I do believe Frank Damazio just referenced this blog in his last sermon. It comes at about the 16 minute and 42 second point in this sermon. Here is the email exchange between Justin and I regarding it:

RP: 

Frank just referenced us at the 16min 42sec point of his latest sermon. And he doesn't read our blog…right.

Catalyst:

Actually, it was a pretty good put down. Makes us look petty.

Touché, PF, touché.

Did you listen to the whole sermon? It sounds like a lot of people are fed up and leaving, and this is his way of trying to get them back.

RP:

Yeah, I listened to the whole sermon…fairly boring…much like Marc's sermon last week. They are on this whole "Community" kick, which is all a bunch of obvious stuff about how they need to care for each other and love each other and watch out for each other. It's all good, but it's not exactly ground breaking stuff. 

Marc set the stage last week and this week Frank followed up with a "We (the pastors) were never meant to do it all on our own. We need you to do your part in reaching out to each other through small groups etc…"

The sad thing is its all a bunch of bull. CBC want's to control anything that would damage them, but apparently won't waste their time working with issues that could damage individual people…and it's all about Community with in THEIR church. The rest of the world can just go to hell I guess. 

I don't know if people are leaving (more than they normally do), I think this is just part of their standard manipulation technique to convince people how important their church is.

Whatever…I'm just glad that Frank is finally firing back at us. Good for him.

Update: Here is a short clip of the mention in Frank's sermon.

short.mp3

It's not that impressive, except that it's been two years in the making.

I'm a huge American Idol fan, and have been voting non-stop for my boy Sanjaya. (The pony-tail mo-hawk killed me.)

But in other AI news, I ran across this interesting tidbit about contestant Chris Sligh. Evidently, he is a worship leader at his church and was recently kicked out of Bob Jones University.

Sligh also talked to the News about being kicked out of the Christian fundamentalist college, Bob Jones University, for attending a contemporary Christian concert featuring the group 4Him.

He enrolled at another Christian school, North Greenville University, and is three credits shy of a music degree.

Leaving Bob Jones "was actually good, because I had been trying to figure out how to leave," he said.

What!?! Sligh was kicked out of BJU for going to a 4Him concert! I didn't know there were people who admitted to being 4Him fans, let alone go to their concerts.  But wow! And I thought Temple Christian High School was lame.

1. It's easy to figure out. Just take your paycheck and move the decimal one place to the left.

2. No need to pray for an answer about how much to give or to whom.

3. Keeps the pastor off my butt.

4. I can glare at the guilty looking shmucks during stewardship sermons.

5. Monogrammed tithe envelopes.

6. Blowing off pan-handlers with a smug "I gave to my church"

7. Easy to figure out my charitable contributions for Schedule A.

8. An occasional nod or wink from the pastor during stewardship sermons.

9. Watching the ushers dive for my check when I drop it on the floor.

10. Woo Hoo! 90% left for me!

KariMichelle writes:

Well, JP maybe you need to take it to the next step. Bring all of us with you. I'd be happy to sign a petition or pen a letter asking Frank to meet with you and I'm sure everyone else here would too. You kind of represent all of us. If he is truly a man of God, I'm not sure how he could refuse. But if he did, then take it to the eldership. If they still refused, we could excommunicate THEM.

Unfortunately, I don't think he would meet with us, and since Frank's eldership is made up mostly of "yes men" I don't see that going anywhere. Of course the idea of trying to excommunicate THEM is hilarious…

Personally, I was quite shocked that he refused to meet just with me. I realize there might not be much to come out of our conversation, but Frank loses so much credibility by hiding from me. This is why I was so impressed with Howard Rachinski for taking the time to talk. He showed he wasn't hiding anything and that he wasn't scared of me. Frank is simply furthering his controlling stereotype.

The problem for them is this, by meeting with me they lend credibility to what we do and say here…and the second they do that their empire could crumble. Of course by refusing to meet, they go against everything the BIBLE says and teaches…clearly they are more concerned with their empire then the Bible…I think we've covered that in a few places on this blog.

For all you CBC faithful who read this blog, let this be a sign of where Frank's heart is really at. He's currently speaking on the importance of Community, talking about how we need to spend time with each other, loving each other, caring for each other…why then won't he commune with me? 

