100 Verse Challenge - Week 15

From dianalovestowrite:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3

Grace under Siege 25: Kangaroo court

     This morning at the end of the first service, the Executive Board of Elders announced a "members only" meeting --with 90 minutes' notice. (The church bylaws require 4 weeks.) As the meeting convened, all nine members of the Executive Board of Elders went gravely up the steps to the stage and gathered around the podium. Since Lou knew that 120+ of us have signed a statement supporting our Statement of Faith, which our elders repudiate, declaring that we would stand with Bear, he started the meeting by having everyone stand.
     One of the elders read a statement denouncing a man I'll call "Bear" for sending out emails that are dividing our church. (These emails contained testimonies by those abused by the leadership over the past 20 years.) The statement called Bear a "sinner" and demanded he "repent." The only time we hear our leaders speak about sin, repentance, and judgment is in relationship to sinning against them, needing to repent to them, and risking judgment ("severe church discipline") from them.*
     The elders took turns in this little charade. Although they admitted Bear had confessed in writing and apologized for hurting anyone by what he has written and for his sometimes imprudent anger and choice of words with them, they indicated that was only the beginning of what would satisfy them. They castigated him for not apologizing for the content of the emails, for which, of course, he has no reason to apologize.
     As his name was read, Bear and his wife moved into the aisle, where at least 30 of us joined them.
     The final elder to speak (before Lou closed in prayer) invited the whole congregation to help bring Bear to repentance and said if that didn't work, they would consider "dismissing" him (a member for twice as many years as Lou and head of multiple church boards and ministries over those years) from membership. But, he added brightly, if Bear repents and is restored to their good graces, we will all celebrate at a party in January!

*Except during this Advent. Suddenly the sermons of all the pastors have been refreshingly orthodox. 

Glimpses of Grace 24: Shaking hands

     This morning at church I was able to make eye contact with Jesus Eyes. His eyes no longer shine with the light of Jesus; usually he gives me a sheepish glance or lowers them in embarrassment. I know that, early in Lou's administration, JE himself was singled out and threatened with discipline for not coming into conformity with the elders' agenda. He gave in--and now for years they have had him doing to others what they did to him.  

     I held out my hand and told him I forgive him. Taking it, he said, "I don't know what I did to offend you. I don't really think I badgered you--"  

     "I was there--," my husband said firmly.

     "I know."

     "--and you did!"

     He murmured an apology.

                                                                ---
     Three Sundays ago, Jerry and I were impressed by one of Lou's sermons. Impressed may be putting it a little strong; Lou presented parallels between the garden of Eden and the temple. They  were new to us but seemed legitimate. He did start out with a premise that made my jaw drop, as an author: If you know the end of a book you know the beginning (or was it the other way around?). I thought, If you don't have conflict, you don't have a plot, and it you don't have a plot, you don't have a book. The Bible has conflict and a plot--God loves man, man spurns and abuses that love, God gives His life in the ultimate act of love to restore man to His good graces.

     Anyway, Lou went on to stress, with many examples, God wants to be with us--He was with mankind in the garden and He wants to be with us through eternity. He implied that the Bible flows directly from one to the other, but in the middle of this talk he did actually stick in a bit about Jesus rescuing man through His death and resurrection.

     We thought that merited our approval that he is going in the right direction. So we moved against the flow after the service to go forward and thank him. He always has three or four people asking him questions after his sermons; I didn't think anything of it. I didn't notice they were all members of the Executive Board of Elders and that they were not there casually but as bodyguards.

     So there was an interesting development as we approached him. Everything went into slow motion. Remember that we have sent out emails about false teaching and the response of our shepherds, which is to flog the flock. As I came toward Lou from Lou's left, with Jerry right behind me, and, smiling, held out my hand, the bodyguards apparently went on high alert. The one who served as their Communications Consultant at an EBOE meeting I haven't told you about yet was standing at Lou's right shoulder. By the time Lou turned, smiled, and took my hand, CC had moved completely around Lou's back and had interposed himself between us.

     I have to laugh, remembering. I am a grandmother, five feet tall and 118 pounds. My hand was open so they could tell it didn't have a weapon in it. But they still felt it necessary to protect our senior pastor from me.

     Go figure.

