If you don't think these people represent all Christians....

[JonLP24]

103. Growing up I attended The Door church on my mom's side of the family

Not so much when I was kid but as a teenager in Flagstaff, I did. I liked going over there because of the people, we often did things together without the pastor but for some reason I liked him too.

He said great things like when Jesus turned the water into wine, well what is new wine? Grape juice. (After 9/11) It is a good thing we have a military man & christian man in charge for a time like this, if Al Gore was in charge we'd be at war with China right now (spy planes). He also once said during a sermon, "I broke all of the 10 commandments" He qualified the Do not kill part as he used to use drugs so that counted as a kill ok killing, I can see.

They are more similar to Wahabbi as to Islam as The Door is to Christianity.

What I mean is they have very strict rules, you can't cuss, that pastor didn't own a TV my uncle & aunt keep TV watching to a few sporting events and they were big sports fans. They do not want you to visit, associate, socialize with people who aren't Christian. They play up the gender roles, they actually didn't vote for McCain because Palin should be at home taking care of the kids, I shit you not.

The Potter’s House grew out of Mitchell’s determination to establish what he perceived to be a New Testament church. Many of those attending Potter’s House churches are converts who came out of the counterculture of the 60s and 70s and were influenced by the Jesus Movement which reached its peak during that same time period. Mitchell seized the opportunity to provide what many of these individuals were lacking: direction in life, a personal dynamic experience with Jesus Christ, and an opportunity to exercise real commitment to a local church body.

Beliefs

The Potter’s House is a Pentecostal denomination which claims to hold to the same doctrinal distinctives as the Assemblies of God (a mainstream Pentecostal church). Although the Potter’s House has not published a public “statement of faith” or doctrinal statement outlining their particular theological views, they do adhere to the teachings espoused in Duffield and VanCleave’s Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (published through L.I.F.E. Bible College). The Potter’s House appears to hold to essential biblical doctrine (i.e. the Trinity, the deity of Christ, salvation by grace alone, etc). In non-essentials, they hold to a pretribulational rapture and a premillenial return of Christ. Because the Potter’s House is Pentecostal, the exercise of “spiritual gifts” plays a major role among Potter’s House fellowship. Speaking in tongues and gifts of healing are a common place in their worship services. (Tongues are exercised in prayer and praise as well as prophecy in a congregational setting.) The emphasis on “gift” ministries stems from the fact that Mitchell was influenced at an early age by such men as William Branham (who denied the Trinity and was very influential in the early stages of the “Latter-Rain” Movement) as well as by A. A. Allen, another early “Latter-Rain” preacher who emphasized a five-fold ministry in the church. Although Mitchell rejected the excesses of Branham and Allen, he did, however, hold on to some of the concepts which arose out of what became known as authentic “gift” ministries.

Organization/Ministry

The thrust of the Potter’s House has been primarily to focus on street evangelism. Consequently, many of those attending the Potter’s House are new converts between the ages of 18 and 35. Because there are relatively few older “saints” in the body, there tends to be an imbalance where spiritual leadership is concerned. (We are told, though, that there seems to be a trend towards establishing an older, mature congregation in the church which will help correct this imbalance.)

The Potter’s House is “governed” by the Pastor along with a group of elders (referred to as the church council). As each church is established, the pastor involved in setting up a new church is responsible for the leadership in that church. (This responsibility includes monitoring the financial, doctrinal, and moral accountability of the church in question.) The Potter’s House is governed overall by the Bylaws established by Wayman Mitchell and others at the initial incorporation of the church.

Though we feel that the Potter’s House is doing an invaluable service in reaching lost souls, we do have a few concerns which should be recognized. They are as follows: 1) its structural authority and accountability; 2) its aberrant view of tongues and healing; 3) its steady hyperactive atmosphere which could result in potential “burn-out” for some members; 4) its lack of a strong healthy doctrinal statement; and 5) negative reports from ex-members and others alleging mind control and conditioning over its members by the leadership of local churches.

STRUCTURAL AUTHORITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY — Though the Potter’s House has made some effort in setting up a structure of authority, those chosen to be on the “church council” with the pastor are relatively young men who have little or no biblical training and who are very young in the Lord. Church boards should consist of men who have walked with God for some time having developed spiritual maturity and discernment over the years. Without the governmental element of older godly men and women, a church can suffer very weak spiritual counsel. Biblical guidelines for eldership in the church can be found in 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1 and 2.

BALANCED VIEW OF TONGUES AND HEALING — The Potter’s House churches believe in and practice the “gifts of the Spirit” in a congregational setting.*

However, their exercise of certain gifts do not follow the biblical pattern as set forth in I Corinthians 12 and 14. In a typical Potter’s House worship service, tongues are exercised in unison by the entire congregation generally with no interpretation following. The Scriptures teach, on the other hand, that biblical tongues in a congregational setting must be followed by two or three interpreting for the sake of the edification of the body of Christ and as a sign for the unbeliever (1 Cor. 14:22-33). As with the Assemblies of God, the Potter’s House teaches that tongues is the “initial evidence” of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
http://www.equip.org/article/the-potters-house/#christian-books-1

The members of the potters house believe in evangelism, as a effective way of bringing unbelievers in to the church, by doing so they will receive salvation, as also a important part of outreach is to proclaim the message of the word through the potters house and not by any traditional or conservative means of preaching as such, methods are used to influence and means of making a individual feeling obliged by manipulation.

