Sovereign Grace Ministries
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by catalyst into the Other Blogs categoryA few readers have tipped me off to a couple new blogs that are dedicated to discussing the imperfections of Sovereign Grace Ministries.
One reader is a former City Bible member, and here is her family's experience at this church:
We attended the Tucson Sovereign Grace church for 2 years. We had so much fun in the beginning because people were so friendly, the pastors were so "humble" (unlike cbc) and we just loved it.
then we had an "observation" - a good reformed word for "issue" with the pastor and met with him several times and found that the humility shown across the pulpit no where to be found. the pastor lied to us, the associate pastor lied and wouldnt even hear our issue, instead turned it around and called us sinners and accused us of having marriage problems.
There have been 10 families that have left this last year - most for the same reasons as us. this church is only about 150 people btw so a huge exodus.
Tucson SGChurch is now having all their members - reup their membership and in order to be a member, they have to sign that they are in total agreement with the entire doctrinal statment of the church and one of the items is "I will read my Bible every day" I will try to get a copy of this from a friend there - she hasnt signed it yet.
If you're not a member, you will get NO care - no care group membership allowed, you're not allowed access to the phone directory - this is a very social church, we all wanted access to that.
I want to touch quickly on this issue of "false humility". I had a somewhat similar experience with the pastor of a church I attended in college. When I first attended the church, I thought the guy was great and very humble. And then a few issues came up with his children, in which I got stuck in the middle. (Basically, his oldest son, who was seventeen, ran away from home and ran straight to my place to crash on my couch for a week. My college roommates thought this was highly entertaining. Myself, I was annoyed.) Anwyay, the more I got to know the pastor, the more I realized he was actually a pretty arrogant man. And not a particulary good pastor. I didn't stop going to the church, but I did cut back my attendance a fair amount. As such, I tend to think the humility in most pastors is just a well-rehearsed act. But I digress…
As near as I can tell there are several SGM churches all over the country. And here are the blogs that discuss these churches.
I love seeing other congregations blog about their church and its leaders. Pastors are there to serve you, not you them.
RSS feed for posts
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 am
Thank you for the link!
I run the sgmrefuge blog, and noticed that we had some visitors referred by this site.
SGM is a pretty major “movement”, with around 70 franchises. Their leader, CJ Mahaney is becoming an influential voice in evangelical circles.
Thank you again for mentioning us. this is my first visit here, and I’m going to surf around for a while.
Grace,
Jim
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
I love the “Before you blog” sidebar on the sgmsurvivors.com site.
•
Hilarious…because its true.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
The sad state of today’s “church” is that pastors have become more like actors, entertainers, hype-artists…than humble servants. I’ve only been in a handful of churches throughout my life, and while there were a few MFI slop piles, I have also been lucky enough to come across a couple pastors who were just as comfortable exhorting christians towards Godlier living, as they were standing up in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people and admitting they were just as much a schmuck as I am!
With more blogs popping up regarding these other
churches…errr…businesses and the veil lifting off the eyes of more of their followers, I’d like to think sites like these are serving notice to thesepastors…errr…CEOs that your facade is about to come crumbling down.July 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
My wife and I attended SGM Pasadena for about a month on the recommendation through a friend of a friend. It seemed like an extremely humble church. First day we were there we had invites to 4 or 5 different gatherings with people we didn’t even know. One of the associate pastors had us over for lunch the following week. We stopped going though because we sensed too much inbreeded behavior. We got the sense that you were either one of them or could have nothing to do with them. Coming from BT/CBC we did not want anything like that again. Plus they had such an emphasis on kids and home school that it was a little distracting. We were in are mid 20s then with no kids, so we really didn’t want to be forced into a kid’s focus all the time. So based on my minimal experience I can’t really say if SGM is a good or bad thing, but I can say that it seemed just like every other big ministry movement. Somewhere along the way the leaders made it less about Jesus and more about them. Pride and arrogance seem to always ruin a good thing. I am sure there are many good quality people with SGM, but I am also sure that there are many bad apples spitting on the truth of Christ. Very sad that this continues to happen all across America.
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Cat went to church in College?!
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
ex-CB Slave,
SGM is a franchise. They have crafted their methods quite well.
You would experience the welcoming behavior across the country.
If you had attended there for 6 months, you would have found yourself surrounded by a group of wonderful friends.
Then, if you left, you would have found that you SGM friends were “just too busy” to continue to fellowship with you. Once they realized that you had left and were not coming back, you would soon realize that these people were not your friends at all-they were just following the system.
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I think we are all arrogant at the core, some people more than others, some movements more than others, but we are all arrogant, including myself. My Christian experience has span from one extreme, Arminianism, to the other extreme, Calvinism. The arrogance of people, churches and church movements who are theologically Arminian is easy to spot, they are typically but not exclusively Charismatics, I know this doctrine inside and out because I once held to the doctrinal tenets of the Charismatic movement (well, I still kinda do partly, but I would need a beer and cigar to walk you through how that works, but I still hang on to some of the Charimatic stuff, I’m kind of an “Agnostic Charismatic”, I believe God still does miracles but I’m not beating down his door to perform one). BUT, on the other side, I was once moving very Reformed/Calvinistic, but I struggled with the “ignorance” of most Reformed Pastor’s I knew. They seemed to be just as heavy handed, legalistic and fundamentalist as most Arminian churches I attended, but their’s was cloaked in this false sense of humility. Though I admit they are much more theologically sound then most Arminians I know, but at the end of the day neither side is exempt from the abuses we discuss on this blog.
