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How a school that calls itself "Christian Hogwarts" is upending a small city in California's Trump country.
This is the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry’s real goal: creating spiritual warriors, young people who will go out into the world armed with just the kind of supernatural gifts that Bethel believes will bring people into the Kingdom of God.
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BSSM is built on the idea that we are all “naturally supernatural”: We all have the potential to heal the sick and to hear God’s vision for the future. It’s ours because it’s Jesus’s, says Farrelly: Jesus does the work, and humans act as conduits. The school’s job is to foster the supernatural gifts of signs and wonders — to teach people to hear God’s voice and turn it into prophecy.
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Behind Bethel’s rise is the enormous talent and ambition of the church’s magnetizing leaders, Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton, who cofounded BSSM in 1998....
Johnson has become one of the most high-profile apostles in a loosely connected and ever-multiplying group known as Independent Network Charismatics, or INC Christians, said Brad Christerson, a professor of sociology at Biola University and coauthor of The Rise of Network Christianity. Christerson calls INC Christianity, which is also known as New Apostolic Christianity, the country’s fastest-growing religious movement — and Bethel, he says, “is at the center.”
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Bethel students who grow up as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians find Bethel through services and conferences that are streamed into their own churches....
For those who have spent their lives in mainstream Christianity, where miracles are generally confined to biblical times, Bethel’s theology can be deeply alluring. It offers a kind of certainty — an absolute proof of God’s existence — that many of their previous churches never did.
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Mike Clark is a “born-again, Bible-believing Christian,” a pastor at a Baptist-linked church in Aurora, Colorado, who has become an outspoken critic of Bethel Church....
“Here’s the danger,” Clark says. “Miracles are a reflection of Jesus. When people chase after signs and wonders, they’re trading the Light himself, Jesus, for a reflection of the light.”
This is the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry’s real goal: creating spiritual warriors, young people who will go out into the world armed with just the kind of supernatural gifts that Bethel believes will bring people into the Kingdom of God.
....
BSSM is built on the idea that we are all “naturally supernatural”: We all have the potential to heal the sick and to hear God’s vision for the future. It’s ours because it’s Jesus’s, says Farrelly: Jesus does the work, and humans act as conduits. The school’s job is to foster the supernatural gifts of signs and wonders — to teach people to hear God’s voice and turn it into prophecy.
....
Behind Bethel’s rise is the enormous talent and ambition of the church’s magnetizing leaders, Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton, who cofounded BSSM in 1998....
Johnson has become one of the most high-profile apostles in a loosely connected and ever-multiplying group known as Independent Network Charismatics, or INC Christians, said Brad Christerson, a professor of sociology at Biola University and coauthor of The Rise of Network Christianity. Christerson calls INC Christianity, which is also known as New Apostolic Christianity, the country’s fastest-growing religious movement — and Bethel, he says, “is at the center.”
....
Bethel students who grow up as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians find Bethel through services and conferences that are streamed into their own churches....
For those who have spent their lives in mainstream Christianity, where miracles are generally confined to biblical times, Bethel’s theology can be deeply alluring. It offers a kind of certainty — an absolute proof of God’s existence — that many of their previous churches never did.
....
Mike Clark is a “born-again, Bible-believing Christian,” a pastor at a Baptist-linked church in Aurora, Colorado, who has become an outspoken critic of Bethel Church....
“Here’s the danger,” Clark says. “Miracles are a reflection of Jesus. When people chase after signs and wonders, they’re trading the Light himself, Jesus, for a reflection of the light.”