New Life, Old Problems

I saw an attractive, converted old chapel in Shipley last month. It was well maintained and had a sign outside: Christian Life Church. I rightly guessed that it was one of those rather dynamic, charismatic congregations which have bought up an old, denominational chapel whose owners had shriveled up and closed. It has an impressive website though a page about its leadership caught my attention. There are two photos, the one on the left of a moustachioed gentleman, arm aloft as he emphasises some point, and a good-looking couple on the right, holding each other close. The text duly identified them:

CLC was founded by Paul Hubbard, who is a spiritual father to our family.

We meet together at Christian Life Church in Shipley, Bradford. We have a dynamic leadership team whose hearts are to bring our vision into reality, led by our pastors Adam & Faye.

So Pastors Adam and Faye presumably work under the benign authority and gaze of their spiritual father.

The link to Paul Hubbard is broken (‘WARNING! paulgrahamhubbard.com has expired’), sadly, so about him I can find little. He may well be a godly and humble man, a faithful teacher of Biblical truth. Yet calling one a ‘spiritual father’ reminds me just a little of the bishop of Rome, or Salt Lake’s prophet, or even just that local pastor with a steely eye and a firm handshake, and who thinks church members are his personal property, a drone workforce to accomplish his personal ambitions. “Call no man father”, urged the Lord Jesus, knowing our propensity to give too much authority to men, offering obedience and unstinting loyalty to mere mortals. Would that we were as faithful to God’s word.

If evangelical churches can lapse into sterile orthodoxy and purely celebral theology, pentecostal churches may fall before the magnetic personalities of their charismatic leaders. A new church in an old chapel, but potentially facing the same problems which have beset the churches from the very earliest days.