A few things to consider by those RCG members visiting quietly here.
He keeps reminding you from the pulpit what a good teacher/leader he is....but nobody has heard of him.
When faced with a personal problem that you need his council on, he snaps "What do you want me to do about it!?"
He removes associate ministers from the church that become popular with the church family.
He does not conduct funerals unless he absolutely cannot get out of it.
He thinks people will lose their blessing if they don't get a chance to donate to his ministry.
He only accepts correction from ministers of equal anointing or higher, so don't even think about it.
He doesn't visit people in the hospital unless he absolutely can't get out of it or God tells him to go, which is not often.
He tells stories from the pulpit of people who were healed through his prayers and none of them go to his church.
He removes associate ministers who can preach as well as he does.
He is rarely seen in the company of low-income congregants.
He believes you should compete against each other to 'get around his anointing.'
He feels his adult children are owed big church salaries despite their lack of experience at, well.....everything
He returns from headquarters and hints how he corrected their doctrine, taught the leaders back their own sermons to them and was generally Joe Cool when he was there.
He becomes VERY upset if you don't call him by his title.
He tells you that as your pastor he is your 'anointing connection.'
He thinks sneering at pastors of smaller churches is acceptable.
He hints that higher profile ministers come to him for advice.
He tells you outright that all his peers come to him for advice.
He maintains he is the one that God sent to preach his favorite doctrines to the area: he's God's man for your town. Someone preaching a similar message in the area is not God's man for the area.
He competes with other ministers to be top dog in the eyes of those he admires and imitates.
He believes the type of ministry he does (teacher, prophet, etc.) is the most important.
You may NOT ask how money is spent in the church.
He regularly suggests there are other preachers/congregants trying to undermine him.
Congregants are charged for copies of his sermons.
He cannot take a joke. And if you try to tease him, he MUST retaliate.
He feels that the church is riding the coattails of his faith.
Match each of the above examples with the characteristics taken from Narcissism In The Pulpit below. There are no wrong answers.
You are welcome to post comments of other examples of
"Your pastor might be a narcissist if..."
1. Feels grandiose and self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements & talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion.
3. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique &, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions).
4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention & affirmation - or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply).
5. Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special & favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations.
6. Is "interpersonally exploitative", I.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends.
7. Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others.
8. Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her.
9. Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted
When I attended Restored it always seemed strange to me that the pastor was never allowed to give a live sermon even if he was there at services - it was always a sermon from HQ. My friends told me this is the same in every congregation. And whatever sermon is being played on a particular Sabbath, THAT is the sermon played in every congregation that week.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhen I attended Restored it always seemed strange to me...
"To Be Played in All the Churches." sermons are plain and simply control. In Dave Pack's case, he simply cannot stand to think anyone else is giving sermons when he needs to always control and not stay in touch with them, but them with him.
HWA/HQ sermons to be played in church were all meant to keep the locals in touch with the personalities. When in WCG, they pulled that very often and I maybe played 30% of the tapes sent. The topics were same old same old, but it was the contact and connection WCG psychologically needed to feel . They did not trust the local pastors to follow the rules. Dave would be fearful some man was becoming more appreciated or listened to than himself. He can't stand that! Tapes control the process. They also piss off the members into eye rolling when they too common and are announced and the local pastor will eventually realize his own soul is being sucked out, he is not being trusted and is plainly a lackey for Dave's worldview.
Dave needs his local ministers to promote support and enforce tithing. He does not need them to actually pastor, love the people and become more needed than himself. That's how it works in a group led by a man such as Dave Pack.
Can't wait to hear about the first trust minister who has Dave Pack fed up group and walks away with it. "To be played" is meant to keep that as less a possibility.
