“Deliver Us From Evil” (DVD) tells the story of a former Catholic priest and pedophile, Oliver O’Grady. As a young boy, Oliver committed incest with his two brothers and his sister and was also molested by a Catholic priest. When he eventually became a Catholic priest himself, he became a rapist and child molester of both boys and girls. His youngest victim was 9 months old. His oldest victim was a mother of children with whom he had sex in order to get to sleep with her children. He would sleep over night on the weekends with trusting Catholic families and slip into the children’s bedrooms at night. He would threaten the children if they told. 

When his two bishops were told about this, they both generally ignored it. Instead of reporting Oliver to the authorities, both of them simply kept moving him to more remote parishes in California. Bishop Mahoney did not want to risk losing his upcoming appointment from Archbishop of Los Angeles to Cardinal in Rome. Personal ambition and protection of public image were higher values than the lives and souls of innocent children. 

After O’Grady was finally arrested, the Church’s lawyers came to him in his cell and offered him a lifetime annuity if he would not tell the authorities and  move to Ireland. To date, O’Grady is living in Dublin with a family, according to the documentary, were not informed by the Church ahead of time of Oliver’s criminal behavior in the United States. 

When a family of two victims went to Rome along with Tom Doyle, a priest and canon law expert, to meet with the leaders of the Church, the Vatican guards barred their way. When the present Pope, Benedict XVI, was going to be indicted for charges of conspiracy and cover-up, as he was in charge of these kinds of situations before he was elected Pope, President Bush granted him amnesty from prosecution. 

Produced by Lionsgate Films and directed by Amy Berg, this documentary interviews victims, victims’ families, and shows actual footage of depositions of the perpetrators. It shows unmistakably that lies, deceptions, bribery and cover-ups are actively present today at every level in the Catholic Church - from its priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals even to the Pope himself. 

Note: I am also aware of two cover-up situations in my area that occurred in Protestant churches.  

"The Israelites were a religious people. Pilgrimages to Bethel, Gilgal, and Beer-sheba, the sacred precincts of Israel, were commonplace (Amos 4:4; 5:5). Freewill and thanksgiving offerings and tithes were performed regularly (4:4), and there were many religious assemblies and festivals (5:21–23). By all criteria, then, the Israelites assumed that they were performing the cultic and ritual requirements necessary to appease Yahweh. 

Furthermore, they considered their wealth and security as evidence that Yahweh was pleased. They assumed that their steadfast devotion to cultic ritual exempted them from the requirements of righteousness and social justice and from the consequences of wrongdoing. Through sacrifice they could guarantee divine favor and their own survival. The peace and prosperity the nation enjoyed must have, to many Israelites, validated their lives, values, and assumptions as the chosen people of God. 

Yet the people had turned the official view around and were reasoning in reverse: their prosperity proved that they were righteous. The distinction, while a fine one, is nevertheless important: the obligation of the covenant was to pursue righteousness and justice; prosperity would follow as a by-product of God’s pleasure. The pursuit of wealth rather than righteousness was an unacceptable short cut, and wholly abhorrent to Yahweh, according to the prophet. 

‘Amos’ severe judgment is a repudiation, not of the cult [worship system] itself, but of the cult as it was practiced in the eighth century B.C.E. …One’s conduct in the marketplace must always conform to one’s attitude in the holy place’ (King 1988: 89). 

And Israel’s did not. Amos decried the social injustice, the oppression of the poor, and the lack of any moral or ethical values on the part of the rich and powerful. According to Amos, the spokesman of Yahweh, Israel was a violent, oppressive, and exploitative society. The poor had to sell themselves into slavery to pay off trivial debts (2:6; 8:6). The rich falsified weights and measures (8:5) and traded dishonestly (8:6). Even the courts, the last bastion of hope for the poor, were corrupt. Judges were bribed to cheat the poor out of what little they had (2:7; 5:10, 12). In fact, Israel was no longer capable of acting with justice (3:10; cf. 5:7, 24; 6:12). Truth and honesty were now hated (5:10).” 

Source: Bruce E. Willoughby, Amos, the book of, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1, pgs. 203-212 (for entire article)

The Phantom was a disfigured man. His face was ugly to behold. As a young boy, an older man physically abused the Phantom by putting him in a cage, hitting him with a stick and selling tickets to the public to come and see the boy with the bag over his head which covered his disfigured face, whom he advertised as “the devil’s child.” When the young boy kills his perpetrator and escapes his cage, he hides in the basement of the nearby opera house. There, in total isolation, shamed by his disfigurement, he lives alone in perpetual darkness and yet becomes a genius: an architect, inventor, magician, singer and composer. 

