Well, they did it, folks. They tied the score; the gays are on the board.

Gay and lesbian Oregonians won a victory 34 years in the making Thursday when the Legislature passed a law protecting them from discrimination in housing, work and public places

However, City Bible Church, led by coach Nashif and assistant coach Nick Graham, haven't quite given up.

Opponents argued the law was not needed and gives special rights to gays and lesbians. The law raises questions, such as what constitutes discrimination against cross-dressers or what is required of public schools, said Nick Graham, spokesman for the Oregon Family Council, a nonprofit Christian group that opposed the bill.

"They broadened it out quite a bit," said Tim Nashif, political director for the Oregon Family Council. He said that while the council still opposes the law, it felt like it was heard.

The council is weighing whether to challenge the bill by collecting 55,179 signatures of registered voters and putting the measure on the November 2008 ballot, Nashif said. If it is not challenged, the law will go into effect Jan. 1, 2008. 

Guess that mass email alert by Frank Damazio didn't quite garner the bump in support, the church was hoping for. So sad! Oh well, I look forward to the November 2008 showdown at the Oregon Ballot box.  Who will take the lead?

I'll  see if I can create a Gay Madness Bracket for 2008. We can place bets on who wins. I trust it'll be a smashing good time.

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

 In all fairness (in my last X-Factor post I made a few assumptions) I decided to listen to PF's latest sermon titled The Foundation for Expectation is Desire (1/07/07). I was hoping to hear a balanced approach to Expectation and at first I thought I was in luck.

Right from the get go Frank says something to the effect of "We will deal with Disappointment because you can't talk about Expectation unless you deal with Disappointment, because that is where people lose their Expectation." Sounds like we are off to a good start, Frank and I agree.

He then gives a formula for Expectation which is: Desire + Hope + Faith = Expectation. Unfortunately this is where he starts to lose me.

Throughout the remainder of his sermon he goes into how people lose their "desire" due to "disappointment", but instead of allowing his congregation to be "real" and helping them deal with "life", Frank's focus is only on "restoring Faith when lost".

Again, there is nothing wrong with that in itself, but without a balanced approach it is simply misleading… in my opinion.

Frank quotes a number of scriptures regarding God giving you the desires of your heart (Psalm 20:4, Psalm 37:4, Psalm 78:29, Proverbs 13:12, Proverbs 13:17) and then tells everyone that "God does not lie" and that "You can go to the Bank with God's promises". Hmmmnnn…..

To sum up his sermon in one sentence it would be "Don't Give Up".

Now, that's a great story for a pep-rally or for a half-time speech, but try telling that to someone who is being sexually abused… someone who's spouse is continually cheating on them… someone who's child has turned away from God.

"Raise up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it" Remember that verse? Now, if you have raised a child in the "way he should go" and he still "departs from it" you are left with 2 options:

Option 1: God is liar

Option 2: You suck.

Neither of these options lead to anything good and so many times I have seen people take Option 2 time and time again until they eventually give up and decide Option 1 must be the case.

I think you get my point so I'll end by once again saying, Life is not easy, but know that God's love for you is more powerful than any hardship you may be going through. We don't always have the answer and there are many times in life when it may seem like God has turned his back on you and when those times come…

Option 3: God has a plan for your life and I don't have all the answers…you should probably seek professional help.

See Frank, it isn't that hard.

I listened to PDazzles first Faith Harvest sermon that was appropriately titled Miracle Seed for a Miracle Harvest. It is probably the longest post I have written, but come on…have you ever sat through an entire CBC sermon? Let's begin:

12:14 - Pastor Frank starts out by announcing this will be a 4 part series. Quite honestly if he keeps this topic to only one month I'll be very impressed.

12:15 - Clarifies that Faith Harvest is giving ABOVE and BEYOND the tithe and mentions that Faith Harvest is the only way to accomplish many things that we can't get done with the Tithe. I could stop right there.

12:17 - Talks briefly about Forward Together, proudly mentions that they were able to accomplish 3 of the 4 things they set out to do. They didn't retire the debt completely but they were able to apply 1 million dollars towards it.

Attention CBC members and all who gave to "Forward Together": ITS TIME TO HOLD YOUR PASTOR ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS WORDS. Don't you all remember how important Step 1 was? I do. Retire the debt. Once that happened there would be so much money freed up to do all sorts of things for the kingdom of God. Also, remember how Forward Together came about? Frank felt GOD telling him what he needs to get the church to do and the elders all agreed on these four steps. Don't you think if God tells you to do something maybe you should listen? Maybe instead of spending your money on a cute little ICE RINK in Vancouver you might just want to FOLLOW THROUGH WITH YOUR PROMISES. Enough of that though, back to the sermon.

