Continued from Part 1....
When my husband and I became members of Mikel Brown's church, Christian Joy Center, three years ago we had never heard a pastor say that God wanted us healthy, wealthy, and full of life. We watched TBN every so often but we never heard anyone describe what was being taught on TBN as the "prosperity gospel". Truthfully, I had never heard anyone speak against prosperity preachers so I assumed that they were teaching the gospel. My husband was stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico and we had recently gotten orders to Hawaii. We had left our previous church of two years and were searching for new church.
We saw an ad for Mikel Brown's church in the local Alamogordo news paper and decided to visit the church. Our first impression of the church was very positive. The people there were very welcoming, loving, and there seemed to be a different type of excitement in the air that we had never experienced before. The members seemed to be overly excited about God and the gospel. We quickly realized there was something different about this church when everyone began to recite a declaration of prophetic words in unison. It was awkward to say the least but we liked what we heard.
We joined the church the first day we visited; we had been looking for a church for about two or three months. We were advised to take a foundation class before becoming official members of the church. The class included a history of the church, the vision the pastor had for the church, what they believe biblically, and a class on money and tithing. The latter part was new to us. We were asked to fill out a form stating our income and told that in order to be involved in ministries you had to be a consistent tither. You couldn't lie about it cause once you filled out the form stating your income the pastor and his administration would know how much your 10% amounted to. I guess this was a new way of holding each other accountable.
Things began to get interesting after we joined the church. The first sermon we heard that initially moved us to join the church was on faith but we soon began to see a shift in the message. The pastor did use scripture but the messages were more on the motivational side; all topical sermons of course. I had never heard the gospel taught like that before. God seemed to be a very generous God who wanted to bless me with money and possessions if I'd only seek Him first. That is what Mikel Brown taught. He taught us that Jesus came to preach the good news to the poor that they didn't have to be poor anymore. It all sounded good to our flesh at the time. We were very business minded and wanted to have the American Dream God's way. Mikel Brown seemed to know how to get wealth God's way but we would later learn that our money equaled wealth for him.
For what it is worth we were happy to be apart of the church and felt that we were going to get rich if we followed the "principles of increase" that Mikel Brown was teaching. I became apart of the children's ministry and sang with the praise and worship team. All seemed good. We were convinced that God wanted us healthy, wealthy, and full of life. We were sowing seeds and waiting for our harvest. While we waited for our harvest we were told to have faith and keep believing because it was coming. So we keep sowing seeds. We kept tithing. We would tithe first when my husband was paid even if we had bills that needed to be paid. We were taught to give God what is right and not what is left. We were taught to tithe off of our gross income not our net. We were introduced to first fruit offerings. Money became more and more of an issue.
We started giving above and beyond our means and would constantly overdraw our account believing that this was God's will and that he would provide. We survived by shuffling bills around,robbing Peter to pay Paul, and by pawning things. Mikel Brown was constantly asking for money and making us feel ashamed if we weren't giving God our best. If we didn't tithe then we were robbing God and would be cursed with a curse; he believed it would be a financial curse.There was a tremendous amount of stress on us to give money all of the time. Mikel Brown also talked about business a lot. It seemed that his passion was really for business more than it was for teaching God's word. He told us that God had called him to make millionaires.
All of his websites online were about business and money. Mostly all of his speaking engagements outside of church were on business and money. They were advertised in church and were pretty expensive and really no different than what he taught during church services. Success is never free or discounted he would say. Most of his books and CD series were about business or money or prosperity. Business and money began to become more of our focus as well. We knew that if we were going to be able to give as much as Mikel Brown wanted us to we had to start a business to create an abundance of wealth.
We were amazed that 90% of the people in the church had some sort of business; most weren't successful but everyone always had something going. If someone started a business and it wasn't successful they would try something else. The idea was to create wealth so we could be a blessing to others. Mikel Brown talked a lot about his dreams and the possessions that he was believing God for and encouraged us to do the same thing as well. He quoted a lot of secular millionaires and often said that these secular people were millionaires because they were using God's principles of increase.
