Dear Brother,
You live in an amazing time of the church. Your question is very extensive and deep. No body could possibly answer it in it's entirety but let me try to help you categorize a few things.
First let me say that this question and many similar to it are asked over and over again everyday by people just like yourself. This is not a sparse or sporadic thing, it is an epidemic.
The good news is, if we get it right, we can literally change the world!!!
Now I do not know you or your specific circumstance so let me also say that no matter what I say or how you take it, I will never, in any way approve of or try to convince someone to sin. If my answers to you help you to go against the will of God then I assume that I have misunderstood the question or you have misunderstood my answer.
All this being said, there is a HUGE swell taking place within the Pentecostal ranks of the Western Civilized churches. You must try your best to put your personal situation within the context of history. The church world as a whole has had several great awakening in the past and I believe that you are in the midst of another one. Before the 1900's the true church for some reason had not had the "full blessing" of the infilling of the Holy Ghost and the maximum power thereof for quite a long time. When God began to pour such power out again it did the two primary things that power always does. It empowered and it corrupted. POWER NATURALLY EMPOWERS AND POWER NATURALLY CORRUPTS!
It definitely empowered the pentecostals of America to do great exploits for the Lord. It lead them to preach under greater anointing and live more sanctified and many other wonderful things. But just like in all forms of human interaction there has been abuse. There were shallow, lazy saints that just "preacher worshipped", "church worshipped" and "movement worshipped". There were those that "learned" to be holiness well enough to be promoted to positions of authority and control. Creating a comfort zone for themselves that they did not want disturbed. Not even by Godly functions, such as outreach, helping the poor or admitting their own faults at times.
So the movement that you came up in was incredibly amazing, very strong and quite Godly and righteous; as well as quite flawed. These flaws are what we are dealing with today. Hind sight of course is 20/20 but if these flaws would have been dealt with all along the way we would have a much more powerful and universally righteous movement today. I of course am not saying that I think myself, you or anyone else could have necessarily have done any better but now that we know what we know, we definitely should do what we can. The problem with fixing that which is broken is that the broken parts are intermingled with the unbroken parts and it is all part of a huge structure that is similar to the federal government in the sense that people have their little pet projects and pet preachers and pet standards and pet.........you get the picture. If you try to disassemble something that is wrong someone will undoubtedly point to something that is right that is propped up by that and tell you that you can't tear that bad thing down because look at the good things that will fall with it. So we just go round and round the circle.
This is where we have to look at the very powerful and influential Charismatics movement for a moment. Charismatic are charismatics for a lot of reasons. Some are because they saw how good the pentecostals had it and they tried to be like them but missed a few steps and ended up with a half baked cake. Some charismatics are literally defiant to the word of God and are genuinely lazy and rebellious. They want all the blessings with none of the effort. To pick and choose and create their own doctrine. The better it feels the more right they think they are. But there is another group of charismatics out there that it appears your ex-pastor may have fallen into and you perhaps almost did to. The group that got so focused in on what is wrong with the holiness pentecostals that they just eventually decided that they can't be right about anything. A lot of these people were just very negative in their thinking, a lot of them were just hurt too bad to stay and many others were actually FORCED OUT by the holiness people themselves.
The REAL answer to your question is this. NOBODY is right all the time. Not even the holiness people. But will that be a good enough reason in eternity to leave. I'm not talking about leaving a church or a fellowship or even a movement. I'm talking about leaving bible truths. A set of doctrines known to be right. Peter and Paul did not get along very well it appears but they were spiritual enough and smart enough to let each other do the best ministry they could and let God build a church with what was accomplished.
Somehow we have gotten to the place where if a handful of ministers from any given group don't see it the way that you do.....you have to either bow to them and submit to their ways over your ways, or, you have to move on and find some other group to be a part of and live totally different than them. I don't know EVERYBODY in the charismatic groups but most of the ones that I know fall into one of two categories. Either A) They started letting down a little here and a little there and they didn't really have good stable roots for themselves, they basically lived what they were TOLD to live and without that person there to LORD over them, they just slipped on off into anything goes-ism. This is their own fault for being so un disciplined in their own studies and convictions and partly the fault of the ministries and leaderships that they were in contact with for just commanding and demanding a bunch of do's and don't's and never really giving them the tools to get independently stable. Or B) They either had problems with certain "key issues" of our churches or they had problems with "key people" in our churches. And they ended up going a little to far to the left for our people because of traditions more than doctrines and they are considered by holiness folks to be "worldly" but once they got to where they were going they stayed there and served God very affectively, sometimes even in the ministry. This last group I am finding more and more of and they are not "worldly" by any other standards except the main stream holiness people. As a matter of fact everyone else still considers them legalist or old fashioned. And they do not continue to "evolve". They just didn't have what it took to live some things the way the rest of us do that were only there because some great men and women had personal convictions in the past that became universal in our groups.
Group A gives me a lot of trouble. Group B I have little to no trouble with at all. Why would I fall out with people that are living everything in the Bible that they know to live. Just because they won't live certain things that I live that I know are not directly biblical but that have worked in the past, make me feel safer and help me fellowship my friends?
Your job from here on out my brother is to do everything in your power to get to heaven and take as many people with you as you can. I believe in authority, leadership, loyalty and all of that, but this idea that if you leave one church or see things different that one leader or want to be a part of a "loosely knitted together" group that you have to BE just like them or there is something wrong with you....I just don't subscribe to that. I PERSONALLY like an outward standard that I think is a little tighter than what you HAVE TO live to get to heaven. For several reasons. Now that is the TRUTH. Why are we not allowed to be honest?
There is a place in everyman's heart where truth, doctrine, love, mercy and judgement all come together to form who he is really going to be. If you want to be a REAL man. A real CHRISTIAN man, You have to determine that place between you and God and prayer and scripture. To the point that no matter who pats you on the back, who tries to tear you down and kick you out, who stays, who goes or what is said....you know who you are in Christ, you know why that is who you are and you know exactly where you will draw your strength from to consistently remain that person. If some have to be exactly like grandma and grandpa to feel secure, if some have to be told by popular leaders to feel secure if someone feels the need to take biblical doctrines and historical doctrines and mesh them into a local "movement", more power to them. If some can step outside of the "box" but stay inside the bible, that is great. JUST DON'T LEAVE SCRIPTURE!
The fact of the matter is people are questioning all over the country right now where "the line" is. Partly because so many have preached their traditions as doctrines, partly because preachers are being very critical against things that aren't really wrong and partly because the power of being the one that gets to TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO has gone to some heads and caused great hypocrisies. I am left in a very difficult place. I am needing to tell people that they don't have to live "every single tradition" to be a good christian but at the same time warn them that to leave those traditions is a very slippery slope if you don't really HAVE IT FOR YOURSELF. I don't mind fellowshipping anybody that is real, sincere and genuinely trying to serve God. But we are surrounded by many that can't do that. It doesn't make them wrong unless they do something wrong.
There seems to be this ongoing confusion. The church is not supposed to by binding people, controlling people with its regulations. It is supposed to be liberating people with its restoration. But the Lord frees you FROM feeling like you have to live carnal and corrupt. He never frees you so that you CAN live carnal and corrupt.
You need to live #1 what you know is biblical and call it your doctrines and #2 what you feel is comfortable and call it your preference!
I know that this is long and went all over the map but I was hoping to give you and others a little extra perspective for the days ahead. If this helped, praise the Lord. If not just discard it. Don't let it confuse you. If you have anymore question or if you need to get more specific, fire away. I will share this on my blog but not mention your name. God bless you brother. Stay in touch.
Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett
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