What if you wanted to take over a denomination? How would you go about doing this?

I’m speaking hypothetically, of course, but what if you wanted to take over a denomination? What if you held a theology which was at odds with the official theology of the target denomination and you wanted first to carve out a safe place for yourself within that group, and then as a further goal, make your minority position into the majority. How would you go about doing that?

Well, it seems to me that you’d take a good hard look at how it has happened before. You might examine the history of other denominations which aberrant groups have successfully infiltrated and taken control of. It would be of particular help to study denominations which had a similar polity to your own denomination. You might commission one of your more able scholars to research that and write a book about it.

The first thing you’d have to do is be in it for the long haul. It would not be a quick affair. You would have to lay your plans for the very long term. You would need to realize that you will not see much fruit for twenty or perhaps thirty years.

The second thing you would have to do is identify your allies right up front. The allies would quite naturally fall into two camps. First, there would be those who would be in fervent agreement with your own aberrant theology. Those are going to be your closest allies. They are the backbone of your nascent movement. We will call these your first order allies.

The second group, which we shall call second order allies, would be those who did not hold your theological aberration, but were sympathetic to it for one reason or another. Perhaps they would be men who are also at odds with the official theology, just in a different area than you. Perhaps they would be those who are at odds, for sociological reasons, with the men who strongly hold to the official theology. They are your second tier of support. They will end up providing the bulk of the cover for you. You would need to build a very strong relationship with them.

These second order allies generally fall into two categories. The first category consists of those who are self-consciously in rebellion against the system, just like you are. They are good allies, but can be somewhat dangerous. They can be dangerous because they have a mind of their own, are usually somewhat intelligent, have a rebellious spirit, and may actually be competing with you to seize power.
The second category consists of those who are aberrant just because they really don’t understand theological systems. Usually their aberrance comes because they are borrowing something that strikes their fancy from another theological system and it doesn’t fit, but they like it and don’t want to give it up. These are your best second order allies. Often they are little more than amiable idiots and are easily manipulated.

The third thing you would need to do is put a three-pronged strategy into effect. You must make a simultaneous effort to capture the denominational seminary, the denominational bureaucracy, and you must make an effort to take control of the official organs of communication, though that is a much less important goal today than it was in days gone by.
The most important of the three prongs is the seminary. You must establish a beachhead at the official denominational seminary. You need to make smart bombs. This means identifying young men with some intellectual gifts which would fit them for the life of scholars. You must nurture these men first in their church life, and then in their academic life. Quietly indoctrinate them in your view. Shepherd them carefully. Pay careful attention to them early on. Flatter them. Groom them. Support them and nurture them, always emphasizing that “we” have a different view than the majority because “we” are more intelligent than the majority. There is something delicious about secret knowledge and a covert sense of superiority.

Send them to University (preferably the denomination’s college, if it has one) and then to seminary (once again, preferably the denomination’s seminary. Key relationships are built in those days which will pay off in the future.) Do this by using the local and regional church’s money if necessary. Then they need to get a doctorate. Pull whatever strings need to be pulled to make that happen.

It would be best if you sent them to a school which does not uphold your denomination’s official theology for their doctorate. A foreign school has a certain cachet, as does an Ivy League school in the United States. The advantages of that particular part of the scheme are manifold.

First of all, they are exposed to many points of view in this type of environment, and if there is any love of the parochialism of the official doctrine of the denomination, that will soon be burned out of them by their professors and advisors. For the one thing you learn in a liberal, pluralistic education is what you can’t say. Thus they learn to be “critical receivers” of their own traditions and “appreciative” of the traditions of others, even those which are at enmity with their own tradition. Secondly, there is a certain je ne sais quoi that accrues to a man who has been out in the wider world and has come back “home.” People want to hold him up as an example. He is seen as someone who has stood toe to toe with the heretics, has lent himself to their blows, and comes home bloodied, but unbowed. Thirdly, in a liberal environment your man can be freer to explore the contours of the aberrant view you both hold, and give it legitimacy. Nobody will ever read his dissertation anyhow, will they?

