cult

my church started a service ministry to the students on portland state university campus. we've been meeting in the campus ministries building for saturday night services since january, so it was a natural place to start. we've set it up so that everyone in the church is assigned to one of two teams, with the teams alternating between service and prayer. whichever team is praying the other is serving. the prayer times have been awesome, and it's been great for us to all get out of our comfort zones, with 'intercessors' forced to get out and talk to people, and 'servants' forced to spend more time in prayer. we're all growing and bonding in the process.

the serving is pretty cool. we're just going around the common areas on campus and giving away bottled water, snacks, pens and coupons for free photocopying at the church office. we've been doing about 3 months now and people are just starting to say, 'hey...weren't you here last week?' to which we have the joy of saying, 'yes, and we'll be here next week, and the week after that, and the week after that.'

last night something pretty crazy happened. my group was on service duty and some of us met some guys that invited us to a bible study on campus at 9pm. six of us decided to drop in with steve, my pastor. as we were heading over steve said there was actually a local cult that did stuff on campus called the portland international church of christ (not to be confused with the church of christ denomination). my friend vickie said she'd heard of it because one of her old friends from youth group joined and disowned his family and cut off all his friends.

we got there and they were really happy to see us. right before we got started my friend rachael asked what church they were part of and the girl we were talking to said, 'portland international church of christ'. just then vickie's (ex)friend she told us about came in. we were alternately amused and creeped out. then they got started.

at first it was your basic serious christian stuff. he started with the great commission and talked about how being a christian and being a disciple were the same thing, and how being a disciple meant making disciples. that's all true and good. but then as he had different people read out passages as we went along, everyone would read with a really loud dramatic voice. it was a bit odd. after that he moved to the verse where Jesus says if you don't deny yourself and take up your cross daily you can't be His disciple. that's when it got really really creepy. they guy was pounding about how if we weren't willing to forsake it all we were going to hell because Jesus said we couldn't be His disciples, and everyone knows that being a disciple means being a christian.

that's when we started chiming in about how God told us to take up our cross 'daily' because He knows that we are weak and would need to fight sin every day. we chimed in about how God gives grace to work out our salvation because He knows it's a journey and not a moment of change. at one point we tried to bring up grace but he steered it away. he looked away from us and said something to everyone else along the lines of, "yes, but as it says in the bible, we cannot be His disciples if we are not willing to forsake EVERYTHING and follow Him." he finished the bible study by asking us to consider -truly consider- if we're really His disciple, and if we are really willing to give it all up to follow Him.

the worst part was him saying how proud he was of one of the guys, an exchange student from africa, who was baptized on sunday and decided his girlfriend was holding him back so he "cut her out of his life". that was one of those moments where all of us on the couch wanted to look at eachother but didn't dare. it was a little frightening how intense the guys was and what a deep sense of fear and shame was in the room.

i'm glad we went. it was a real eye-opener to see the enemy at work not just through the darkness, but through enough of the truth to make it seem right when it really wasn't. it made me that much more grateful for grace.