One of the highlights of my day is reading quotes from kids who attended Generation Unleashed.

"I've gone to a new level in worship," said Annalise Neciuk, 17, from Vancouver, Wash. "You can't help but be impacted when you're in a room with thousands of other people who are so hungry for the presence of God. That atmosphere alone builds your faith and encourages you to believe for something greater."

I felt the same way last month watching Belmont almost upset Duke in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. It was amazing, thousands of other people craving a Duke loss. All of us believing that nothing would be greater then mocking the Dukies as they left the stadium.  I seriously went to a new level in hating Duke.

But honestly, what is she talking about? What does it mean to go to a "new level" in worship? I know it sounds cool and spiritual to talk about "new levels", but I am not sure it actually means anything.

Because what Evangelicals do best is copy from that evil secular world out there, I give you:

My Church

See who can find City Bible's page.  

It's a historic day at City Bible Church; they are about to get their first brown elder. Asim Trent is getting the call up to the big leagues.

PRESENTATION OF NEW ELDERS

As senior pastor I work with a group of leaders called the eldership which are the governing board of our local church.  The process by which new elders are ordained is as follows.  I present the current eldership with the names of the potential new elders.  After they confirm these individuals, we as a leadership present them to the congregation to allow you to voice any biblical concerns about the individuals, then we call for a confirmation vote by the congregation.

The City Bible Church eldership is proud to present Asim Trent to you as a potential new elder.  He has already proven his shepherd’s heart and biblical qualifications to serve our congregation and we are blessed to have him.  We trust he will add to the decision-making process of the eldership and serve this congregation with integrity and wisdom.

Asim and Lisa Trent have been involved with City Bible Church for over 13 years. Asim has been involved in the youth ministry since the moment he got saved here at the age of 15 and has served in a variety of areas at CBC.  For the past five years he has been serving in the youth department, currently as the Youth Pastor for the Rocky Butte campus. Asim and Lisa have two children, Houston and Elijah.

Pastor Frank Damazio

Call me arrogant, (I am) but I actually think a certain Mr. Knox's and Mr. Coffee's comments on this blog are what prompted the promotion. They helped call attention to the lack of minority leadership at City Bible.

To be fair, I do not want to diminish Asim Trent's accomplishments at all. He's a good guy, he's loyal, he deserves this honor.  And he has a white wife. (So, you know, one step at a time.)

Anyway, I'm starting to come around to Frank. First he bails from MFI, and now he's putting a person of color in a position of leadership. I like it.
 

I just want to highlight a sentence from a new reader who defends City Bible:

They're not all about the money, just about Jesus!, although kingdom giving does need to be taught on, not so the pastors can get paid more money, but so the kingdom of God can be fully established.

Somehow, that statement makes me so sad. God does not need your money to establish His Kingdom, He needs your love.

Here are some more of your City Bible/Bible Temple tithe dollars at work:

From Ex-City Bible Slave,

After I left BT, I and some of my collegues went on to become youth leaders at another church in Portland. This did not go over well with some of the youth leaders who stayed at BT, because they felt we had abondoned them and “stole” some of their kids. This made for a strained relationship and very little interaction between our youth groups.

However, during my few years at this other church our kids were asking about going to Generation Unleashed (held at BT) and wondered why our youth group had not yet attended. So we decided to put our differences aside (after all it was about the kids and not us) and take a small group of kids to the event. One of the members on our team even offered to teach a daytime workshop, which was initially ok’d.

This is where it gets interesting. The first night we where there the head youth pastor for the conference came up to us during worship and asked to speak with us. He took us to another room and told us that we were not welcome there and that the senior pastor himself wanted us to leave. He personally escorted us to the door. Our speakers name was removed from the brochure. We were blatenly ousted from the even for now reason and with no explination other then this mans pride. We thought he must be crazy. We did nothing wrong. There were thousands of kids there from all over the city and he singled us out just because he did not personally like us.

After the night was over we did not go back there and later had a meeting with some of the BT leadership. We were fed all sorts of lies and told never to come back again. The level of arrogance, anger, and downright evil message these “leaders” were directing towards us broke my heart. I could not believe what I was hearing and seeing. I thought, “has Chrisitanity really come to this?”

And from My Little Pony:

In terms of my personal worst experience (with CBC-ers), I was a victim of a brutal crime and the elders’ position was that it was my fault, that I must have somehow had a crack in my “covering” and been on “a bad path” and otherwise made myself vulnerable to this trauma.

