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| BEEN THERE, DONE
THAT |
The
“Great” Commission of Gwen Shamblin & Remnant Fellowship:
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Welcome to Gwenville
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A Life Changing Teaching
 Prior
to being entrusted with this commission by Gwen Shamblin at Remnant Fellowship,
my wife and I had participated in and coordinated the Weigh Down Workshop
and Exodus Out of Strongholds classes at our local church since 1997.
We had greatly benefited from these programs, as they had encouraged us
to turn away from worldly strongholds and idols and look to God to fulfill
all our emotional and spiritual needs. At that time it was just the
medicine our struggling marriage needed. We’d recently moved to New
York, were struggling with our weight, and were drifting apart. We
had both been Christians for some time, but our faith wasn’t vital or dynamic.
We had studied the Bible for years, but the Scriptures seemed dry, almost
irrelevant to our lives.
Tapping
into these teachings about relying solely on God to meet one’s needs really
changed our lives. My wife lost almost 40 pounds over the years,
as well as a propensity for depression, and developed into a talented and
driven ministry leader. I was delivered from pornography and workaholism.
We learned how to pray again, how to enjoy Bible study. We learned
to look for God’s presence and blessings in our everyday lives. Our
marriage was transformed. The Spirit of God was truly at work in
our hearts, and it overflowed to those in our Weigh Down and Strongholds
classes and to our local church. God brought intimate Christian friends
into our lives who’d also been powerfully affected by what they’d learned
in the Weigh Down Workshop.
Needless
to say, because of this wonderful fruit in our lives we were quick to defend
Gwen Shamblin in September of 2000 when the mission statement on her website
denied the doctrine of the Trinity as she understands orthodox Christianity
to present it. After all, how could we argue with the fruit of this
ministry? Countless lives changed, people getting closer to God,
our own lives transformed. Based on our understanding, the doctrine
of the Trinity and Gwen’s presentation of God’s nature didn’t seem that
different from each other. We felt we needed to remain loyal to the
teacher who’d helped us so much.
Just
prior to the Trinity controversy, my wife attended the 2000 Desert Oasis
Conference in Nashville with her fellow coordinator and friend from our
congregation. While there, she was invited to an additional meeting
called “Rebuilding the Wall” at the Weigh Down Workshop headquarters. There
she heard the call to begin examining our church leadership for signs of
reluctance to truly do the total will of God.
We
began to notice quite a few problems in our church, things upon which we
ordinarily would have overlooked. Instead of feeling judgmental we
experienced concern, and decided to redouble our efforts to pray for our
church and leaders. We’d seen a lot of growth in our home church,
and while we began to feel that God was stirring the congregation, there
were also times when it didn’t feel as though the church was 100 percent
sold out for Him. We felt that each member should have been running
after God with all their “heart, soul, body, and mind,” and yet we knew
there was sin in the church and sometimes a sense of complacency that we
felt our participation in Weigh Down had burned right out of us! Were we
truly in a church with leadership that would not turn the people from their
sin?
A Pilgrimage to Nashville — Our Visit
to Remnant Fellowship
We
spent the next few months in prayer about our home congregation, but on
the whole tried to remain faithful to our belief that Christ would take
charge of this congregation and his church, and felt that all we needed
to do was continue to pray.
We
decided to keep an eye on the Remnant Fellowship church that was meeting
at the WDW headquarters in Nashville. Maria and her co-coordinator
had excitedly shared news with us about this church where everyone worshipping
was committed to laying down all sin and, as in the book of Nehemiah, “rebuilding
the wall,” which so badly needed the attention of God’s people. In
the spring of 2001 we decided to visit Nashville for one of their Remnant
Fellowship Weekends to find out more about them (and just generally because
we were excited to meet Gwen, David Martin, and other Weigh Down “celebrities”).
We attended with her co-coordinator and her husband, another heavily involved
WD couple who we were good friends with, a couple from out of town, and
an elder of our church who had recently joined Weigh Down and had experienced
success with significant weight loss.
The
June 2001 conference kicked off with a bang. It met in the warehouse
of the Weigh Down Workshop, a large bare room decorated with grim banners
depicting the Flood and Noah’s ark. Those in attendance were chiefly
members of small Remnant Fellowships from all across the South and the
Midwest. As far as I know, our group of nine was the only one that
had no members of a Remnant Fellowship branch.
We
met Gwen, which was quite a thrill for many of us who’d participated in
her programs for years and knew her as mainly an image on a TV screen.
Prior to her opening address she seemed strangely intense and excitable
— sort of “in our faces” — asking us if we trusted her, if we felt we could
rely on her word due to our long participation in her programs. This
seemed odd, but of course we assented: we trusted Gwen. Why else
would we have come? We were given three ring binders as study
guides, and sat at long folding tables as Gwen directed us.
