What should we know about Encounter?

Question:

I received an invitation from someone to go to a Christian meeting called Encounter, where I was promised that within a few days I will have a spiritual growth and an approach to God that one can not accomplish going to church for years. What shall I know about this practice and how to proceed with the invitation that I received?

What is Encounter?

and is a movement about which I have recently heard that it was born in Brazil and the organizers invite participants to an alleged special meeting with God.

The testimony of a participant

I first heard about this experience from a man who was at this weekend and told me very happily, that he saw something special that he had not seen before and called that the living Gospel. He understood there that he was not born again but also said that at that meeting he had been faced with a long list of sins of his relatives, ancestors, etc. and he had to repent for each of those sins, saying that if there were an unconfessed sin one would not be released from it. He also told me that five topics were addressed at those meetings:

1. Salvation
2. Release from dependence
3. Baptism with the Holy Spirit and the filling with the Holy Spirit
4. Healing of physical disease
5. Vision

There can not be all at a time

As with you, those invited to these meetings are allowed to receive all at a time, that means to receive a full spiritual growth only during the weekend. It is not possible and spiritual growth involves time and discipline in a systematic study of the Holy Scripture, in prayer and in preaching the Gospel.

Escape from responsibility

That Christian who told me that he attended such a meeting, also told me an aspect that seemed to me not good. He says that at the Encounter Weekends people come to confess sins which they can not confess to their pastors, but there, they say to a minister who does not deal directly to their spiritual growth and does not shepherd them. Even more, he said that some pastors were also coming to confess their sins to foreign persons, so that they might not be dismissed from their ministries in churches. In my opinion, these people flee from responsibility and what they do not can not be qualified as repentance or sincere confession.

What does the reader know and think about Encounter Weekends?

Translated by Felicia Rotaru