12:22 - Quotes his first scripture Gen 8:22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Follows this scripture with theses statements "The law of the harvest is built into the scriptures", "You can not have a harvest time without a seed time, not in the spiritual and not in the natural", and finally "Seedtime is important because without there can not be a harvest." Excellent work Pastor, take a scripture that is literally talking about planting literal seeds and reaping a literal harvest and make it sound spiritual.  Question? What does the "cold and heat" stand for in your spiritual interpretation?

12:24 - Quotes second scripture Eph 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…" and before anyone has a chance to say "What????" he jumps right into scripture 3: Luke 7:9 "When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

12:24 - He then moves into talking about the 3 levels of faith. Lets see, there's "Faith, Great Faith, and Miracle Faith"… wait a second, what just happened? I'm pretty sure PF just stole my wallet; I couldn't even see it coming. Wow, he should take this show to Vegas. What a magician. Lets watch again, but this time in slow motion:

Random Scripture 1 mentions Seedtime & Harvest, jump to random scripture 2 mentioning how God is ABLE to do all (according to his power), finish with Random Scripture 3, which speaks on faith, and BAM. Homerun (It should have been a walk off home run I tell ya, he could have marched right off the pulpit, rounded third and headed home, but he decided to head back out for an encore.) For those of you who still don't get it let me ‘splain. No there is too much, let me sum up… Frank randomly took 3 scriptures that referenced his sermon topic, quoted them all together and created Faith Harvest (unfortunately proper Biblical interpretation doesn't work quite like that). Moving on.

12:26 - 3 levels of faith. Faith, Great Faith, Miracle Faith. Makes the following statements: 1. Great Faith believes our God to be a good God and all things are possible. - TRUE 2. Great Faith believes God desires to bless his people with great provision financially and spiritually. - Uh, Frank…? He does go on to mention that he has "proven it by scripture, by my life…" and many other ways, but fails to actually tell us HOW he has proven it.

12:29 - "You are not going to have the kind of  "more than enough" resource if you don't learn kingdom principles and kingdom thinking." Says something about sowing and reaping. Sow in famine sow against your mountain. Whatever that means.

12:32 -"Either this law of the harvest is right or it's wrong there is no in between. It's either a doctrine of scripture or it isn't a doctrine of scripture." Which I translate to say "Either you are going to give us money and continue to attend CBC or your not, there is no in between".

12:34 - Quotes someone unnamed saying "Great Faith is the empty hand of the soul that reaches out to God and returns full'.

12:39 - Tells everyone to "Open your hands a little bit". They have Prayer asking God to fill their hands with provision. Tells them to "bring it in, right now, bring it into your life. Place your hands on your heart". I think they are supposed to have just received provision, but I'm not sure how… they haven't had a chance to give yet.

12:42 - "Your tithe… is always the tithe… is always the tithe. It's 10%. It never changes even though the cost of living goes up and percentages go up and everything goes up, God still only asks for 10%. God doesn't increase that with the economy. Kinda makes tithing sound like a good deal…except that "Your 10% is always 10% is always 10%." The percentage doesn't go up, but the dollar amount does.

12:45 - Mentions Malachi 3. Naturally

12:46 - Offering is free will out of your heart. You should be a joyful giver and every person should be a receiver. When you sow you should expect to reap. When you sow your tithe you expect protection, you expect the covenant to work, windows to open. You should always pray that over tithe / offering. Again I'll translate "Give to get, give to receive, give to collect"

12:48 - If you have no expectation it dampens the "rhythm of giving" (I would love to hear a sermon on that alone). Many people do not get this; they give and give but never expect to receive. (Damn fools) So their giving is not with much expectation from the king.

12:50 - Tells story about a King and Giving/Receiving.

12:54 - God wants you to prosper. Prosperity is a gospel of scripture. God wants us to prosper with purpose so we can have more than enough. 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? God wants us to have more than enough. This makes me sick. He asks the congregation to "give until it hurts", but CBC can only give out of the excess offerings. What the eff are they tithing for? TRY CUTTING DOWN ON SOME OF YOUR EXPENSES AND YOU MIGHT JUST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO HELP THE POOR.

12:56 - He gets a little weird at this point: It's a faith offering. A specific offering with sacrifice. You dictate where the Lord will bring the harvest back. Target your giving: i.e. Give your house money, get a blessing in your house. It could be your business, your family, anything. Whenever you sow your mind needs to be directed somewhere.

