Monvee: Profiles of the Mega-churched.
Stacey Tallitsch printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 12:08:39 PM EST
[ed: updated from diary section]

Over the last 20 years, a consolidation from the small protestant church has given way to the "Mega-church" where community fellowship goes to die, and prosperity-gospel-rock-concerts are born. Just like the business world, when giant multinational corporations gobble up the mom & pop, a leveraging of hegemonic power soon arises to ensure dominance.

The challenge for any "Mega" organization, whether corporate or religious is how to move and motivate without splintering. The synchronization of the cogs is paramount to a controlled movement.

Starting in December of 2009 a new form of Evangelism will be introduced to the Mega-Church set. It's called "Monvee"® and it's got a familiar flavor. If you've read about C. Peter Wagner's "Demonic Mapping" of the country, the cold chill up your spine could easily be the fruition of those efforts.

Monvee is the brainchild of the Heartland mega-church in Rockford, IL and is about to take the nation's Mega-churches by storm. In January 2010, the official kickoff of Monvee is being headlined by Rick Warren and Condi Rice at some spectacular event yet to be announced. While the 700Club is currently scheduled to do a pre-release story this month on this new and exciting way to "mold and shape" the minds of both believers and non-believers.

So what is Monvee?

Specifically, it's very hush-hush. If you go to the website www.monvee.com you'll see a lot of information that says absolutely nothing. However, insiders have told me that it's a program that builds a psychological profile to tailor the teachings of the bible based on your "level of spiritual growth."

What's the base-line for this profile? You are miserable, and don't even know it.

Sure, that's the foundation of every cult in America, but the manner in which to persuade the target is willingly divulged in a psychological test. If a person is dealing with family issues, the focus of the evangelism is on that person's weakest point, the family. Predatory and perverse to be sure, but the evangelism is all done under the cloak of virtue, so I guess that makes it all right.

Once a "spiritual growth" profile has been created, a teaching regiment is suggested that involves a whole library of books, CD's and DVDs. Later, another profile is administered to see if any "growth" has taken place and new learning material is offered for sale.

Individual church leaders can track their congregants to see where they are "spiritually" as a whole, or individually. Provide their own "training material" or "classes" to help them develop (or conform) to that church's focus. The online software is also adaptive, meaning the more people who participate; the better it understands how to hammer a particular teaching.

However, that's not even the most dangerous part. Like C. Peter Wagner's database collection of "demonic areas" of the country, Monvee data builds a personal profile that can be used and manipulated with other data, to easily push a political agenda. It wouldn't take much to find a collective common thread to pull, or wedge issue, when election time rolls around.

For those who might consider this a Church/State violation, Monvee is the product of a private company. It's being touted as the eHarmony for God.

If Monvee was simply a tool, used by the local church, one could easily dismiss these claims as some loony conspiracy theory. However, it's being pushed and widely accepted by the nation's Mega-churches and its leaders, like Rick Warren.

What happens to all these "spiritual growth" profiles is yet unknown, but it would be worth millions to marketing companies all by itself. To politicians and would-be masters of the universe, the information is priceless.

In truth, the Heartland Church isn't exactly known for its political agenda. In fact, one would be hard pressed to hear them discuss politics at all.

So, why all of a sudden, the invite to uber-partisans and religious super-stars to launch a church program said to be, on its surface, a community support program?

While there is absolutely no evidence to point to that says a sinister plot is afoot. But, quoting President Obama, "The stars are lining up."




Display:
So far, I can't found much a hint of where Monvee is at theologically. It's a very slickly packaged piece of mystery meat, this new church product.

by Bruce Wilson on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 01:21:15 PM EST
Hi Bruce, You raise a good question. I've gone into this a bit in my blog post `Spiritual growth? There's an app for that'. Hope this gives at least some food for thought.

by BetterThanSacrifice on Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 06:50:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]


It looks to be a very powerful tool that not only has a centralized database, but can be tailored to any spectrum of the ideological rainbow. Say a white supremist church wants to get a bead on how "White" a member is, it's plausable gain a psych profile that expresses the member's commitment. If that member is not sufficiently racist, a regiment can be created to ensure he/she gets up to speed. The same goes for any bigoted malfuction.