It is best to have these men make their bones by pastoring for a few years, but the minute an opening at the denominational seminary appears, your man must be put forward. If you’ve sent out enough men, sooner or later one or two of your smart bombs will find their target. And that’s all it takes. Just one or two. You see, once the seminary has received one or two of your men, and they are tenured, then they can very slowly and cautiously begin to teach and release works which reflect the aberrant view. And if they are not squashed by the administration, then you have created an environment in which your view can be held and taught. By not firing your man, the administration gives tacit legitimacy to your view and establishes precedent for it. For example, for those of you who are Westminster sabbatarians, think of how hard it would be to exclude a man from your PCA presbytery for holding that recreation is allowed on the Sabbath. You can’t do it. The other view is now permissible and your intolerance won’t be tolerated. The same dynamic will work in a seminary environment. Anyone who fights against it knows he is fighting a losing battle. And most won’t bother to fight, even if they disagree… even if they see exactly what you are trying to do.

If your man does get any pushback from the administration, it’s no big deal. Scholars are supposed to be mavericks. They are supposed to push the boundaries. That’s why tenure exists, after all. It exists to keep the administration from firing radicals. Your man can just say that he’s only exploring new ideas. He can pull in his horns and wait patiently as he gains more power and influence. Then he can try again in a few years. He will also have the opportunity to end up helping to select the new faculty who replace any departing professors. If you’re favored, he will rise into the ranks of the administration of the seminary.

The seminary is the choke point. If you can create a space for your view at the seminary, you have probably won the war, even though you there are many battles ahead. When your view has a place at the table at the seminary, students can quietly be instructed in your view. Relationships that last a lifetime are forged between seminary professors and their students. Many will embrace your aberrant view completely. Even those who do not wholly embrace your view are primed to tolerate it out in the wider church. They will know men who came through seminary with them who hold this view. They will like these men. They won’t want to see them excluded from the church on doctrinal grounds. The trick is to keep all of this fairly quiet from the church at large for a fairly extended period of time. A decade, at least.

The second prong of your attack, capturing the bureaucracy, is simply a matter of activity and longevity. You must show diligence in the small things. It will require grunt work. The regional bodies need men who will volunteer to take on the jobs where the power really lies. Most men won’t want those jobs because they are a lot of trouble and a lot of work. You need to take advantage of the vacuum that their laziness causes. You and your committed core need to learn to love those jobs. They also need to be diligent to serve on whatever committees are available at a national level, and to do so at every opportunity. That means you and your core need to be committed to one place for a long time. You can’t be careerists and pulpit-hoppers. You need to settle in and become a fixture wherever you are. Plan on having, at most, two churches in your whole career. Longevity is a key to influence. If you hang around long enough, you will become the institutional memory of the regional body. You can exploit that for your own purposes whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It is at this stage that you also want to implement another strategy. You want to do everything you can to encourage a diversity of viewpoints within your regional body and all the other regional bodies where you have allies. Your second order allies, the ones who hold an aberration, but not your aberration, are solidified as allies at this level. Diversity is a cover for you. It keeps your natural enemies, the confessionalists, busy shooting at all sorts of targets all the time. By doing so, they will spend their capital very quickly. Many of them are not socially adept. Some are even relationally retarded. They don’t know how to pick their battles. Exploit that fact. Often they will grow enraged at you. All the better, for angry people are unattractive and make mistakes. They will come to be seen, not as those who hold faithfully to the old, orthodox position, but as a faction just like any other… a curmudgeonly and unattractive faction. They will look like negative men who are always on the attack and don’t have anything nice to say about anyone except their faction. This will marginalize them.

Therefore, be very kind to these aberrant men. Protect them. Defend them from the criticism that is leveled at them by those who hold to the official theology. Your watchwords should be quietness and niceness. That will pay off handsomely in the future. Many of these aberrant men are very socially adept. They will be the ones who have the big churches. They will be able to help you later on when you are criticized and attacked. The ones who end up with big churches will also have more money available later on, and since they like you, they will probably give you other people’s money fairly freely. It doesn’t cost them anything, after all.

