She Was Not Alone

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

This story amidst pain and tragedy we have witnessed this week really touched me:

Heroes stay with mall shooting victim to the end: 'she did not die alone'

CLACKAMAS, Ore. - In the chaos of the shooting spree Tuesday at Clackamas Town Center, several people stayed with Cindy Ann Yuille, 54, who was shot and died at the scene.

Retired emergency room nurse Joan Smith of Milwaukie, Ore., was one of the people who worked to revive Yuille after shots rang out.

She said she wanted the family to know that Cindy was cared for until she passed away. "We had to stay with her," she said, even though it was unknown at the time where the shooter was or if they were safe.

This has been a difficult week.  We will never forget the senseless crime of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting.  What a tragedy.  There was also a mall shooting at Clackamas Town Center in Oregon, near my old stomping grounds, in which two people were killed.   When I was in high school, Clackamas Town Center was newly built and I had to transfer buses there.  Many times my classmates and I would go in the mall for a quick snack at the food court where the murders took place.  It's so sad to think about.  

Earlier this week, I dealt with someone whose family member had threatened suicide.  The family member was not in a safe place and thankfully we were able to get this family some help.  It has weighed on my heart.  I've also thought about the Impostor Blog and the difficult exchanges we've had on the Wartburg Blog. It has been uncomfortable and has opened old wounds for me and also for some who have contacted me privately.  I am putting up some personal boundaries on that issue because I need to live life and enjoy the beauty around me:  my family, friends.  Please consider doing the same if you are getting triggered.  

I saw this news clip about two kind-hearted individuals who stayed with shooting victim, Cindy Ann Yuille, until she passed away.   This is what a victim's family would want to know:  did she die alone?   Cindy Ann Yuille did not die alone.  Two brave individuals, Joan Smith and Tony Charro, risked their lives while the shooter was still on the loose to attend a precious human being as she breathed her last breaths.  Even though they did not know this woman, they respected her, they cared for her, they demonstrated love to her and did not want her to be alone.  What a precious gift they gave.

I see that happening here as we share abuse stories.  One of the scariest things that abuse survivors feel is the feeling of being alone.  When I shared stories about the challenges of being single in the church, a common response was:  we feel so alone.   The love and support you show one another here - complete strangers - is wonderful.  I want to be intentional in my love and support of others who are going through difficulties and struggles.  

I don't ever want to lose the aspect of that beautiful gift God has given us - the gift of relationships, the gift of encouragement, care, and support.  Thank you for supporting me behind the scenes this week.  You know who you are.  

The Homeschool Movement: Its Reconstructionist Roots and Rushdoony's Influence

"We are authorized by God to challenge all that is not godly!" Rushdoony thundered. "God is angry with the wicked every day, and the sins of the wicked deserve the infliction of God's wrath in this life as well as the life hereafter!"  Rushdoony

I know the title of this post seems dry and boring.  If spiritual abuse is a concern of yours, I encourage you to take the time to read this post carefully.  Check out the links and do some research on your own.  The information I have found has compelled me to keep blogging, to keep telling my story, and to keep sharing the stories of others.  I am just a little worked up on this topic.  

There is much more to homeschooling than just educating children.  There is much more to patriarchy and courtship than fathers being heads of home and parents involved in the process of finding mates for their adult children.  You must know that there is an agenda going on.  This agenda ties these practices together.  I thought I was homeschooling my children because I could do a better job than the local public school system.  I thought I was homeschooling my children so I could include Bible in their education and also protect them from negative worldly influences. That was pretty much my agenda.  But that was not the agenda of the people I looked up to - the leaders in the homeschooling community.  We looked to the leaders because they knew what they were doing and could help guide us on our foreign path.  But there was an underlying agenda that I didn't know about, that they did not disclose.  It was there all along, but it's not so obvious.  I want to expose that NOW! 

Many of you know that this blog started with the intent to share about my family's experience at a spiritually abusive church.  There has been much heartache in that experience and then 3-1/2 years later, it continued as my former pastor filed a defamation lawsuit against me and 4 others (and lost) this past summer.  I have seen the impact on my family and have done a lot of soul searching:  what led us to that church?  who influenced my life as a Christian?  who influenced my life as a mother?  who influenced my life as I ventured into homeschooling my children?  As I researched my primary influencers, I found a common thread of destructive ideologies within the homeschooling movement.  