Beliefs.

The network of churches appears to adhere to an orthodox
Christian theology with a decidedly Pentecostal/Charismatic
bend (see, for example, these Statements of Faith Off-site Link, as posted at the website of The Potter's House, Carson City, Nevada).

After about 6 months my youngest brother left the church. Like a good PH disciple I shunned him and basically treated him with contempt. My parents were distraught over this. For the next year or so I hardly spoke a word to my youngest brother, acting as if I was doing the `right' thing. Obviously the rest of the church was doing the same. During this period, my other younger brother married one of the single girls from the church who had been there when we joined. At their wedding the pastor preached a sermon which expounded rather harshly on adultery. This is rather unfortunate because it related to our father, with my brother, who was about to be married, being the `fruit'. So, instead of being a joyous occasion where the parents can celebrate their success of bringing a son to manhood, it turned into a severe humiliation for them. Needless to say, my father now had another reason to hate the church. For the next six years our family was basically split. We would see each other, but there was no joy and no meaningful communication.

After about a year and a half of shunning my younger brother, I finally realised that what I was doing was completely insane. I realised that no good thing could come from it and that it defied all Christian principles of love. How can one love if one actively shuns and condemns? Yet if one does not love then one must wonder if they are even in the faith. Of course, the PH has some rather sick justifications for shunning and to this day the die-hard of the church see no problem with it, despite the fact that it hardens them more than it does the person being shunned. My younger brother and I were reconciled to some degree and we basically agreed to disagree on many things. Needless to say, our relationship was not overly good, but it was there and through it we could communicate. We never fellowshipped as such while I was at the PH. How could we?

In the years following salvation, I committed to some of the `ministries' of the church. I did the mixing, played guitar in a band, served as an usher and helped clean the church. However, in the course of time the steadily increasing grind of life in the PH began to take its toll. There was no `abundant life', just abundant drudgery. There was no spontaneity in worship and very little opportunity for individual expression in worship, just choreographed posturing. There was no genuine relationships, just postured relationships. There was much back biting, much frustration, much rebuking, much barely concealed temper and much innuendo. There were never any sermons simply describing the goodness of God, for example, but all were based on morality. All put the focus on the believer, magnifying the believer's problems while neglecting God. As a result, there was no vision, no power and no anointing in the preaching or in the church as a whole. Such relentless moralising provided the basis for legalism, which was rampant. If you wanted to be in `ministry', there was a bunch of things you could not do, none of which are actually immoral in themselves. Of course, anyone who has any
experience with the PH knows about these `rules'.

<snip>

The departure of yet another couple from the church was probably what really set the wheels in motion for my own departure. They were an older couple, and their two daughters were also members of the church in Ballarat. One of them was the single girl that married my younger brother. Initially, the husband left the church for reasons unexplained. He just informed the pastor that he was leaving and that his wife was free to continue to go if she so desired. Well, straight away the church, and in particular her own children, began to drive a wedge between her and her husband. They were willing to sacrifice their mother's own marriage to their father in order to keep her in the church! Well, after a couple of days, she decided to leave as well, and her daughters turned on her and told her that she will not be seeing her grandchildren again because they do not want her influence upon them. It was then that she realised the sickness of what she had been involved with (she had her suspicions in the past) and was distraught because now thought her family was shattered. The next Sunday morning, her husband appears in the church service and attempts to disrupt it by sharing with the church his version of events, or something to that effect. The pastor ordered the ushers (which included myself) to physically remove him from the building while the rest of the church praised God loudly. It was a pathetic scene. Anyway, this man was not cooperating in his removal and we did not want to hurt him by forcing him. So his son in law (not my younger brother) sees the difficulty we were having and joins the fray. He screams at his father in law "get out" while pointing to the door, face red and veins bulging in his forehead and teeth exposed in a snarl of rage. It was one of the most inhumane things I have ever seen, coming from the guy's own son in law, in front of his daughters and grand children, and delivered by a person who claims to be a Christian and has ministry in the church. It was then that I realised something was fundamentally wrong with the church. I had always known there were things that did not seem right but I chose to ignore them, believing that these things were typical of any church. Remarkably, there was no fall out from the event. There was no introspection. Was there anything that we had done that had caused them to leave? There was no compassion toward them at all. They were just rebels and the church, and especially their own family, completely shunned them, such that they were not even informed of the birth of another grandchild.

http://crackedpots.topcities.com/testimony_david_butt.htm