Glimpses of Grace 23: "With all due respect--"

     This was Jerry's and my response to the unsolicited, one-sided email sent to everyone in the church to tell them not to read or send out unsolicited, one-sided emails. ;o) Although we do not identify the elders or pastors mentioned by those we quote, they pretty much all referred to Lou, Hatchet Man, and Jesus Eyes.

10-27-11
Dear Brothers on the Elder Board, 

     In your recent e-mail (Oct. 11) to all of us, you appealed for everyone to "address concerns in a Biblical and Christ-honoring manner." We heartily concur with this advice. We only wish everyone abided by it!

     Over the years God has sent scores of faithful members of our church to our leaders to show them Scripture and hold them accountable to be true to the Bible and our Statement of Faith. Those with concerns have been careful to follow Matthew 18, documenting them Biblically and taking them directly to those whose teaching has not been in accord with the Bible, rather than spreading them as gossip. As one woman put it, "I came to have concerns all on my own. . . As I have become aware that there are others with similar concerns I have observed that they too developed and examined their own concerns in their own way. . . I have heard 'I thought I was the only one' or 'We thought we were the only ones.' Thus, they did not come to their questions and quest for answers because of 'gossip' that they had heard."

     Unfortunately many of these people  (we personally know of more than a dozen) report that certain of the leaders have not received their concerns "in a Biblical and Christ-honoring manner." They typically report responses to their concerns with phrases like the following actual quotes: 
     "When I tried to bring these (concerns) to (pastor), he blasted me with anger.    When I tried to bring these to (elder) he blew me out in vicious, hateful anger on the phone. He misrepresented what we're saying. (Another elder) too accused me of saying things I've never said. Every avenue I tried to go through to speak to the leaders was squashed." (Woman)
     "You cannot talk to (pastor); he just won't listen." (Woman)

     "When I raised objections to the elders, they became almost militant about it." (Woman)

     "(Pastor) raised his voice in a threatening fashion. . . He was intensely intimidating." (Man) 
     "They wouldn't let me tell them my concerns and said I was being 'divisive.'" (More than one person)

     "Two of the elders confronted me publicly when I came to teach the women. They were standing in the doorway and told me I was not permitted to come in. They told me someone had complained about me and wouldn't tell me who it was. They did not instruct that person to bring their complaint to me directly, as Matthew 18 commands, so I could make amends. On a later occasion when I tried to protest this injustice (a third elder) screamed and yelled at me, called me a liar, falsely accused me, and demanded I sign a list of 'confessions' he had prepared, threatening to bring me before the church for 'severe church discipline' if I mentioned this to anyone." (Former head of Women's Ministries)

     "People I deeply respected had talked to (pastor). Very capable people have questioned him and got no place. I almost gagged at the way (elder) has treated several people. So unkind and abrupt. He needs to repent and go ask forgiveness of the people he's offended. I don't see repentant hearts among the elders." (Man)

     "I felt totally intimidated. They scared me. I was shaking." (Woman)

     "I lost it. I was bawling." (Woman)

     And always, "They told me not to talk about it."

     This lying and intimidation has apparently been a pattern among some of the leadership of this church for years:

     One elder left the elder board when he was instructed to tell people that a decision had been "unanimous." "I told them that was a lie and I would not lie for them," he said.

     One of three staff members forced out of GBC all at the same time said, "They made me leave the church without telling me why. They even wrote up a list of 'confessions' and signed my name to them to present to the church body. If (one of the other two) hadn't threatened to speak up and say it was a lie if they read the 'confession' publicly, they would have gone through with it."

     Another man on staff briefly said, "In the service the leaders told the congregation I was leaving the church to take a job in the private sector. When I got out in the parking lot afterwards I broke down in tears. It was all lies. They told me to leave without telling me why. I didn't have another job."

     Because most of these people did not talk about their experience and subsequently left our church, it was only recently they discovered that almost all of them share the experience of having approached certain elders with truth and having had their concerns dismissed out of hand. They were blamed, shamed, threatened, intimidated, or in other ways verbally abused.

     Others whom we know, still in our church, are currently experiencing this. The two of us personally experienced what felt intimidating by an elder when we attempted to send out e-mails to some of you asking prayer for our church in our capacity as Prayer Coordinators. On two different occasions this elder called and kept demanding to know why we were asking for prayer for our church, who we were sending our letters to and what we were going to be praying. When I (Jessica) asked whether it was all right to pray for a certain meeting which I had not realized was confidential he said, "WE'RE praying!" in such a tone that it was clear the answer was no. When I told him I was feeling attacked and badgered--by this time I was shaking and in tears--he said, "I'm not badgering you!" and kept on making the same demands, even ordering us not to send out letters asking for prayer without his permission!

