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

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