One day, he hears the lovely singing voice of Christine in the opera house above. He begins to obsess for her. When he learns that Christine’s beloved father is about to die, the Phantom takes advantage of Christine’s emotional vulnerability and pretends to be her father’s voice talking to her as she sits in the candle-lit room with stained glass window of an angel overhead. Christine believes that she hears the voice of her dying father telling her that after he is dead, he will send her an Angel of Music. 

When her father passes, the Phantom pretends to be the Angel of Music promised to her by her father. In her dreams as well as her waking hours, the Phantom never leaves Christine; he helps to develop her voice into a sound of matchless beauty. The Phantom believes that Christine owes him a commitment to marriage since he was the one who enhanced her gift of song as her unknown but real mentor of success. 

Enchanted by the Phantom’s musical abilities, she follows him one night into the depths of his world under the opera house. She discovers, however, that the Phantom’s love is one that is self-serving, possessive and even violent: He will destroy anyone and anything that will get in the way of him possessing Christine’s voice and form as his very own. He will have her - even against her own will! 

Raul, a childhood sweet heart of Christine’s, enters her life and rekindles their long lost love. His love for Christine is pure, selfless and protecting of her from the destructive possessiveness of the Phantom. When Christine visits the grave of her dead father in order to seek his guidance about how he could have sent her such an Angel of Music that was so devilish and destructive, Raul cries out to her about the voice that she hears coming out of the red-lit tomb, “This is not the voice of your father!” 

At the crescendo of the movie, which takes place in the Phantom’s caverns under the opera house, the Phantom gives Christine a choice: either marry him and sing for him forever, or else he will murder Raul who he is ready to hang at the end of a rope, as he has killed all of his other victims.  

In a moment of insight into human nature and unconditional acceptance, Christine wades through the waters of the cavern toward the Phantom and sings to him,  

“Beautiful creature of darkness; what life have you known; you are not alone!”  

She then passionately embraces and kisses the Phantom as a woman who was deeply in love with him. By doing so, she shows him her unconditional acceptance of him as a man despite the shame of his facial disfigurement which she has personally witnessed several times. Christine’s love and acceptance break the Phantom’s heart, and he releases both Christine and Raul to leave his dwelling of darkness completely unscathed.  

The Phantom then tells them that he will accept his life of complete loneliness. As a sign of future hope, however, Christine comes back to the Phantom’s room and graciously returns to him the wedding ring that he had given to her (so that he might use it again someday for another woman after his transformation is complete?)

*   *   *  

In my view, The Phantom of the Opera can be seen as a Christian allegory of the two kinds of love available in the world today: the “love” of Evil and the love of God. The Phantom’s passion can symbolize the self-centered, over-controlling, possessive and destructive paramours of the Evil One. As he was clothed in black and red throughout the film, using deceptive words to “help” Christine’s singing career, so the Evil One attempts to seduce innocent Christians (symbolized by the name “Christine”) into selling their souls out to his own control because of how he may have appeared to have helped them along their career path of success. 

Are not all human beings “beautiful creatures of darkness,” i.e., sinners dearly loved by the heart of God? God’s “kiss” of unconditional love and acceptance through the cross of Jesus Christ, stands as a constant reminder of how he does not allow the ugly disfigurement of their souls to stop his divine passion toward them. Christ’s love melts the hardened heart and releases the sinner from the bondage of sin and darkness. As Raul went to any lengths – even to the point of self-sacrificing death – to save Christine, the woman he loved; so Jesus went to the cross to save the woman he loves, his beloved Church. Jesus causes the Evil One to flee from the lives of those who love him as they receive a Love that is not scared away by their soul’s imperfections but reaches out and meets them even at the point of their deepest and darkest shame. 

On March 21, 2008, the 700 Club aired an amazing story about how God's grace saved and restored the lives of John and Debbie Lowe. Debbie was a former stripper. The way that the 700 Club portrayed Debbie's former life concerned me. In my viewed, it raised the question: How "true-to-life" and explicit do Christian broadcasters need to be in order to communicate their message?  Here is what I emailed the 700 Club. What do you think?

