Restoring Fallen Leaders – UPDATE

I was writing about this issue three months before the current “hit the fan” moment because the time has changed for a New Era, and we are approaching the first new season of a new time.

God intends to reset the kingdom, and He is looking for kingdom leaders to reestablish kingdom culture:

The number of people aware of the issues that one brave soul finally made public is far too many for these horrendous abuses of kingdom culture to have remained unexposed for so long.

1. The current issue began in the first of an authentic move of God plagued by leadership blight; at that time, a very public failure on the part of international apostolic fathering embarrassed the apostolic restoration;
2. At that time, the fathering leaders responsible did not fulfill their responsibilities; they left the fall out to someone else, made light of the severe issues, and punted the fallen leader to someone not even involved in fathering him during the time of horrendous sexual deviation and drunkenness; those fathers remain uninvolved to this moment;
3. The restoration process was not a total disaster, but it did cost the kingdom even more division and disagreement about the process of restoring fallen leaders; it featured the fallen leader in flippant dishonor for the kingdom culture, and distinct lack of sincere repentance signaling transformed behavior; it never showed the world the authentic process of restoration because the fallen leader – like many others before him – never submitted to the process with a wholehearted brokenness;
4. Instead of an improvement on restoring fallen leaders, provided by the apostolic restoration, signaling a maturing apostolic fathering role, the situation spotlighted the reality that the apostolic restoration remains immature, hammered into a church-growthism context, with an emphasis upon accumulating instead of maturing;
5. Hyper-grace ideology walked into the spotlight, on stage, and remained in focus for several years, revealing the horrifying devastation of grace-mess error and fueling the silliness of “love saves people, not Truth” genre of milk toast apostolic preaching;
6. Now, a brave soul hauls the iceberg into harbor and blocks off the exit, and suddenly everyone ignoring the thing like a hair on a biscuit wants to become an expert on something they know little about while blaming the one apostolic leader willing to do anything about it;
7. Now, that things didn’t work out so well, the silence from the apostolic fathers unwilling to actual father is deafening, leaving the one man willing to make an effort hanging out to dry in the blistering desert wind of widespread disgust.

Once we dismiss the hundreds of wanna-be’s making pontificating statements about the two sides of the coin and currency of the irrelevant, ignoring those who should be listening more than speaking, we get to the silence of kingdom leaders who should be saying something.

1. “Not my problem” is pretty lame. What kind of “father” ignores a son when he is broken but makes his a poster boy when he appears anointed? The answer is “the immature and self-serving father:”
2. Watching these leaders file into the venue when this mess first got out of control, one after another, seated in front row splendor, validating the moment as something they “father,” hoping to attach themselves to something that might become a major move of God, but running for the shadows when the fan blew the sewage onto the front pages – well, we are going to repeat this scenario if we allow this to slide;
3. Without a clear message from apostolic fathers operating in council, instead of a lone father left to bear the burden of this fallen leader’s continuing refusal to step down and stop misrepresenting Jesus, the horrifying confusion will increase; that is, this is a simple, straightforward, easy-to-solve kingdom leadership function that now looks complex, divisive, and confusing at the expense of the restoration;
4. The real question is, “If we can’t get this easy call right, what kind of leadership can we expect to provide as restored apostolic leaders?”
5. This is a three-second jury decision; this is a “saw this coming” apostolic and prophetic intuition; this is a “we will judge nations and angels, so why can’t we judge one drunken sexual pervert?” moment; this is Apostolic Fathering 101 or even kindergarten; yet, we see hesitancy and hear silence before a watching world and the hero generation of emerging Timothy leaders;
6. This is a moment testing the fathering maturity, revealing terrifying ineptness and functionality; this moment says, “You cannot trust the fathers of the faith to deal with a predatory wolf devouring sheep for month after month, treated like a protected, endangered species at the expense of basic kingdom principles;”
7. This is a clarion call to stop making worship music leaders, their experiences, and their poetry the source code for what is life and death; the fraudulent teaching that “love changes people” makes the application and implementation of any appropriate discipline, judgment, and repositioning impossible.

In other words, the silence of apostolic leaders in this very important issue has been filled by people who should not function as the sources of apostolic Didache. The poisonous leaven was part of the problem in the initial exposure of these issues, and the failure to rid the kingdom of that leaven at that time in a proper manner now leaves us with a whole-loaf of cake half-turned.

What should take a day and half to settle will now become an enduring squabble over issues taht do not even relate to the lost princples, processes, and protocols of the kingdom clulture over which apostles have direct Biblical authority and responsibility to “Train them to obey all I have commanded you.”

1. This man should not be given a public platform to speak, preach, or minister until a period of proven personal change has established authentic repentance with an appropriate attitude poon his part about the blasphemy of his sinful behaviors;
2. These behaviors and those of very public figures in the 1990s are hardly comparable, yet the response of the apostolic restoration has been dismal
3. Do we assume that the apostolic restoration has less authority to implement kingdom culture than the previous paradigm the restoration says is inferior?
4. If apostolic fathering cannot successfully protect the kingdom from this predatory leadership, can we even show our faces in public to claim we are ready for a New Era Reformation?
5. Do we wish the messaging of this situation to publish this horror as a norm for kingdom leadership? Do we wish to say this is “love” for any person involved? Do we think this is “grace” when it is sinful? Do we wish to allow this foundation to serve a moment in kingdom history already challenged by lawlessness and hyper-grace error?

Solutions:

1. The original fathering leaders who refuse to do their fathering duties should now step in to deal with this issue without leaving the fallout to the guy who tried to help when no one else could anything more than making sound-bite public statements;
2. The entire apostolic leadership – this is no longer a matter for one “network” or apostolic leader – should now council to arrive at a protection for this guy who tried to help as they should have done all the way along – either call for a correction at whatever cost if they disagreed with the process, or do something other than turn away and keep busy with other stuff to avoid getting involved;
3. The entire apostolic fathering movement should rehearse the process that failed and provide the process that succeeds to assure the present generation – all the people alive at this moment – that the apostolic restoration intends to restore kingdom culture principles, processes, and protocols; this is not the matter of one network of apostolic father anymore;
4. A council should convene to consider the horrendous outcomes of false grace, “love changes people,” and “just let the Holy Spirit disciple” that now dominate mini-movements producing hundreds of leaders who think these behaviors are OK, plausible, and consistent with “Holy Spirit alone tells me what is appropriate behavior;” in other words, this is a teaching moment, called to consideration by Holy Spirit, requiring the apostolic leaders to function as apostles;
5. This is an international incident bigger than any one form of apostolic organization or one apostle; an immediate discussion should arise about the false premise that this is not an issue for every apostle in the kingdom worldwide since this has been an international incident from the beginning due to the GodTV broadcasting and failure upon the part of GodTV to take a stand even after the revelations of gross sinful behaviors were known; TV in the name of God that fails at this level comes at a high price;
6. This is a salient moment for the big boys and girls to act like adults; while I disagree with the process designed and executed for restoration, the failure here starts with one person – the leader in sin who refuses to receive the grace to stop sinning; this is a moment of discussion about the power of the Cross, the enabling capacity of grace to overcome sin, and the empowering Presence of Holy Spirit to produce fruit instead of flesh works;
7. The initial rebuke of this man’s words, “I did it, get over it,” in the face of his very public dishonor of marriage and family should have been enough, within itself, to ask this man to get a job and preach only after nothing less than two years of learning how to live without haughty pride.

It is imperative that this behavior never become normalized in kingdom culture.