Page Six
Posted on July 16th, 2005 by catalyst into the Uncategorized categoryI apologize for not posting much this week. I recently got a new job and am trying to make a good impression with my boss. I expect this will last about another week, and then I’ll be back to checking the blog hourly and reading every page on espn.com and craigslist.
In the meantime, allow me to share some gossip and clarify a misunderstanding. Apparently, the business community at City Bible believes this blog was set out to attack them personally. This could not be further from the truth. At the risk of offending our resident anti-consumer Nader-voter (Jiminy Cricket), me and JP are big believers in business and money. We both work hard every day to make money, and we would love to have a successful business. We’re not attacking business, we’re attacking a church that runs itself like a business.
Anyway, apparently City Bible is beginning to feel a backlash from their Business Leaders. The leaders are feeling manipulated. They feel the church expects them to be fundraisers. They feel City Bible values them because of their money and nothing else. (You think?) They feel used.
Side note and blind item: Which long time BT/CBC business member is privately fueding with Pastor Frank?
This all goes to support our claim that the problem with City Bible isn’t the individuals who attend the church. It’s the mindset of the leadership. A mindset that places an inappropriate emphasis on money, and a leadership that uses Christ’s grace for fundraising purposes. (not cool).
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July 16th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Focus on the Gospel, the cross, repentance, denying yourself, a low view of man/ a high view of God, and they’ll lose 50% of their congregation. The leadership doesn’t want to lose any more people (wallets) than neccessary. What you see at City Bible is what Deitrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Listen to the sermons and tell me if any of the five topics above are preached throughout the year. Chances are good you won’t hear them in fear of people exiting the back doors and never returning.
July 16th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Amen to that comment. cbc might respond that they do mention those 5 points all the time.
for instance repentance, they encourage people to repent of public and “outright” sins, but i never once heard form PF or any other minister of cbc, or member for that matter, that they should repent of their own righteousness.
Denying ones self if refered to when they ask for “sacrificial” offerings above and beyond the tithe.
The gospel , they might respond, is for baby christians and is discarded like a childs walker toy, they out grow and get beyond that, learn to do without it.
A high view of God is that they worship Him for 30-40 minutes with free “expressive worship”.By the way “everyone stand up now, I want everyone to strech your hands to Salem , now D.C., now vancouver, and finally jerusalem. I want everyone to worship God in thier prayer language.” What freedom.
The cross is forgotten much like the gospel. Tozer said many christians have made a new cross that is easy to cary, the wood is not rough and splintered but smooth and comfortable, and best of all the new cross requires no death. so now you can market it because we can make it appealing.
Weap for those who have made a desert in the name of the Lord.
July 17th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Just FYI, dudes:
I do share a birthday with Nader, but I didn’t vote for him (I fundamentally believe that putting a Pisces in charge of the country is a poor idea).
I have been known to shop at the local all-vegetarian co-op, but I’m much more frequently seen at the mall and Starbucks. I’m not anti-consumer….just anti-hypocrisy (I hope).
Just a little trivia, that’s all….
July 17th, 2005 at 10:47 am
Hey Cat and Reformed, have you seen the new letter CBC has sent out? The title is CBC Woship Ministry Standards for Social Drinking and Social Gambling. The people will have a “no drinking at all” standard. Total Abstinence. and the only type of gambling allowed is poker with chips absolutely no money. “They do not want to open the door that has proven to be a very destructive vice in our society”. Well last time I checked Starbucks and Crispy Cream Doughnuts were the pastor’s vices. It was funny if you listen to the second sermon that he taught last sunday, he says well now I am going to go to starbucks, he chuckles nervously and then says i am not addicted ha ha ha. Yeah right if he didn’t have that caffiene drip that he has attached to his stomach going 24/7, that man would have the worst headache alive and wouldn’t be able to function, Thank God for opening a 24 hour Starbucks in Gateway. Anyways these knew rules apply to all leaders on any level at CBC. So good luck CBC leadership filtering out all the “heathens” at your church. I hope that all the leaders will be honest with their pastor and tell them that they did have that glass of wine last night with the family or that happy hour at Sanfords was fun with the guys. God Bless to all the Posters of this blog and thank you Morton boys for giving us a voice.
July 17th, 2005 at 11:00 am
To JC: No worries. I was just poking fun at you… but thanks for the info.
To Hannah: I’ve gotta get my hands on this letter. I’ll put JP on the trail.
Also, I’d love to know the story behind this letter. Who, on the ministry team, is drinking and gambling? (Actually, the better question is probably who isn’t drinking and gambling?)
