As Lisa Gungor sets to release her new book it is time to take a look back to the damage the purpose driven apostate church did to this couple...

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Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. -- 1Corinthians 15:1-2 (ESV)

https://www.charismamag.com/video/39126-lisa-gungor-i-stopped-believing-in-god-after-pastoring-a-megachurch

If one reads the bible with any frequency and has the indwelt Holy Spirit it will soon become evident that we are living through what the bible teaches are the end times. The love of most has grown cold. The birth pains of a groaning planet are coming more frequently. We are witnessing the great falling away, or apostasy. The sad truth is the majority of the people with microphones in one hand and a bible in the other are part of the apostate church. This bastardized version of the body of Christ tries to talk the talk and walk the walk but discernment reveals the truth. This is important to realize beloved because while God makes things easy; man makes them much harder. The cult of personality, mega church, purpose driven mindset has led so many astray to a powerless gospel that cannot save anyone. A watered down, sugared up, prosperity driven, greedy knock-off of the real Gospel. This should not be of any great surprise as the bible speaks in many instances about these matters. In Matthew 7 we see people lined up to stand before Christ at the final judgment only to discover after a lifetime of believing they were serving Him that He actually never knew them. We see the threats that should any man present any other gospel that they should be accursed! We also have the key verses today that remind us that it is entirely possible to believe in vain. To have the appearance of piety and the machinations of religion but for all of it to be useless, vanity.

We write all the time about false teachers and sometimes it becomes a lesson in the abstract instead of being personal. We fail to realize that for every story of false teaching there are countless victims. Sheep who leave the pen, never to return. Goats who think they are sheep, never pursuing salvation again. They are apart from Christ yet united by their singular desire to never set foot in a church again. With this backdrop I present Michael and Lisa Gungor. They lived a storybook Christian life. Michael was a pastor's kid, raised in church. A product of the church just like his wife to be Lisa. She also grew up in church. They met in Bible College. They got a dream Christian job at a mega-church in Michigan where their music ministry began to spread professionally. They won Dove awards and Grammy nominations. They were the toast of the evangelical world. A few years later they were out of church and Michael even became an atheist at one point. He began publicly challenging the veracity of the bible, drawing the ire from the people he once shared the pew with. To this day they remain outside of the faith and Lisa is coming out with a new book, for which she did a promo video linked above. I just want to go through some of it so we can see the damage that heresy has as we examine a true victim of the apostate church.

"In order to be in the tribe you have to conform to it and if you have doubts you are a dangerous person." -- Lisa Gungor

Lisa is 100% correct in this assessment of modern churchianity. Questions are greeted with faithless platitudes within the church. I remember once a man posted on Joel Osteen's page that he was confused why his house was going to be padlocked by the local sheriff in 10 days. He was confused because he said he always did what pastor Joel said, tithed faithfully and yet here it was. The responses from his followers were a vapid mess of word faith heresy. You just have to have faith! Speak the money you need into existence! The cold hard reality is we all fancy ourselves as being filled with faith until our lives demands it and then we find out we have questions. Beloved, there is nothing wrong with having questions. Why does God allow suffering? Why is my house being foreclosed? Why am I struggling? These are opportunities to develop deeper faith and the church squanders them by blaming the questioner. By asserting that they must not have the requisite faith. What is at the heart of this confusion? False teaching! Beloved you must understand that when your gospel is nothing but hearts and rainbows you set people up for confusion on stormy days. If all your worship is centered on man, whether you be a friend of God or the head and not the tail, then you understand less and less about whom God is supposed to be. Think I am overstating? Michael Gungor actually co-wrote Friend of God with Israel Houghton.

"How many of these leaders of mega churches fall because the pressure is too much?" -- Lisa Gungor

That is a very fair question but it misses the point of the real problem. It is not that the job does not have pressures but rather that man has usurped the role of God and that is why he cannot tolerate the pressure. He was never meant to. If you read Acts Chapter Two, you see the design God had for the church. The people studied the Word, held communion and fellowshipped. The leaders were responsible for the vertical growth of the sheep. That's right, the church was built to feed the sheep, not entertain goats. The horizontal growth of the church was the responsibility of God. He sees to how many are added each day, not man. The purpose driven church flips all of this on its ear. Suddenly the church must cater to the unsaved, despite the bible teaching us the things of God are foolishness to them. The pastor is now the vision caster whose job it is moves from growing the sheep to growing the church. He is encouraged to commit the sin of Lucifer and ascend to the throne of the Most High. So is it any wonder that so many fall? They are trying to do God's job!

"And as I look back we were just two kids trying so hard to get it right. And we did things the right way. No drinking, no sex, no kissing until we were married. We had this transactional view of God." -- Lisa Gungor

Wow, if that does not describe the god of the mega church nothing does. He is definitely transactional. That is the god they market beloved. If you tithe, god will throw open the windows of heaven and pour you out more blessing than you can contain. If you serve in ministry god will reward you with purpose. If you just behave a certain way, vote a certain way, and live a certain way then God will give you everything pressed down and running over. This teaching works great as long as things are ok in your life. Every little positive thing and happenstance is immediately attributed to God. Promoted at work? Hey that tithe thing really works! New ministry opportunity? God rewards those who diligently serve Him! You found a great parking spot? Parking under the anointing! You may chuckle but this is how most Christians think every single day. God is not your Lord and Savior as much as He is you blessing dealer and that works fine until things go wrong.

