Interview with Kim Crutchfield ... Part Three

This is the concluding installment of a three-part interview with Dr. Kim Crutchfield, pastor of Taipei International Church.

In Part One, Kim answered questions about his pastorate in Taiwan, his doctoral studies, and his Pentecostal upbringing.  Part Two dealt with his years spent at Princeton Theological Seminary, under the tutelage of professors like Bruce Metzger and James Loder.

Crutchfield

Today the subject matter is much different.  Part of Kim's life journey took him through Atlanta, Georgia, where he served on the staff of Chapel Hill Harvester Church (aka, the Cathedral of Holy Spirit).  Much of what Kim experienced there was not joyful like his pastorate in Taipei, nor edifying like the classrooms of Princeton or Columbia Theological Seminary, where he earned both a master's and his doctorate.

Once a prominent charismatic megachurch, Chapel Hill Harvester Church (CHHC), under the leadership of the late Archbishop Earl Paulk, became a scandal-ridden spectacle.  As stories of sexual misconduct, as well as, stories of financial and psychological manipulation of the congregation oozed out of CHHC in the 1990s, it became clear that it was an unhealthy place.

That serious and sustained wrongs occured there is well-documented (see a Charisma magazine article here, a Lee Grady column here, and the video below from Fox5 in Atlanta).  Today's blog is not yet one more news report about the travesty at CHHC (that news, thankfully, is rather stale).  Instead, it is an attempt to learn from an insider's viewpoint on how parishoners might recognize the early warning signs of a church going spiritually, financially, and morally awry.

When I say "insider's viewpoint" I need to be clear:  Dr. Crutchfield was never, ever involved in the horrific events at CHHC, nor did he have knowledge of them when he was there as a staff member.  What he did see were the attitudes and teachings and actions that served as the seeds to produce such a terrible harvest.  He gained a great deal more information on the scandals by staying in contact with many former members of the church, ministering to them in such venues as the Cathedral Survivors internet forum.

Today, the massive cathedral that housed CHHC has been sold, and the very shrunken congregation, now led by Paulk's son, D. E. Paulk (his son by reason of an affair with his sister-in-law!) is pursuing a theology that is a mish-mash of charismatic Christianity, universalism, and Eastern mysticism.  As Lee Grady opines in another column,  "A pulpit that was already defiled by diabolical perversion is now the breeding ground for unthinkable deception."

JR:  What are some of the lessons to be learned from the Earl Paulk debacle?

KC:  Jon, I served in that ministry staff from 1975, after graduating from bible college, until the end of 1983.

Although many bad things happened and many people were hurt in that ministry, I learned much from it.  I kept in touch with many friends whose lives were affected by their participation in Chapel Hill Harvester Church and the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit long after I left CHHC and joined the United Methodist church.  I witnessed spiritual manipulation and crass social control in its raw form.  I learned to be critical of spiritual authorities in a healthy way.

When leaders resist questioning and set themselves above the flock there is danger.  As Lord Acton warned long ago, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  Red flags go up for me when a minister stresses the need for everyone to submit to his or her authority.  All leaders need healthy checks and balances.

One of the watchwords of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at its height was, "The kingdom of God is built on trust."  That sounded spiritual.  However, it translated to mean that members of the congregation should suspend all critical evaluations of spiritual leaders and trust them blindly.  This slogan led followers to believe that God would judge leaders for their mistakes and, therefore, their participation was not culpable.  Their only duty was to trust and obey spiritual authorities.  This is plainly false, but it formed the practical essence of Kingdom Now Theology.

The leadership used gifts of prophecy and discernment to gain control over people.  They placed one woman, touted to have the gift of discerning of spirits, in the leadership structure.  Whenever she sensed a staff member or someone in the congregation in disagreement with the direction of the Bishop, she would "discern" in them a "Judas Spirit" and "Spirit of Intellectualism", or that they were relying on the "mind of reason".  She would call them out in public to rebuke this spirit.  This was a ritual of humiliation.  It was a clever way to discredit anyone who opposed or questioned the wilder and wilder direction the leaders wished to take the congregation.

The Bishop prophesied that God had told him that everyone should offer twenty percent of their income to the church.  Who could question such a pronouncement?  If they did, were they opposing God's Man of the Hour?  Were they "Judas spirits" or relying on the mind of reason?  Such devices silenced voices of dissent.  This abuse of the gift of discerning of spirits was a form of crass social and spiritual manipulation.

I also learned that arrogance in leadership is ugly and destructive.  I am appalled at the number of those whose faith suffered damage through their participation in CHHC and the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit.  Many will never darken the doors of another church.  Their faith was so violated and their trust betrayed.  Yet the arrogance of the leadership prevented them from uttering words of apology for their wrongdoing.  Rather, they continued to vilify their victims and castigate the whistle blowers.  A clear acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology would have brought enormous healing to so many.  The leadership should own up to the scandals and come clean.  However, arrogance issued in denials and flat out lies.  They accused their victims of being instruments of Satan who wished to "destroy this ministry."  Abuses continued until they became undeniable and public.  It was a sorry spectacle and left enormous human carnage in its wake.