As a regular viewer of the 700 Club and donor to Operation Blessing, I so appreciate how you use personal testimonies to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I viewed the segment that described Debbie Lowe's former life as a stripper, however, I felt very disappointed. In my view, it was not necessary to show a woman on a stage sensually dancing, stripping, throwing off her top, leaning over and offering her body to men who were lusting after her and coming on to John as a buxom, wanton prostitute.

I realize that you want to make your segments "realistic" but, in my opinion, this was too realistic. It was a stumbling block to me which Paul says Christians should avoid putting in front of their fellow believers (Romans 14:13). The segment could have been presented in a much more tasteful way by simply not showing as many dark behaviors.

In my view, everyone knows what strippers and prostitutes do. In the future, I hope that I do not see similar characterizations involving such unnecessary and sordid details. 

Respectfully Yours in Christ,

David

To view the John and Debbie Lowe story see:   CBN Media Center - Browse. Search. Watch. Share.

‘Scrupe said: “I don't get it…God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands…And if we reduced that mindset to its most direct form, i.e., “I’m going to Brownsville Assembly to get God’s anointing from Billy Burke”, does it begin to sound just a wee bit insane (if not downright un-Biblical)?” 

‘Scrupe, I agree that Christians can too easily become obsessed with "anointed" people, places, churches and movements. I also agree that "God does not dwell in temples made with hands” (Acts 7:48-49). Nevertheless… 

I am not willing to go so far as to say that since God does not live in material temples, that all meetings in buildings will never experience his power or presence. In 1906, in Los Angeles, California, there was the Azusa Street Revival. Thousands visited this little run-down building on Azusa St. to see what God was doing.  I don't consider their interest or even curiosity wrong or automatically unnecessary. Tens of thousands have visited Toronto for the same reason. I was blessed to have gone twice myself and both times had a wonderful experience in input. 

After coming home, however, I felt it was my responsibility to take the blessing that I had received and share it freely with others (cf. Genesis 12:2). I knew that I should not horde the blessings by telling others that the only place that they could experience God was in Eastern Canada; neither did I dare to twist true visitation into emotional manipulation. 

Your post raises a legitimate question: Why does God seem to visit certain places at certain times and use certain individuals? I don’t know. God is sovereign and he does whatever he wants to do whenever and wherever and through whomever he wants.  “God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases” (Psalm 115:3). 

Some people in Jesus’ day did not believe that any good thing could come out of the small town of Nazareth (John 1:46), but that did not stop God from having Jesus raised there and begin his ministry in the town (Luke 4:16; Matthew 21:11). 

Naaman, the leprous commander of the Syrian army, became furious when Elisha’s messenger told him that he would be healed only if he dipped seven times in the Jordan river (2 Kings 5:10-11). The Syrian commander replied with pride and indignance: “Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” (I Kings 5:12). He walked away angry and unhealed (cf. Luke 4:24-27). 

Did Jesus not appear uniquely at one point in history? Did he not travel around specific areas like Galilee calling disciples and healing the sick? Was there not a special day of Pentecost in a particular upper room where 120 disciples were filled with the Spirit of God (Acts 2)? Yes, these were all time- and place-specific events.

Accordingly, if I had been living in those days, I would have made every effort to get to the mount or the plain or the desert or the city or the lakeside or Solomon’s porch in the Temple to be wherever Jesus was. I would not have cared where Jesus was teaching or doing the works of God; I would have wanted to have experienced or at least to have observed for myself his multiplying of the loaves, his raising of the dead, his anointed teaching, etc. I would have rented a donkey, if necessary, to get to the upper room before Pentecost so that I could have been a part of that spiritual outpouring. By attempting to get to the upper room with the other disciples before Pentecost, I would not necessarily be saying that I felt that God dwelt exclusively in that upper room. I would simply be saying that I would like to experience the divine visitation that Jesus promised was soon to come (Luke 24:49). 

Such efforts, in my view, do not automatically indicate carnality, “unbiblicalness,” or a lack of faith for God to do the same mighty deeds in one's own home or place. They can simply indicate a sincere spiritual hunger to personally experience a sovereign move of the Spirit wherever it is occurring.    

Jesus told his generation that many of them missed their time of divine visitation because they rejected him when he walked among them (Luke 19:44). I think that Christians can also miss out on spiritual blessings - throughout church history - if they hold too strict of a definition of who, what, where, when, why and how God moves or “should” move. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus come to mind: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).” 