I was shocked discover how many hard core Reform guys go down that legalistic road abusing sheep in their wake and yet have a much stronger emphasis on God’s grace, sovereignty and the finished work of the cross than most Arminians I encounter. But here’s how I think it works, most Calvinist get so swept up in the TULIP (i.e. SGM, Household of Faith, etc…) that they mistake it for the gospel. The TULIP for many Calvinist is ULTIMATE and the gospel is PENULTIMATE, when it should be the other way around. Much of the TULIP hangs on the gospel, but they reverse it.
So their abuse is not so much “principally” driven, like Arminian churches such as CBC, TCC, TBN, who beat you up for not getting with the program, theirs is “theologically” driven, hence they kick you in the nuts for not adhering to the 5 points of Calvinism. And we all know if you make an “idol” either of a theological or a principle-centered system that Christ is not at the center of, abuse happens.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Just to connect the dots…
Josh Harris is the SR pastor of Covenant Life church - which is the Sovereign Grace main church - His dad is Greg Harris, SR Pastor of Household of Faith, not affiliated with Sov Grace as far as I know, in Portland and of course Greg’s twin boys, are the infamous Harris twins earlier mentioned in this blog.
Another connection, the Harris family, Greg & Suni(?) with their kids including Josh used to attend CBC - I still have the church directory with their picture in it.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Sadly, even in the homeschooling churches, like Josh H.’s dad’s church, the congregation is constantly reminded of the “homeschool royalty’s” celebrity and success. It’s backwards, the way families serve the leader’s “vision”, and quite a bit isolated from the Great Commission. The church is there to serve it’s leadership and to foster a more “successful” family structure, and no need to invite in all those pesky unsaved, messy families out there. There’s a weird emphasis on inviting other committed christian leaders out there to host them and get a taste for how the church operates, instead of inviting sinners in.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
So, Greg and Sono used to be members there at BT/CBC? What made them leave?
July 4th, 2008 at 7:24 am
They along with 10 families, I believe, sent a letter to CBC eldership telling them they disagreed with CBC and that they were leaving to start another church.
July 4th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Its a step in the right direction. I wonder if they got a letter from Davis, Write, & Tremaine?
July 4th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Holy cow Nd, nothing says “brotherly love” like swift kick in the man-parts ! (I guess it’s ok if it comes from a church leader … in Jesus name of course!)
ouch,
ICE
July 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Negrodamus,
I can appreciate the Tulips to Armin background. The “sort all it down to doctrine” approach to god is very much a head trip. It aides people in feeling superior with their “super knowledge” and results in a pshudo-relationship with “god”.
Knowing about God is not “knowing God.
What freedom there is in a relationship based beleif in God! It allows his presence in everyday life… whether it be a little buzz from beer or catching sight of a humming bird on an afternoon walk. The miracle is recongizing his love so eminant in all parts of life.
I understand what you mean by “agnostic-charismatic”. There is so much I don’t know about God, but what I do know is that I need to continue to believe He is LOVE.
July 4th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I have a blog where I critique the groups/courtship practice that Josh Harris and Sovereign Grace Ministries promote:
www.ikdg.wordpress.com
I Kissed Dating Goodbye: Wisdom or Foolishness?
When I first read Harris’s book on “kissing dating goodbye” I was appalled. He failed to share any of the problems with the system he promotes though the church he now pastors had years of experience with the approach. Harris was quick to point out the defects with dating but not the defects of his approach.
I know of two other blogs about Sovereign Grace Ministries “imperfections.”
http://spiritualtyranny.com/
http://ikissedsgmgoodbye.blogspot.com/
July 5th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Jim,
I’ve been on your site - Below is a comment from your blog & is a very insightful view as to what is happening in SGM - very sad. My heart breaks for you. My husband and I were lucky to have friends who left SGM after we did, so we are outcasts together & loving our freedom. My story is the one in this post.
My husband & I find it very eerie that the tactics used in your situation is so similar to the tactics SGM used on us and our friends who left.
From SGM Refuge:
I have “known” Jim and Carole from another blog. I think I can assure you that they did everything they could to reconcile their differences with the SGM church they left. The problem is, what do you do when the SP you are speaking with will not receive any form of correction, no matter how many witnesses you bring?
Many of us have run into this sort of thing. My husband and I took four others, but it made no difference. The Pastors we speak of (and I’m sure there are exceptions) are “above” the rest of us. They don’t seem to think that we are capable of confronting them, that we could possibly have anything worthy to say. They even reacted in anger. We were polite, respectful, and loving in how we approached them. Yet, there was no humility in their responses. What happens then?
What is a member to do if he/she has followed scripture, but the Pastor has not? None of us are on this blog to gripe and complain. We are here to reveal a deep-seeded problem in SGM Ministries that span the country. There are many believers whose freedoms in Christ are being robbed by men who think they have the authority to stand between man and God. We love these people. We want to see them set free.
If the leaders will not listen to us, then we go to the people. I hope I have explained this well, and I mean no disrespect to you. It is love that motivates us. I am sure that if anyone comes on this blog in a different spirit, Jim or Carole will step in. But give them a chance. Thank you.