PS It also indicates that the reality is it is what Dave Pack thinks which is the most important kind of sermon. Church is about Dave Pack's views, ideas, specialness, awesome announcements and plans. This can only be delivered by a Dave Pack which is why underling ministers are not considered by Dave to be qualified to speak for Dave. Also, we can't have some knowing what Dave thinks and others not knowing it at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThe RCG ministry are simply the Elephant poop cleaner uppers at the circus and only are called upon when needed to make the stars look good.
He returns from headquarters and hints how he corrected their doctrine, taught the leaders back their own sermons to them and was generally Joe Cool when he was there.
ReplyDeleteDescribes the apostle Paul to a tee.
You nailed it Corky.
ReplyDeleteGosh, most of the list can be matched up with a bragging Pauline scripture....
ReplyDeleteHard to tell if the list is describing the Packatollah, Spanky, or Six-Pack Flurry, to be quite honest.
ReplyDelete"He believes you should compete against each other to 'get around his anointing.'"
....what does this even mean? Seriously, I can't wrap my brain around what this sentence is trying to say, can someone clarify?
"HWA/HQ sermons to be played in church were all meant to keep the locals in touch with the personalities. When in WCG, they pulled that very often and I maybe played 30% of the tapes sent."
Other than the Holy Days (to take up some of the slack for the split sermon, if there was no one "visiting" at the time), I would say Victoria probably averaged 10% of the "to be played in all the churches" sermons.
After the changes, however, I would say this went up exponentially. Not that those sermons made the least bit of sense, either.
"They also piss off the members into eye rolling when they too common and are announced"
Sad but true, this was the case for my congregation, as well. Some of the sermons about the digs in Jerusalem were interesting, but, more than twenty-five years later, those are the only ones that stand out in my mind.
Velvet, that comment means those types, and DP is known for this , get the underlings telling on each other and family against family to be allowed to be around him and win his favor.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for Dave to get between one too many mama bears and her cubs and see what happens
The song leader cartoon at the head of the blog entry reminds me of some of the games songleaders used to play at F/T in old school WCG. At least once each feast, some white songleader would suddenly say, "Now brethren, we'd like to have all the Negro brethren sing verse 3!" The problem lost on our erstwhile songleader was that there were insufficient numbers in the huge festival congregation to be heard.
ReplyDeleteBB
PS it means people under him should compete in some way, usually through favors and "information" to get the change to ingratiate one's self to the leader. Like tithe the most, donate the most, give whatever the most to the leader and you're in.
ReplyDeleteI would certainly agree that Davey is acting very consistently with the irreverant, and deliberately distorted misrepresentation of Paul that some have presented here. However, we need to recognize that that misrepresentation is a minority viewpoint, certainly not consistent with the understanding of the majority of Christian theologians, or the majority of Christians.
ReplyDeleteQuite honestly, HWA never knew precisely what to do with Paul, most likely because HWA believed that there was not supposed to be any difference between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. You get quite a different view if you read the works of the pre-Nicean fathers, whom HWA rejected as being Catholic, hundreds of years before the word "Catholic" or "universal" was applied.
BB
It would seem if a real god were really behind the writing of the New Testament, he would have made things far less confusing, don't you think? Just look at all the conflicting views just presented here.
ReplyDeleteHow I wish the congregants awake. HWA took us for a ride. Now that he is gone, there are those that followed him sucking tithes from innocent people whose only aim is to please God. You got it, mind control is the name of the game. People should realize that no church nor any minister on this planet can bring about salvation. Only Christ can. These so-called ministers are just maintaining a lifestyle using the name of Christ.
ReplyDeleteBut remember that old saying: "Fooled me once, shame on you. Fooled me twice, shame on me." Somewhere along the line the gullible people who support these tithe-suckers have to take some responsibility by taking back control of their own minds. Genuine innocence is one thing. Foolish naivety quite another. And Anonymous 3:48, your "salvation" mindset is just as naive as the stupid suckers who support all the HWA spinoff groups, and sets you up for all sorts of delusions.
ReplyDelete"Quite honestly, HWA never knew precisely what to do with Paul, most likely because HWA believed that there was not supposed to be any difference between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians."