Theologically speaking, God brought revival in New England through Jonathan Edwards who was a Calvinist. He also brought great revival in England through John Wesley, who was an Armenian. God chose to use two men even though they held opposite theologies to bring revival and spiritual awakening to people. When the famous evangelist George Whitfield preached to thousands seated in open fields, it was no more or less spiritual or biblical a place or event than when John Wesley, founder of Methodism, sat in a chair or a pew in a society meeting on Aldersgate Street in 1738 and exclaimed, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation…”   

God was in both places because the true message of Jesus Christ was being preached – not because one was outside and the other was in a material building. We know that God does not restrict himself anymore to living in “temples made with hands,” but history, experience as well as the Bible show us clearly that God certainly chooses often to visit them - for the sake of those “temples made without hands” that are hungering after him on the chairs or pews inside (Luke 24:53).  

* * *

Suggested reading: Accounts of a Campus Revival: Wheaton College 1995, ed., T. Beougher and L. Dorsett; I Saw the Smithton Outpouring by Ron McGatlin; In the Latter Days by Vincent Synan; The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States by Vincent Synan; The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent; www.azusastreet.org

Today I heard a man in the 700 Club studio audience ask Pat Robertson two questions about men’s ministries: (1) Why is there such a lack of men’s ministries today in so many local churches? and, (2) What can be done to attract men to a church-based men’s ministry? 

Pat skipped the first question and said the following about the second: If you’re going to have a men’s ministry, then you need to organize it around what men like to do. Do manly things like go to the gym and do karate. One men’s group is focused around hunting; they meet together and eat game. You can’t have an effective men’s group by expecting men to sit around and play tiddlywinks or knit. 

I would like to submit a response to the question which Pat chose not to address: Why is there such a lack of men’s ministries in so many local churches? 

In my former home church, our senior pastor allowed a men’s ministry to hold its meetings on the same evening as the mid-week service. This seemed like an ideal night to get men together since most would be coming to church with their families anyway. Interested men would meet in various houses and places near the church at about 6:00pm but had to be dismissed around 7:00pm-7:15pm in order to attend the mid-week church service. The meetings were a great success. The men, of all ages by the way, so enjoyed the meetings that they requested of the senior pastor that he allow them to skip the mid-week service and stay in their men’s meeting groups until the church service ended. After all, they reasoned, what was happening in the men’s groups was personally ministering to them more than what was going on in the mid-week church services! As I remember it, there was a great groundswell of support for this idea from most, if not all, of the men. 

After several months of great meetings, something terrible happened. The senior pastor abruptly ended the meetings. I do not remember the reason that was publicly given as to why the pastor decided to end the meetings, but I do remember that whatever it was did not strike many of us as the full story. When the announcement was made to the groups, we felt very disappointed; we thought, what could we do to reverse his decision since we were not church staff leaders? 

I would like to submit two reasons why I think that this senior pastor closed down the men's meetings.   

(1) I suggest that the men’s’ meetings became a political threat to the mid-week service. If the men would rather attend men’s meetings more than corporate church meetings, what if this attitude spread to the women, too? What would happen to the mid-seek service?

(I don’t think that economics played as much of a role because they could still take up collections in the individual groups, but one ever knows for sure on this one.) 

(2) I also suggest that the level of transparency evidenced in the meetings became an emotional and psychological threat to the pastor. He was not raised in an era where church leaders were open and vulnerable about their struggles. The men in the meetings shared honestly about the issues that regularly affected them: women/marriage/family, money/career, and, of course, sex. 

Recommended reading: Leon J. Podles, The Church Impotent: the Feminization of Christianity (Spence Publishing), 1999.

Ex-City Bible Slave says:

“Pastor’s are insecure because they are out of touch with reality. They surround themselves with yes men who tell them everything they want to hear and they begin to believe they are bigger and better then what they really are…” 

These words show fabulous insight into the reality of the Yes Men culture in churches run by pastor-kings and some of the consequences that accompany it. I’d like to share a few examples from my own church life experience, then make a few observations, and finally ask you a few questions about your own experience with church staff members: 

Example #1 - As I was transitioning out of my home church, I called to talk to the senior pastor. The reason for my call was confidential, and this fact I told the associate pastor who took my call. The associate told me that if I informed him of the reason for my call that he would keep it confidential and allow me to tell the senior pastor myself. He did not. Instead, the associate broke his promise and told the pastor why I was calling. This allowed the pastor to get up his defenses before he picked up the phone. 

Example #2 - I shared some questions with the Dean of the Bible college about their church history chart having to do with how NT truths were progressively “restored” throughout church history. I found out later, that the dean immediately went to the senior pastor and told him of my doubts without bringing me along to explain myself. 

