A post on a previous thread:
Just this last week, in Charlotte LCG, little Mikey DeSimone delivered a beat-down to LCG members old enough to be his parents and grandparents. Completely ignoring the Bible's instructions that he honor his elders, this kid used the analogy of white-water rafting to demand that members obey the ministry without questioning. The Bible tells us to follow the ministry as they follow Christ, but Mikey believes that LCG members must follow his instructions even if we recognize that he is making a mistake. Members are to recognize how little they know, and how much Mikey (like other ministers) knows.
Mikey seems unable to realize that if everybody took that approach, we would all still be Roman Catholics, and that if Rod Meredith had taken that approach he would have died as a member of Grace Communion International.
Unfortunately, Mikey is a good student of Rod McNair, who recognizes that if you can infantilize the brethren, you can control them more easily. God gives brethren the Holy Spirit to help them grow in maturity and discernment, which means that Rod and Mikey must work very hard to bully LCG members into quenching the Holy Spirit and becoming jelly-brained robots.
That blindly obeying the ministers would result in members becoming Roman Catholics or Grace Communion International is shrugged off because bullies only think short term and not long term. Like Esau and his bowl of soup.
ReplyDeleteSo if something 'works' in the short run, do it!
Further proof of the infantilizing of LCG members can be found in the most recent Weekly Update, in which Gerald Weston tells his people:
ReplyDeleteWe saw an uptick in the number of co-workers and donors in June.
Weston's refusal to share specific numbers reminds us of Dave Pack and Bob Thiel, while the fact that this is news at all is a reminder of the steep downturns LCG has been having, month after month, for some time. LCG members are bullied, however, into forgetting just as in Orwell's 1984, and won't remember that for many years LCG took for granted that there would be not just an "uptick" each month, but actual growth that translated into more money to preach the true Gospel.
LCG Someone said: "Speakers at the Feast—Send Your Message Titles to the Festival Coordinator by August 15.If you are going to be giving a sermonette or sermon at the Feast of Tabernacles, please e-mail the title(s) of your message(s) to your Festival Site Coordinator by Wednesday, August 15. If you do not have your message fully completed, that’s ok—just send your coordinator at least a draft title of what you are working on."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Gerald and the LCG Elite, oops, Servants to the Brethren will be sending in their own FOT sermon outlines? Probably not. This approach of sermon monitoring and in fact, for my last FOT sermon in Myrtle Beach I was assigned some inane Wonderful World Tomorrow topic to speak on. I somewhere said "The wonderful world tomorrow" in the sermon but gave the one I chose on "The Politics of the New Testament: Why Peter, James, John and Paul may not have been and all one body we, one in hope and doctrine, one in chariteeeeeee...."
and too...they all illegally applauded at the end and Dave Albert made a beeline to me afterwards. He was the FOT guest speaker and I thought, uh oh..here it comes. He said we had to go to dinner so I could tell him more. He was my Epistles of Paul teacher back in the day.
ReplyDeleteIt did prove to be my last FOT sermon and in a year or so Dan Rogers was telling my church not to listen to me right after he presented me with a 25 year watch that had a dead battery in it. LOL Symbolic. I sent it back... Off to work to rub people the right way for a change :)
The "I was just following orders" excuse , was thoroughly discredited at the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazis after World War II.
ReplyDeleteMankind is expected to disobey immoral, and unlawful orders. In fact , enlightened and progressive organizations ENCOURAGE subordinates to speak up and point out problems and emergencies , and it is now the standard operating procedure in medical, aeronautics and many other industries.
I wonder how many of these groups who have the counsels,have ones on the counsels that are AFRAID to give their opinions and ask questions. I believe one poster made a comment on that.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of these groups who have the counsels,have ones on the counsels that are AFRAID to give their opinions and ask questions.
ReplyDeleteThat was Charles Bryce's testimony. Unfortunately, the cowardly Bryce only said so after he was thrown out of LCG. While he was in LCG, he was happy to sit on the Council of Elders and stroke Meredith's ego, daring to disagree only about the most minor matters of "how to do the Work" or doctrinal minutiae, even while major abuses and serious doctrinal discrepancies remained unaddressed.
Even obedience isn't enough for LCG's ministers.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember, a few years ago, when a Charlotte member obeyed Rod McNair's directive to quit a job at a nursing home? The member dutifully and immediately gave the nursing home the two weeks of notice that is customary in most of the working world.
Well, one of McNair's spies discovered this member working at the nursing home during the two weeks prior to the announced departure. The spy told McNair, who then disfellowshipped the member for "disobeying the ministry" without even checking with the accused.
McNair, you see, has been coddled in the ministry for his entire life. He has no concept of the courtesies and standard procedures of the workplace. The spy was rewarded, and McNair never apologized. This is life in LCG.
Two weeks notice? What about what happens after the person quits? What do you live on,your savings? When asked why you left the job, what do you tell the next job, I left because of demons? Do you change careers? Does anyone know more about this situation? Did the person(woman)find another job?
ReplyDelete"The Bible tells us to follow the ministry as they follow Christ,"
ReplyDeleteOh brother! Are you serious? Please show me exactly where the bible tells us this.