My first article on the homeschooling movement opened up a whole can of worms on a culture that I have been a part of for the last 20 years or so.  Some of these teachings (courtship, modesty/purity, full-quiver) have infiltrated churches and families who do not teach their children at home.  It is a powerful movement and I caught on to the movement without realizing I was part of it.  I embraced certain aspects of it, brought those aspects that I agreed with to my churches.   As we moved around the country (my husband was in the Navy), I shared these aspects with my friends and friends shared the aspects they learned with me, etc.  That is how this movement spreads.  It can be one particular teaching or many, but they all intertwine, feeding the agenda.

It is important to have knowledge of this movement because even if you have no desire to homeschool your children or maybe you are single or empty-nesters, this movement spreads to churches in some way or other and as we have seen with courtship, patriarchy, and other teachings, some of the teachings leave a devastating path with emotional and spiritual turmoil.  

The other night I read an article about Michael Farris that got me worked up. Mike Farris is known as one of the key pillars of the homeschool movement.  I wanted to share my thoughts on a situation regarding Michael Farris, but realized without sharing more background information, you wouldn't get the full picture.  So, please allow me to do that now.  

Before Michael Farris was a pillar in the homeschool community, there was another very prominent figure, Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001).  I believe Rushdoony set the trajectory for the homeschooling movement.  Although Rushdoony died in 2001, he established the basis of the movement long before.  These roots are in Christian Reconstructionism.   

I found this article which described Christian Reconstructionism very well.  As you read the variety of quoted materials included in the post, I encourage you to keep in mind how the ideas of patriarchy, courtship, full-quiver tie in with this belief system.

What is Reconstructionism?

Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or "Biblical Law," is the basis for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth.

Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life--such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely "social" or "moral" issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion. Reconstructionists have formulated a "Biblical world view" and "Biblical principles" by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

More broadly, Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy."

Source

Let's learn a little about Rushdoony.  This is from Wikipedia:

Rousas John Rushdoony (April 25, 1916 – February 8, 2001) was a Calvinist philosopher, historian, andtheologian and is widely credited as the father of Christian Reconstructionism and an inspiration for the modern Christian homeschool movement.^[1][2] His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on the Christian right.^{[3] (Source)}

I was glad to find this video on Rushdoony and his Reconstructionist beliefs. It is an interview with Bill Moyers of PBS and is very good.  It's still difficult for me to wrap the idea around my head that part of this belief system is to bring the Old Testament laws into modern times; ie, death penalty for those who commit adultery, death penalty for homosexuals, etc.  

Christian Reconstructionism in a Nutshell from Bruce Prescott on Vimeo.



This quote describes how Rushdoony took his Reconstructionist views and made a case for educating children at home and thus became known as the "father of the homeschool movement" by many:

Key to this strategy was the homeschooling movement.  Education, Rushdoony realized early on, was the best way to distribute his message. To that end, he wrote multiple books on the history of American education, charting its transformation from one-room schoolhouses and parochial schools to urban institutions. These books became guideposts for Christians who believed that public schools were indoctrinating their kids in the false faith of secular humanism. McVicar, the Ohio State scholar, says, “Rushdoony understood that if he changed the way Christians educated their children, he could change the way they thought.” (Source - ja note:  this article goes on to discuss current people in politics influenced by Rushdoony's ideologies  - very interesting article)

The homeschool movement is comprised of specific teachings/beliefs.  These teachings come from various groups or individuals who share the common thread of homeschooling.  These groups work independently and may have different focuses, are in different locations, but again, the foundational agenda can be found in Reconstructionist roots.

Interestingly, I had the above paragraph typed up a couple days ago and a few minutes ago I read an article by Frederick Clarkson originally published in June 1994 about this Reconstructionist "movement" and how it has spread over the years:

A Movement of Ideas
As a movement primarily of ideas, Reconstructionism has no single denominational or institutional home. Nor is it totally defined by a single charismatic leader, nor even a single text. Rather, it is defined by a small group of scholars who are identified with Reformed or Orthodox Presbyterianism. The movement networks primarily through magazines, conferences, publishing houses, think tanks, and bookstores. As a matter of strategy, it is a self-consciously decentralized and publicity-shy movement.