Beginning
with her keynote address that weekend Gwen broadsided us with the charge
that most churches today are “counterfeit churches” because they don’t
teach people that they must lay down all sin (adultery, greed, deceit,
pornography, over eating, etc.) and be totally obedient to God. Gwen
cited numerous Scriptures to support her contention that God’s will was
for a church to exhibit transformed hearts and minds leading to perfect
submission to His will. From the opening chapters of her study guide,
she wrote:
| This renewing means that
inside your heart and mind and soul, you are putting that sin or stronghold
on the altar and killing it. The early Christians understood the
Scriptures that said you were called to be pure and holy because you are
now the physical representative of the church — the called out — the temple
of God ... That was the picture of the New Jerusalem, and God was going
to walk among His people and be in His people. Now He could have
this relationship that He had been longing for ... He is calling His church
to unify ... He is calling the called out to repentance, and He is calling
all lambs to understand this holy priesthood — that they are to be pure
and holy in this choice of devotion. Instead of relying on a few
people in the front of the building to lead us in worship, he is calling
for us to get the foundations right in our own hearts — in this temple
(the body) — and for us to grow up because God is judging the counterfeit
church.1 |
Gwen
goes on to explain the process by which believers access grace and favor
in the eyes of God. After quoting 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, and 16-17,
she writes,
| Knowing
that the church is not a building, but you are the temple and the throne
is your heart, you should make sure that the foundation of the heart is
strictly the sacrificial, selfless devotion to God that is portrayed by
Jesus throughout the Scripture. He was the Lamb led to slaughter,
and He made it His life’s work to let the world know that He loved the
Father and did exactly what the Father wanted Him to do (John 14:31).
With this as your foundation for everything in your life, you are as solid
as the Rock you have founded your life upon. Nothing can bring you
down ... God wants to rule among a group of people — the called out — a
remnant willing to move their will aside and allow the holy personality
of God to rule their lives. If God’s will is on the throne of your
heart, you will be holy (1 Peter 1:13-15). You will stumble, but as time
goes by, you can experience more and more of His personality (Holy Spirit)
ruling your life.2 |
All
this seemed to make so much sense to me. Here was someone who boldly
stated the truth! True Christian believers cannot continue living
in sin. But I missed the fact that in these statements Gwen doesn’t
mention the saving work of Christ’s cross as what makes us fit to be in
the presence of a Holy God. Rather, she teaches that it’s our effort
to finally lay down our will that makes it possible for Him to have the
relationship with us He’s been longing for. Gwen explains her position
much more clearly in the following quotes:
The
purpose of Christ is clear: He came to forgive us for making the choice
of being in control (being our own god) or being under the control of a
false god or Satan (an ex-employee of God’s — which is no god at all).
We have been forgiven of those two foolish mistakes and we have an opportunity
to turn back to the right God after we have rejected Him. We are
allowed to enter God’s kingdom and to serve and worship Him from now on.
We do not believe that the blood of Christ was intended for us to jump
back and forth from one Kingdom to another and from one God to another
at our own whims. Like Joshua, when we come to Christ, we must choose
this day whom we will serve and stick with it. Our choice will be
measured by seeing whom we bow down to — and our heart’s passion will become
apparent. We will prove our choice by our deeds.3
We
believe that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s will and we believe
that Jesus is the Son of God who died for the remission of our past sins
and future stumbling sins. We believe that Jesus’ sacrifice is the
only way we could be forgiven. We believe that this does not take
away our responsibility not to “continue in sin.” Rather, we believe
this grace teaches us to say “no.”4 |
At
the time, I assumed that the idea of Christ as the ultimate source of grace
and a relationship with God was a given in Gwen’s mind. I didn’t
understand the import of the above passage, or the significance of it in
the theology of Remnant Fellowship. I wasn’t sure about what was
meant by a “stumbling sin.” It seemed clear to me at the time, but
in hindsight I’m not so sure.
I
now understand that what Gwen Shamblin and the folks at Remnant Fellowship
have done is confuse the teaching of grace for salvation as it is written
about in the Scriptures with the ongoing work of sanctification done by
the Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart. Her essential argument is,
“Unless sanctification has been completed, you cannot be saved.”
But the crux of the New Testament message is, “Because you have been saved,
allow the Spirit to do the work of sanctification in your heart.”
Gwen’s
approach to the grace of Christ and His reason for dying on the cross are
discussed more thoroughly in other pieces available on the Internet.
An excellent piece titled “Weighed Down with False Doctrine” by Don and
Joy Veinot, which thoroughly discusses Gwen’s view of grace as it differs
from mainstream Christian theology, is
available on the Web site of Midwest Christian Outreach (in its section
titled “The Journal”). I highly recommend this article for
a more in-depth analysis of Gwen Shamblin’s theology of grace.