If you're referring to Paul telling the Corinthians to follow him as he follows Christ you need to remember Paul founded that church. They looked to him as a spiritual father. To turn this to a command to follow "the ministry" is why so many people are duped/deceived and rightfully so, anyone dumb enough to believe that deserves everything they get!
Kevin M
@ 11:01 AM, would you deny that this principle means that the LCG members in Charlotte should follow DeSimone and McNair as they follow Christ? The principle is sound. The problem is that those two wolves faithfully follow Satan, so the LCG brethren who follow them become more and more evil the more they follow.
ReplyDelete"Following the ministry as they follow Christ" should mean that if someone/anyone has a good habit, imitate it until it becomes internalised. It's a growth technique. However in the church, this is twisted and is a example of 'loading the language,' ie, extra, unintended meanings are added to the words. In the church, it means being passive and allowing oneself to be lorded over. Ministers do not own members lives and should not be exercising the talents that God gives to every person as in the parable of the talents.
ReplyDeleteMinisters, in 1984 doublespeak call this theft 'administering Gods government.' But it's murder, since life is exercising these talents.
These thieving, murderous ministers richly deserve the lake of fire.
"@ 11:01 AM, would you deny that this principle means that the LCG members in Charlotte should follow DeSimone and McNair as they follow Christ?"
ReplyDeleteOnce again, oh brother! Talk about being deceived, principle? Principle? Come on, it was just a statement that Paul made to people who learned the gospel from him. Nothing more.
Here's an idea, why don't you just follow Christ and leave out the middle men?
This is the reason there is so much division in the church. You turn a simple statement by Paul into a command to follow a man, and totally neglect his calling the same people carnal for saying they're "of" Paul or Apollos, Cephas or any man.
Today you say, I'm of LCG or I'm of COGWA or I'm of UCG, etc. etc. Know you not that you are still carnal.
Come on, we are of Christ, no, not I am of Christ, "WE" are of Christ" all of us who strive to obey him.
If you haven't come to understand that the reason God destroyed the WCG was because of idolatry, for putting a false "government of God" system above him. Putting men above God!
Don't believe the lies, the Ambassador trained minister class are a mirror image of their mother, the Roman Catholic Clergy. Church Government is the Image of the Beast!
Follow Christ, if you see a brother following Christ then yes, imitate him/her but they are in no way over you.
Wake up, quit worshipping men and physical church organizations!!!
Kevin
And yes, the Greek word means to imitate or mimic, not to follow someone as a leader!
ReplyDeleteKevin
I personally know Mike DeSimone. And this is completely false.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:12 AM, your denial is weak sauce. Didn't you read Mike's "A Few Notes"? Here's what Mike wrote:
ReplyDeleteWe had a total of six rafts for our group. Each raft had an experienced guide at the stern. The name of the guide on our raft was Everett.
Immediately after getting the raft in the water, Everett gave us a crash course of the commands he would give as we navigated the rapids. “FORWARD 1!” That meant one stroke forward. “FORWARD 2!”... Two strokes forward. “FORWARD!”... Just keep going until he says stop. “LEFT BACK, RIGHT FORWARD!” Meaning left side paddles backward, while right side paddles forward, making a hard right turn for the raft.
He also made it abundantly clear, “While we’re on that raft, everything we do, we do together.”
This is all we really knew at the beginning. He gave us what we needed to make it through alive.
As he yelled out the commands, many of the times we didn’t understand all the reasons, and sometimes they were even counter-intuitive! Sometimes, he was steering us to the right, when I thought we should have been heading to the left. Sometimes, he had us go into the rapid with the front of the boat almost full facing one of the shores. He had us paddle at times I would have thought we should not be paddling. And on and on...
And even though they didn’t make sense at the time, it was our job to follow the instructions he gave. Even if we felt like he was making a mistake, it was still our job work together to follow his direction! It wasn’t the time to question his judgment and demand an explanation before we took action. He knew what he was doing, and we didn’t.
Speaking with him later, he explained there were often two or three reasons why he had us take certain actions. At first some of it was to train us and test us. Sometimes it was for stability, sometimes for his steering purposes, sometimes to help him turn the raft faster and harder than he could by himself. Sometimes, it was his intuition of how we needed to get through the rapids without flipping. And sometimes he was simply maneuvering the raft to make sure we could enjoy a good glimpse of a special feature of the river.
This experience helped highlight in a special way, how little I (we) knew and how much he knew… Even when we could understand some aspects of it logically, it wasn’t all based on logic. He had many reasons for what he did. We were each just small instruments, seeing a small picture of something that took a great deal of thought, experience, and intuition to get through the adventure alive and without incident.
Mike's point is clear. The raft guide knew what he was doing, but the rafters didn’t. The analogy is plain. Mike (the ministry) is the raft guide, and his congregation members are the rafters. "This experience helped highlight in a special way, how little I (we) knew and how much he knew…" Members aren't to question or to assume they know more than the ministry.
Anon 7:12 AM wrote, I personally know Mike DeSimone. So do I. Mike has changed a lot since he was ordained. It's sad.