GBFSV SPIRITUAL ABUSE VICTIMS' RECOVERY
For The Victims Of Spiritual Abuse And Authoritarianism At Grace Bible Fellowship Of Silicon Valley And Victims Of Other Churches ©MtnShepherdess 2016, 2017, 2018
I’m 42 and I have done a lot of different things in my life! Some of them were motivated by fear (I have to accomplish to be loved?) and some were motivated out of my own unhealthy drive (I have to do better than this or I will be abandoned). Some of it just fell…
via He Doesn’t Have to Wreck Your Life, Part 2 — Give Her Wings
People who ask questions, and tell truths, are accused of…
Earlier this year we shared a guest post titled “Why I’m at a Church That Doesn’t Support Gender Equality”. The post led to a robust discussion of the pros and cons of staying versus leaving. Today a seasoned leader shares a consequence of staying in a complementarian church that did not come up in earlier…
via Do I Stay or Do I Leave? A Dilemma for Women in the Church — The Junia Project
by Velour/MtnShepherdess © Cartoon courtesy of David Hayward/NakedPastor.Com ©
My former church Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley scrubs the internet of all negative reviews about the excommunications/shunnings of godly men and women who dare to think and use the brains God gave them. For former members who have exposed and opposed the authoritarianism, nepotism, 1970’s heavy-Shepherding techniques, and Thought-Reform techniques that the pastors/elders at Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley (Cliff McManis, Sam Kim, Tim Wong, Bob Douglas and any other new pastors/elders) used to control church members GBFSV tries to scrub the internet of this important information.
From YELP to Google to Amazon and anywhere else Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley scrubs the internet of negative reviews to control the narrative.
After I wrote a negative review on Amazon beneath Cliff McManis’ book which I had previously bought and described the abusive church that he leads and that I was a member of for eight years, the church had Amazon revoke ALL of my customer reviewing privileges, which I have given mostly 4-5 stars for other products. I have been a customer of Amazon’s for years and have ordered many products for myself and as gifts for other people. (Cliff McManis also claims he has a Ph.D. and another advanced degree. According to the U.S. Department of Education, they’re FAKE degrees from an unaccredited diploma mill called Faith Bible College in Independence, Missouri. A real Ph.D. from an accredited university takes eight years of very hard work to earn. In the private sector, faking degrees and education gets people fired from their jobs or not hired if it’s learned that they lied about their degrees/education. Additionally, the Missouri Attorney General brought fraud charges against Faith Bible College’s bogus ‘accrediting agency.’ The fraudster accrediting agency was banned from doing any business in Missouri. The fraudsters moved to nearby Arkansas, renamed themselves, and opened up their fraudulent business again. And they’re back in Missouri again. And I contacted the Missouri Attorney General and said, “They’re BAAAACCCCK! Go get them, again!”)
I wrote the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, about the problems with GBFSV, the excommunications and shunnings and the Megan’s List sex offender/child pornographer that the GBFSV pastors/elders gave membership to and access to everything, including putting him in a trusted position to supervise a team of people. The GBFSV pastors/elders maintain that “child porn isn’t a big deal”. It’s a very big deal — a felony crime — and violates federal and state laws. It carries stiff prison time.
Jeff Bezos RESTORED my customer reviewing privileges! (People around the world have heard about this story on the internet and said that they commend me for my stance at GBFSV and Jeff Bezos for backing me up!)
And I just started this blog because I refuse to see that level of abuse that goes on at GBFSV and turn around and be silent. It was terrible and painful to watch good people get kicked out for any trumped up reason, including a doctor in his 70’s and a middle-aged professional woman who volunteers with the mentally ill and the elderly in convalescent hospitals. And then the pastors/elders did it to me.
Thanks Jeff for understanding.
P.S. I also wrote the CEO of Google about my Google review that GBFSV had taken down and the CEO of YELP about my review that got scrubbed there too. Amazon was the first to respond!
by Velour/MtnShepherdess
“When Sheep Fight Back”. Cartoon by David Hayward/The Naked Pastor. ©
I was contacted today through social media from people across the United States who have found the new blog I have started about my former church, Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley, and its spiritual abuse. My ex-pastor was a graduate of John MacArthur’s The Master’s Seminary in Southern California. I liken it to a franchisee training ground, like a 7-11, where graduates learn to open up their own franchise of the JMac “brand”.
I learned from several writers/radio talk show hosts who have been in JMac churches that these abuses that I was subjected to at Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley, that I watched others be subjected to (godly men and women), and many others saw the ‘warning signs’ and the ‘writing on the wall’ and fled, are common-place in JMac churches with JMac graduates.