Quoting 1984 has become so cliche, but WOW!

by Stacey Tallitsch on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 08:01:30 PM EST

"Monvee : We have All Your Data".

by Bruce Wilson on Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 04:20:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
leader who just can't keep from grabbing too much, and selling the lists to less than honest brokers, leading to identity theft, and causing the media to focus more on this "tool".

I wonder if Scientology has a similar program, as it sounds like something they'd come up with?



by trog69 on Tue Jul 28, 2009 at 10:08:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]



Many leaders in the larger NAR and NAR-friendly groups realize that current forms of "discipleship," descended from the cultic Shepherding movement of the 60s-80s, only work for so long before they are called out for what they are... cultic.  I know my former church movement (descended from one of those Sheperding groups, Maranatha) was getting into "spiritual gifts" and personality (like DiSC) testing and "kinder, gentler" forms of discipleship where they essentially moved slower and tried to keep the really weird stuff isolated only to those who were indoctrinated enough to not find it weird.  The fact that Monvee tries to restrict the details only to those who are "pastors" and "leaders" is telling.  But the end result was still what Flavil Yeakley observed in his personality testing of mainline vs. cultic/"high impact" groups, published in Discipling Dilemma--that the personality profiles of members in the cultic groups changed to match the dominant profiles among the leadership, while the personalities of mainline church members did not change.

This is scary because, if effective, Monvee would remove one of the main areas of cognitive dissonance experienced by cult members, especially as observed by loved ones and friends--personality change.  And this is a cult.  This is part of an ongoing agenda to cultify American Christianity and absorb it into a hybrid movement which believes that if a critical mass of "Christians" are joined together toward the common goal of "taking dominion," then Christ will return.  Some of the more radical leaders in the NAR believe that THEY will corporately become deified AS Christ.

But another more practical bottom line is MONEY.  These things can't operate without MEMBERS and the MONEY that comes with them.  And lately churches like my former church movement have been hemmorhaging both.  The church growth fads championed by Rick Warren and his mentor, C. Peter Wagner are exactly that--fads--and since they are getting long in the tooth need to be replaced by the newest, sparkliest, "new way of doing church" to try to attract some new innocent raw meat suckers, who like I was when I joined my former church, have NO CLUE that there's anything wrong until it's too late.

by ulyankee on Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 08:28:32 AM EST

While I focused on what could be done with the database, I do think this has more to do with targeting Christian paraphernalia for Heartland Community Church. They have a sizable bookstore on site, and this is a way to target and push their merchandise.  

However, the potential for massive corruption with very personal information is extremely likely. You can almost hear C. Peter Wagner's mouth salivating.


by Stacey Tallitsch on Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 12:00:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]


If the program was effective, family members and friends would still notice the personality (personal priorities, values, politics) change, even if the convert's speech is not larded with "cult" lingo. Megachurches already train lay leaders and congregants to lay off the overly exotic/ expressive/ "charismatic" behavior when dealing with visitors and newer members. (See Alexandra Pelosi's documentary about New Life Church (formerly run by Haggard).)

by NancyP on Wed Jul 29, 2009 at 01:13:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]


same business model. I have to wonder if there is any component of coercion tacitly or specifically allowed, if a member who has unwisely confessed something damaging his/her reputation (affair, same sex attraction, abortion, etc) decides to back out and stop buying or even speaks against the program or church.

To be sure, conventional churches will counsel people troubled about specific things with selected verses "applicable" to the issue at hand.

The data aggregation and personal record-keeping could indeed be made to interact in a political manner, as well as in marketing.

by NancyP on Wed Jul 29, 2009 at 11:50:40 AM EST

The Assemblies were known for using something confessed in private to control behavior and coerce submission to their authority.

When I was a member, it wasn't obvious, but now that I've broken most of their programming, now I see it was quite overt.

by ArchaeoBob on Thu Jul 30, 2009 at 12:43:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

...can now be found in some Protestant mainline churches.

by Bruce Wilson on Sat Aug 01, 2009 at 05:35:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]




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