Someone should also remind the leaders, that most of these worship members are volunteering their time to help the church. And may not take kindly to being told what they can and cannot do in areas that are not clearly Biblical.
July 17th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
I just emailed it to your brother
July 17th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
I wonder if the church staff ever get tired of being babysat.
July 17th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Yes, we do. When you’re so worried that you’ll screw something up that will get back to somebody on gossip hill, it’s time to step out and let someone else be pushed around for a while.
July 17th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Yeah, but why should anyone be pushed around? Granted, someone working for a church rather than some other kind of business should expect that their lives are open for a fair bit of scrutiny. But I would think that if a pastor has enough faith in someone to hire them into a pastoral position, than he should trust that they would know how to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. Yes, there are incidences of pastoral staff acting inappropriately, but taking it to the other extreme is only going to leave people afraid to make any decisions or take a step in any direction where they feel the Lord might be leading them. And isn’t there grace for those of us who sincerely repent and recognize our “wrongdoings”, even if it was a completely innocent mistake? What kind of a message does that send to new believers, or solid Christians who would like to get involved? I know that stops a lot of people from getting involved - it’s just so frustrating not being treated like an adult. The decisions as to what you allow and don’t allow into your life are between you and God and no one else. Any other way and it feels force-fed, and it definitely won’t stick.
July 19th, 2005 at 10:21 am
So, I realize this is just rumor, but…he repented and was still asked not to be involved? Way to teach people grace and forgiveness, FD!
This isn’t my story, but I know personally a person who was involved in a volunteer ministry capacity at CBC. Pastoral staff-person approached him one day to discuss his involvement. The pastor had heard that he had been drinking and the volunteer confirmed it openly and honestly. Pastor delivered an ultimatum: he had to stop drinking or stop being involved and then gave him 24 hours to think about. Volunteer said, “I don’t need 24 hours - I quit.” I doubt if they ever spoke again. Rather than discuss the church’s philosophy on anything they simply deliver a mandate and it’s their way or the highway.
I’ve been involved in other ministries, one where the pastor strongly preferred that his members did not drink in a motivation of love, and due to my current location in the USA, most Christians have no problem with drinking at all.
All that said, they turned a cultural or moral preference into a spiritual mandate. There have been people reading the blog asking what’s wrong with CBC and how they have hurt people. This is a class A example of legalism hurting its members.
Jiminy, please tell me you were being sarcastic about the Nader/Pisces thing… haha
July 19th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
RE:The people will have a “no drinking at all” standard.
Personally I believe that if you are going to have a strict standard at your church then you need to back it up; so to that I say “Good job Hank”, however I recently had a friend have a discussion with Hank about drinking in which Hank said (paraphrased and once removed from original conversation) “We know people are going to drink on vacation, and we don’t make a big deal about that”. To that I have to say “Shame on you Hank, shame on you. What are you teaching the children?”
Essentially this is the problem with today’s church. The line between right and wrong has been completely blurred to where it’s wrong only if you get caught. Moral standards apply only when people are watching. This applies to many different aspects of Christianity. The worst of course being sex. If you get caught having sex nothing happens. If you get pregnant however, up to the front of the church to apologize. It’s really sad how many times sin gets swept under the rug in order to “protect those involved”. I’m curious though, is the rug fire proof? Will it protect them from hell? Maybe that should be the definition of hell “Public Awareness of Sin”. Sounds pretty crazy.
When my family was at CBC we were involved with a young married cell group where one of the leaders had an affair. Do you think the leader had to repent in front of the church? How about to the cell group? Of course not. In fact they did their best to keep it a complete secrete from everyone in the group. They didn’t want people to be unable to forgive the leader, well guess what? To this day people still talk about the affair. Why? BECAUSE WE ALL SAW YOU SWEEPING! In church when people start sweeping every stops to find out why.
Maybe the leader has asked God for forgiveness and maybe God has forgotten all about it, but how would we know? The worst part about it was that one of the other members of this cell group was a young couple who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock years earlier and had to get up in front of the church to repent.
Tsk,tsk,tsk what are we to think?
July 19th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Reformed Pope, I’m with you.
CBC’s LEADERS ARE NOT CONCERNED ABOUT THEIR PEOPLE’S LOVES OR HEARTS; THEY’RE CONCERNED ABOUT CBC’S IMAGE! That’s why caffeine addication is “OK” but tobacco or other addictions are not; it’s all relative to what CBC, as it’s own bubbled-up cloister, deems as right or wrong. That’s why, to them, drinking on vacation or otherwise under the radar is “acceptable,” but conspicuous, public drinking is “evil.” That’s why “hidden” sexual immorality (i.e., that which is only known to leaders through confession) is ignored but any resulting pregnancies beget (forgive the pun) public stonings as transitions between “worship” & “the word.” CBC wants to be perceived as “anti-sin,” but they’re really anti-anything that “tarnishes” the image they think they have built. What about the image of GOD????? What about God’s love for the people He died to reconcile to Himself? Did he publicly shame the prostitute? NO, he called the Pharisees on their self-righteousness. He cares about what sin does to our hearts and our lives; He doesn’t care about it making him look bad.
