one of the primary investors.

And again, people have to sort of contextualize this. Our knowledge that we have, that we possess, most of us live in the urban areas, we, I mean, think about what we understand about the world and how people in the early 1900s understood the world. Like they had such limited access to knowledge.

Right. So people being fooled was easy to do. Right. Because people were so ignorant. I mean, it's like they didn't know what they didn't know. That's become less of a lesser of an issue these days, but it's still there. Right. One of the other things I find interesting, you know, and this is a, you know, this gets down to this whole thing of what is church, right.

It's like, it's like, we, you know, we, we all, as I've said, if you're a parent with kids, what are you looking for? You're looking for the church that has the most fun kid programs.

Right. Yes. So every, I mean, and I get it. Right. I was one of those parents at one time. And, and you know, your, you know, your kids being educated and raised in the faith and all that's important to you. But it also, you know, you know, you're battling Star Wars and, and, you know, and all these entertainment movies and different things. And so, you know, the idea of a rural, sort of slow paced, you know, the old storybook, little, what are they used to call those velvet, you know, storyboards or whatever. It wasn't velvet. What was that? It was like the soft little

figures they used to stick on a board, right? Well, urban kids just find that boring as heck, right? So, so well, the only churches that can afford to have a more dynamic children's ministry are the urban churches. Again, you see the shift. And so I'm not necessarily saying that's evil or it's bad. I'm just saying it has a huge impact on our normal, our version of church, right? We just, we, you know, I hear all the time this phrase and I just, I have to bite my lip all the time. And it's this. We are a new testament church. And I'm like, really? But they, people, I mean,

somebody may have told them that or whatever, but I hear this repeated all the time. Oh, you got to come to our church. We're a new testament church. And I'm like, oh, really? You know, of course, if I want to be really, and I don't know what the word is, that little irritating younger sibling Paul, can I go really?

What's the last time somebody in your church was thrown in jail for their faith? I take it a step further. I say, are you willing to live into a communal lifestyle and share everything that you own with your other Christians?

Exactly. And all that. But what are things, you know, and maybe you've got some insight into this. One of the oddest things for me in Paul's writing about the New Testament church is the word he uses.

Right? In other words, people always assume because they see the word church in the Bible that it's got a Hebrew or Greek root. But the word church doesn't come from Hebrew or Greek. It comes the actual word that Paul uses, which I find so fascinating, is ecclesia.

Well, here's what makes this odd is that ecclesia is a group of voters. In other words, it comes from the Greek culture. So to explain this in Athens, Greece, where you had democracy, you know, the foundation of democracy, the way it worked was they would all meet on top of this hill.

The vote, the, the man of voting age, right? That had, you know, you know, they, you know, they had to be of a certain age and unfortunately women really didn't get the vote even back then, but they voted.

But the way they voters, they heard the argument and they had two big pots and everybody had a stone and you either choose the A or N. Right? Yes or no? And that was how it, but that group of voters was called the ecclesia.

So here Paul is describing the church, but he uses a Greek political word. Yeah. And it's always been a head scratcher for me. Now, I understand he's writing to a Greek culture. So he's got to use references that they understand, but he uses a political reference, not a religious reference, right?

So then people go, well, where did the word church come from? Like it's not in here. It's not the area. This is the weirdest thing. I still, from a translation point of view, it's mind-boggling when you understand this story.

But the translators didn't, they couldn't figure out which word to use. So they didn't use a Greek or a Hebrew word. They picked an English word. Well, actually, he's Germanening, right? They picked this other word, right?

And so what's interesting is I think what Paul was trying to say was the ecclesia didn't refer to a building, right? It referred to a group of people, like in other words, a community of people, right?

