Session Notes

GraceAndMercy.org

Church history demonstrates that believers in every generation become enslaved to a performance basis for earning God’s approval and blessing. In other words, they believe they are right with God because they do the right things. This is a constant temptation for all who desire to please God. [...] I’ll be using the term performance basis interchangeably with the term legalism.

Because performance-based living is so deeply rooted in human nature, the entire world, not just the Christian world, is filled with people who either thrive on it or who are constantly striving to extricate themselves from it. But apart from the applied grace of God – the exact opposite of performance-based living – nothing more than superficial relief is ever realized by anyone, Christian or not.

The really entertaining thing about these guys is their background: They are specialists in bringing people out of cults. They have launched this site to take on fundamentalist Evangelical legalism — using those same skills. (See their first post)

From where I’m sitting, it looks to be about time…

worldnetdaily.com

A respected pastor, best-selling author and founder of a major ministry to teens predicts an imminent “earth-shattering calamity” centered in New York City that will spread to major urban areas across the country and around the world – part of what he sees as a judgment from God.

“An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen,” he writes. “It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us.”

Wilkerson’s vision is of fires raging through New York City.

“It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago,” he explains. “There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

I can just see how this latest embarrassment to the cause of Christ on earth got started:

David Wilkerson awakens in a cold sweat: (Gasp)(Pant)

“Oh NO, I just dreamed God nuked the world — this has to mean more then last night when I dreamed I was falling into a pool of chocolate pudding and the night before when I dreamed my wife wanted to stab me and I woke up with a massive bruise in my ribs where she delivered the right elbow of fellowship to stop me from snoring. Yes, it HAS to mean more…” (Burp)

“But why… Oh ya, now I remember — God didn’t pour quite all His wrath out on Christ. God’s focus has now shifted to to nuking the sinners in the center of the entire known universe — New York City. (You know, like, where I live…)”

“Of COURSE, I’ve been appointed as His mouthpiece — I now speak for the (Que reverential tone) L-O-R-D!!!!!!! Now where is my antacid — this heartburn feels like my chest is on fire…”

“But wait, what’s that verse some Still Small Voice is mentioning?”

2Tim. 1:7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

“Ah — never mind that — It’s not just the heathen, WE’RE ALL GONNA BURN!!!!!”

Either that, or this guy has got some serious inside contacts inside Al Qaeda…

What if Starbucks marketed like the church???

It’s nausea inducing — and it’s starkly true.

What is even more disturbing is that this video is itself actually a marketing tactic for a company that MARKETS CHURCHES called BeyondRelevanceDotCom. (No, I will NOT provide a live link to them…)

I’m not sure which is more nauseating…

Perhaps, instead of marketing churches, we could fix them so they don’t need to be marketed??? Perhaps we could actually introduce people to a Life Changing Power so dramatic that their friends will want to come and see? Perhaps we could look at the mess that makes up the church and the broken hearts that cause such so that it’s real love that greets people as they walk in the door?

Unless this is an admission that it can’t be done — that both this company and the churches it works with really are permanently beyond relevance and marketing is their only hope…

(In that case, we really have a problem because it’s not like the general public hasn’t already figured out that if you need to market it, it’s likely garbage…)

Typology of Clergy Who Engage in Sexual Misconduct

• PSYCHOTIC & SEVERE BORDERLINES
  Impulsivity due to poor controls; sexual contact due to bizarre belief systems or theories; poor social judgment concerning actions and words; may have variety of sexual targets. Some related cases are:
  • MANIC STATE (especially when previously diagnosed; stopped taking medications)
  • ACUTE PSYCHOSIS SECONDARY TO DRUG REACTION (e.g. steroids)
  • ORGANIC/NEUROLOGICAL PROBLEM (e.g. tumor)
    
• SOCIOPATHS & SEVERE NARCISSISTIC CHARACTER DISORDERS
  Self-centered, gratification-oriented; sexual acting out varies considerably; good at manipulating & getting out of trouble; no concern for harm to others
  
• IMPULSE CONTROL DISORDERS
  Longstanding, ingrained impulsiveness, with or without substance abuse or addictions; sexual issues may be primary or secondary
  • SEXUAL IMPULSE CONTROL DISORDER
    Full range of diagnostic categories including pedophilia; sexual or aggressive needs being met by actions
  • GENERAL IMPULSE CONTROL DISORDER
    When sex is not the major area of acting out, but one area of abuse (e.g. Character Disorder)
    
• SEVERELY NEUROTIC AND/OR SOCIALLY ISOLATED
  Typically overly involved with clients & parishioners emotionally; sexual contact develops secondary to emotional involvement; however, this can become a repetitive pattern
  
• MILDLY NEUROTIC & SITUATIONAL BREAKDOWN IN OTHERWISE HEALTHY PERSON
  Having ruled out more serious pathologies and deficits, in these situations with a single victim and remorseful offender, the situational factors and timing appear to have played a major role — Rev. Marie Fortune calls these people "wanderers"
  