This is exactly what I have seen happening in the homeschool movement and why it is so hard to pin down because it is not localized in one church, one denomination, or organization.  Both the Reconstructionist and homeschool movements are so invasive and have spread the same way.  You or people you know may be part of either the Reconstructionist movement or the homeschool movement and have adopted ideologies without even realizing it.  I realized through my research that I furthered the homeschool movement by sharing books, CDs, talking to my friends about my new-found ideas.  I had been a part of it all along endorsing it and spreading it quite convincingly among my friends and church acquaintances.  

Here's a little more on Rushdoony.  In 1965 he founded the non-profit organization called Chalcedon Foundation to promote the Reconstructionism.  Read Chalcedon's vision statement here.  

Here's a brief summary from Wikipedia:

The Chalcedon Foundation is an American Christian Reconstructionist organization founded by Rousas John Rushdoony in 1965. Named for the Council of Chalcedon,^[2] it has also included theologians such as Gary North, who later founded his own organization, the Institute for Christian Economics.

The Chalcedon Foundation provides educational material in the form of books, newsletter reports and various electronic media, toward advancing the theological teachings of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionism movement. It is notable for its role in the influence of Christianity on politics in the U.S.^[3] and has been described as "a think tank of the Religious Right.^[4] Rushdoony's son, Mark now heads the foundation.

The Chalcedon Foundation has been listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centerfor, among other reasons, supporting the death penalty for homosexuals.^[5]

We can see in the above summary that this Reconstructionist organization has infiltrated the education systems and politics in America with their Reconstructionist agenda.  

Here are more articles I found interesting in researching this topic:

Invitation to a Stoning

Chalcedon Foundation Leads Christian Reconstructionists in Campaign to Convert Conservative Fundamentalist Churches

His Truth is Marching On

When we think of spiritual abuse, we think of it in the confines of a church.  The homeschool movement is different because it has no confines - it is scattered all over the country, people can become as involved as they want in various groups, but what I've noticed is that there are behavioral characteristics used by those in the homeschool movement which are similar to behavior used by spiritually abusive church leaders.  There are different dynamics, but the end results can be the same.  This is why I keep sharing personal stories about these topics here.  

False Teachers: The Hard Gospel and Grace

In my former church our pastor spoke that our church was different than others because he preached a tough gospel message.  It was implied that people in other churches would have difficulty getting through the narrow gate to heaven because their pastors preached what they wanted to hear, not what was necessary to get to heaven.  Our pastor didn't water down the Word and wasn't into seeker-sensitive or easy-believisim teachings.  Some current church members even mentioned this narrow gate wording on their Google reviews which have since been revised or/or removed.  It was (is) a source of pride among the congregation.  We felt thankful that we didn't have to listen to other pastor's sermons which were most likely weak.  There was a sense among us that other pastors must not love their congregations the way ours did because our pastor preached the hard teachings.  We were special ones to have this teaching, even though it meant a more difficult path.  


Spiritual abuse pattern:  A common trait in spiritually abusive churches is elitism.   If we are so special, and all others churches are inferior, who wants to attend an inferior church?  Elitism is a manipulation tactic to keep people at the church.  And it works powerfully because we become convinced that no other church will measure up to our elite church.

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.   Matthew 7:13-14

What we saw modeled to us to get to that narrow path, however,  was works-based religion.  We felt the need to be present at all church meetings.  If there was a car wash evangelism outreach, it was important to be there.  We felt pressure to go out and and evangelize on Friday nights, to other events he deemed important.  We had to use the right formula for evangelism, we had rules of how to dress, there were rules of when women could talk, what members did with our time outside of church.  Somehow, the pastor did not need to say a thing and people still felt  pressure and could hear his rules in their heads.   These were unspoken rules.  I've spoken to a number of people who sensed this pressure and felt guilty for not attending a specific event or teaching.

Religion always teaches that you can get to God by doing something.  Your good standing with God depends on what you do.  Do the law, perform religion, do it right, look good, try hard.  Is that the gate through which we are called to find life?  No.  Those leading people to it are ravenous wolves in sheep's clothing.  They look like sheep, and they appear to be the safest, most righteous, but they lead people down the wrong path.  Jesus plus anything is not Jesus! 