12:57 - Quote of the night: It's a spiritual principal "You can't buy the blessings of God but this gives him something to work with". Right, and when I go to SUBWAY for lunch I'm not buying a sandwich, I just am giving Subman something to work with….

12:59 -Faith Harvest is:Given out of a willing heart, Given out of the stirring of the Holy Spirit, Given out of your own special treasure. It Starts with what you have and is a Sacrificial offering. "All good giving hurts." (I knew that was coming).

1:02 - Faith Harvest is motivated by grace not guilt. Not Competition orpressure. (Get ready for a runner up quote of the night…) "I [Frank] am always on the edge when it comes to preaching on money because I want you and need you to be stirred up. The church has opportunity and needs money but doesn't want you to feel pressure from what I am saying but wants you to have grace."No…… No pressure felt here. It's not like you would spend an inordinate amount of time speaking on giving or anything.

1:04 - "The best definition of grace is divine enablement. God gives you the generosity into your spirit that you need. God implants in your heart the spirit of giving" Yes, a truer picture of Grace could not be painted. Forget Jesus hanging on the cross and bearing our sins, Grace is all about Giving.

At this point I think he's gone on a little too long because he starts to reveal the REAL reason he is a pastor. Keep in mind these are his words and not mine… I couldn't make this stuff up really. The whole time he was preaching I kept thinking "Stop writing my blogs for me". Here we go:

1:07 - Remember, his words: "Most everything I do in the ministry right now I will never enjoy it fully. Whoever comes after me will have great inheritance in the Property, in the building, the size of church and staff in the college, everything that I'm doing is really setting up for the next generation." 

There you have it folks. It's all about the size of his church. Well… as the apostle Peter once said… "It's NOT the size of the ship, but the motion of the ocean" (well maybe not the apostle Peter, but a peter said that).

The quickest way I can find to dismiss this principle is to simply ask: WHERE IS JESUS IN FAITH HARVEST?

John 444's email reminded me of a story:

Every Sunday @ CBC, right in the middle of worship*, one elder would walk through the crowd and pick out 4 or 5 members to go and pray for Pastor Frank Who would be sitting in the front row… did I mention this was right in the middle of worship… It was always funny to watch how excited people would get when the elder would walk their direction. They really believed it was a huge honor to be able to pray for Hank in front of the entire church, while we were busy trying to worship.

One guy in particular had this slow and pious(?) walk towards Frank. He was very methodical with each prayerful step, savoring every little moment of glory, as if to say, "Look how important I am". Quite pathetic really.

The worst example I can remember is one Sunday there was a young man attending whom I had never seen before. He was bald, tattooed, and covered with piercings and appeared to really love Jesus. I watched him during worship as he danced, raised his hands, and sang his heart out to God.

As the pastors gathered the "Prideful Pray-ers" to minister to Frank (during worship), this young man got excited and marched right down the center isle and laid his hands on Frank and began praying. Instantly one of PF's cronies grabbed the young man and marched him to the back of the church for a lecture.

I don't know what happened at that point, but he did not return to the service and I never saw him there again.

Gee, I wonder where CBC's focus is???

*During the offering time, however, we were told to stay seated because they didn't want anyone to get distracted (this is prior to the "bring your tithes forward so we can use peer pressure to influence your giving" time).

You know how it goes, CBC starts passing the buckets, some young college girl gets a chance to sing a "special", the spirit starts to move, everyone stands to their feet with their hands raised and worships God… that was unacceptable to City Bible Church, but gathering a crowd front and center to "minister" to Frank Damazio was just fine.

Gee, I wonder where CBC's focus is???

Go ahead and say it "Johnpaul, you're just bitter because they never picked you to pray for Frank". Damn. And I spent so much time trying to sit close enough.

 John 444 sends in this email:

Hi JP and Justin,

After Anna's post in the "Odds 'n' Ends" thread, I visited Amazon.com and looked up Frank Damazio to see what kind of books he's written. When I saw Frank's book "The Gate Church", I remembered hearing him preach about "gate churches" at the Shiloh Equipping the Prophetic Conference in Kansas City at Metro Christian Fellowship Church in November 1999. My wife Karen attended with me and remembers Frank as well.