So I think the proper... translation probably should be a congregation, an assembly, or a group, right? Instead, they picked this English word. It's so weird. But we're it. I think it started with the King James in the 1611 version, is when they decided to deviate and stick a dramatic English word into the translation. And you're like, what are they doing? Well, I'm no expert in Greek, but from my limited study, what I have learned is that one single word in the Greek language, it might take entire paragraphs for us to understand the complex meaning. And that meaning shifts

depending on its usage. So if you use it in one situation, it may differ from another. I think the word, in most cases that I have read, the word assembly fits the best. When he says to the churches in this region, he's talking about to the local assemblies in this region. When he refers to the entire body of Christ, he's talking about the assemblies that have assembled and it's more than just assembly. The political meaning actually fits because it is an assembly for a purpose. It is an assembly for the purpose of furthering Christianity in Paul's case. So when he talks about the

church universal, he's talking about all of the assemblies that have existed through time. And those assemblies had the purpose of spreading Christianity. But today, because that church, in our language, the, through countless sermons that don't understand what he was actually saying, they have overloaded the word to mean something entirely different than what Paul was even saying. Yeah, when you start drilling down and sort of unpacking this, it gets a little weird. And what I mean by that is the Dutch word for what got translated is his Kirk, right? The German word is Kirk with CRI, C-H-E. The

Scott's called it Kirk with an eye. They all come from an old sort of section word, which is Kirkra or whatever, or they use another word, it comes from another word, which is C-I-R-C-E, like Cersei.

Right? It's all kind of a, but here's what's odd about Cersei. She was a goddess. And it's where we get the word circus from. Yeah. It is the way this thing circles back around again. Like the word, the root word that they're using for church is the same root word that later is called a circus.

Entertainment, right? The show, performance, all of this. Yeah. And that furthers my point. The words that were used, we have such hyper-focused sensitivity, I guess is the best way to say it to other cultures and things outside of our norm.

If you understand what Paul was saying in the letter to Romans, I've mentioned this a few times, he says, it doesn't matter, don't let anybody rebuke you or offend you because you're eating food that has been sacrificed to another God for entertaining yourself in a festival.

He is literally saying, you can participate in these things, don't go worship the gods, obviously. But you can participate in these and be free. You don't have to have somebody who's scorning you constantly. And the word assembly, the word church that he's using there, it's talking about the people, it's never ever talking about the building.

And this is a people who has been set free, they have been dedicated to Christ, and they can live in the world among the people who are of other cultures, and they can even participate in their felt, their celebrations, etc. I had recently, I've actually had two or three in the past month, they would see some symbol, or they would see here some phrase, and they would say, oh, that came from Hinduism, that came from Wicca, do you know that you're entertaining the demons, John? Well, in the letter to Romans, Paul is saying, you don't let people do this to you,

don't let them rebuke you. You can live free, you're not going to accidentally catch a demon. And the assembly is not the building, you don't have to, one of the first things that hit me really hard, when I left the cult, and I started going into churches, even in mainstream churches, I won't mention the denominations, they wanted to beat you over the head that you go every Sunday, and me having just escaped the cult, I couldn't go every Sunday, I did for a while because they beat me over the head, but the triggers that were setting off were explosive in my head,

and I was actually doing more damage to myself than had I just stayed away for a bit, and they would misrepresent that word, and they would misrepresent all of the statements that are applying to this word, but Paul never intended this, it is you're to be free.

There is the passage, don't forsake yourself, the gathering for the reading of scripture, the assembly for the reading of scripture, but you have to understand most people back then couldn't read, if they were going to hear the scripture, they had to go to the assembly, so in today's world it's totally different. Well, to sort of bring this current, do you know who George Barna is? Yeah, so George Barna for you that don't know is kind of probably the leading Christian culture sociologist, he just does so much research as to where we are now, and shifts, so I'm always, I just love reading this stuff because it kind of

isn't, you know, it's like, he's like, I don't know, it's just things I'm interested in, but one of the things that he talked about, which is interesting, and I don't know if he was the one that came up with this phrase, or he borrowed it. But the dynamism of the Jesus people movement, the charismatic Pentecostal world that was launched will say in the 60s, right? You know, peaked in, you know, the 1980s was sort of the 80s and 90s was the heyday is waning. And he calls our generation the dunes is the word he uses. And the reason why he found this interesting

is is that our generation isn't going to church as much anymore. So then the question was, well, where are they going? Have they forsaken the faith? Right? In other words, you know, all these people that got saved in the 70s during the Jesus people movement, where are they? Well, what he discovered was there were two places they were. One, a small percentage of them had actually migrated to the Orthodox churches. And I don't know if you have friends like this, but I have a number of friends that they went back to the Greek Orthodoxy, right? They wanted some form of stability, some sense of history with some mystery.

And that's the Orthodox church. You know, they're not afraid to say we don't know, right? They're right. But the vast majority of people are age that have left the church world actually meeting house churches. And it's not a house church. It's not a system, right?