The other members worshiped Mikel Brown and so did we. He, as well as other ministers and members, taught that the pastor is the mouthpiece of God and that he had wisdom concerning our lives and we were to submit to his authority. God had supposedly given him special revelations concerning the word and the lives of those in his church. Blessings would come to those who submitted to the authority of the man of God. We now see that these were signs of an abusive church.
As I mentioned earlier, we had received orders to Hawaii prior to our joining Christian Joy Center. So eventually the pastor asked us to see if we could turn down our orders and stay in New Mexico to be apart of the church. Our first response was that we could come back to New Mexico after my husband got out of the military since his enlistment would be up after our tour in Hawaii. Mikel Brown cleverly said that we should make up our minds now and that things could change once we left and moved to Hawaii. He didn't pressure us but he believed that we would really prosper the way God wanted us to if we stayed apart of his church; it was very conniving.
We didn't make a decision that day but because there were other ministers in his office when he asked us to stay we immediately began to get pressured after that. Some of the other members began to tell us of there stories. There were a a lot of members who he had convinced to get out of the military and stay apart of the church; some who had planned on starting ministries back in their home town. There was a couple who had bought a house in New Mexico and the pastor asked them move to Texas where the mother church was located and be apart of the ministry there full time. This couple moved out of their house and rented a house in Texas all the while driving back and forth (two or more times a week) to be apart of the church in New Mexico. The commute between the church in El Paso and New Mexico were about an hour and a half.
There were numerous members , whom he had asked and whom had volunteered, from his church in El Paso that drove back and forth during the week to be apart of the leadership of both churches. They were and are very dedicated to Mikel Brown and will do whatever he asks of them. The members began to tell us that the pastors' instructions were from God and we should follow them. I remember so vividly, after a Wednesday night service, we asked one of the elders of the church if he had gotten out of the military and stayed in New Mexico because he felt led by God to do so or because the pastor asked him and he said he did so because the pastor had asked him to.
During this time we were so confused. We had prayed about the orders and gotten them but we were feeling pressured by the church members to stay because the pastor was the "mouthpiece of God". We wanted to go to Hawaii but we wanted to stay in New Mexico if that was God's will for us. We didn't want to be out of God's will; we believed that was possible at the time. One night while we were at the local Walmart we ran into four members from the church and they began asking us if we had decided rather we were going to turn down our orders and stay. We told them that we hadn't decided yet. We all ended up joining hands in the middle of the store and praying about it. We eventually gave into the pressure and turned down our orders to New Mexico. We let the pastor know and everything seemed great. We were one big happy family.
Everything was okay until we began to realize what we had done and we couldn't shake the uneasy feeling we had about the decision to stay. My husband came home one day and said I am going to see about taking those orders to Hawaii and boy was I relieved. We had been praying about it together and individually and we felt that we were making the right decision. By the grace of God God, the military allowed my husband to recant the decision to turn down his orders. My husband announced in front of the church the next Sunday that we had changed our minds and were going to accept the orders to Hawaii. Once everyone was aware of our decision we began to be treated like we were the evil stepchildren. Mikel Brown seemed the same but everyone else just began to turn their backs on us.
I don't know if the pastor encouraged them to treat us this way but we were very hurt.The tension in the air became so thick that one Sunday after the pastor preached my husband stood up and confessed that he had some ill feelings toward the members in the church for how we were being treated since we accepted the orders to Hawaii. He asked that everyone forgive him. After my husband's confession the pastor stood up and said that he had no ill feelings about us leaving and that he had wanted us to stay but respected our decision. Members of the church began to come to us and confess that they had cut us off because they were mad that we had decided to go to Hawaii. They all asked for our forgiveness and we forgave them though the closeness we had once felt was no longer there.
Some of the members continued to say that we did not adhere to the instructions by the man of God and that we are out of God's will. Eventually we left for Hawaii and the pastor sent his blessings with us and told us to make sure we sent our tithes to the church until we joined another church in Hawaii.