My closest friends “took the party line,” decided I had done something to deserve the brutality I had experienced, judged me utterly, and ostracized me. In hindsight, I know their theology was fear-based, and they had to tell themselves I had done something to deserve what happened…otherwise, they would have had to believe that anything could happen to them, too, regardless of how strictly they adhered to their lists of do’s and don’ts.

At the time, it devastated me, but only briefly, because ultimately it drove me into the arms of Jesus, where I discovered the truth about Him and Christianity. While I don’t wish to ever re-live what happened to me, I praise God for the fact that it catapaulted me out of that wicked s ystem and into the truth.

Three years later, and the stories are still pouring in. Seriously people, there is a big problem with City Boobie Church. And it goes way beyond, bitterness. It's a problem with leadership. And a specific leader at that. I don't want to name names, but it rhymes with Shcmazio.

And I know, they have cool worship, and three campuses, and a Jesus-endorsed coffee shop in the lobby, so yeah, it's probably just me.

Just so we hit every major issue. Here's a story from a "person of color" who attended City Bible in the 90's.

I was at Bible Temple/CBC back in the mid to late 90s. Became a Christian there in fact. I was heavily inovled for about 5 years and met my wife in TREK (yeah baby, I married a true blue BT princess!) youth group.

However, around my senior year when me and her were getting really serious, I was ostrosized by the leadership because she is white and I am primarily black. They weren’t really for the inter-racial thing (dame fools) and came out really hard against us. Had multiple meetings, phone calls to parents, and “pastorial” warnings about what we were getting ourselves into. They told her (and I quote verbatem) that “black men only take white women as trophies.” Can you believe that sh*t. Anyway, going through that expereince on top of questioning what I really wanted to do with my life (they were all trying to force me to go to PBC because I needed some “biblical training if I wanted to serve in ministry”), made be bounce out of there real quick.

The best part about it though, is that I took my wife with me (boy were they upset about that - we both lost our best friends over it because the leadership told them to stop talking to us). Anyway, we got married a few years later and served as youth pastors at another church for awhile. then decided to move to Los Angeles so I could pursue my dream of becoming a sports agent. So far so good.

This is why sometimes bitterness is acceptable folks. It's not good to stay bitter. But uh, just because you leave a church angry and bitter, doesn't mean you are necessarily at fault. It may just be that the church is full of racist old white guys.

I guess all this bad church financing is contagious.

According to West Seattle Blog, Mars Hill Church recently had this to say in one of their "Pastor Prayers".

Multiple pastors request prayers for our financial state. With the deep deficit, it is a test for all the staff to choose Jesus over anxiety when ministry funds are cut short and the possibility of lay-offs and additional budget cuts is on the horizon. Please pray for repentance by those who are disobeying God in their giving …

(Insert Snarky Comment)

(H/T - www.onthevig.com)

NPR has a great wrap-up of Senator Grassley's investigation into Megachurch financing.

The report also includes this little tidbit of new information:

Since Grassley began seeking answers from the churches a few weeks ago, someone approached his staff with new information, that, "an individual always had to stay in a presidential suite when he traveled, and that the cost could be as high as $5,000," Grassley said. "Maybe that's not illegal, but it may raise questions about whether it's the right expenditure of money."

This investigation is not over. I suspect it is just beginning.

If you've got information to share with Senator Grassley, feel free to contact him here.

It's funny how these three are all connected.

I did not know this, but guess who serves on the Board of Regents at Oral Roberts University:

Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar. Three of the regents under investigation by the U.S. Senate. They were among six televangelists who received letters from Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

And guess who attended Oral Roberts University:

Pastor Frank Damazio is a graduate of Portland Bible College and holds a Bachelor of Theology degree and a Master of Divinity from Oral Roberts University.

And what do ORU, the Regents and D-Maz all have in common? They all believe in the "Prosperity Doctrine".

Sadly, if recent events are any guide, I don't think the "Prosperity Doctrine" believes in them.

I would like to take a moment to update everyone on Faith Harvest. I, naturally, have been listening very closely to all of Frank Damazio's Faith Harvest sermons (this year he started prepping his congregation early with the "Surplus" series which he has carried right into "Faith Harvest" which he titled something like Supernatural Supply…). I've heard them all.