(from The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson & Jeff VanVonderen)

Look at the verse following the narrow gate passage:

¹⁵ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  

I discussed a bit of this with my friend, Pastor Ken Garrett.  Ken has first-hand experience of being involved in an abusive church for over a decade and has studied spiritual abuse at great length.  I always appreciate his insight.  He shared this with me and it goes right along with what we and so many people experience in abusive churches:

Dogmatic, demanding preachers are prone to boast that their "gospel" is THE narrow way; and they can usually point to a truck-load of rules, mores, taboos, and religious expectations and dogmatic doctrines that they've laid on their followers as evidence of just how "narrow" their way is!   Basically, any church that doesn't seem as "strict" as their church immediately is accorded the "broad-and-wide-way-that-leads-to-death" title.  It's the theology of bullies, and is an affront to God's marvelous grace.

Ken is exactly right.  A typical pattern we see in these churches, as Ken alludes to in the last sentence, is a lack of grace.   There is no gospel without grace.  If a pastor says "grace" from the pulpit, but his life and actions reflect otherwise, is he preaching the gospel?  I don't think so.   Preaching is much more than the words coming from the pulpit.  A pastor preaches and models to his congregants through his words and actions after the service, during the week as he rubs shoulders with congregants and those outside the church.  

Anyone can get caught up into a church like ours.  Because so much seemed biblical and accurate from the pulpit, I had difficulty articulating what the real problem was.  I share our personal accounts because my husband and I had been Christians over 30 years and we were fooled.  I knew something was wrong the first time I walked in the place, but could not identify it.    It took leaving the church, getting out of the environment completely to see things clearly, and even then, it was a process.  The wool was pulled over our eyes.  We drank the Kool-Aid.  The after-effects of the Kool-Aid are wretched and painful.  We are still dealing with it.  

I hope our story helps to illustrate how false teachers creep in and can get even seasoned Christians fooled.  Just because your pastor teaches the hard gospel and uses scripture to back it up, and preaches against false teachers, calling them out, does not mean that your pastor is not a wolf.  Scripture says that they creep in unnoticed.    Their objective is to devour.  Look for the inconsistencies in their words.  If they preach grace, is the fruit evident in their lives and words away from the pulpit and in their personal life in dealings with others?  






photo credit: Norma Desmond via photopin cc

C.J. Mahaney's Philosophy on Friends: Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You

"For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. ..."1 Thessalonians 2:1-20 ESV

It's been over a month since Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), C.J. Mahaney and others were named in a lawsuit for mishandling of sex abuse cases, etc.  I've been following this story for over 5 years because the spiritual abuse tactics and how they handled sex abuse cases in the church resembled what I experienced at my former church (the same church/pastor who sued me and 4 others for defamation for $500,000).  Reading this post, we will discover another pattern used by these types of pastors.  It's an important pattern to note.  

Some may recall that last year, C.J. Mahaney stepped down from his position as president, taking a leave of absence to do some soul searching on accusations brought before him.  Some of these accusations stemmed from a 600-page document written by Brent Detwiler which was released on the internet.  Instead of C.J.  remaining at his home church, Covenant Life Church (CLC), to deal with his issues and putting himself around his church's elders for accountability, he went to his BFF's (best friends forever) church, Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist to hide  worship.  Those who have been involved with SGM have stated that no other pastor or leader would have been allowed to leave a SGM church while being under scrutiny, but the pattern we see in these kinds of churches is that the leaders don't have to go by the same set of rules that they enforce on other pastors/leaders.  JA conclusion:  C.J. Mahaney thinks he is special and gets a free pass to do as he pleases without regard to the rules he has set in place for those beneath him.  

One other notable aspect of C.J. is his many close buddies.  Immediately after C.J. publicly announced that he was going to be taking a leave of absence, a number of his celebrity pastor BFFs came to his defense publicly:  Al Mohler (this article is really good, btw), Ligon Duncan, Ray Ortlund, etc.  

Many bloggers, including yours truly, have been watching and waiting for C.J.'s celebrity friends to issue some sort of public statement since the lawsuit went public.

What is the response from C.J.'s friends?  zilch, nothing, squat, nada!!  

Blog queens, Deb and Dee from The Wartburg Watch have been keeping track of the number of days  gone by without a response and have it posted on their blog front and center here:  

It really makes you wonder why are these celebrity pastors silent?  