"We couldn't get pregnant and people we knew were just like, "just pray and believe" and just say it and it will come to pass." - Lisa Gungor

Sounds like the people I saw on Joel Osteen's Facebook page that day. I can't blame them anymore than I can blame Lisa here. This is how they had been taught. That God is always transactional so when things do not go your way, you must not have paid enough. Except you hadn't changed anything. You were still giving when things were great so now why are they suddenly not? Why is the house being padlocked? Why can't we conceive a child? Let me offer the real Gospel for a second. The transaction God conducted was on Calvary. He redeemed you from Satan and sin by offering His only Son as a sacrifice in your place. He required nothing from you in return except faith in Him. That's the deal. That's the transaction that guarantees us eternal life. Instead of driving home this eternal transaction the church wastes every Sunday selling you temporal blessings. God always wants you rich, healthy, and successful. You're a lender not a borrower! You're the head and not the tail! Until that day when you are the tail. When life happens, as it must to all of us. Instead of reflecting to our eternal promise we check our temporal blessing account and wonder why it is not filled to overflow. Then we ask our fellow transactional brethren sitting in the same apostate church that we do and wonder why we do not get biblical answers. Instead we get just pray and believe or speak it into existence. At this point beloved, because we never truly had faith in our Lord and Savior and because we probably were never saved, we either blame ourselves or blame God.

"The more we toured the world and heard other people's stories the more we doubted what we had been given. We took a trip through Europe and visited the concentration camps. We toured the crematoriums and it was real hard to come back to America and pray for something. When you have these images in your head your opinion of what a good God is can change pretty dramatically. I would try and pray and all I could think about was the concentration camps and how my faith had been transactional. If I am good enough or pray enough then I get blessings, or a baby, or a good life." -- Lisa Gungor

I remember visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC and it was life altering in terms of putting things in perspective. Because I had a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ I was able to find rest in Him, not fault. I am sure that touring the camps must have been 100 times more emotional but it only drives home for me the depravity of man. This is yet another damage wrought from being taught by the purpose driven apostate church. It constantly reinforces that YOU are special instead of Jesus. That God has a special super-duper purpose for you and you alone. That He is intimately involved in every nook and cranny of your life. From having a child to finding that parking space -- God is pulling the strings. Then you tour a concentration camp and cannot fathom where He was. The truth is that God rarely gets directly involved in our lives. He did not create robots. We have choices to make and consequences to bear. That does not even take into consideration what involvement He did have in ending the Holocaust or for sparing individuals. We simply want God to remove all pain and suffering and while that sounds good on the surface -- why would anyone need God then?

So follow this story now of the Gungors. They are raised into churchianity. They are fully immersed into purpose driven teachings. They do the part that is demanded of them. They raise their hands when appropriate and say hallelujah when ordered. Their story reads like a mega church fairy tale. Meet in Bible College. Honor God throughout their dating. Marry without having even kissed. God rewards them with a healthy marriage, huge jobs within the church itself and an international career in the praise music industry. Wow. That is the stuff of Christian movies. But they wanted more. They wanted a child. For whatever reasons, they were unable to conceive and this was taken as a spiritual affront. A denied blessing from a God who had always come through for them. They start to doubt and question but the church has no idea how to biblically support them because they have not been raised biblically either. Instead they throw platitudes at them which the Gungors finally see are empty cliche's instead of actual realities. When their questions persist the church has none of it and essentially ex-communicates them. They move to Denver and start a home church and start exploring beyond the confines of church and the bible. Within a matter of time Michael declares himself an atheist. Perhaps it is because his second child has been born with Down Syndrome. Perhaps it is because he always was an atheist playing a role he was raised to play but never really believed. Either way, when they perceived that their blessing bank had gone dry they left the god they had created.

Many had criticized Michael Gungor at the time because he was tweeting nonsense about the story of creation not being literal. The church that viewed itself as being his benefactor for so many years fought back. Heresy charges were left at his feet which only served to drive him and his wife further away. I do not blame Michael and Lisa Gungor. They are victims beloved. They are victims of the purpose driven industrial complex. They were sold a false god through a false gospel and in the end believed in vain. I watch the linked video from Lisa Gungor and I weep for her lack of knowledge. I weep because she is so right about what happened without understanding why or how it happened. Who knows why she could not initially conceive? Maybe God was trying to reach them in the midst of their own apostasy. Jesus once said to the rich young ruler -- go sell everything and then you can follow me. What lifelong desire do we need to let go of to truly follow God? Will you still serve Him if you do not become successful? If you do not get that promotion? If your life remains ordinary? Will you still serve Him if your child runs away, or has Down Syndrome, or you cannot even conceive?

I do not know why things happened to Michael and Lisa as they did or what God may or may not have been trying to say. What I do know is their story as laid out by Lisa is a Christian tragedy. I know people like Lisa and Michael. Church hurt people abandoned by those they thought they were "doing life" with. I remember when I left my mega church after ten years of service in leading ministries, preaching and teaching. Very very few people stayed in touch. None reached out. Only a handful remains until this day in my life. Thankfully my pastor preached the Gospel and thus my relationship was with Jesus Christ, not the church per se. It has been a lonely road since that day but my faith in whom I serve has not wavered because He has already completed the only transaction that matters on Calvary. Anything I get after that is gravy. I will pray for the Gungors that someone preach the real Gospel of the kingdom to them so they can come to this realization as well. They have left the apostate church and that is good but now they roam the landscape of Christianity like sheep without a shepherd. Don't ever think for a moment there are not real victims of heresy and apostasy beloved. They are all around us

Reverend Anthony Wade -- November 5, 2018

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.