The legalism, hypocrisy, dishonoring (to put it nicely) of weaker members of the Body (or at least those whose weaknesses cannot be brushed under the rug), etc., at CBC that we’re discussing here…it’s all such B.S., and diametrically opposed to the Cross, the heart of God, and real Christianity.
Freedom is not about drinking or eating (i.e., what we do or don’t ingest). It’s about who we are in Christ because of what HE did and does for and in us. It’s about abundant life, not living in fear, wondering if today will be the day that I will actually step outside of the “community standards” (note I did NOT say Scriptural directives) and have the church I’ve called home for years point its finger at me and call me ruined…not living in torture and fear that God’s love for me or favor on my life is earned or maintained by my behavior. My abundant life includes hundreds of things, including a couple of drinks now and then. Jesus drank wine often. His first miracle was to turn water into wine in order for people to drink it. I challenge anyone who adheres to the theory that the word “wine” means grape-juice in the OT/NT to share with us how the refrigeration systems back then kept grapes from fermenting rapidly. YES, people abuse alcohol. People also abuse all kinds of other things. Worse, we also abuse each other & ourselves. Everything is a carcinogen, so what are we to do? The cancer of sin is in our hearts. Christ made that plain. Not whether we drink alcohol or don’t.
I know, I’m preaching to the choir. Like most of you, I could tell horrific stories of the hypocrisy of CBC. I wish I could forget them, but am actually grateful for them, as they serve as lessons of where we can all end up if we try to define Christianity as something other than the way Christ does. I thank God daily that he has delivered me from legalism and from lawlessness and that I’m just IN HIM.
July 19th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
LIVES, not LOVES. Sorry.
July 20th, 2005 at 11:08 am
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July 20th, 2005 at 11:15 am
FICM,
Sarcastic how? Have you ever MET a Pisces that you’d like to put in charge of the free world?
….yeah, that’s what I thought.
So, we know that drinking’s a no-no….I suppose that means dabbling in astrology is right out, eh?
[wink!]
Darn, and I was hoping I could be on the worship team after all these years of musical training… I coulda been a contender!
July 20th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
I hate to burst your bubble, but musical training (let alone musical proficiency) is not a prerequisite to be on the worship team at City Business. What counts is whose car you’re willing to wash.
July 20th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
Yeah, I side-mic’d at genchurch a couple times cause I promised them I’d raise my hands and smile really big during worship, but I think they had my mic off the whole time. Again, image is everything.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:02 am
I seriously think HTML needs an “I’m just kidding” tag…
CBC practises its own form of astrology. Instead of which house or sign you were born under, they check to see whose house you were born in or married into.
I was a total outsider and I have never had a chance. I tried to date royalty once and it turned rather ugly. And for the record, she dropped me for not wanting to be a pastor or a missionary. She couldn’t stoop low enough to be with me, I guess. I’m not bitter - I’m glad I didn’t end up there or I’d be trapped forever within the system. *scary music*
July 22nd, 2005 at 1:32 pm
FICM,
Congrats on escaping the clutches of a woman so obviously bound and determined to be poor….
Well, I guess not if her intended kept climbing the CBC ladder…I hear you can make the Fortune 500 list if you wax Hank’s car 11 times in a week.
Ok, so I don’t really hear that. I made it up. I’m a bad, sarcastic Pisces. Oh, and now I just got worse by using astrology to bait people yet again. Darn.
Jeremy, don’t feel bad about having the side mic turned off. Actual phonation usually makes CBCer’s nervous. I think they’re afraid you might make up a harmony part and sing it, which is almost as dangerous as knowing how to read musical notation (just ask John Calvin).
Everyone knows that Jesus was into PowerPoint (although it was just overheads back in the day), and hymnals were definitely Satan’s idea. I mean, think about it. Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics use hymnals, and we all know they’re headed straight for hell (not on the top 10 list, but still…). I’ve even heard that some of them sing harmony WHILE reading music, and sometimes not even just in choir. It’s scandalous…they’re using their cognitive abilites in church.
The point of side mic-ing is less like “American Idol” and more like “So you think you can Dance”. You’re supposed to let your booty….oops, I mean your raptly spiritual-looking face do the talking.
October 29th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
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