Is community supposed to be easy? Should you only care for those who are in agreement with you? Are his sermons only meant for those inside his church…should you ignore the rest of the world?

Here is a fitting comment from Tom Sparks in regard to CBC not wanting to meet or debate scripture with me:

He doesn't want to debate scriptures for two reasons.  1)  Because it is just too hard to biblically prove and support the doctrine they hold.  They know many great writers have written rebuttals to this approach they take, and they don't want to get into the debate.  2)  Because if they allow you to take them on in debate then they will feel they have to give the same treatment to everyone that comes along, and they know it would wear them out and distract them from the goals they have in ministry.  To one extent this is reasonable, but if they take this position then they must understand there will be those who censure them, both privately, and publicly on your blog.  They can't have it both ways.  If you reference in your blog comments that the things you write are not about a personal unresolved offense with Frank, but rather with the goal of helping folks get free from false doctrine and its effects, then they will have to just leave you alone, unless they desire to turn it into a formal debate, which they understand will play out on the blog before the watching world.  This would be problematic for them, since they are clear that they want to be able to do what they do inside their four walls, without censure and debate.  Sorry Frank, but you can't have it both ways…

Actually Tom, as long as they can convince people that CBC is THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY and "SPIRITUAL COVERING"…they can have whatever they want.

David Mackin sends in this post:

What Can Christians Do About Greedy Pastor/Leaders?
  
20/20 recently exposed certain ministries for not being transparent about their finances, e.g., Paul & Jan Crouch (TBN), Benny Hinn, etc. (see: ministrywatch.com). StopBuildingTheirKingoms laments:"We can't stop these [greedy] preachers unless we first stop people from having itching ears in the first place…"

What could concerned Christians really do about situations like what happened after my former church's last annual business meeting:
 
The last year that I remember them having an open annual church business meeting was the year that the treasurer, received some very direct and challenging questions from the congregation from men of integrity. The Senior Pastor, in my view, hated public questions because they made him feel out of control and put on the spot. From what I can remember, after that meeting, This Pastor stopped having the annual open business meeting for church members, Instead, he told the church members that if they were interested in the annual financial report, that they could obtain a copy of it from the church office. To my knowledge, the cancellation of such a meeting was and is illegal for a 501c3 non-profit corporation.   

What can concerned Christians do about the many senior pastors who hide their salary/benefit packages along with their outside incomes from books, tapes and honorariums:  

In my opinion,  many senior pastors/preachers, esp. of large independent local churches, purposely hide the exact amounts of their salary/benefit packages from their congregations - from the very people who pay for them! -  so that they can avoid potential criticism and questions. In this area, and if done correctly, this is where denomination churches are a safer place in which to invest than many large, mega-churches run by business-oriented, charismatic pastors, who run everything from behind the scenes and, in most cases, give the false impression that they are genuinely accountable to a "team" which are little more than a group of hand-picked Yes Men.    

Here are a few practical  ideas:
  
(1) Whenever Christians donate to a ministry make sure first that they only donate to one that has the seal of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (see: www.ecfa.org).

(2)  Never give to a local church that is completely run by a senior pastor who can hire and fire at will; who sets his own salary, gives himself raises, creates his own benefit packages.

(3) Start a movement in local churches that are run by senior pastors to re-do their church constitutions and by-laws that presently give too much power to the senior pastor over the finances of the church or ministry.  

(4) Insist in your own local church that every dollar is specifically accounted for in the church's annual financial report; and that the annual financial report does not use photos and a fancy layout to distract the people from the bare numbers of the report (like some of the Church reports I have seen!).

(5) Make sure that the annual financial report has been prepared by an independent accounting firm outside of the church or ministry (smaller churches probably won't be able to afford this).

(6) Insist that all church staff salaries are specifically mentioned in the annual financial report, esp. the senior pastor's  (because his is normally the highest) and not all just lumped together under "salaries" or "overhead."