After we left, God began to work on our hearts and open our blinded eyes from the deceit of the prosperity gospel. We began to hear people speak out about it and say that it wasn't the gospel. It all started when we bought an album called, If They Only Knew by Trip Lee. Trip Lee had a song on his album called, Cash or Christ, when we first heard the song we hated it; if you are in the prosperity gospel you will too; cause it made us question everything we had been taught. We begin to feel very convicted about our constant pursuit of money and we couldn't pretend that we hadn't heard the message of the song. That one song shook our foundation. After that, we learned about a pastor by the name of John Piper through another Reach Records artist by the name of Tedashii. John Piper spoke a lot about finding infinite joy in God and his sermons and resources were very God centered.
I cannot stress how grateful we are to God for John Piper's ministry. John Piper truly spreads, "a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ." Life has truly changed for us and God is doing amazing things in our lives in many different ways. First, we are learning what it means to treasure Christ above everything and we are experiencing the infinite joy of being satisfied in God alone. We reduced God to a servant by coming to Him for riches now we humbly submit to the Lordship of Jesus. Thanks to Randy Alcorn and his book, The Treasure Principle, we have a biblical perspective on how we are to use our money to glorify God. In his book we learned about why it is wiser to store our treasures in Heaven and not on earth. We can now give knowing that our treasures in Heaven will never be destroyed.
It is very man centered to think that God just wants to dish out money and blessings so that we can feel loved. John Piper said it best in his book, Don't Waste Your Life, when he said, "Being loved does not mean being made much of. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so that we could spend forever making much of Him not so that we can make much of ourselves". God is the gospel and He is the gift not money or possessions. Don't settle for fleeting pleasures let your joy be in Jesus.
When my husband and I became members of Mikel Brown's church, Christian Joy Center, three years ago we had never heard a pastor say that God wanted us healthy, wealthy, and full of life. We watched TBN every so often but we never heard anyone describe what was being taught on TBN as the "prosperity gospel". Truthfully, I had never heard anyone speak against prosperity preachers so I assumed that they were teaching the gospel. My husband was stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico and we had recently gotten orders to Hawaii. We had left our previous church of two years and were searching for new church.
We saw an ad for Mikel Brown's church in the local Alamogordo news paper and decided to visit the church. Our first impression of the church was very positive. The people there were very welcoming, loving, and there seemed to be a different type of excitement in the air that we had never experienced before. The members seemed to be overly excited about God and the gospel. We quickly realized there was something different about this church when everyone began to recite a declaration of prophetic words in unison. It was awkward to say the least but we liked what we heard.
We joined the church the first day we visited; we had been looking for a church for about two or three months. We were advised to take a foundation class before becoming official members of the church. The class included a history of the church, the vision the pastor had for the church, what they believe biblically, and a class on money and tithing. The latter part was new to us. We were asked to fill out a form stating our income and told that in order to be involved in ministries you had to be a consistent tither. You couldn't lie about it cause once you filled out the form stating your income the pastor and his administration would know how much your 10% amounted to. I guess this was a new way of holding each other accountable.
Things began to get interesting after we joined the church. The first sermon we heard that initially moved us to join the church was on faith but we soon began to see a shift in the message. The pastor did use scripture but the messages were more on the motivational side; all topical sermons of course. I had never heard the gospel taught like that before. God seemed to be a very generous God who wanted to bless me with money and possessions if I'd only seek Him first. That is what Mikel Brown taught. He taught us that Jesus came to preach the good news to the poor that they didn't have to be poor anymore. It all sounded good to our flesh at the time. We were very business minded and wanted to have the American Dream God's way. Mikel Brown seemed to know how to get wealth God's way but we would later learn that our money equaled wealth for him.
For what it is worth we were happy to be apart of the church and felt that we were going to get rich if we followed the "principles of increase" that Mikel Brown was teaching. I became apart of the children's ministry and sang with the praise and worship team. All seemed good. We were convinced that God wanted us healthy, wealthy, and full of life. We were sowing seeds and waiting for our harvest. While we waited for our harvest we were told to have faith and keep believing because it was coming. So we keep sowing seeds. We kept tithing. We would tithe first when my husband was paid even if we had bills that needed to be paid. We were taught to give God what is right and not what is left. We were taught to tithe off of our gross income not our net. We were introduced to first fruit offerings. Money became more and more of an issue.