Nevertheless, some "true believers" still hang on to the decaying carcass.  I learned that religious committments that become fanatical have great tenacity.  Few people are willing to admit that they had played the fool.  The insular world of the religious sect keeps the devotees loyal to authoritarian leaders.  Binary thinking prevents people from healthy and critical assessment.

JR:  Thank you, Kim, for your candor and insights.  I pray the Lord's richest blessing on you and those you serve in Taipei.
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Interview with Kim Crutchfield ... Part Two

Bruce Metzger

This is the second installment of a 3-part interview with Dr. Kim Crutchfield, pastor of Taipei International Church.  (The first installment can be read here).

Raised in a Pentecostal home in the United States, but now a United Methodist minister in Taiwan, Kim has covered a lot of terrain --- literally and figuratively.

Today, we ask him about his seminary years at Princeton, particularly studying under Bruce Metzger (pictured on the right;  Dr. and Mrs. Crutchfield are pictured in the first installment).

JR:  Studying under the late biblical scholar and textual critic Bruce Metzger at Princeton Seminary had to be a delight.  Tell us about that experience.

KC:  I entered Princeton Theological Seminary's Master of Divinity program in the winter of 1984.  I had earned a Masters in Theological Studies in Ethics from Columbia Theological Seminary in 1982.  My transfer credits allowed me the elbowroom to choose many elective courses during my MDiv program at Princeton.  I selected the professors under whom I wished to study.

The last course Bruce Metzger taught before his retirement was the Book of Revelation.  He took the approach he later shared in his 1999 book Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation.  I elected to take the Book of Revelation as a Bible course, primarily because I wished to sit at the feet of one of the foremost textual critics in the world.

Dr. Metzger delivered his lectures with great joy, brimming with calm insight.  Though not animated, he was never boring.  He was brilliant.  I soaked it all in.

The materials Dr. Metzger introduced to the class as background reading expanded my viewpoint on apocalyptic materials exponentially.  My Pentecostal bible college where I did my undergraduate studies trained me only in the Dispensationalist interpretation, an approach that sought to harmonize the prophecies of Daniel with the book of Revelation.  Hal Lindsey's Late Great Plant Earth was popular at the time of my undergraduate days.  Dr. Metzger's approach opened a new world of interpretation to me.

Dr. Metzger was a true gentleman, sheathing his vast knowledge in humility becoming to a great scholar.  He held the Bible in high esteem and brought a wealth of knowledge to the class.  I am grateful for the privilege to have studied under Dr. Bruce M. Metzger.

James Loder

Another professor that affected my life at Princeton Theological Seminary was Dr. James Loder.  He had written The Transforming Moment a few years before I entered Princeton.

Dr. Loder helped me claim my Pentecostal heritage during a time in which I was sorely tempted to abandon it.  The abuses to which I had witnessed and had been subjected almost led me to toss out the baby with the bathwater.  Dr. Loder's deep appreciation for Christian experience and the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life helped me to integrate the mind and the heart.

My Pentecostal colleagues had been distrustful of too many questions and suspicious of the intellect.  They counseled against too much head knowledge as dangerous to the faith.  Some of my Pentecostal friends disparaged seminaries (which they jokingly called "Cemeteries") as factories of unbelief and head knowledge.  I did not experience Princeton Theological Seminary that way.

Dr. Loder modeled intellectual acumen combined with a heart of love and devotion.  His lectures were electrifying.  He preached and taught through every class.  I hated when the lecture ended and class would dismiss.

NEXT SATURDAY:  Kim and Stephanie's years in Earl Paulk's Chapel Hill Harvester Church.  Read it here.

Interview with Kim Crutchfield ... Part One

When Kim Crutchfield received his doctorate from Columbia Theological Seminary in May, he was aware that he had traveled a long way from his earliest memory of religion --- sitting in an A. A. Allen tent revival. 

And some of the traveling has been literal:  Kim is currently the pastor of Taipei International Church in Taiwan.

To mark the occasion of Kim's recognition as a Doctor of Ministry, I thought it would be interesting to interview the United Methodist minister about his spiritual journey that has taken him through Pentecostalism, the Princeton classrooms of the late biblical scholar Bruce Metzger, the megachurch of the notorious bishop Earl Paulk, and now to the pulpit at Taipei International.

The interview will be posted in three parts:  today (Kim's background and thoughts on Pentecostalism), next Saturday, July 24 (his experiences at Princeton with Metzger), and finally, Saturday, July 31 (what he observed at Earl Paulk's church in Atlanta).

JR:  Kim, first tell us about your church in Taipei and how you came to pastor there.