It looks like CJ's buddies don't have a problem with this lawsuit as evidenced by this:

The 2013 National Conference of the Gospel Coalition lists C.J. Mahaney as one of the speakers.  Take special note of who else is speaking:  C.J.'s good friends!!!  Here are just a few:

"These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage."Jude 1:16 ESV

Ok, so why would these guys want to share a platform with someone who has so much controversy?  Quite a few SGM churches are leaving the group because of all the controversy.  What about those folks?  Are their arguments valid?  The stories we have read about abuse cover-ups are shocking.  Do C.J.'s buddies not care?  Are they not concerned about the spiritual abuse and sexual abuse cover-ups that have been made public?  Why are they willing to overlook it?  My brain demands, WHY????????????

And then I noticed C.J.'s Twitter account.  A lot of celebrity pastors are taking advantage of social media, like Twitter, to connect with people who follow them.  Check this out - - - as of the time of this screen shot, C.J. has over 23,510 followers.  Presumably most of his followers are people who want to hear what he has to say and probably a good many of them have a lot of respect for him.  That's quite a platform of followers, isn't it, when can you say something and have 23,510 people read your words in an instant?  Whoa!

I am following him because I want to know what he's saying to his wide audience.  Well, I've been getting an "earfull".

Check out C.J.'s recent tweets:

"For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people."

Romans 16:18 NIV

"I will not show partiality to any man or use flattery toward any person. For I do not know how to flatter, else my Maker would soon take me away."Job 32:21-22 ESV

Those are seemingly nice tweets, right?  But what do you notice about these tweets?  Notice the people connected with them?  Are you seeing what I'm seeing?  He's giving shoutouts to his friends - people he rubs shoulders with at conferences and people he endorses on book covers.  There's a big concentration of Al Mohler shout-outs - probably because SGM recently moved their headquarters to be near Mohler's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  This is an excellent article discussing Mohler's alliance with Mahaney.  Of course CJ is giving accolades to Mohler and endorsing his new book, Conviction to Lead.

Could this be why Al Mohler won't speak out against his good friend - - -  why Carson and DeYoung and Packer won't speak out?

Are you familiar with the expression:  "don't bite the hand that feeds you?"  That comes to mind as I read these tweets.  It would be pretty uncomfortable to be a close friend of CJ's and then speak out publicly against him when he is publicly endorsing you to literally thousands.  It sure seems that C.J. is flattering his friends into silence and they are too weak to stand up against it.  

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
Hebrews 4:12 ESV

Detailing Events and Discerning the Times: Part One

Detailing Events and Discerning the Times: Part One

© Brad Sargent (brad/futuristguy), November 2012

After I wrote my analysis piece on Sovereign Grace Ministries in the previous post, I was asked two questions and invited to share more detail on:

1. Why evaluating a Members Meeting that happened at Covenant Life Church (CLC) over a year ago holds any importance now, and 
2. How a case study of Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) fits into the larger scheme of what seems to be happening with exposing “malignant ministers,” toxic organizations, and spiritually abusive systems or cultures.

So, I worked on describing how I go about doing these tasks and why they’re important. Because “externalizing” one’s thought processes takes a lot of space, the original version of this post got longer than expected. So I split it into two parts. The first talks about techniques I use from my points of view as a cultural interpreter and a organizational developer to detail events and analyze changes over time. The second picks up with linguistics and futurist/strategic foresight techniques I use to detect patterns and discern cultural trends that drive long-term change. 

These are the kinds of intuitive and intentional critical thinking tools that might go with being a modern-day “son of Issachar” (1 Chronicles 12:32) who seeks to understand our times, and discern what the churches should do. Hope you find this different perspective worth the read, despite it delving into some technical skills. I suspect we all have a lot of detailing and discerning to do in the near future because of continuing revelations on the horizon about spiritual abuse in the Church. Perhaps the descriptions and illustrations of these research techniques will help understand some of the content in the forthcoming SGM trial and the larger cultural context in which this is occurring.