We started giving above and beyond our means and would constantly overdraw our account believing that this was God's will and that he would provide. We survived by shuffling bills around,robbing Peter to pay Paul, and by pawning things. Mikel Brown was constantly asking for money and making us feel ashamed if we weren't giving God our best. If we didn't tithe then we were robbing God and would be cursed with a curse; he believed it would be a financial curse.There was a tremendous amount of stress on us to give money all of the time. Mikel Brown also talked about business a lot. It seemed that his passion was really for business more than it was for teaching God's word. He told us that God had called him to make millionaires.
All of his websites online were about business and money. Mostly all of his speaking engagements outside of church were on business and money. They were advertised in church and were pretty expensive and really no different than what he taught during church services. Success is never free or discounted he would say. Most of his books and CD series were about business or money or prosperity. Business and money began to become more of our focus as well. We knew that if we were going to be able to give as much as Mikel Brown wanted us to we had to start a business to create an abundance of wealth.
We were amazed that 90% of the people in the church had some sort of business; most weren't successful but everyone always had something going. If someone started a business and it wasn't successful they would try something else. The idea was to create wealth so we could be a blessing to others. Mikel Brown talked a lot about his dreams and the possessions that he was believing God for and encouraged us to do the same thing as well. He quoted a lot of secular millionaires and often said that these secular people were millionaires because they were using God's principles of increase.
The other members worshiped Mikel Brown and so did we. He, as well as other ministers and members, taught that the pastor is the mouthpiece of God and that he had wisdom concerning our lives and we were to submit to his authority. God had supposedly given him special revelations concerning the word and the lives of those in his church. Blessings would come to those who submitted to the authority of the man of God. We now see that these were signs of an abusive church.
As I mentioned earlier, we had received orders to Hawaii prior to our joining Christian Joy Center. So eventually the pastor asked us to see if we could turn down our orders and stay in New Mexico to be apart of the church. Our first response was that we could come back to New Mexico after my husband got out of the military since his enlistment would be up after our tour in Hawaii. Mikel Brown cleverly said that we should make up our minds now and that things could change once we left and moved to Hawaii. He didn't pressure us but he believed that we would really prosper the way God wanted us to if we stayed apart of his church; it was very conniving.
We didn't make a decision that day but because there were other ministers in his office when he asked us to stay we immediately began to get pressured after that. Some of the other members began to tell us of there stories. There were a a lot of members who he had convinced to get out of the military and stay apart of the church; some who had planned on starting ministries back in their home town. There was a couple who had bought a house in New Mexico and the pastor asked them move to Texas where the mother church was located and be apart of the ministry there full time. This couple moved out of their house and rented a house in Texas all the while driving back and forth (two or more times a week) to be apart of the church in New Mexico. The commute between the church in El Paso and New Mexico were about an hour and a half.
There were numerous members , whom he had asked and whom had volunteered, from his church in El Paso that drove back and forth during the week to be apart of the leadership of both churches. They were and are very dedicated to Mikel Brown and will do whatever he asks of them. The members began to tell us that the pastors' instructions were from God and we should follow them. I remember so vividly, after a Wednesday night service, we asked one of the elders of the church if he had gotten out of the military and stayed in New Mexico because he felt led by God to do so or because the pastor asked him and he said he did so because the pastor had asked him to.
During this time we were so confused. We had prayed about the orders and gotten them but we were feeling pressured by the church members to stay because the pastor was the "mouthpiece of God". We wanted to go to Hawaii but we wanted to stay in New Mexico if that was God's will for us. We didn't want to be out of God's will; we believed that was possible at the time. One night while we were at the local Walmart we ran into four members from the church and they began asking us if we had decided rather we were going to turn down our orders and stay. We told them that we hadn't decided yet. We all ended up joining hands in the middle of the store and praying about it. We eventually gave into the pressure and turned down our orders to New Mexico. We let the pastor know and everything seemed great. We were one big happy family.