Frank's message wasn't consistent with the overall theme of the conference, which was for teaching about the gift of prophecy, and so I forgot about Frank and his message, although if memory serves, there was a 'prosperity/blessings' flavor to it. The basis of his message as I recall, was relating Jacob's ladder to churches, and how us and the angels would ascend / descend the ladder to heaven, carrying blessing of one form or another. I attended a few conferences at MCF in KC between 1999 and 2002, and only recall seeing Frank the once. Can't say I was looking for him, but given my initial impression that Frank wasn't on the same page as the other speakers (Mike Bickle, Paul Cain, Kingsley Fletcher, Rick Joyner, Graham Cooke, etc.), I assume Frank wasn't asked back.

Though Frank's message was forgettable, there is one lasting memory I have of my encounter with him in KC, and that is how Frank spent several minutes telling the audience about the 4 (I believe) intercessors he takes with him when he travels. He pointed them out in the front row at the conference, and said during the entire trip, their job was to pray for him, even while he was preaching. I'm sure it was intended to impress us, but it bugged me in that it seemed 'self important' and puffed up. Why announce that? It seemed extravagant. I can understand traveling with someone to keep company, his wife or a close male colleague, but 4 intercessors? Couldn't they intercede for Frank from Portland while he was in KC?

I'm left wondering if taking intercessors with him is a junket kind of thing as a reward for faithful butt-kissing?

John444

 The only problem I have with this story is the timeframe. I'm fairly certain that in November of 1999 Frank was busy preaching the Faith Harvest message to me and my friends at City Bible Church. Oh well, could have been a guest speaker that week.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Faith Harvest let me explain:

Faith Harvest begins every year (at CBC anyway) in November with a month of sermons on giving. This is followed up by December in which they speak on giving. And finally reaches its peak in January which is celebrated by a month of sermons on giving. (For those of you doing the math, that's 3 solid months or 1/4 of the years sermons dedicated to giving)

This is how it works. They tell you to give them money so that God will in turn "bless" you. While they never say exactly what that "blessing" is, week after week they have someone stand up and tell a story about when they gave to Faith Harvest they received ________ (fill in the blank with one of the following: Random Check in the Mail, Inheritance, Promotion, Pay Raise, etc). This obviously implies that if you give them money (above and beyond the tithe) God will give you money back. They won't say it, but anyone willing to think logically about the situation will clearly see it's a "give to get" program.

The best is when someone gets up and tells about how they received an "Inheritance Blessing". I can't help but think, "Oh joy, praise the Lord, someone close to me just died and I got paid. Hallalujah."

Of course it's not just a one-time gift they are looking for. No. Instead they want you to write down a pledge to give, over the course of those three months. "Stretch yourself" they tell you, "God honors faith."

They even have you bring your pledge card forward (together) so they can pray over it, asking God to bless you for your gift. Never mind what the Bible says about "letting your left hand know what the right hand is doing". It works though. Look at the beautiful campus that they have (make that multiple campuses). Two Espresso makers with in 50 feet of each other, fancy lighting, and plasma screen TV's all over the lobby. I guess its just more proof that the Bible is legit:

Mathew 6:2

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

 It's Faith Harvest time again, and while there are many good places to go sow your seed there is one place where the blessings really flow. Lets take a look:

Each and every year one farmer stands out from the rest. What makes his crop so special? Well, while some are busy with Wheat and others with Fruits and Vegetables Frank the Farmer goes and reaps the rewards from the Money Tree. Without fail his crop always produces great amounts of wealth, but don't be fooled… not just anyone can handle the money tree.

While it may seem to be a simple formula to you (take over large church, focus on giving, reap large rewards), preparing for the Faith Harvest is, in reality, a very large task.

First, you must plant the seed. This is not done quickly, oh no. When Farmer Frank bought his share of the CBC farm he spent the first 12 weeks planting the giving seed. 12 weeks. Many would give up on this saying "It's just not Biblical" but not Frank. Carefully he worked the soil with the same tedious message, give…give…give, but he didn't stop there.

After the first season he set out to find the perfect plant to help build his farming empire. This was not an easy process.  Every single day he went and worked the ground with Submission to Authority, Spiritual Covering, and other such seeds until one day he came up with the perfect hybrid crop. By carefully mixing Greed, Envy, and Pride with a touch of Biblical Misinterpretation he created the ultimate money tree: Faith Harvest. And now the time is upon us.

So get out your rake, your shovel, and your wallet and lets all head down to the CBC farm for a good old fashion Faith Harvest. Be prepared to invest time, it takes 3 months of every year just planting the seed (3 full years when the moon falls on Forward Together), but the reward is always worth it. 3, 4, even 10 times the amount sowed will be returned to you when the time is right.

I have faith for the harvest, do you?