Pictures and Profiles: Systems “Snapshots”

I thought it would be helpful to start with some background on why I would bother to do this kind of analysis piece in the first place. As my blogger friend Julie Anne Smith mentioned in her first comment on my post at her blog, [November 11, 2012, 6:45 PM], I seem to have landed in a role of drawing people’s attention from detailed analysis up toward the big-picture patterns, and considering what such trends might mean in light of the larger context of culture and change.

This is what I wrote in the final point near the end of the article:

(4) The only way to refute an allegation of a malignant pattern of mishandling situations or avoiding responsibility is with documentation. 

Only the principle people involved can provide “primary documentation” through their emails, notes, daytimer schedules, phone records, etc., at the time of the events and interviews or depositions later on. Those items and observations help establish facts and timelines and participants, etc. 

But a “secondary” layer of resources share other people’s analysis and interpretation of the facts. They look at such things as gaps in the evidence, interconnections among people, patterns that appear at a given time or over time, and how various patterns compare with some internal standard (such as the organization’s constitution and by-laws) or external standards (such as legal mandates or “biblical” commands). 

Here are some of the techniques I use to create those kinds of secondary resources.

As a cultural interpreter, I personally observe and/or I research events. I gather evidence that seems relevant and much that may turn out to be irrelevant – but I can’t always know that in advance. I analyze the set of evidence, and interpret it as best I can as offering us a “snapshot” of where that subject (an individual or organization or culture) was situated at the time of those events. Think of this snapshot as sort of like pinpointing the subject’s coordinates in a “cultural Global Positioning System” at that moment of time. If I’ve done my role well, my “take” on the subject’s GPS is close to matching the profile of facts about the subject and its surrounding system, mostly supplied by primary source people.

Goals and Trajectories: Shifting from Snapshots to “Video” Mode

Then, as a theologically-based practitioner of organizational development, I plot a set of GPS snapshots taken over time against what I understand to be the ideal ministry. This ideal represents the goal we should be moving toward. This profile of the ideal includes how ministry strategies, infrastructures, and leadership should function for their system to be considered TRULY “safe,” “healthy,” and “growing” – from a biblical standpoint, despite what leadership and organizations are supposed to look like from a business standpoint. (And I am working a set of specific indicators for exactly how I define and describe and measure all three of those terms: safe, healthy, growing.) 

If the GPS for that ideal profile represents the goal point of ministry function, then we can figure out what kind of “trajectory” that church or organization is on. And we do that by looking at the change in the profile positions of their snapshots over time, relative to the goal. In other words, we shift from snapshots to “video,” and measure which way the subject of study is moving. (Or, if you are familiar with the media known as “flip books,” movement is captured by slight shifts between successive drawings or photos. The shifts become more noticeable as you flip through the series. This became the basis for animation.)

There are four basic possibilities of how a church body relates with the goal of being/becoming a “safe house for God’s people.”

• Move forward toward the goal.
• Move backward away from that goal.
• Remain static and move nowhere (which we usually associate with a body that is unconscious, in a coma, or is actually a corpse).
• Orbit around some other person(s) than Jesus Christ or some other goal, in which case there may be a lot of activity but it ultimately revolves around whatever keeps it pinned to the ground and prevents it from moving along a pathway.

After figuring out the overall pattern, there are still a lot of nuances in a trajectory: Is the path smooth or erratic, start-stop, relatively slow or fast, etc.? We simply don’t know which trajectory type is happening, or what qualities of movement it demonstrates, unless we take periodic organizational snapshots to see what is or isn’t happening over time. We need a series of snapshots to figure that out.

From Single-Person Profiles to Multi-Person Trajectories

The process of helping individuals figure out how they’re doing in terms of Christlike transformation uses similar tools to those for organizations. It likewise involves:

1. Identifying their starting point in relationship to the ideal profile of mature Christian character and spiritual formation practices.
2. Then profiling their status at different points over time.
3. Then tracking all of those to evaluate the type of trajectory they are on, and what specific gap they have that need to be filled in, and what excesses they have that need to be filed down.

Such interpretation of an individual’s spiritual profile snapshots and video is valuable for the ministries they are part of also, because, as organizational specialist Price Pritchett wisely suggests in The Ethics of Excellence, “The organization can never be something the people are not.” And running this kind of spiritual profiling for leaders is especially valuable because to paraphrase something Jesus said, “Protégés become like their mentors.” More specifically (still paraphrasing), “If the blind lead the blind, they both fall in a ditch” (Matthew 15:14) and “When a pupil is fully trained, he will be like his master” (Luke 6:40).