Everything was okay until we began to realize what we had done and we couldn't shake the uneasy feeling we had about the decision to stay. My husband came home one day and said I am going to see about taking those orders to Hawaii and boy was I relieved. We had been praying about it together and individually and we felt that we were making the right decision. By the grace of God God, the military allowed my husband to recant the decision to turn down his orders. My husband announced in front of the church the next Sunday that we had changed our minds and were going to accept the orders to Hawaii. Once everyone was aware of our decision we began to be treated like we were the evil stepchildren. Mikel Brown seemed the same but everyone else just began to turn their backs on us.
I don't know if the pastor encouraged them to treat us this way but we were very hurt.The tension in the air became so thick that one Sunday after the pastor preached my husband stood up and confessed that he had some ill feelings toward the members in the church for how we were being treated since we accepted the orders to Hawaii. He asked that everyone forgive him. After my husband's confession the pastor stood up and said that he had no ill feelings about us leaving and that he had wanted us to stay but respected our decision. Members of the church began to come to us and confess that they had cut us off because they were mad that we had decided to go to Hawaii. They all asked for our forgiveness and we forgave them though the closeness we had once felt was no longer there.
Some of the members continued to say that we did not adhere to the instructions by the man of God and that we are out of God's will. Eventually we left for Hawaii and the pastor sent his blessings with us and told us to make sure we sent our tithes to the church until we joined another church in Hawaii.
After we left, God began to work on our hearts and open our blinded eyes from the deceit of the prosperity gospel. We began to hear people speak out about it and say that it wasn't the gospel. It all started when we bought an album called, If They Only Knew by Trip Lee. Trip Lee had a song on his album called, Cash or Christ, when we first heard the song we hated it; if you are in the prosperity gospel you will too; cause it made us question everything we had been taught. We begin to feel very convicted about our constant pursuit of money and we couldn't pretend that we hadn't heard the message of the song. That one song shook our foundation. After that, we learned about a pastor by the name of John Piper through another Reach Records artist by the name of Tedashii. John Piper spoke a lot about finding infinite joy in God and his sermons and resources were very God centered.
I cannot stress how grateful we are to God for John Piper's ministry. John Piper truly spreads, "a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ." Life has truly changed for us and God is doing amazing things in our lives in many different ways. First, we are learning what it means to treasure Christ above everything and we are experiencing the infinite joy of being satisfied in God alone. We reduced God to a servant by coming to Him for riches now we humbly submit to the Lordship of Jesus. Thanks to Randy Alcorn and his book, The Treasure Principle, we have a biblical perspective on how we are to use our money to glorify God. In his book we learned about why it is wiser to store our treasures in Heaven and not on earth. We can now give knowing that our treasures in Heaven will never be destroyed.
It is very man centered to think that God just wants to dish out money and blessings so that we can feel loved. John Piper said it best in his book, Don't Waste Your Life, when he said, "Being loved does not mean being made much of. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so that we could spend forever making much of Him not so that we can make much of ourselves". God is the gospel and He is the gift not money or possessions. Don't settle for fleeting pleasures let your joy be in Jesus.
"Now that my vision's clear, Oh Lord we sing your praise
And pray that those in the world would turn and seek your face
Father we thank you for eyes to see so we can know you and love you forever"
-Eyes Open, Trip Lee 20/20
And pray that those in the world would turn and seek your face
Father we thank you for eyes to see so we can know you and love you forever"
-Eyes Open, Trip Lee 20/20
3 comments:
Wow sis, what a testimony! It's amazing how God's grace has brought us to truth.
Thank you for posting this. I'm about halfway through your YouTube videos on this. How it must grieve the Lord to see so many deceive and be deceived.
The hardest part is the experience after leaving. It has been very helpful for me writing and youtubing about it. I sincerely pray that God uses our testimony to open someones eyes.I have one more video I am going to do with that series and then I am moving on to modesty and lust. Thanks for commenting!
I read your story in a book on my Kindle called "The Prosperity Gospel Exposed and other false doctrines" by Michael D Fortner, watched your You Tube video, and nearly cried! Much blessing to you and your family for speaking the truth on this erroneous teaching.
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