(7) Never give to a local church or ministry until they supply you an official copy of their annual financial report. If the majority of Christians would insist on this, the churches and ministries would feel the pressure to begin doing so if they wanted donations to continue! (The only para-church ministry that immediately sent me a copy of their annual financial report when I sent in a donation was Good Samaritan Ministries in Beaverton, Oregon, run by Betty Mitchell, Ph.D. This really impressed me, and I think that I only gave them $50.00!

What ideas do you have by which Christians can begin to call their pastor/leaders to financial account and begin to stop so many of them from exploiting God's people and living like kings?

Well, it had to happen. Generation Churchers, once enamored with Judah for his frank sex-talk, are now divided because of his conflicting messages of “sexual purity” and “the joy of sex”.

Supporters of Judah have donned buttons to voice their support.

A few prefer to conceal their support.

As in every movement, there are the zealots, seen running around the UW campus like 200 lb. canaries.

While the opposition has adopted a singular message of protest.

We can only hope that all the sexual tension at GC won't lead to dancing. 

 (Nod to CafePress.com for the fine graphics/products). 

I just remembered that I sent a letter to Frank a couple of months before I sent the email i posted earlier today. This was my first attempt at communication with Frank Damazio, he never sent me a response. 

Now that I think about it, he probably never got a chance to read it. I bet it never made it past his secretary…well Frank, since we all know you were lying about reading this blog, here is a letter I sent you back in November. Please feel free to respond.

I have removed the personal names from the letter (some people don't like their names being associated with this blog) but the rest is exactly the same.

November 20, 2006

Pastor Frank,

I have a question for you, but first I would like to clear up a couple of things. First and foremost, I DO NOT HATE YOU. I really don't, in fact, in most of my dealings with you; you treated me kindly and fairly.

Many people have brought up the "_________" situation to me, and told me that I am bitter towards you for the way it was handled. I want to make sure you know that although at one time I was very angry and bitter, God has shown me where I was at fault in the situation. When you are young you often look past what you have done and just blame others, fortunately I was able to get through that time.

Looking back on how I acted during high school, I can now see that I created a negative image for myself. I wanted to be known as a trouble maker, I wanted to challenge people and I wanted to do things my way; clearly your response to kick me out of school was justified for many reasons besides my involvement with ____________ (I am assuming you know the situation that I'm talking about. I believe you recently met with _____ ________ about it.) Hopefully you can believe me when I say that I hold no anger towards you.

So…now you are probably thinking "What about the City Business Blog"? Well, simply put, I disagree with many of the teachings at CBC and since you are the head pastor you get most of the abuse from us on our blog.  I feel it is unfortunate, but I think our blog has been a "necessary evil" to help many who have been hurt by the Christian Church.

Anyway, I'm hoping you can help me clear something up. I often listen to your sermons online and recently I heard your teaching titled Miracle Seed for a Miracle Harvest.  At this point I don't really want to get into debating the "Faith Harvest Principles" with you, that gets a little complicated, but what I would like to find out is why you chose to use certain scriptures. I feel that the scriptures you quoted were taken out of context and used to prove a point that YOU wanted to make. This was a little offensive to me.

In your sermon you quoted Genesis 8:22, Ephesians 3:20, and Luke 7:9 and used them to show (1) Planting Seeds and Harvesting is a Biblical Principle (2) God can do anything and everything for you if you give (3) All this requires great faith.

The problem, as I see it, is these scriptures are not talking about that at all.

Genesis 8:22 is talking about God's promise to never flood the earth (a great blessing which has nothing to do with planting seeds).

Ephesians 3:20 is a great scripture on the POWER of Jesus, but seems to be asking that we are "rooted…in love" (not giving) and again has nothing to do with planting any seeds.

Luke 7:9 is about Jesus healing the Centurion's servant; a great story about faith, but again, Jesus doesn't mention any seed planting or harvesting.

It is my belief that we, as Christians, need to be very careful in our use of the Bible. I can't see how these 3 scriptures apply to the sermon you preached. However, I am no Bible scholar and so hopefully, you can show me how my assumptions are wrong.

The reason I am sending you this letter is so that by communicating directly, you can help me better understand your philosophies and hopefully I can find peace in that, thus keeping me from "airing my complaints" online. I should tell you that I had originally tried to get an answer on this from _____, but he refused to talk to me about it. It's probably better this way; you were the one I should have gone to in the first place.