People who’ve read the blog hope that others around the world will read it, be strengthened by it. I started it because I will no longer be silent. What I witnessed, and what I was subjected to by the pastors/elders, was wrong.
Others who’ve been abused at JMac churches have been cowed into silence. Why? Our numbers are growing and the tide is turning. I will not ratify such abuse. Close your wallet, stop giving your money to support this nonsense, walk out the door, and don’t volunteer your time to any of these abusive churches.
“Paper Matches”
My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That’s the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
“At Your Service,”
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire.”
― Paulette Jiles ©
Artcle by Velour/MtnShepherdess ©
Over on The Wartburg Watch blog http://www.wartburgwatch.com/some commenters/Christians know the history of the abusive heavy-Shepherding Movement. It’s un-Biblical teachings are now spread via Mark Dever’s 9 Marks organization in Washington, D.C. and other authoritarian groups like Acts 29. The most “important mark” of a “healthy church” as Wartburg Watch commenters noted is “Love” in the Bible, which NEVER made it to Mark Dever’s 9 Marks of a “Healthy Church”, which is just abusive Shepherding all over again.
Resource/book: The Shepherding Movement: Controversy and Charismatic Ecclesiolgy by S. David Moore.
“Brad/FuturistGuy posted this on May 23, 2016:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/interesting/books-movies-tv-etc/#comment-254411
After doing some background research, the book I picked as probably the best one for overall history and analysis is *The Shepherding Movement: Controversy and Charismatic Ecclesiology* by S. David Moore.
http://www.amazon.com/Shepherding-Movement-Pentecostal-Theology-Supplement/dp/0826471609/
It would be really helpful to have a summary of key activities and indicators that demonstrate the presence of an underlying pro-Shepherding/authoritarian discipleship paradigm, and what contemporary groups function from that paradigm, and the history of the who and how that system got into those groups. I don’t yet know of any books that cover those details. Maybe a group can take that on sometime …” ]
http://thewartburgwatch.com/interesting/books-movies-tv-etc/#comment-255111
Posted by BL on May 27, 2016, Part 1:
refugee wrote:
What would you say were the 9 (or whatever number) marks of the shepherding movement? Is there a way to sum it up? I can’t seem to get my head around it. I don’t know if there is a CliffNotes version, or not.
I’ll give a shot at an overview of what I know & experienced.
Late 60s – early 70s and the Charismatic Movement swept through the US – impacting all ages (though the largest percentage were highschool & college age) AND all denominations.
People who were not believers as well as people who had been believers and church members for years. These people encountered God, and it changed them. They had tasted and seen that the Lord was good.
I know heroin addicts who stopped overnight and never went back.
I know church members that had been content with feeding on their Sunday sermons, that began voraciously reading Scripture.
I know highschool students who gathered together in groups of 3 or 4 to worship and praise God, to pray to Him and to seek His face.
People continued going to their denominational church, and would meet with other charismatics at other times. Young people who had not been church members, would go wherever they could find a church – to a Southern Baptist church on Sunday mornings, a Methodist church Sunday evening, an Assembly of God on Wednesday night.
And when there wasn’t an official church meeting somewhere, they would get together (again across all denominational lines) in homes, or offices, or the back of a motorcycle shop to worship, to share what they learned that week, to pray for each other, etc.
I say all this to point out that no man was in charge. No organization was determining who did what when.
And in response, several men already in various ministries decided that something needed to be done. There was concern that people were not being held accountable, they might not be maturing.
These were already nationally known speakers and authors, and had established relationships among themselves (that sounds familiar).
It is within the above that the Shepherding/Discipleship movement was launched.
I’ll continue in a following post on what came next.
http://thewartburgwatch.com/interesting/books-movies-tv-etc/#comment-255113
Posted by BL on May 27, 2016, Part 2:
refugee wrote:
What would you say were the 9 (or whatever number) marks of the shepherding movement? Is there a way to sum it up? I can’t seem to get my head around it. I don’t know if there is a CliffNotes version, or not.
Part 2:
The discipleship leaders were initially involved with a ministry in Florida whose leader committed sexual sins. In response to this ministry’s failure, they sought protection from such failure by committing to each other for accountability.
So, we had a large number of on-fire Christians going from one meeting to another, one denomination to another, caravaning to other cities for some traveling evangelist, spending hours reading books or listening to teaching tapes, as well as talking to and teaching each other.