“Come Out of Babylon” — The Counterfeit
Church
As
for me, not until she began to draw up an indictment of today’s church
and delivered her recommendation did I began to question what we were being
taught that night. Gwen declared that many of the churches of today
were counterfeits, like the church that was written of in Revelation 17-18
and called “Babylon.” She said, “… much of the church has become
drunk with the ‘safe grace’ message,” and went on to explain her view of
what God’s true church would resemble:
| Counterfeit churches have
a safe grace plan, or they are strict for manmade rules. The Apostle
Paul said that he wouldn’t allow these difficult, legalistic, non-heart-effective,
distracting, man-made rules in for one moment (read Gal. 1-6). The
true universal church, whether a home group, a small group, or a large
number anywhere in any city, will teach strict heart lessons, and the foundation
will be Jesus Christ. It will be made up of people who are so radically
different, they are transformed — new creatures.5 |
Gwen
then discussed this image of the counterfeit church as Babylon, and quoted
Revelation 18:4 with the following explanation:
| “Then I heard another voice
from heaven say: Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share
in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins
are piled up to heaven.” When God calls you out of Babylon-that
is the counterfeit church or religion, or the world-to be different and
to be holy (a holy priesthood), it may not always be easy to obey.6 |
She
went
on to compare the exodus from Babylon (the counterfeit church) to the story
of Noah, whom God saved from a wicked society. She related how she
and her family, and the Martin family (coincidentally numbering eight people)
were like the eight people God saved from the flood, in that they’d exited
their previous congregation without looking back and founded this new Remnant
Fellowship. They were the holy and faithful remnant that had been
prophesied about.
Then
Gwen laid down this charge: any faithful believers who were part of the
“counterfeit church” needed to depart from those fellowships and get under
a true, God-given authority (presumably, Remnant Fellowship). To
support this she quoted a variety of New and Old Testament passages indicating
that God wanted His people to be separate from the world. The one
that remained with me the most that evening, however, was 1 Corinthians
5: 9-13:
| I
have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people
— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy
and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave
this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate
with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy,
an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard, or a swindler. With such
a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those
outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge
those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”7 |
Gwen
said that in the days of the early church, there was only one brother who
was immoral enough to be expelled from the church. However, in this
modern day, the churches are full of immoral, greedy, idolatrous people.
If the leadership is not forbidding such behavior to occur, then this passage
makes it clear that the “loyal Remnant” must leave; to stay in that church
would be to condone its tolerance of sin. At the same time, she complimented
us on already knowing these truths, for being that Remnant who had recognized
this truth, and who had already left the “counterfeit church,” or were
taking steps to leave.
The
atmosphere in the warehouse resembled a wake. All around us the faces
of the audience were somber. It was as if we had just pronounced
death on the modern church! I know I was feeling uncomfortable because
I belonged to a church where I knew that there was sin in every member’s
life, including my own, and that not everyone seemed to be “100 percent
sold out for God.” I’d often been frustrated by that, but now I felt
condemned. Members of our group were scared, because we felt that
we needed to get away from that church as fast as possible, and “get under
a true, God-given authority.”
Still,
I had some serious misgivings. Gwen seemed to assume a lot of authority
regarding how to interpret some difficult-to-understand passages of Scripture.
I heard many of these passages more carefully exegeted by scholars, but
she seemed to dispense with any pretense of careful contextual analysis.
Furthermore,
her call to leave churches didn’t seem to gel with other passages of the
New Testament focused on restoring fallen brothers and bearing with the
failings of the weak. During question and answer sessions, I repeatedly
tried to ask Gwen about these issues. She listened to my questions,
and then launched into lengthy evasions that always found their way back
to the conclusion that faithful Christians would not fellowship in churches
that had disobedient people in them. |
ENDNOTES
1 Rebuilding the Wall Foundational
Beliefs, “A History of God’s Relationship to Man,” p. 23. Conference
notes received at the June 2001 Remnant Fellowship Weekend in Nashville.
[BACK]
2 Ibid., p. 24. [BACK]
3 Rebuilding the Wall Foundational
Beliefs, “Remnant Introduction and Mission,” p. 6. Conference
notes received at the June 2001 Remnant Fellowship Weekend in Nashville.
[BACK]
4 Rebuilding the Wall Foundational
Beliefs, “A History of God’s Relationship to Man,” p. 31. Conference
notes received at the June 2001 Remnant Fellowship Weekend in Nashville.
[BACK]
5 Ibid., p. 30. [BACK]
6 Ibid., p. 31-32. [BACK]
7 New International Version. [BACK] |
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