What happens is and what's happening all over the country is, you know, at our age, you know, we've got history like I just had lunch with one of my friends whose son was in the same great as his my son and his daughter was in the same, you know, grade is my daughter back in the 19 I mean, we grew up together, right? We've been friends for 40 years. We can have the most transparent, honest, you know, just connection because we've been through so much together, right? Yeah. It's like we know the good and bad of each other. You know, we love each other,

despite ourselves. Well, people want that. They want that we more than they want the production, the show. And so what's happening is the younger families with kids are all running towards the entertainment centers and our generation is left. And we're all getting together because people go, you know what? Who are the, you know, five couples in our lives that, you know, we have this bond, this history, this connection, right? You know, who do we love, right? And they'll get, you know, five couples together. And they just meet. Nothing official, no structure to it.

I'll do a book. together, you know, or they'll do what it was talking about in 1 Corinthians 14. They just get together and everybody shares all this happened to me. I was reading this and I felt like God showed me that, right?

It's not there's this move away from a central figure who's the star, right? The celebrity culture of the of the church world right now. They're just done with it. And that's why I think we're born.

I got the name is just everybody's done. Like I just done with the production. I'm done with the show and I got to be honest when I first read that a few years ago, I went, that's me.

Like I have a really hard time. I got friends that are constantly pulling me to their church, right? And every time I walk in, I just go yuck, right? Because it's like, oh my God, this is like, I'm going to the show.

You know, you know what I mean? And it's just, it's just all these, you know, I just feel so much underneath all these, you know, hidden agendas of, look at me, look at me, look at me.

You know what I mean? And it's all screaming at me. I just can't do this anymore. Maybe, you know, maybe my PTSD, PTSD or my nervous system has got to me. But it's like, it's just, it's just overwhelming noise.

You know what I mean? It's like that static noise, you know what I'm saying in my head, right? Where it's like when I go get together, like a bunch of guys, you know, in a few weeks, we're all going to go down to the lake together.

Guys, I've known for 40 years. That's church to me. That's what I want. You know, I grew up in a world where the people that I was with in church leadership and some who weren't, it was a show whenever they got to the stage, especially the ministers, they would get up and who they were on stage was not who they were off stage.

I watched the humblest of people. I won't give names. I would like to, but watch the humblest of people who present themselves as this humble creature and then go home and in a two minute conversation with somebody on customer support for only $2 would bring the person on the other end of the line to crying because they had just railed this person.

That's the difference in mentality between these people. And it was a stage act. And then after I left this, I started to realize that it wasn't just them that was the stage act. We were all in this traditional thing.

We got in this routine. We would go to church. We were all in a stage act and we didn't even know it. And so I'm exploring this thought as I get into mainstream Christianity and attend a few different varieties of churches and I see the same stage acts over and over again.

And it's normalized now, right? It's normalized. And it's not that I have a problem with it that some people like that. I'm not a routine person like this, but some people like this. I've even had people frequently on the show who will mention how They need to support the institutional church and all of that.

That's fine. If you want to do that, but I will say this, that is not for everyone. And I am of the strong opinion that churches should be not involved in taxes in the way that the strict tax structures are today.

They should not be given a free blanket check to go have tax-free benefits. If you knew the level of crime that goes into church because of this, you would run screaming. So I am all for getting rid of that policy whatsoever.

But look at the shift. But so back in as its rural area church, whenever people were contributing to the church, they were contributing to a community, especially in towns that only had one church.

Everybody goes to the one church, everybody if sister so and so has no money and needs food. Well the whole church, the whole community is coming together for that one person when it shifted to the metro, it changed significantly.

One of the first things that I did, once I saw how they all, especially the larger churches, they operate as a business, we stopped paying our tithes and offerings to the church and instead gave them to the less fortunate people.

So that they could have some sort of a life when I know mothers who, in fact, we've helped mothers who have children that they did not even have enough money to feed the children.

I would much rather give my tithes to this person than I would a building from which is already getting tax benefits, etc. Right. Wow. Well, I give you an example of something that's always kind of intrigued me, communion.

So we have this thing where we drink the wine and do bread. People, I don't know if they've ever stopped and thought about this. This was a meal. Like when this first happened, it's a bunch of friends.