All of this together means that what individuals do singly adds up to what teams and ministry groups and churches and networks and denominations do corporately. If there are too many toxic leaders and blind followers in a system, it hinders the system from bearing good fruit now and better fruit in the future. 

And foresight into the future – that’s where we shift from tools of the cultural interpreter and organizational developer to evaluate a trajectory, to those of the linguistic to identify patterns and the futurist to evaluate culture-shifting trends. Those are the subjects in Part Two, which is forthcoming. But first, here are some preliminary conclusions, based on extensive reading over the past few months about the Sovereign Grace Ministries system and the class action lawsuit filed against it and specific current and former leaders.

Thoughts on Sovereign Grace Ministries and Trajectories

Here is a comment I wrote on a post at The Wartburg Watch after reviewing the extensive SGM Crisis Timeline, produced by Jenn Grover. It gives not only some of my conclusions, but reflects on the process I used. I have edited it slightly to clarify a few points, and added boldface to the key statements about the equivalent of snapshots and videos, as well as trajectories and orbits.

First, whoever you are, Jenn Grover, thanks for your work in putting that together. It was immensely helpful as a “Grand Tour” to get an overview. 

Second, I don’t know if I will, but I might go back another time to read/view the documentation materials at each link supplied in the many Dipity information frames. More detail may change my interpretations or fine-tune them, but I still thought it would be beneficial to offer some first-take impressions on what I read, as that might be similar to what a jury member would have to consider upon a first exposure to this information.

Third, I think I “get it” about organizational development and church conflict. Since shifting to evangelical and theologically conservative churches almost 40 years ago, I’ve been in the middle of, or observer to: church systems that failed, others that split, one church that was literally taken over (i.e., commandeered/stolen) by an insider group, others that were held captive to/by malignant leaders or “kidnapped” by outsiders who infiltrated in, some that had toxic doctrine that created toxic internal cultures, and a few had multiples of these factors all rolled into one spiritually suffocating combination. 

So — with all that 35+ years of framework in my own background — after reading this timeline, I come away with one overwhelming impression, based on the assumption that this timeline seems documented well enough to give a significantly accurate and sufficient base of observations from which to develop opinions. And here it is, the big-picture impression: 

It seems to me that there really has not been much recent “forward trajectory” at SGM based on “fixing eyes on Jesus” as a guide-wire for going into the future. Instead, for at least two decades, the SGM systems (leaders, laypeople, churches, trainings, associations, boards) all have been tethered to the polarizing agency of C.J. Mahaney. If you map out the various interrelationships of *dramatis personae* since about 1997, it appears that ALL the lines of friendship, and dominant theological stances, and who’s in authority, and relational conflicts, and individual and church departures, eventually all connect somehow with Mr. Mahaney.

Thus, as in tetherball, SGM insiders get hit clockwise then counterclockwise, reverse and repeat, to a dizzying degree, based on the metaphorical hits Mr. Mahaney takes or makes. There is a lot of action, but basically the whole thing has gone nowhere for at least the last 15 years but ’round and around on the integrating pole of Mr. Mahaney and the same plotline chain of dramatic controversies.

And if one man has that much direct and indirect preeminence in such a huge amount of activity, I wonder if it’s fair to say then, that there has been an idolatrous amount of attention paid to him. If so, that enormous expenditure of energy on adoration or revulsion, protection or correction — at the leadership level of SGM especially, and with outside celebrity leaders and non-profit organizations — might make sense as system-wide set-ups for many things remaining overlooked or ignored instead of properly overseen, being done in a dysfunctional way, swept under the carpet, slipping between the cracks, etc. Hence, here they find themselves in this lawsuit –- the SGM organization and several of its most prominent individuals.

After my own series of difficult experiences in churches, I’m used to such mega-drama, though I still get emotionally churned up over it (anger, sadness, numbness). However, this contentious history put me on the verge of exasperation. I just wonder how a civil lawsuit jury will respond to what seems to be an organizational context of extreme distraction due to uber-leader-level drama during the exact same time period of the alleged cases of mishandling instances of sexual abuse plus questioned practices of pastoral care or cover-up …

On now, to Part Two …