The Shepherding Movement and Covering Doctrine was popular in the 1970s and 80s. Initially it was good for providing mentoring and protection for younger converts, but soon developed into "power and control" situations by leaders wanting to use their "spiritual authority" to make disciples for themselves. The outcome of it was that multitudes of believers were seriously harmed and many dropped right out of the faith because of the abuse and bullying that came with the "covering". I heard that there is a resurgence of it in some churches, so I have written this to warn people not to be duped into accepting anyone's "authority" to be accountable to them instead of Christ.
The "Covering" doctrine is a total lie, and as Bob Mumford said, "It is not the spirit of the Gospel".
Some of the Charismatic type churches, or what Wagoner used to call 'Third Wave' churches uses the term 'covering.' I cringe when I hear that. I never liked it because... why not use Biblical terminology... and where is the concept exactly in scripture? I asked one pastor about this when I was in my 20's. He was in the Vineyard. He said it had to do with I Corinthians 11. I'd memorized that when I was younger, and I knew it wasn't. The covering there, some believe, is hair. Some believe it is a veil. If that passage is about the pastor as covering, then men should not have one, and women should wear pastors on their heads. In the South, where I lived at the time, a lot of the pastors were so big that if a woman were to wear one on her head, she'd break her neck.
There are different concepts of 'covering.' One harmful concept was that if your 'covering' told you to do something, you were absolved from guilt if you did the wrong thing, and the 'covering' was responsible before God. I have never heard this taught, I just heard about it being taught by those into 'heavy shepherding' in the '70's or '80's. A lighter version of the teaching is that everyone needs to be in submission to someone or a group of others. That was the idea in the 70's when the movement started. There were five leaders in the Charismatic movement who discipled other leaders.
But downstream in the movement, some of the pastors got very controlling. I read a testimony from a man who said the elders in the church called off all weddings in the church for people wanting to get married. They had to approve spouses and things like that. There had been a Maranatha group in the town I went to college that had closed down a few years before, and I heard about the elders matching people up. The idea of 'covering' and 'submission' turned into church leaders dominating and micromanaging other people's lives. The man I mentioned said that if he'd expressed any interest in wanting to marry to have sex, or asked about any sexual-related topics with his potential spouse, the elders would have forbidden the marriage. (It turns out his wife later had little interest in sex, which was a marriage issue later for him.) It sounded like the elders were trying to take over a role that was for parents in scripture with their influence over who married.
Incidentally, in some Asian cultures, it is normal for leaders, managers and pastors, to try to match up people to marry. Some of this is cultural. Some cultures are more controlling, especially Confucian cultures. But I digress.
The idea that 'everyone has to have a covering' is not in scripture. The idea of submitting to one another and to leaders is. One thing that annoys me about the 'covering' mindset is that some leaders in these movements might not want people doing ministry unless it goes through them and they are in control. So if you want to cook some food and feed the homeless, they might want to have it done under 'their authority.' I have not seen that specifically, but that seems to be the mindset. This sort of thing can stifle believers from living a normal Christian life, using their gifts, blessing others.
Growing up Pentecostal, generally Pentecostal pastors had a less controlling attitude. Some of them wanted to be in control of the building and their own meetings, but if you got invited to give a testimony or preach at another church, they probably would not think you had to ask their permission first or something like that. Pentecostal churches also allowed for someone who got a tongue or interpretation or prophecy to speak it out in the meetings. The Charismatics in the 'covering' type churches might want you to write a prophecy down and pass it up through the church hierarchy. I don't see how that is obedience to the instructions in scripture on how to prophecy in I Corinthians 14. I am not saying they all do that, but that seems to go align with the 'covering' teaching given it's emphasis on everything going through the pastor.
It wasn't just Charismatics (some of them) that went this route. When the shepherding movement was taking off, a 'Church of Christ' down in Florida developed a similar system. They had 'disciplers' having new converts write out a schedule of how they sent their day, and giving the converts a schedule to micromanage their days. This became known as the 'Boston Church of Christ' as it grew in Boston, then the 'International Churches of Christ.' A lot of them had the attitude that they were the one true church. Individuals were under a lot of pressure to bring in numbers of converts. They may have had quotas. I read they had 'breaking sessions' where they tell someone how sinful they are, make them feel miserable about themselves, that sort of thing. I had a boss who was in that movement, and he took people into his office and told them how bad they were, apparently. It wasn't just me. He judged my motives. He didn't know me. It made me angry, and it did not make sense. I finally figured out it was probably a practice form his church, so I looked it up online, asked, and was told about their 'breaking sessions.' There were lots of people in these movements on college campuses when I was in college. Some people would get burnt out and think that since they couldn't live up to the standards of that movement, they could not be Christians.
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