ReplyDeleteTo HWA, there was hardly supposed to be difference between Jews and christians. His recipe for a "true christian" was not far off of take 1 pharisee, add a pinch of christ (for flavor). Knead vigorously. Bake at 777° for 7 minutes. Yields one light, fluffy, unleavened loaf. (WTF??)
But such lunacy is not contained merely within the bounds of the COG's. Browse through this brief article for a list of the absolutely nutty things multiple MILLIONS of your fellow American's actually believe! And then consider how ardently religious America is when compared to many other countries, especially the western European nations.
ReplyDeleteTo me, this is downright frightening:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/12-million-americans-believe-lizard-people-run-our-country/63799/
And the aliens/lizards referred to are what the conspiracy buffs/fundamentalist Christians understand as "Grays" and "Reptilians" - two separate shape-shifting creatures said to be the offspring of Satan and his demons mating with human females. I know of at least one COG member who would die defending this loony belief. And no doubt there are many others who believe it. The vast majority of those who believe in Grays and Reptilians are ardent Christian believers. All one has to do is to visit their websites to attest to this. But it just shows once you start buying into the conspiracy mindset (which Christianity essentially is founded upon) that it can lead to all kinds of other hybrid and distorted versions of reality that spring forth from it.
ReplyDeleteAnd just to further illustrate the conspiracy mindset in action, within minutes of the tragedy that took place in Boston earlier today, they were already starting to interpret the twin explosions as a "false-flag" government-sponsored act. Unbelievable.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/15/the_boston_marathon_conspiracy_theories_start
DennisCDiehl said "HWA/HQ sermons to be played in church were all meant to keep the locals in touch with the personalities. When in WCG, they pulled that very often and I maybe played 30% of the tapes sent. The topics were same old same old, but it was the contact and connection WCG psychologically needed to feel."
ReplyDeleteIn LCG, it goes far beyond just connecting with the HQ personalities. It is nothing short of hypnosis.
- Keep your focus on the swinging pendulum.
- Weekly updates on all the goings on in Charlotte.
- Must-play sermons on a regular basis.
- The TV broadcast as sermonettes once a month.
- RCM writing the lead article for all magazines.
- Monthly co-worker letters from RCM.
- And on and on.
After all, if RCM was honest:
- We don't want you to focus on your relationship with Christ because then we lose power over you. Since Christ has hand-selected me (RCM) as his one-and-only representative on earth, focusing on us IS focusing on Christ.
- Be very careful to interact with the Laodiceans outside of LCG.
- We really need your money to do "the most important work on the face of the earth", so you should not give your tithes or offerings anywhere else.
- We don't really care about the well-being of the field churches; after all, their sole purpose is to serve us here in Charlotte. Therefore, we have no problem sucking in all of the best of the field ministers into Charlotte where they can be bureaucrats instead of ministers.
This craziness among American Christians is all too true, Leonardo.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in Missouri, my wife and I were invited to a Christian lady's home, and we went there at the appointed time.
She told us how the little light on her cable box was part of a Satanic effort, trying to watch and listen to us, and that was why she had a piece of tape over it.
What's even more crazy is that this lady was one of the most respected Christians in town.
Leonardo,
ReplyDeleteI have met a few x-WCG people who consider Alex Jones to be a good source of "news"...
However, in spite of the fact that I've met MANY more "non-x-WCG" people, I have never heard any of the "non-x-WCG" people mention that they believe Alex Jones is a credible source.
This certainly says something about what can happen to a person's brain after being indoctrinated with Armstrongism.
Fundamentalist indoctrination hurts our thinking capacity, no doubt. But another thing that also plays a major role, and that is the utter lack of teaching people the very basic skills of critical thinking. It's becoming endemic in America. Kids just aren't being armed with any kind of tools in this area at all, and when they grow into adulthood this ignorance is all too evident.
ReplyDelete