The men, Mumford, Simpson, Prince & Simpson (Baxter joined later) thought that the burgeoning charismatic movement needed to be accountable to someone and that someone needed to oversee it in order for the people to grow and mature.
They named themselves Christian Growth Ministries.
And in no particular order – they emphasized the importance of:
Restoring biblical church government.
The local church.
Covenant.
Spiritual authority, spiritual covering, delegated authority.
Male authority.
Accountability.
Spiritual covering (everyone had to have a personal shepherd).
Unquestioned obedience to your shepherd.
Wives’ submission & obedience to husbands.
Honoring & serving leadership.
Not gossiping, no negative speech, no spreading strife.
This church – Elitism (we’re the ones who are doing it right).
Not making any decisions without your shepherd’s approval.
Unity (with no place for dissent or disagreement.)
Small shepherding groups.
Obeying your shepherd even if he is wrong & trust God will fix it.
Leaving this church and your are leaving God.
Shunning anyone who has left.
.
I’m sure I’ve overlooked some aspects.
by Velour/MtnShepherdess
Conservative Christian Gram3 is a smart woman, wife/mother/and grandmother who has been “keyed out” [excommunicated from a church] for asking hard questions. She knows a great deal of history and is a logical thinker who posts comments on The Wartburg Watch. She has been an enormous help to me in helping me deprogram from the bizarre teachings that I was subjected to at Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley.
Gram3 knows a great deal about church history, including the roots of the Complementarian/Patriarchy movement that we’re seeing in U.S. churches, and the spread of NeoCalvinism. Gram3 and her husband Gramp3 were “keyed out” as she says, excommunicated from their church for asking hard questions.
**************************
Gram3’s post on 5/24/16 http://thewartburgwatch.com/interesting/books-movies-tv-etc/#comment-254543 about the roots of Patriarchy that we are seeing in Christian churches, NeoCalvinism:
I would add to BradFuturist https://futuristguy.wordpress.com/ that Rousas Rushdoony was the fount of Reconstructionism (the Reformed version of Dominionism) which led to Federal Vision which plagues many PCA churches to this day. Federal Vision is Doug Wilson’s theology, though it is taught by Peter Leithart who is still inexplicably tolerated by the PCA.[Presbyterian Church]
Dominionism was also promoted heavily in charismatic circles via TBN and other outlets. The connection between the charismatic form of Dominionism and the Reconstructionist version was Gary North who is Rushdoony’s son-in-law.
Reconstructionism is a perversion of standard Covenant Theology. Some consider it merely an extreme form of Covenant Theology, but I disagree. As Brad said, they wish to establish a theocratic state modeled on the OT theocracy. They take that as a pattern for how we should do government and church and family. This includes the idea of Patriarchy.
Federal Vision shifted the focus from establishing a theocracy to establishing a church that is the center of everything. There is much talk of priests, fathers as priests of their family, etc. Rather than a focus on individual conversion, the FV focuses on baptism and communion. One becomes a Christian by being baptized and one is baptized because one is born into a family headed by a Christian man.
The word “covenant” is plastered all over a lot of different things, and I think it is important to keep those things separate lest we blame people who hold to standard Covenant Theology for the weirdness.
I think a lot of Reconstructionist baggage got ported over to the YRR by guys reading Greg Bahnsen who was an affiliate of Rushdoony. He was a brilliant guy who was highly respected as an apologist in the Van Til school as was Rushdoony.
Gothard is another thing entirely, as far as I know. Wheaton in the 60’s was not a Reformed stronghold. I believe that Gothard’s views were primarily shaped by a fundamentalist mindset in reaction to a liberalizing culture. The answer was more laws and rules rather than an emphasis on regeneration and the internal work of sanctification in the individual believer. He began his work helping parents who were frustrated with their teenagers’ rebellion. Any of us who have raised teenagers can identify with their desperation for answers, and Gothard offered a System for that just like our current Female Subordinationists offer a System which supposedly produces happy marriages and families.
I think there was a lot of cross-pollination among these various streams of thought back in the 60’s and 70’s to get us where we are today. The Christian homeschooling movement is another place where ideas crossed over. Rushdoony decreed that homeschooling is the only Biblical way.
The bottom line is that people will use whatever means works if what they desire is to rule over others. We have all been useful idiots, but typically in the present it is much easier to see when other people are being useful idiots. Retrospectively, some of us have been able to realize that we were useful idiots.