Having a Passover meal together, right? It's a long, drawn on thing. I don't know if you've ever been to Passover as I've been to tons of them, right? And there's stories being told and it's, it's your family, it's your relations, like the whole thing is relational, right?

And it's historical and it's a whole drawn out thing. Right. Now we've got the urban version. Yes. I got it. I went to this church the other day and it's like a whole packet.

Like it's like this produced little thing and you just peel it off and have one side of the wine and the other side of the little, you know, it looks like a nugget. You know what I mean?

You're just like, oh my gosh, I mean it's like there's a whole production now, right? And you know, it's interesting because in the rural areas, on sunny because people travel, what do they do?

They would bring food. So you'd have church together and it wouldn't last one hour like getting everyone, right? It would go in... till it was done. And then we'd all eat together. And it's like that whole thing at time, right?

It just slows down and we focus on relationships, something else which I believe you know this because of your experience. One of the shockers for me as a young guy in the ministry coming up in the 1980s, which is a little frightening as I look back on it, but almost every single one of the mega church pastor guys that I know who stood on a stage and were dynamic and projected a caring relational, you know, they just, you know, this whole kind of vibe, right? And everybody's like, oh, pastor, he's so lovely and caring, right? And then I got to know these guys off the

stage like you talk about. And I could care less. Yeah. They are so emotionally disconnected, right? And it was freaky, you know, it's like, it's like they walk out of that curtain and it's a whole persona that comes on them. I had to deal with this at KCF because Mike was one of those guys, right? I mean, he would get people to move, you know, sell their homes, move away from their families, give him thousands of dollars, right? And they all thought because of the lunch they had had or the dinner they'd had with him that they're coming to Kansas City to go on staff

and be a part of the ministry. And then they'd get there and he wouldn't even talk to them. And they're like, huh? Wait, this is not the, wait, what did just happen here? Right? I mean, I literally picked up so many broken people. Sadly, I had to, I had, I mean, to this day, you know, we've all kind of remained friends, but the disillusionment, you know, I can remember vividly, this is terrible. I got, I even think about this, but I was at some pro-life thing with Melody Green and everybody out in Washington DC. And there's this massive crowd, right? And I hear these

two voices move out of the way for the man of God. Move out of the way for the man of God. I don't like, I thought it was just like somebody was telling a joke or something, right? And I turn around and there's these two huge guys that look like NFL lineman pushing the crowd out of the way.

So a little earnest aim easily could walk. Oh, no. I just, I just looked at that and went, oh my God, where am I going so familiar? This is insane, right? But again, the world, you know, I'm the man of God. I'm, I mean, I'm different. You see that again, normalized. So one other, you know, and again, this is a whole nother discussion for another day, but I spent 40 years of my life in the sewer with all these guys.

And the reason is, is there's a stage persona, and then there's their very broken lives in real life. With everything from mental illness to addictions, to twisted things, and as I was sharing with my friends the other day, even with Mike in his situation, it all goes back to childhood, right?

These are things, abuses, programming, things that happen in childhood that were never dealt with, right? Which actually ended up creating the narcissism, the sociopathie, the disconnectedness, which we all think is anointed. Yeah. Right?

This is where this gets so wild to me. And I have such a hard time because I'm listening to people who are just drooling over these stage personas, these stars that, you know, they're being entertained by and I'm going, God, few of me knew.

Few, only knew. It's really sad. I have people often who send me friendly, hate mail of reviews about, I knew your grandfather. He was such a good man. He would be so ashamed of you.

He's turning over in his grave, that kind of thing, you know? And I love my grandfather. This is where it gets really hard for me. I love my grandfather. I really thought he was a good man.

I also know people whose lives he destroyed. And so I have to deal with this. I loved him as a human being. He was a flawed, ridiculously flawed human being who was leading a cult and was destroying lives.

He was doing what he thought he knew best and it's complicated as to whether that was intense of the heart or some other motivation. But I loved him as my grandfather. He ruined lives.

But he had the stage persona where people did not see him as a person who is ruining their life. And they would devote their lives too. And I had people who were just, people would show up and just hand him $100 bills just in stacks at his house because they felt like they needed to support this humble man who has nothing had no idea how much money this man had.

He was quite wealthy. But that's the difference. When they go on stage, they act one way. And whenever they go off stage, they're a different person. But don't you think, and this is a frustration for me and I'll just lay it out there.