Thank you for your time,

Johnpaul Morton

At one point last December I decided it would be worthwhile for me to attempt to speak with Frank Damazio and try and reconcile. Clearly, as I have previously stated, there are things that I have done in the "wrong spirit" which I felt I owed Frank an apology for. Here is the email I sent him and the following is Frank's reply (I actually didn't have Frank's email address so I just guessed that it was Frank@citybiblechurch.org and the response was from a "Frank Damazio" so I'm assuming he read it, but who knows what liberties his secretary is willing to take):

Tue 12/12/2006 9:51 AM 

Frank, 

I would like a chance to meet with you so I can apologize for the mistakes I have made on my blog over the past few years and also so we can share with each other our hearts and hopefully find reconciliation.  Would you be interested? 

-Johnpaul

————————————————————————————————————

Wed 12/13/2006 1:46 PM 

Dear JohnPaul, 

I accept your apology and forgive you. I have never read the blog so I really don't know all that was done and I don't want to know. I have no offense towards you, John Paul, and I pray that whatever has created bitterness or offenses in your heart will be removed. Life is meant to be lived. Go on with your life and be freed from the past. Whatever happened is over years ago. As far as I'm concerned, we are reconciled. 

Pastor Frank

And on to the final section. The end of the debate:

In my humble opinion, God's word is very clear. We are expected to give and give generously and cheerfully. We should expect God to bless us in return. God expects us to invest what He has blessed us with into the lives of others and into the kingdom of God.

Hope this helps. Sorry about the lengthy email, but it should be some clarity as to the doctrine of sowing and reaping.

When I look at the words of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, I never read a word about tithing nor see Him supporting the sowing and reaping doctrine that I hear from you and Frank. As a matter of fact, what I understand Jesus to say is just the opposite of "if you sow money, then you'll reap more money," "if you sow a car, then you'll reap a car," etc.

Please read Matthew 6:25-34 and give me your application of these powerful words of Jesus.

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[a]?

28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

When Jesus refers to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, He makes it perfectly clear that they DO NOTHING TO EARN their Father's daily provision:

1- "they do NOT sow or reap" 

2- "they do NOT store away in barns…" 

3- "they do NOT work or make their own clothing" 

…and yet "your Heavenly Father takes care of them!" And, on top of that, He says, that His children are even more important to Him than the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, which He takes care of so automatically and seamlessly! When Jesus could have agreed with Frank's Law of Causation and told His followers that the way to get their material needs met was to tithe and give big offerings at the temple, instead He told them to seek His kingdom and his righteousness and, then, "all these things would be added". 

The main picture of God that Jesus brings to the world is that God is a good and generous Father who freely takes care not only of His children but also of all mankind, because of His great love He has for everyone. On the contrary, the main picture of God that you and Frank bring to the world is that God is an investment banker and a tax (tithe) collector, who sits every day in heaven and makes sure that He does not allow anyone to receive one blessing from His hand unless it has first been paid for in full through a tithe or a local church offering. There is no hesitation in my heart as to which picture of God I like more; neither do I doubt which one is more accurate to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ!

I hope you can understand where I am coming from. It is not my intention to "tear down" your church; in fact it is just the opposite. I would love to see your church grow and continue to help many more throughout the city. I do not, however, see that happening with truth and integrity under the current unbiblical teachings. 

Please understand that I have heard countless stories of people who felt abused under the CBC system. For some reason that I do not completely understand, I feel like I have been called to bring these abuses to your attention.

I admit that my tactics in the past have not been the best. By God's grace, I am still learning and growing. Nevertheless, I do not feel that my imperfect approaches should be an excuse to dismiss any or all of my valid concerns about how Frank is not accurately representing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not correctly interpreting God's Word from the pulpit of such a great church as CBC. 

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

-Johnpaul

 Ok, here is part 3 (of 4). In all honesty, I don't think my emails made him think one bit, but they really challenged me and caused me to grow a lot more confident in my belief that CBC's "give to get" Faith Harvest period (and their basic view on giving) is flat out wrong and deceitful.

