Wort und Geist
A few years ago, Helmut Bauer, the leader of the Wort und Geist movement (WuG) from Röhrnbach, Germany, visited the New Life Church for several times. He had series of healing meetings, which drew a significant attention. Since then, people from various places have been asking us, when would be Helmut Bauer coming to the New Life Church again.
We were in a certain uncertainty for quite a long time, because we were coming across some discrepancies and matters, which we couldn't agree with. I am not going to make a list of them, because it is not significant anymore. Anyway, it made us more careful and restrained, and so we didn't invite him for another visit. We were waiting for the situation to become clearer. That happened at the end of 2009, and I find it necessary to come up with at least a brief statement.
In fall 2009, we came across series of alarming news about the Wort und Geist movement at a number of German Christian servers. These news showed that the movement is in delusion and sin.
To mention at least a fraction of these news: Helmut Bauer called himself haughtily the apostle of nations; Melanie Irvin, who had separated from her husband, was entitled an apostle; Bible disappeared from the center of the service, instead of it, they are talking about a leadership of spirit and about love; and even extramarital relationships appeared, even among the leaders.
To make sure these news were true, we decided to contact Helmut Bauer and Peter Wenz, one of the former leaders WuG (he left because of disapproval of direction of the movement; however, his wife stayed and she was entitled an apostle...) and Wolfhard Margiese. It's very peculiar that Helmut Bauer didn't reply (similarly with Jaroslav Kříž, the leader of Slovak community KS Milost, whom we addressed with a different matter).
Before we received a reply from Wenz and Margiese, we decided to come to assess the situation directly at WuG. Our findings confirmed this bad news. A short time after that, we received the letteres from Peter Wenz and Wofhard Margiese. Both of them also confirmed, that WuG moved away from God and warned us against them.
I'd like to attach a translation of the brief letter from Peter Wenz:
Dear brother,
I am afraid, all the accusations are true, and even worse things have appeared. They have transformed themselves totally into a sect, in which Helmut Bauer replaced Jesus Christ in the center of attention. They have tempted a lot of brothers and sisters and they live in deep sin without any willingness to repent. We have to warn immediately everyone against them. In Germany, almost everybody already knows, what has happened. More and more people are leaving WuG. Please warn all the brothers and sisters in the Czech Republic not to join them.
The Best Regards.
Peter Wenz
KS Milost
Besides the Word und Geist statement I have to add several significant statements about the KS Milost ministry as well, at least about their activities in the Czech Republic. I have to say, that I don't know much about the situation in Slovakia, but I know several pastors from Slovakia, whom I respect and I appreciate their work. However, we have had quite a lot of experience with the work and efforts of KS Milost, esp. its lead pastor Jaroslav Kříž and some of his co-workers here in the Czech Republic.
First of all, I have to say, that our experience is explicitly negative. For quite a long time, we haven't reacted publicly on their immoral behavior; however, after permanent provocations from local "leaders" I consider it necessary to share our experience also with others and de facto warn them against this incorrect behavior of KS Milost.
I'd like to express our experience in a few points:
Pastor Kříž behaves as if there were a much larger work behind him than what the reality is. Also, we have to distinguish, which churches are a result of his work and which joined the movement because of something else. Even if we didn't consider this, Jaroslav Kříž acts as if "his" church had dozens thousand members, even though the reality is a fraction of such number. A number of other people with similar background simply wouldn't allow themselves to act like he does. But the fact is, that there certainly are also people who are impressed by such behavior.
At least here, in the Czech Republic, KS Milost spreads an absolutely incorrect and unbiblical way. It is true that there are certain general misdeeds among churches, but what is happening at KS Milost, is something completely different: To broaden their influence, people, who live in a sin, seem to be accepted in an even warmer way than those who don't.
We also know that among their leaders and possibly even among pastors, worship leaders or evangelists, there are such people - People, who were removed from their service in their original churches because of their sins in their families and personal lives or even because of their unwillingness to repent they got among the people at the edge of expulsion, or even got expelled.
We know that people from KS Milost are looking for such people. Or - they don't even have to look for them, it is generally known that many of these people are always looking for a church, where they could "start again", but without any repentance.
As an example, one former member of our church. Because of some serious reasons, we had to remove him from a position of a leader, and then for total unwillingness to repent, we even had to expel him from our church. He was immediately accepted to KS Milost and a short time after that made a leader. Consequently, we found out, that during the time, when he was a leader in our church, he was (and because of no sign of repentance, we have no reason to think that he isn't anymore) a regular consument of pornography, and even at the computer at his church office!
The other is much worse. When KS Milost finds
sympathizers in other churches, they tell them not to leave immediately, but to start unobtrusive "labor" in their current churches, to undermine the position of their current leaders, to sow dissatisfaction and with groan to create opposition against their leaders. They use even the worst libels - even I have experienced it myself. All of it with one purpose - to "transfer" the entire church into KS Milost. Or at least to take as many people as possible. I'd like to emphasize that they didn't tempt people to help them in a better way, but to be able to expose "growth".
The quality of their service is similar to the quality of absolutely big-headed international-political commentaries of pastor Kříž. Grievous content is covered by a little coat of spiritual anointment. So, for many Christians, these shallow "exegeses" gain its sense, because they consider it completely unbelievable that the lead pastor would speak so hollow.
We have no problem to treat such behavior unambiguously and directly. However, the reason for publishing this article is quite different: first of all, we are convinced that even many other people can see this, but simply cannot believe it could be so bad. They only stand by in disbelief and eventually look for their own mistakes and make no resistance. Actually, this is what Jaroslav Kříž hypocritically recommends them to do. We hope that this article will help understand, that the reality might be different.
Mikuláš Török
Pastor of the New Life Church (Nový Život)