KC:  My family and I were in the Philippines for several years, serving as United Methodist missionaries. I taught at Union Theological Seminary in Das Marinas, Cavite, and my wife, Stephanie, worked with an indigenous people group known as the Ayatas in the mountains of Tarlac (the Crutchfields are pictured below).  On weekends, I taught in the adult education department of Union Church Manila, an international church in Manila.

When our mission term of service was up, our mission board wanted to reassign us to Cambodia.  However, the pastor of the Union Church Manila told us about another international church pulpit that had recently become vacant, the Taipei International Church.  We prayed about it and then dropped in our application.  In a few short months, TIC decided that we were the couple for the position.  We moved to Taiwan in late November 2003.

Taipei International Church is an international congregation.  It is now in its 53rd year.

In 1957 a Methodist missionary began the Wesley Methodist Church in Taipei among the Mandarin-speaking Chinese who migrated to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek.  That congregation opened an English-speaking service that became Taipei International Church.

The people of TIC come from many countries and from all different denominations.  TIC is an exciting place to serve God.  The congregation is committed to mission on the island and in Asia, with outreaches to India, Indonesia, Cambodia, and the Philippines.  A large part of the TIC constituency is Filipinos who serve as Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs).

We hold a special Tagalog Fellowship every Sunday, with several satellite congregations around Taipei.  Our youth have a worship service called Paradyme that meets every Sunday morning as an alternative worship service.

TIC supports many missions on Taiwan ranging from orphanages, crisis counseling services, ministries to rehabilitate alcohol and drug abusers, Gideon's International, and Christian camps for Thai workers.

TIC is a vibrant congregation serving the Tienmu section of Taipei.  We hold our main services in the Taipei American School.

JR:  What was the area of study you pursued in your doctoral program?

KC:  I entered the program at Columbia Theological Seminary called "Gospel and Culture".  This program aimed to equip the learners with tools to help us interpret the culture around us in which we do ministry.  The professors taught us the skills to serve as "theological ethnographers".  We interpret culture and gospel.  This is of particular interest to me.  Western culture is changing.  To speak a meaningful word of good news to the world in which we live,  we must understand the culture and how the gospel addresses it.

Since coming to Taiwan, I live for the first time in a culture that is not predominantly Christian.  Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism form the dominant religious committments in Taiwan.  Christianity comprises only about 2% of the population.  Through my program, I learned how to observe another culture and seek for better understanding.  What do the people value?  How do they think?  What symbols speak to them?

My studies led me to reflect on the phenomenon of ancestor homage, as they practice it in Taiwan.  My final project paper was on Concern over Ancestor Homage in Taiwan:  Toward a Culture Specific Catechesis for Taiwanese Christian Seekers.  I offered my reflections on how the church may respond to Taiwanese who seek to enter the church but struggle with family pressure to continue to worship their ancestors.  I hope to make a contribution to the ongoing dialog of Christians in Taiwan as they seek to evangelize and initiate new Christians into the faith.

JR:  As you evaluate your youthful years in Pentecostalism, what were some of the major pluses and minuses you saw?

KC:  Pentecostalism stresses that everyone is a minister.  Even as a child, I believed that God could use me to serve.  We believed that the Holy Spirit works through men and women, boys and girls.  Some scholars call this "the democratization of the prophetic spirit".  We were taught that the Holy Ghost (back then, we usually followed the KJV) would anoint "sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants, old men and young men" to speak the word of God.  God was near, not far away.  The Holy Spirit brought God close.  The Holy Spirit was God-in-Action among us, granting power for effective service.  Pentecostalism also led us to exercise spiritual gifts.  Prophecy and tongues were the main ones people talked about in our churches.  The plus was that we believed God could use us in the exercise of those gifts.  One did not need a seminary degree, or, even an office, to serve as an instrument of God's work in the world.

One minus was that our church stressed that the Holy Spirit would only come on persons who spoke in tongues.  They stressed the "baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues".  We looked at non-Pentecostal Christians as nominal Christians, lacking the Holy Ghost power.  That set up a natural one-upmanship, separating us from other brothers and sisters in Christ.

I also witnessed many cases of the abuse of prophecy.  Prophecy was often misused as a tool of crass social manipulation.  Some folks have trouble separating their own prejudices and biases from what God might say.  It is easy to add a "Thus sayeth the Lord" to cloak one's own agenda.  I have seen that happen before.

The Pentecostal movement stressed heart religion and experience.  That is a plus.  However, they were often suspicious of intellect.  Anti-intellectualism is a minus.  When I was a student in bible college, one teacher tried to dissuade me from pursuing my field of interest, ethics.  I believe she thought it too mentally challenging.  I have to laugh about it now --- I thought schools and colleges were centers of learning.  Yet, in that case, too much learning proved threatening.

NEXT SATURDAY:  Experiencing Princeton and the scholarship of Bruce Metzger.  Read it here.

Kim and Stephanie Crutchfield