That’s enough for a comment box. If you Google these names and movements, you will find a wealth of information.
http://www.wadeburleson.org/2009/07/god-calls-patriarchal-headship-sinful.html
We live in a day when the basic family unit is disintegrating. Divorces are rampant. Live-in relationships are the norm, and homosexual unions are being recognized by governments. It is right and necessary for the Christian church to both teach and model the Biblical concept of “family” in this age when the Biblical concept of family is seldom understood. However, one of the problems we face as Christians is misinterpreting what God calls the ideal home. There is a growing patriarchal movement among conservative Christian churches, a movement where men are taught that they should have complete “authority” in the home, and that they should “rule” over their wives and children. Many of these conservative Bible-believing Christians who advocate patriarchy honestly believe they are teaching Biblical truth. It is my intention in this post to show that patriarchy is not God’s ideal, but rather, patriarchy is the result of God’s curse on Adam and Eve. When God’s grace appears in the home, patriarchy is expelled.
When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, God pronounced judgment on them in Genesis 3:16-19. God first began with Eve:
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).
Some conservative Bible scholars take the last phrase of v.16 to mean (1). The wife shall have a “sexual desire” for her husband (i.e. “your desire shall be for your husband”), and (2). The husband is to be the head, authority and ruler of the home (i.e. “and he shall rule over you”). These conservative scholars declare that God’s statement in v. 16 is how the husband and wife “should” relate to each other in the home, and how the home ought to be in terms of headship and governance. The man, they say, is to rule over his home; there should be no equality of authority since God established this patriarchal system from the very beginning.
However, other conservative Bible scholars rightly point out that the woman’s “desire” for her husband in Genesis 3:16 is not, at least linguistically and contextually, a sexual desire. One only needs to turn one chapter over to find the same word teshuqah, in Genesis 4:7, where it is also translated “desire.” In the context of Genesis 4:7, teshuqah is used to refer to sin’s “desire” to control Cain. Thus, letting the Bible interpret itself, the word “desire” in both both Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7 means “a desire to control.”
Likewise, the same Hebrew verb mashal, which means “to rule,” is also used in Genesis 4:7, just as it was in Genesis 3:16. Mashal is used in Genesis 4:7 to describe Cain’s efforts to rule over or dominate the sin that is “crouching at his door.” Again, when you let the Bible interpret itself, mashal is used in both Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7 to describe someone who is having to fend off an attack; it carries the idea of warring for control or domination; a battle to see who will be ultimate “ruler.”
Using basic principles of interpretation, one comes up with a very simple explanation of the consequence of God’s curse on Adam and Eve – a consequence that has infiltrated every home since the beginning of time. Simply put, the woman will desire to dominate or control the man, but the man, perhaps even with superior strength, will fight hard to rule over and dominate the woman. Where the curse is present there is a constant battle for control. This is how things are because of sin, not how things in the home ought to be. The patriarchal societies of the world express the reality of male domination, and in certain western Christian cultures, patriarchy is often said to be ordered by God – as if God designed the home to be this way.
Likewise, in some cultures, such as the Kanu of South America, the women “rule” the home, and the men are the “servants.” These women explain their domination of men in the home with the simple phrase – “the gods have made it this way.” What both matriarchal and patriachal proponents need to understand, regardless of the culture from which they come, is that any system designed for “domination” or “control” of the other spouse is the result of sin and the curse on sin.
When the God of all grace gets a hold of a man and a woman in a marriage relationship, no longer will there be a fight to see who dominates and controls the other. Rather, there will be mutual submission between husband and wife (i.e. Ephesians 5:21 – “submitting to one another in reverence to Christ”). Mutual submission, with no thought of “control,” is God’s design for the home. It should be the effort of every Bible-believing church, pastor and teacher to instruct husbands and wives on the sinful nature of any husband or wife seeking to dominate the other spouse.
In fact, I like what Dr. Richard Hess, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Denver Theological Seminary says in his comments on Genesis 3:16. Dr. Hess said all Christians should attempt to pull down any patriarchal (or matriarchal) system of domination and control in the Christian home, and then responds to those who object to any attempt to end patriarchy:
It is no more a sin to end this consequence of the fall than it is to use weed killer to end the promised weeds and thorns in the following verses. No, the emphasis (in Genesis 3:16) is on the terrible effects of sin, and the destruction of a harmonious relationship that once existed. In its place comes a harmful struggle of wills.
I trust that conservative, evangelical churches will continue to proclaim and model God’s design for the home. I just pray that we do a good job of understanding the subject ourselves first. Patriarchy is the result of man’s sinful desire to control and dominate and should be, by God’s grace, avoided at all costs.
In His Grace,
Wade
GBFSV SPIRITUAL ABUSE VICTIMS' RECOVERY 