They are also generally the careerists and pulpit-hoppers. And they generally leave behind congregations that crave more careerists and pulpit-hoppers. These men will carry their relationship with you and their affection for you throughout the whole denomination as they change jobs. Keep tabs on them and maintain the relationships. They will be a key asset.

Once you have secured your influence in the regional bodies, then you can put yourselves forward for positions in the national body. It won’t be long before you can begin first to exercise influence, and eventually to exert control there as well. The priority is to identify and seize the key positions of power. The position that interprets the official rules is a power position. That must be seized by either a first or second order ally. Preferably a first order ally. Whatever judicial and oversight structures there are must also be seized. Either first or second order allies will work there as well. Whatever committee nominates people for all the other committees is a power position. It must be seized. Only first order allies must be allowed on that one. Any committee which oversees the college and/or the seminary must also be seized. Either first or second order allies will work there as well.

If you are truly favored, you will find an ally who is neither a first order ally nor a second order ally. He is a tertium quid, and he is truly special. He is one who projects an image of intelligent orthodoxy which arises out of some dim memory of a love for the truth, so the confessionalists will have a very difficult time criticizing him effectively. And yet out of affection for you, or for some other reason, he will violate all of the principles which ought to arise necessarily from his views. Thus he will work closely with you and facilitate the accomplishment of all of your goals. What he does will not match with what he says, but we can see from the example of secular politicians that it matters little what a person does. It’s what a person says that most people believe. Thus that man is pure gold. He is your greatest weapon. Guard him and protect him at all costs. See to it that he is educated and placed in a position which will allow him maximum power and influence, either at the seminary or in the bureaucracy, or both.

The third prong of your attack, seizing the official organs of communication, is much less relevant today, with the advent of the internet, than it was in days gone by. However, it is still worth doing. Once you have the bureaucracy, you can appoint the editorial staff. The common folk will be the ones who read this material, and so all debate and discussion must be kept out of the pages of the periodical. Fill it with positive and uplifting stories and fluff and pabulum. But make sure the stories are always friendly to your allies and your position. Show your allies doing nice things. Everyone likes nice things.

Needless to say, all of this requires a lot of money. Preferably other people’s money. Now, if your denomination has a long standing policy of taxing its members or churches in order to fund its operations, then your takeover of the bureaucracy will place you in a position to fund what you desire to fund and starve what you wish to starve. Use that power quietly for as long as you can. The day will come when you fund something so egregious to the sensibility of someone that they will blow the whistle on you. If you have conducted yourself wisely, you should have all the political coverage you need to survive that eventuality. There may have to be a token firing or some reshuffling of bureaucrats, but your core group should remain firmly in control.

If it does not have a policy of taxing its members or churches, then you have really only have one option. By the middle stages of your takeover, what you and your allies are doing will be recognized by some. It will make some people nervous, and voluntary donations will likely begin to dry up. This is very bad.

At that point you must trick the people into burdening themselves with a mandatory tax. That will be a difficult prospect. You should place that task in the hands of your tertium quid ally, the golden man. If it is going to pass, he’s going to have to carry water for you. Pull out all the stops. Draw pictures of the worldwide activities of the church grinding to a halt if the fools do not impose the tax on themselves. Also draw pictures of the paradise which will invariably spontaneously erupt if the bureaucrats have enough money. Emphasize how small the amounts of money you are demanding from them (for now.) Talk about fairness. Talk about responsibility. Remember, you must start small and then slowly raise your demands until you have amassed enough power and influence to operate openly. And by all means, control how that money is spent. Every penny of it. It must be funneled to your allies for the furtherance of your cause. Therefore, you must not allow the church at large or officers elected independently by the church to control where the money goes. Instead, designate unelected committees as the recipients of the decision-making power.

If you are able to do that, you will have conquered the denomination. At that point your power is so secure that your opponents will only have two choices. They may either stay and violate their consciences at almost every turn, or they may secede. Either way, they are neutralized as an effective countervailing force.

Yup. That’s what I’d do if I wanted to take over a denomination. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
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Brian Carpenter is pastor of Foothills Community Church (PCA) in Sturgis, S.D.