#410 Modern Apostles and Prophets? Examining the New Apostolic Reformation | Brandon Kimber

Brandon Kimber (0:00)

If our nation was overtaken by the influence of NAR, Word of Faith leaders like Bethel and Kenneth Copeland, I wouldn't call that a Christian nation that's been discipled by the biblical gospel. I would still say that they're lost and rejecting the biblical gospel. So that even though they're embracing conservative values, and maybe those things are being more promoted in our government, in culture and society, we're still missing the gospel and that's the most important thing.

Alisa Childers (0:42)

Many of you discovered this podcast through a movie called American Gospel Christ Crucified, which featured my story of having my faith challenged in a church that would eventually go on to identify as a progressive Christian community. That was called American Gospel Christ Crucified. Many others of you have had your lives changed by the first American Gospel movie in Christ Alone, which talked a lot about the prosperity gospel and the word of faith movement. Well, I'm so excited to let you know about the newest installment, which is 18 episodes of a series of American Gospel called Spirit & Fire. We're going to talk all about it with the director, editor, and mastermind behind the whole thing, Brandon Kimber in this episode, brought to you by We Heart Nutrition, which is a wonderful, high-quality Christian-owned supplement company. You can go to weheartnutrition.com today and use my code ALISA for 20 percent off your first order. Guys, I'm so excited to bring this conversation with you because this 18 episode series has been in the works for quite a while, and I've been a part of it. In fact, I'm featured in a few of these episodes as well. I am so impressed with what Brandon has been able to put together. He's become quite the NAR expert himself, so we're going to be talking about NAR today, some of the things to look for, some red flags, who are some of the people. We're also going to address a question a lot of you had in a recent episode that I shared about NAR, and I particularly said how the NAR tends to come in through the music.

Many of you in the YouTube comments were like, well, what is a NAR song? How do I recognize that? We touched on that question today with Brandon just to give you some general advice about that, but we're also going to be doing a whole dedicated episode just to that question with NAR expert Holly Pivick in the future. We're still working on getting that put together and when we're going to record it, but be looking for that because that's going to really give you a guide to why we think NAR is using duplicitous language in some of these songs and how they sneak their theology in through that. With that said, I do want to just take a moment to address that question because so many of you had that question, I don't want to leave you without an answer. So I would say generally speaking, if I could just advise maybe church leaders at first, what you want to do is be looking for any music by Bethel Music or by Jesus Culture or IHOP, Kansas. Those are probably three of the main entities that are producing the music and how you can look at that is if you look on CCLI, you can kind of look at who published it. So Bethel Music would be in the credits of that song. And one of the reasons that it's so important to be mindful of these things is because not only are they sneaking their theology in through these songs, but every time you sing them in your church through CCLI, they get a royalty, which actually contributes more finances for them to continue making this music to put into more churches. So it's something that I don't want to bind anyone's conscience to, like you have to do it one way or another. But I do think it's important for church leaders to think these things through. The easiest way to keep the NAR influence out of your church would be to just avoid songs by any of those entities. And now I want to talk to churchgoers in general.

If you're not the one making the decisions about what songs are being sung, I would really strongly advise you don't walk in fear about that. You don't have to be worried that every song that's in your worship service is a NAR song. I would just urge you to be cautious about what you're singing. If there is a lyric on the screen that gives you a red flag, gives you pause, you might think, okay, do I believe that? Is that something that I want to sing about God? Does that align with scripture? And you can maybe opt to not sing a line or two or a song if you don't believe that that song is biblically or lining up with scripture. And I would urge you to have a lot of grace with your church leaders because this is a difficult conversation right now. And I would not advise like leaving a church because they sang a Bethel song necessarily. Have grace for your church leaders. These are hard decisions to make. And even the best churches, like things can slip by.