• UNINFORMED/NAIVE
  Having ruled out pathology and deficits, a lack of training and good organizational structure and supports appear to be the basis for boundaries crossings which set the stage for the involvement; this must be a non-predator, and the explanations cannot be rationalizations, excuses, or justifications; there should be remorse; sometimes person has a distorted view of the professional helping relationship or pastoral role and does not distinguish it from friendship

This is an exceptionally well thought out list of the underlying mental and emotional issues present in those who abuse. While targeted at ministers engaged in sexual misconduct (Admittedly an overwhelmingly large and growing subset) it would be a waste to limit it to this specific behavior or specific group.

The problem of abuse is present wherever there is the presence of power. Wherever a person is granted tacit authority over a person’s life (By virtue of age, God, science or whatever), there exists the possibility of abuse. When the person/position granted that power tends to operate without any meaningful societal constraints on his or her behavior, then that position or role will tend to attract those who desire to operate in darkness. It will attract the above personality types.

The functioning of the early Church demanded accountability. The difference is, they demanded it on a far deeper level:

Gal. 2:11 ¶ But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.
Gal. 2:12 For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.
Gal. 2:13 And the rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.
Gal. 2:14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
Gal. 2:15 “We are Jews by nature, and not sinners from among the Gentiles;
Gal. 2:16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.
Gal. 2:17 “But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be!
Gal. 2:18 “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
Gal. 2:19 “For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God.
Gal. 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.
Gal. 2:21 “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”
Gal. 3:1 ¶ You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?
Gal. 3:2 This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?
Gal. 3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Gal. 3:4 Did you suffer so many things in vain — if indeed it was in vain?

They didn’t demand accountability at the level of naughty behaviors — they demanded it at the level of surrender to the intimate Grace and Freedom of the Gospel. They demanded that at least her leaders if not also her members stand in a relationship of profound intimacy with God and in isolation from a set of rules that would put them back under the system of judgment that previously condemned them.

While, on the surface, this demand would appear to actually create the exact behaviors that were problematic through giving license, it doesn’t. When a person is captivated by an intimate life of, To quote E. Peterson’s Message translation, a life of, “What’s next Papa,” (Romans Chapter Eight) their life, by very definition, can not be dominated by shame and fear. Shame and fear are the core of most of the non-chemical personality issues and the deepest core of the last two (The ones they don’t seem to be able to figure out).

The irony is, most of our social groupings (Evangelical and otherwise) today have it precisely backwards: We tend to look at the crimes of lust and gossip in a person’s life and condemn them (Or at least call them to account) for such. We then look at the ways they are attempting to control others, inflicting the same shame and fear that drives their own hearts on them and/or demonstrating the personal conformity to the rule of law Paul took Peter to task over and we regard it as a little slip up in an otherwise righteous life. We define it as righteous because it does not exhibit the lust (or whatever) crime we feel is so bad.

Then we wonder why the world wide Church will probably pay out well over a Billion (Yes, you read me correctly) dollars by the end of this decade in compensation for sexual abuse alone, we wring our hands and we lament over why it was never stopped. The answer is simple — we forgot about what really matters.

But, that’s hardly the real tragedy — the real one is that spiritual abuse and other missuses of power often leave much larger bullet holes in a person’s heart then a clearly definable violation like sexual abuse. And, they are so much more common.

Rolling Stone

When most Americans think of the Christian right, they think of scenes from television — great halls full of perfectly groomed people in pale suits and light-colored dresses, smiling and happy and full of the Holy Spirit, robotically singing hymns at the behest of some squeaky-clean pastor with a baritone voice and impossible hair. We don’t get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there’s a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won’t scare the advertisers — and then there’s the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down. I was about to go backstage, to personally take part in the indoctrination process for a major Southern evangelical church… I badly wanted to be invisible.

In these Southern churches there are few wizened old sages such as one might find among Catholic bishops or Russian startsi. Here your church leader is an athlete, a business dynamo, a champion eater with a bull’s belly, outwardly a tireless heterosexual — and if you want to know what a church beginner is supposed to look like, just make it the opposite of that. Show weakness, financial trouble, frustration with the opposite sex, and if you’re overweight, be so unhealthily, and in a way that you’re ashamed of. The fundamentalist formula is much less a journey from folly to wisdom than it is from weakness to strength. They don’t want a near-complete personality that needs fine-tuning — they want a human jellyfish, raw clay they can transform into a vigorous instrument of God.

It will make you laugh, it will sicken you, and, most of all, it will definitely annoy you — because it’s the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, you will find no evil in Harry Potter. Real evil is found here, clothed in the garb of religion, masked with the illusion of holiness and preaching a Jesus who died to be your rabbit’s foot and wants you to do what your reverend tells you to do. It revels in power and it delights in the weakness and ignorance of others that allows it to reduce children of the Most High King to idiocy.