     We want to hasten to add that this kind of treatment has not been our experience or that of others from the majority of our leaders. But it has been the experience of a significant number of people from the same handful of pastors and elders.

     We have been told by other elders that the elders in question "are human" and "under stress." But that does not excuse sinful behavior on their part any more than it would excuse such behavior in any of us. We're all human and often under stress but anyone who responds in this kind of brutalizing manner to people of sincerity are responsible to confess their anger to God and to ask forgiveness from those they have abused.

Sincerely,

Jerry and Jessica Renshaw

P.S. No one has been blind-copied in this e-mail.

Glimpses of Grace 22: The e-mail to end all e-mails

     The Board of Elders took decisive, if passive-aggressive, action against those exposing them. Almost every service opened with a different elder reading some prepared statement or prayer misquoting Bible verses to declare things like "the elders are worthy of double honor" and declaring their "unanimous" support of Lou. (We know they aren't unanimous; at least three of them stand with us in opposing his doctrine and the personality cult surrounding him.) 
    Lou had finished his series on the fruit of the spirit, or rather, he had declared himself bored with the series and said he wanted to switch to something else. I noticed the fruits he had decided not to preach on, ironically, were "gentleness" and "self-control." Now in his sermons, Lou would manage to get a dig in at those sending out emails even if it had to come from a verse in I Corinthians during his new series on Exodus.
     In the Life Groups, held in private homes, they warned against reading unsolicited e-mails. They mentioned the "Renshaw issue" by name and told people not to speak to us or read what we write. (Of course we try not to send anything to anyone who doesn't want it.)
     The day after a group of intercessors agreed God was "changing the angelic guard" and giving us "a higher level of authority for a higher level of warfare, a friend in Oregon texted us, "Stand firm. The enemy has not retreated. He is just gathering more workers." That was at 7:48 on the morning of October 11. 
     At 4:01 that afternoon, we received an email, Important Communication from the Leadership of Grace, sent to everyone in our church of 800 who has email. It referred to "unsolicited emails containing charges, accusations, inferences and innuendo against the pastoral staff and elders of the church" with an "appeal to the people involved to address concerns in a Biblical and Christ-honoring manner." They called themselves "men of God" and defended their commitment to "personally living and leading God's church under the authority of God's Word." 
     They certainly were "gathering more workers."
     It was signed by the head of the Executive Board of Elders, the one I have chosen to call Hatchet Man. It sounded so sane and reasonable even we could almost be persuaded they were the victims.

Hail to Long Beach

Driveway

     Last night, in a freak thunder-and-lightning storm, we heard the thundering of hooves overhead. No, not reindeer, not just rain, but hail.
     I know these pictures seem pathetic to those of you who have real winters but in Jerry's 64 years, including in utero, it has only been cold enough to snow twice in Long Beach. So you know ice cubes falling from the sky here is news!
     As soon as we got out the camera, it turned to rain and started washing away.

Garage roof and back yard (through screen), and Santa-capped neighbor to south!

Patio

Glimpses of Grace 21: In His hands

     The following Sunday morning while we were singing in the main service, I asked God again to search my heart and reveal whether we are the ones believing lies or if I have sinned against anyone in anything I have said or written about the leaders of this church. I told him it does not matter what happens to me.      
     If I am wrong, I told him, if I have hurt any innocent person, do to me whatever You will--like King David when God offered him three disciplinary options, "Let me fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men!"
     I told God whatever punishment I deserve if I am the one deceived is deserved--shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?--"but Lord, You and Your reputation are what matters. You are good, kind, all-loving, all-righteous, Almighty, all knowing, everywhere present. There is none like You! All I care about is that You be glorified. Even if we are right, it does not matter what happens to me, they cannot separate me from You, they cannot destroy my soul. At 'worst,' I will just go be with You forever. That is a good thing."

     As I prayed, I felt slight but definite pressure in the centers of the palms of my hands. I looked at them and could not see anything. But God spoke to my spirit and said, The nails which went through My hands are going through yours, too. I was persecuted and you are being persecuted with Me. We are being nailed to the cross together. I am with you. 
      Wow.