7. Jesus himself said you should expect a return on your giving, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."  This would be a tough one to refute. It is plain and simple. If you give, IT WILL COME BACK TO YOU. This applies to all areas of your life as we have discussed in the law of reaping and sowing, and again in context, will also apply to things you give materially.

Pastor X, you need to look at the context of this scripture. It is not talking about money. It is a context of his disciples paying the price of being prophets of the Gospel (vs. 23,26) who will suffer rejection from their enemies. But how are they to react to the persecution? By sacrificial love: Giving even to your enemies (v27) and "everyone who asks you" (v30) mercy, forgiveness and even food - and then, hopefully but not always, receiving back the same from them.

"Receiving back from them" is similar to Jesus words, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." (Matthew 5:7). Do merciful people always receive mercy in this life? No, but when will they receive it? The context implies in the next life (v23).

Also, as an interesting side note, in the same context he condemns the rich (v24) and well fed (v25).

8. All of the being said, THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT of all of this is to understand the motive of WHY we would want to be blessed. Paul made it clear that our motives should never be for selfish gain, but for blessing the Lord, others and extending the kingdom. AGAIN, please understand our heart and motive is to see people blessed SO THAT they can bless others and see the kingdom of God advanced. There is great honor and noble rewards to those that desire to see others who are need helped. God blesses us so that we can bless others. This truth applies from Genesis to Revelation.  We teach this biblical truth, so that we might have the resources to reach out to the thousands of people monthly that are less fortunate. God forbid that we, you, or any other Christian would teach that God blesses us to build a haven for ourselves on earth, but the kingdom of God. Hence, we are proud of both our teaching and motives in believing God for our finances.

Can you show me how you back this up?

I would like to challenge you in two ways:

1. If you all believe this so much, why don't you just encourage the saints at CBC to give their money directly to the needs of the community, instead of to CBC? They should still receive the return for their investment. If the principle is true it should work even if they don't give the money directly to the Church. (I have never heard anyone from your pulpit tell the congregation to just "give". It has always been in the context of "give money" and "to this local church".)

2. If CBC truly believes in the guaranteed results of the Law of Divine Retribution then they shouldn't have to put so much pressure on the congregation to fund their debts and programs. They should have the faith that after they have given what they have to give, God will automatically add it all back and then some.

I would have more confidence in your teachings if I saw you leading by example. Instead Frank says things like "If we don't have any money above the tithe we can't: help the community, open other campuses, give out food boxes. If we're poor how do we feed the poor? How can we do that if we don't have anything to give?" This is the exact opposite of what you teach your congregation to believe. Don't you feel this quote implies that you want to reach the lost after you help yourself? This example is not found anywhere in the Bible. As a matter of fact, the Bible says NOT to give money to the rich - those who already have it! "He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich-both come to poverty." Proverbs 22:16

In my opinion, Frank should have his own "Faith to Receive" and have the attitude that says "We are just going to give the churches tithe and offering money to whatever cause and believe in God to bring in the funds". Then, if this principle works, you will have more than enough to "help the community, open other campuses, and give out food boxes… " Without that, it looks like a double standard. What do you see?

I know that CBC began by sowing a roughly $65,000 "seed", this is a great start and thank you for doing that (I am not trying to ignore the good that you do). The problem for me comes when Frank says that a lot of the Faith Harvest money you receive will go to CBC's personal needs. It seems to cheapen your "gift" when you know you will be receiving all that and more back from your own congregation. Does this make sense?

In my opinion it violates the "spirit" of sowing and reaping you proclaim so strongly to others. Jesus gave up everything for us, not so that we can have a "rich" life, (I know you never come out and say "give and you will be rich" but what else are we supposed to believe if, based on your thoughts here, we give money we will get more money back?) but Jesus sacrificed so that we can spend eternity together. There's your blessing.

Additionally, there are so many warnings throughout the Bible on riches; they are dangerous thing to "have". The more we have the less we will rely on God and that is a scary thought. I am not claiming that the Bible says "riches are inherently evil", but what I am saying is that as I read the NT most, if not all, of what I read are continuous warnings against greed, materialism and the love of money! Why is this Faith Harvest teaching appearing to me to be so different, as a whole, from the teachings of the New Testament?