Oh ya — it would like your donations too…

CNN.com

In the Texas raid, 416 children were removed from the ranch and placed in state custody. They are in temporary shelters and face a series of court hearings beginning April 17.

Investigators said Thursday they have left the YFZ ranch. The investigation, which also involves the FBI, is continuing.

In Hildale and Colorado City, people are reluctant to speak with outsiders, much less go on the record. Their responses ranged from indignation to resigned vows to leave matters up to the Lord.

“It’s very unjustified. It’s — it’s religious persecution,” said a woman who would not give her name.

A man who identified himself only as Nephi said he will remain prayerful and dedicated to his church.

“I think I am going to be at peace about it. It’s in the Lord’s hands. And we will leave it at that,” he said.

Marlene Hammon, a plural wife, was a small child when the Short Creek raid took place. She remembers being very frightened by the threat of being separated from her five mothers and 38 siblings.

Fawneta Carroll was 7 when she was separated from her family in the 1953 raid. She returned to polygamy and believes one of her 24 sisters was in the Texas compound with her children.

“If there is abuse, that should be investigated and taken care of,” she said. “But I do not see how you can use that to justify taking 416 children out of their homes and away from their families.”

Priscilla Hammon was born just after the raid and also lives in a polygamous marriage. She says she has many children and grandchildren, and that the threat of being separated by outsiders is always there. advertisement

The children are scared, she says.

“How can I possibly promise my children nothing will happen to them, when I see something like this taking place?”

Another day, another hour of CNN blasting out yet more sordid details of child molestation in the name of God. Endless fascination with the religion (and the strange and obviously abusive practices of it) and the quest to get closer and finally onto the compound to see the faithful.

Isn’t it interesting how politically correct the whole thing is? Where exactly are real ministers who know enough philosophy to stand up and call this whole thing what it is? Not once have I ever heard anyone grow the balls large enough to actually question the religion itself.

It’s really simple actually:

“Did God create man in the image of Himself? If so, then doesn’t it make sense that any person who, in the name of God, espouses treating people in a way that harms that image has to be preaching a false gospel as no sane creator harms what He has made?”

If the above is true, how about we look at the wreaked lives of these people, toss this out as a nonviable religion and just start just calling it an act of criminal mind control??? (It’s deserving of about as much special recognition/protection under law as one drunk beating up another by hitting him with a Bible.)

Oh yes, perhaps then we can also apply this to Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity… Ah, I get it — ok, never mind… It’s our God ordained right to treat people like that…

On second thought, WE MUST STAND FIRM FOR FLDS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. Our fundamental RIGHTS and FREEDOMS are at stake… [SIGH]

womensenews.org

Now, Davis and other local sex workers have banded together to establish Canada’s first cooperative brothel in an attempt to offer women a safe place to work.

The group, formed by a sex workers’ alliance based here, called the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women, will incorporate next month and is already setting the groundwork to open the co-op brothel.

Members have begun scouting for a location and are enlisting the backing of local businesses, police and labor organizations.

Faced with the task of cleaning up the city to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver authorities said they are open to the idea.

“We would be willing to explore anything that . . . would be helping the situation of sex trade workers, and make it safer for them and make it better for the community,” said Vancouver police spokesperson Howard Chow. He noted one requirement: “It has to be something that is lawful.”

So, let’s see: we’ll take an abuse of women that clearly is also a social blight, mix in the idea of creating a central edifice for it and then ice it with a thin veneer of socialist yammering about cooperative business being a wonderful thing. Take this lovely cake and get an idiot police spokesman to endorse it — now there, don’t we have a warm fuzzy story to tell our children about social progress?

Or, we could endorse the idea, get all the sex trade workers in there and arrest them. Then put in a whole raft of plain cloths officers posing as hookers and arrest all the Johns too. Get a judge to sentence the lot of them to treatment. Find two deserted patches of forest somewhere, set up a bunch of oilfield camp trailers, bring in the therapists and get to work on actually fixing the problem.

Naw, the warm fuzzy stories are more fun…

Canada.com

CALGARY – Officials at a Calgary church have admitted they were aware of an allegation of wrongdoing against an adult volunteer at his previous church but allowed him to continue working in youth programs under increased supervision for two years.

Police have charged the volunteer with sexually abusing three girls under the age of 14 at Centre Street Church.

According to a statement made by Brian Spiers of Westview Baptist Church during Sunday morning services, church staff investigated the allegations against the volunteer but found no corroborating evidence. As a result, the man was permitted to continue working in church programs.

“Unproven allegations are very difficult for a church to deal with,” said Dayle Medgett, senior pastor of Westview church, after the service.

