Our Resignation From Zeus Club

From memory this week on Facebook I've been highlighting a passage in Acts 14:12, and saying Paul was being addressed as Zeus. Well this is wrong.It was Barnabus.
"And they began calling Barnabas, Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. "
The sentiment of what I wrote was right, and whenPaul refused to go along with it, by verse 19 Paul was being stoned and dragged out of the city for dead.
I'm ofcourse highlighting a peculiar spirit that I'm calling Zeus Club, whereby as long as you are prepared to be considered "something special in your own right", you will be warmly received by this opposite and symbiotic spirit of a kind of "servitude" in those receiving you. The twin pronged spirit produces a pyramid structure. It is the same spirit that thrust Moses on alone up the Mountain to meet with God face to face, while the people of God first quaked in fear then began to "play". Which tells us something about the parable of the Talents and the man that hid his talent in the ground out of fear, "because he saw his master as a hard man, expecting more back than was given." So if we are "seeing hardness".....the strange thing is , it is not long before we are "playing". The opposite of Zeus Club, is becoming one flesh, one thing with Christ. Of being driven by that passion of the 1st Commandment to love God with a "fire" love that consumes our whole being.

About 30 years ago, Emsworth "warmly" received their "apostle" Jorge Pradas to live full time amongst them for 6 months. At the end of this period Jorge confided in me that he may as well have just carried on visiting from Spain,for all the extra "gift of utterance " it had given him by being more on hand. I also noticed that women in particular would be thrilled to invite Jorge and his wife to their houses for meals, in the UK ,Argentina ,Spain and France. They would serve up the very best. Jorge would get fatter. The women would bust their guts getting things ready....and hardly even see the guy for all the time he was there.

Charismatic leaders dine out on this symbiotic relationship continually. Something like this is also going on in tithing." We'll support you as long as you are nice to us, and don't give us too much of this "religious " stuff."

You start to see there are "other dynamics at work" which we, in our original naivety assume to be just Kingdom love, and hunger for the Word.
We say "You continue running meetings, or if you are a worship group, singing songs and we'll sit here being entertained." "You go up ahead Moses.....we'll remain here."

A truly marvellous system , no? Except nothing changes, and the resultant fallout when nobody changes is a cynical gospel of despair. By being a part of all this we are supporting the very system that Jesus described when he used the image of a tower.
When you build a tower, make sure you have enough to complete the job, because if you only half finish, everybody will laugh at you.
The other aspect of Zeus Club, is by signing into it, we are accepting that we "shall permanently be excluded from some inner core, some inner elite."

Two Christian musicians who covered this ground were Steve Taylor on I Predict 1990 What is the Measure of your success?(in the form of a 80s selfmade man) and Charlie Peacock as himself in Big Man's Hat. Lyrics below if you are interested?
So I was going to do a blog post in the manner of a resignation from Zeus Club.

People who are actually in this spirit look at my 3rd level blog and assume it is some elitest thing, when the truth is, it is just the opposite- the realisation that we never had an independent life, and that it's not enough to have the Holy Spirit as some external charismatic mid realm....it is Christ Himself living His life as us.

MEMBERSHIP TERMINATION
We the undersigned do notify that we are hereby terminating our membership to Zeus Club.
The Body of Christ is not a pyramid in the shadow of one man either locally, nor internationally. The Church is run by the Lord Jesus Christ in and through the one Holy Spirit. We refuse to have any pyramid role thrust upon us, nor to serve any pyramid purporting to be the Church of Christ. We speak instead the freedom of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all souls, for He is the husband of the Church, exalted as its Head at the right hand of God the Father. He has appointed gifts of ministry and empowering to men to impart this very freedom in the Son, and to enable all others to be cobuilders of this same Body of Christ, by that which each joint supplies. And never by locking people into some earthly institution or framework that honours only a handful of people at its inner impenetrable core. Our resignation is from immediate effect and to the greater glory of the Son of God Jesus, who is worthy of all honour and praise, from a multitude drawn from every nation and people and to whom we add no further burden than to believe in the full work of the Cross and resurrection of Christ.

none of these signatures are the true signatures of the real people who oppose this spirit in the church in order to prevent fraudulent use.

Paul Anderson Walsh wrote "Bonsai Conspiracy" and is currently working on a theme close to this blog...the three growth Stages : Safe and Sound,The Apprentice,are already out
Jack Fortenberry wrote Corinthian Elders, which after a slow start is picking up readership and Chris Welch strongly recommends it.

Brian Mirte Longridge - musician and psalmist

Paul Noble is among other things a musician who is currently writing many songs

Francois Du Toit is an influential Bible Teacher who travels between nations and is currently writing the amazing Mirror translation of the Bible.

Lyrics


Steve Taylor - What is the Measure of your success
In this city I confessI am driven to possess
Answer no one, let them guess
Are you someone I impress?
I am a big boss with a short fuse
I have a nylon carpet and rubber shoes
And when I shake hands, you'll get a big shock
You'll be begging for mercy when the champ is through
You better believe I'll put my clamps on you

In this city, be assured
Some will rise above the herd
Feed the fatted, leave the rest
This is how we won the west
I am a safebox,
I am the inner sanctum when the door locks
I hold the passkeyYou say you can't take it with you?
We'll see about that won't we?push....push....push
In the city, I confess
God is mammon, more is less
Off like lemmings at the gun
I know better, still I run
I am an old manand the word came
But you can't buy time or a good name
Now when the heirs come around
Like buzzards on a kill
I see my reflection in their envious eyes,
I'd watch it all burn to buy another sunrise
Some men find the fire escape
Old men learn it all too late
push....push....push the alarm
Old MacDonald's bought the farm

BIG MAN'S HAT Charlie Peacock
I used to wear a big man's hat in a big man's world,
You got to have a big man's hat in a big man's world,
But I was just a child then, I acted like a boy,
I bought my shirts at the Veteran's Thrift,
I wore myself a fur-lined motorcycle jacket,
I had to have peg-legged jeans, I was one bad cat,
And don't you forget: I wore a big man's hat,
Oh yes, a big man's hat.

I learned myself one good lick from a one-lick man, oh yes,
You gotta know one good lick to play in a one-lick band,
Well, I was just a child then, I didn't know a thing, (no, no, no)
I thought I had to talk like a fool,
I though I had to drink like a goldfish,
I thought I had to lie like a dog, I was one sick cat,
Was all of this because I wore a big man's hat?
A big man's hat.

I used to have a big man's thoughts in a young man's world,
You got to have a big man's thoughts to make a big man's girl,
And when I finally made that girl she did not have a clue that I would break her like a matchstick, that I could turn young love into the third world war, that I'd sit in the seat where the devil had sat,
That I could turn young love into the third world war, that I'd sit in the seat where the devil had sat,
That I could turn young love into the third world war, that I'd sit in the seat where the devil had sat,
That I could turn young love into the third world war, that I'd sit in the seat where the devil had sat,
Was all of this because... (all of this because)
Was all of this because...
Was all of this because...
Was all of this because...
Was all of this because (all of this because) I wore a big man's hat?