Example #3 - I mentioned to a former colleague some of my questions about some of the “truths” that we were teaching in our Bible college, and he told me later that after our conversation, he just about went to the Dean himself and told him about our conversation without me being there to speak for myself. 

Example #4 - One church staff female counselor told a church member in the church that if she were in her marital situation, that she would probably get a divorce. The staffer told the counselee not to tell anyone else that she made this recommendation to her. (The staffer knew that she was going against the senior pastor’s position on divorce and so didn’t want him or anyone else to find out about it.) 

The pastor-king system creates a stifled social and intellectual environment. The pastor-king himself quashes all lines of thinking that bring any of his personal values, visions or interpretations of the Bible into question. When this anti-intellectual atmosphere gets mixed with the senior pastor having the sole power to hire and fire all church staff, there is a cult-like atmosphere formed that consists of intimidation, secrecy, blind loyalty, politicking and man-pleasing to the senior pastor and his traditions.  

The senior pastor hires people not primarily because of their ministry anointing or skill-level but because of their loyalty-level. In such a system, there is an unspoken rule that all doubts and questions that pose a potential threat to the rule of the pastor-king, will be immediately brought to him. This creates a system of gossip in the leadership legitimated under the guise of loyalty and unity. When I was a kid, we used to call most of this kind of thing “tattling.” In the pastor-king system, however, it is subconsciously known as “loyalty-building.” 

In faithfully bringing all potential threats to the pastor-king, church staff members earn unspoken loyalty points with the man in charge. After all, since all promotions and ministry opportunities within such a  system depend upon the initiation or approval of the pastor-king, all church staff members know instinctively that they need to build up as many loyalty points with the senior pastor as possible in order for him to give them more ministry opportunities. 

(Some even hope that if they can earn enough loyalty points that the pastor-king might even consider them worthy enough to stand and speak for a moment behind his golden throne – the Sunday morning pulpit!)  

What has your experience been with church staff members? 

How have church staff employees respected your confidentiality agreements with them? 

What, if anything, have church staff members done to show more loyalty for Senior Pastor Tradition than loyalty to you or the pursuit of truth? 

I have met doctors, lawyers, policemen, professors, cabinet makers, real estate agents and many other professionals over the years, but I have never met as many insecure men as those in the pastorate. 

In one church, the pastor did not have a college education, so every time I’d try to talk with him about something on an academic level, he’d show obvious signs of insecurity. One time I was carrying the book, The Institutes of Biblical Law by R. J. Rushdoony, an intellectual Christian Reconstructionist, and the pastor said with an insecure smile on his face, “Oh! Rushdoony; he’s a nice guy!” (probably not even knowing that Rushdoony was polar opposites with him on many theological points!) 

I have had more than one pastor ask me to proof read a paper for them only to find out after I looked it over, their insecurities flared up so much that they never talked to me about their paper again and showed no sign of appreciating my efforts to improve their work. 

Here are some theories as to why so many pastors might suffer with the emotional problem of insecurity: 

1-Pastors are sensitive, people-persons and so their insecurity stems out of their super-sensitivity to God and people’s needs. 

2-Some pastors do not have college or advanced degrees, and so they feel easily intimidated by those in their congregations who have more education than they do. 

3-Pastors who see their churches as business enterprises will exhibit signs of insecurity because they are always operating with a hidden agenda: to somehow manipulate those in the congregation to donate their time, money and talent to help them to fulfill their personal ministry vision. 

4-Pastors are insecure because they have a deep need to be loved and appreciated by others. They will sometimes do whatever it takes to get that affirmation from their congregations. 

5-Pastors operate as political animals if they belong to a denominational or hierarchical structure. Their various social posturings and foci on self-advancement contribute to their insecurity in their effort to climb their organizational pyramids. 

6-Pastors who make public image their number one priority in life never give themselves the chance to be transparent about their feelings, weaknesses or needs because they constantly have to try to be a “good example” to the flock. 

Do you think that pastors tend to rather insecure people? If so, why? 

What do you think might be some of the consequences to a congregation if its pastor is extremely insecure? 

In what ways do you think that Christians might be able to help pastors become more emotionally secure?  