Although officials declined to comment on the nature of the allegation or how they learned about it, they said the man worked for three years as a missions co-ordinator and parent volunteer in the youth program – but was never alone with children.

Medgett said upon learning of the allegation the church placed the volunteer under “increased accountability conditions.”

This happens to be going on in Calgary — but it could be anywhere. If it’s happened once, it’s happened a thousand times:

Person is in, “Ministry,” in a church, so many are creeped out by his actions, church does some sort of due dilligence via. police checks, nothing is found, person continues ministry/abusing until there is a huge blast radius, everyone pleads innocent claiming there was no proof and the lawyers pick over the remains.

Of course, for years I’ve spoken in one church after another addressing so many different areas of brokenness — and so many of them have responded with the same assumption, “It’s so good someone is helping the sexually broken — but we don’t have that problem here.” (Many times I’ve actually had a couple of their members in one program or another at that very instant…)

Problem is, few of those broken ones stayed in their churches. It’s not that they abandoned their faiths — but it is a departure from church. Not just that church — the institutional church in general. They have become part of the emerging or emergent church and their church is now a home group somewhere. And, the pollsters are very clear on this one: They are NOT coming back.

With their departure, the institutional church lost their first and last line of defense — a broken-and-now-healed-one who can move in on a clear and present danger like the above mentioned individual and bust them — hard. The old saying that it, “Takes one to know one,” has never been more accurate.

It’s kinda like the gun argument in the USA. (When you finally outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.) When we finally get the last broken-and-seeking-to-be-healed person out of your church, you will only have the predators remaining.

“But wait,” you say, “We never ran the broken out of our church.” Yes, you did.

When the Gospel of grace and freedom was exchanged for a gospel of rules, when ethics became the standard and control became the means, when you embraced some 12 step model of performance in place of the healing Christ has to offer, when fear and shame was allowed to sneak back into the one place on Earth Christ created to be free from it, when you allowed your 50yr veteran little-old-lady-babes-of-legalism-in-Christ to stand in condemnation of one broken heart (thus letting it stand as a warning to others), when you allowed some paranoid lawyer on your church board to tie the entire group up in a knot over the liability issues surrounding having a program of healing in your church, when you had the stunning arrogance to forget that your job was to introduce people to Jesus and then teach them to listen to His voice alone, you ran the broken out.

To Center Street’s rather significant credit, they seem to have had at least enough wounded healers remaining to eventually make it hot enough for the abuser in question — so he left. That’s remarkable for a church these days. Perhaps it was soon enough to keep the wolves from gathering.

In most other cases, the only hope is that lawyer…

Random Musings:

Finally something happened. The Scriptures began to penetrate my heart. My eyes were opened to the fact that I hadn’t been falling—the Everlasting Arms had held me all along. The fear vanished. I began to taste and understand grace. It was glorious, amazing, indescribable.

Theological and doctrinal shifts, it seems to me, shouldn’t be so emotional. I don’t do theology by experience, by throwing myself off imaginary cliffs. But this was more than just the “mind-y” way I had approached my Christianity for the past six years. This truth penetrated to the core of my being. It captured my heart and laid me bare.

Grace—wow! It wasn’t a matter of me saying, “Oh, cool, the doctrines of grace. What a wonderful theology. To think that my salvation was God’s idea all along—amazing!” No, this was much, much more than that. It was so personal. So intense, so intimate. Grace—God’s grace—for me!

This is a stunning story of transformation from a Bill Gothard driven theology of lies to a theology of freedom and grace. Well worth the read.

Jennifer’s Recovery From Emotional Abuse:

“Jennifer describes her childhood as emotionally abusive and unpredictable. Her mother, now a committed Christian, struggled with uncontrolled rage and mental illness when her daughter was a child. Not only did the incidents of violent and frightening outbursts of rage leave her feeling insecure, unloved and inherently bad, Jennifer’s mom blamed her for her own unstable behavior. ”It’s your fault I act like this,“ she said. Suicide first entered her mind at age six. A sensitive child, Jennifer attempted to avoid her mother’s wrath through perfectionism. By junior high school, weary and disillusioned, she knew she could never earn her mother’s love and approval. If not her mother, she needed someone’s approval, so she sought it out by misbehaving at school, ditching it altogether or seeking affection from the opposite sex. Lonely, insecure and feeling unlovable, she grew to accept cruel and destructive behavior from friends, thinking she didn’t deserve any better.Then she met Rick, a quiet but popular football player, and she described it as ”love at first sight.“ But he had a difficult home life, too. Raised by an abusive, alcoholic father, Rick described seeing his father break a plate over his mother’s head because he didn’t like what she had cooked for dinner one night.”

This is an inspiring story of emotional abuse! However it does not talk about the Finished Work of Christ and His identity/character in believers. This eliminates the need for criticism. Jesus took all the issues away! We have had His constant approval and it will continue always.