Don’t let the NAR get to you!
The NAR’s stealthy advance within our churches.
The influence of the NAR
This is a topic that has been causing quite a stir lately, and for good reason. Yesterday I listened to a thought-provoking podcast about the NAR: the New Apostolic Reformation. It was an eye-opener to hear just how great the influence of this movement is on evangelical and Pentecostal churches, especially in the United States. The speakers explained that countless communities have been torn apart by this teaching. Thriving churches fell into decline as soon as this ideology crept in and sowed discord. In the Netherlands, too, we are increasingly seeing characteristics of this thinking within charismatic circles, with all the damage that entails.
The tricky part is that this movement often operates beneath the surface. It is a collection of ideas primarily disseminated from Bethel Church in Redding. Because this vision carries risks and is gaining ground in our churches, I’m sharing the key points from the podcast with you. I’ve personally heard many sermons by Bill Johnson. He’s a gifted and humorous speaker whom I enjoy listening to, but his church, co-led by Kris Vallotton, teaches things I simply cannot support.
What exactly is the NAR?
The term may sound familiar, but for many people it remains a vague concept. That is also the nature of the beast: the NAR is an elusive phenomenon. There is no official headquarters, no membership list, and no overarching church denomination. Yet theologians see a very specific and recognizable pattern of ideas and networks. Some call it the most significant development in modern Christianity, while others claim the entire movement does not exist. The truth is nuanced, but the impact is anything but.
Its roots go back to the early twentieth century, to the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. There, the focus was on the direct work of the Holy Spirit, such as prophecy and miracles. After World War II, this gave rise to the Latter Rain Movement. The name refers to Joel 2, where the “early rain” represents Pentecost and the “latter rain” represents a massive end-times revival that we are supposedly in the midst of right now. At the time, established Pentecostal churches rejected this as unbiblical, but through Professor C. Peter Wagner, it resurfaced in the 1990s. He called it the New Apostolic Reformation, because he believed that the church structure needed to change fundamentally.
The Pyramid of Authority
The core of NAR thinking is that God is today once again appointing apostles and prophets with authority over the church at the local and national levels. It is believed that the church has been weak for centuries because these offices were lacking. Only when the apostle and the prophet are back at the helm can the church fulfill its calling. For they are said to receive direct strategies from God.
Ephesians 4:11 is often cited as the biblical basis for this. Within the NAR, however, the five ministries are not viewed as equal. The apostle and the prophet are at the top of the hierarchy; they set the course based on their revelations. The pastor, teacher, and evangelist have considerably less influence.
Author Danny Silk, a friend of Bill Johnson and a member of Bethel Church’s Senior Leadership Team, describes this as the “funnel from heaven.” What is in heaven flows through the apostle to the rest of the church. This creates a top-down structure in which leaders are virtually untouchable. In practice, their word can even take precedence over the Bible, though they would never say so out loud. This clashes head-on with the Protestant idea that authority lies with Scripture and that there is collective oversight through a church council. Within the NAR, power shifts to the personal inspiration of a single individual. Criticism is then quickly dismissed as resistance against God.
The Dark Side of Honor
This system is based on the principle of the Culture of Honor. The idea is that you can only receive a leader’s blessing if you show that person the proper honor. That sounds nice, but it makes blessings conditional. According to this teaching, if you offer criticism, you are not showing honor and you are blocking the spiritual atmosphere.
This mechanism makes the structure extremely vulnerable to manipulation. Abuses are covered up because no one dares to hold the leader accountable. Danny Silk even argues that people who sin do not need to be punished, because Jesus has already borne the punishment. He advocates for a conversation focused on restoration, but in practice, the focus is often on shielding the perpetrator rather than protecting the victim.
A painful example is the well-known prophet Shawn Bolz, a confidant of Bill Johnson. For years, he made prophecies using inside information he gathered via social media about attendees at his conferences. Bethel’s leadership knew this but kept it under wraps for years. There was not only religious abuse, but also misconduct in other areas. Covering things up is simply unacceptable in such cases.
A Call for Openness
The New Testament presents a very different picture. There, issues are sometimes openly addressed. Consider Ananias and Sapphira, or leaders who were publicly corrected. A situation where you are not allowed to ask critical questions or where church services are purely one-way communication silences the believer.
I myself am a strong advocate of the gifts of the Spirit. I believe in prophecy and healing and have served in those areas for years. Of course, I also believe in the fivefold ministry, because that is what the Bible says. But nowhere do I read that one ministry must dominate another. A healthy church gives every role and every office a full and proper place. We must not seek to copy the hierarchy we see in the papacy and Roman Catholicism in our own churches, even if we now call it something else.
The NAR system poses a major risk because the leadership protects one another. In a healthy culture, you must be able to honestly question the methods. After all, everyone makes mistakes, including the leader on the platform. Prophecies can be wrong, and healing sometimes fails to materialize. However, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater, for I see wonderful things happening through God’s Spirit; but as soon as a system makes dialogue impossible, the church enters dangerous territory.
@wimvanputten