In your post, you said that your bitterness toward a pastor helped to ruin your marriage. As I read your words, I remembered one evening when my first wife and I had dinner over at a leader's house in our home church. After we had dinner and visited awhile, we left for home. On the way to your house, my wife at the time said to me something like: "Did you notice that all you could talk about at the table was your problems with the church? You didn't talk about anything else except the pastor, the church and ministry there: the church, the church, the church; the pastor, the pastor, the pastor!  It wasn't a very enjoyable conversation!" 

In looking back on her comments, even though there was much more that went into her filing for a divorce, I realized that I had become obsessed with the church and the pastor. So much can play into a church/pastor obsession in addition to bitterness:

low self-image; deep father hunger; a need for male approval; lack of personal identity; lack of vocational niche and satisfaction; the need for attention and affirmation, emotional insecurity, the need to be needed and recognized, the desire to a part of a leadership team, etc. 

In my life I discovered that the criticism and rejection that I had experienced for many, many years from my biological father set me up to over-need the affirmation of other father figures and get emotionally fixated upon them and what they could give to me. What has helped me is to be filled with the unconditional love and affirmation of my heavenly Father, who is my closest friend, lover and source of every one of the ministries that he has given to me.   

As I have grown in self-understanding, through reading, prayer and counseling, by God's grace, I have experienced deep emotional and psychological healing. My prayer is that you will experience the same.

I know that it is almost impossible at a time like this probably for you to believe this - I know that I didn't believe it when I was told it by others - but no matter what happens with your "ex" and you - there is a bright and good future ahead of you as you allow God to heal the depths of your being and your wounded sense of manhood.

I have decided to take a different approach on this blog when it comes to naming names. Up to this point, I felt that I needed to name names to give more credibility to the points that I was trying to make. I think that I, and possibly others, experienced a kind of therapy from knowing exactly about whom we were talking. In spite of this personal benefit, I have changed my mind on this issue. I will continue to critique any/all published materials like books, articles, Cds, tapes, Mp3s, sermons, etc., but I will try not to name names anymore. I now admit how this kind of practice can descend so quickly into a “he said/she said” kind of scenario or an unhealthy feeding frenzy of repressed feelings against certain people. 

Here are my reasons:  

1-When I name a name on this blog, the other person is not there to defend himself or herself or to give their side of the story; in that sense it is unfair for me to name names. Sure, we know that many “lurk” or have their staff members do the same, but most do not want to engage in trying to defend themselves personally in this kind of environment. 

2-I have taken more to heart the Mt. 18 Protocol of Jesus which begins with: “When your brother sins against you, go to him in private…” I don’t know how I am going to honor these words of Jesus perfectly because I have literally boxes full of notes of wrongs and offenses against leaders, but I will be thinking and praying about how I can work this important exhortation more into my daily life. (I am open to any ideas along this line.) 

3-Several years ago, I promised a couple of the pastors in the church system I like to criticize on this blog that when I wrote my book on spiritual abuse, that I would not mention any of their names. Even though this blog is not strictly a “book,” I feel that I may have been violating this promise in spirit. 

4-My motive for naming names has been to confront a church system that I feel has gone wrong in many ways. I now feel that I can accomplish my main purpose without always doing this. My naming of names may have hurt some people’s reputations unnecessarily. (This last point brings up the whole idea of whether I owe any of those I publicly criticized an apology; I will wait on the Lord about that one.) 

5-I have found that the Lord has sovereignly involved me in situations (even one right now for which I covet your prayers!) in which I confront pastors about their wrongdoings. Because of these types of sensitive scenarios, I think that I will feel better in my heart if I drop using names. (Honestly, I’m getting filled with so much ammo against pastor/leaders that I don’t want to get into the habit of it spilling out automatically all the time. I want to follow the approach that, as far as I can tell, therapists take when they publish a book using all of their clients’ examples – but with all the names changed.) 

6-I personally know many pastor/leaders besides the ones “on the hill.” As I continue to share, I would like any readers to know that what I write is not necessarily going to be about the church “on the butte.” 

In light of these reflections, I will be systematically going through all of my previous articles and striking out the names wherever possible. I felt to change the names in my Tacoma Dome story awhile back and now feel peace about changing the rest of them. Again, at least for right now, I feel that I can still accomplish my goal of exposing spiritual abuse in pastors and churches by keeping my focus on the general biblical principles involved instead of naming individuals.   

If you disagree with my decision, I will understand. I ask, nevertheless, that you try to have patience with me as I continue to struggle with the many deep and personal issues involved with truth-telling on this blog; especially since, from the beginning, I have chosen to post in my own name.