I've always had this worldview that God's about diversity and harmony, that there's multiple things going on in any one situation. I get very frustrated because there's a sort of default setting in the church world that something is either good or it's evil.

And I keep trying to explain to people, no, it's good and evil, right? The same person who can do really good can do really bad. And people just they don't have a mindset for that right so if you say they did something evil They get mad at you because they'll point out to what he did good So one of the things I always remind people of is Ted Bundy

You know another name Ted Bundy yeah Ted Bundy had a dynamic preachers Persona personality That everywhere he went everybody loved him right he got invited everywhere He was all involved in politics people wanted him to run for office he had charisma Well, he was slaughtering or whatever he did 20 women right the same guy who had this dynamic personality had this dark side And I'm just saying I can you know it's I got in trouble with my book Because the younger generation Could only view my vehicle as good or evil And I kept trying to explain to them over and over again, you don't understand

Myce got a good heart, you know like you were saying about your grandfather He wants to do good Mike does not sit there and go how can I be evil and destroy people's lives right he's he's not sitting there like you know You know, he's not trying to get away with something right he's just but he's broken He's very broken good people Do bad things And bad people do good things That's the reality of life and so one I think it's intellectual laziness to just say good or evil right I think you're just being late because I think it's situational. It's like what do they call a case-by-case

CBC right every situation you have to evaluate is this guy being driven by selfish ambition and greed Which is evil Or is he being driven by love and caring for others, which is good Right, so I'm that's why I'm saying I always look at the nature of something To kind of get behind it, but it's really scary how many narcissists social pass Run big churches and the final thought for me is the the black and white mentality you mentioned That is a cult and doctorated mindset this black and white mentality Good or evil Yan or Yang however you want to look at it

What's interesting about that is they train the people to dehumanize anyone who is outside of their religion But what nobody really recognizes is in doing so they also train you to dehumanize the leader The leaders no longer human. He has become something that isn't I call it the other He's the other he's become the other or she has become the other They're like in a different sphere different realm, right? Yeah, we're all peons and they're other. Yeah, exactly So so many so many thoughts come to mind We're talking about talk to you.

There's like a thousand things I want to say and we're limited to an hour. Well, so here's what we'll do the next time. Now keep all those thoughts roominating and then next time we'll do that.

And then of course we've got our discussion about upstate New York still hanging out there which I just find fascinating, you know? Absolutely. Well, I look forward to it. Thank you for doing this.

No, thank you. I'm having fun. I was telling some friends the other day. He's the one guy that I've met in probably 30 years that actually I can have an honest, transparent conversation with who doesn't like freak out.

I go, most of the church role, it's like navigating a minefield, right? It's just people, like we were talking about, they're on or off, in or out, black or white, right? And so you just never know when you're stepping on a mine.

And so I find myself just so cautious anymore to say anything because everybody gets triggered so easily, right, we get offended so easily. It's like the concept of sitting down and having different opinions and trying to put it all together just doesn't exist.

See, this is where I'm different from most people. Most people go this, if this is different from this, then they're opposed. I look at I go, if this is different from this, it might be another slice of the same piece, right?

You see, in that mentality, you have that, like I do, and it's so frustrating to talk to people because they can't see that. They can't see that, like Paul, you know, the manifold wasn't of God, the many faceted wisdom of God.

There's a lot of different ways to do things, right? There's a lot of different points of view. I mean, if you deal with, like I do with racial reconciliation in Africa, you couldn't get more different points of view.

But it was like, how do you reconcile that? See, and that's where my heart goes. Let's say, how do I reconcile this? But you get people from a cult mentality? They're so rigid and dug in.

They're not interested in reconciling anything. And the sad truth is that that cult mentality has spread into the mainstream, and that's where this gets interesting. Well, it's spread into our whole culture now, right?

That's where cancel culture comes from. It's like, well, if you don't think like I do, you're evil. I mean, I hear it on the news, and I'm just like, whoa, it's like, it's just crazy.

It is crazy, but that's why we're here to untangle the crazy and make sense of it. So I'm trying to make seeing this out of insanity, huh? Absolutely. Well, if you've enjoyed our show, and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the NAR. And for more about Mike Pickle and IHOP KC, you can read some said that blundered, breaking my decades.

silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.