Dave Pack Denies He Was Ever A Source Of Controversy

"Who? Me?" should really be Dave's mantra.  He has never done anything wrong in his entire life.

Some today assert that Church Administration, and later Ministerial Services, perceived Mr. Pack as a source of controversy in his pastorates, and that there was a necessity to frequently transfer him through the years to alleviate problems he had supposedly created. Had this been the case, and this should be obvious, he would not have been systematically promoted in 1976, 1977 and 1981 (and other times later).

On the contrary, he was viewed as a pastor who could reorganize and stabilize injured congregations.

The expanded Rochester/Syracuse/Buffalo pastorate spanned five and a half hours east to west, and three hours north to south, from Dunkirk to beyond Utica, and from the St. Lawrence River (Canadian border) down to Cortland, New York, below Syracuse.

Now pastoring almost 1,100 brethren, the Packs drove almost nonstop to attend three Sabbath services each week, on top of giving Bible studies and directing Spokesman Clubs and youth programs, as well as also making many visits each week. He did have two unordained, but full-time, ministerial assistants to help.

Dave Pack takes credit for turning HWA against Stan Rader

Is there anyting in the COG that Dave has not stuck his nose into and taken credit for?

Three months later, in mid-April 1979, Mr. Armstrong’s chief legal counsel was interviewed on the popular CBS television news program 60 Minutes.

At a point, after a heated argument with reporter Mike Wallace, the man stormed off the set, warning before the camera, “You’re on my list!”

Mr. Pack was far from the only minister who was terribly disturbed by what had happened on national television. A month later, at a regional youth track meet in Hershey, Pennsylvania, three field pastors vented their frustrations to him.

“If Mr. Armstrong doesn’t do something about this man, the Church will be destroyed,” they said with one voice. “You’ve got to say something.” Of course, many other ministers felt the same, but these three actually urged Mr. Pack to speak up to Mr. Armstrong. Their request was formal.

Convinced he had a duty to apprise Mr. Armstrong of the damage being done by the Church’s attorney, Mr. Pack called the Pastor General the next day.

“Mr. Armstrong, we have a major problem brewing with [name],” he warned.

Mr. Armstrong became angry. (He had been satisfied with the interview, not knowing he had been given an edited version of the program! He had no idea that all of America had witnessed a representative of the Church engage in an emotional outburst and seem to threaten a prominent journalist.)

“Dave, you just have to understand that he has a temper,” Mr. Armstrong said, “and when he shows it to me or raises his voice to me, he always regrets it and apologizes. You need to extend him the milk of human kindness.”

Unsure of how to get his point across, and very much now on the “hot seat,” Mr. Pack simply stated, “Mr. Armstrong, I just don’t understand how he is allowed to scream at you. People know that he does this. I would never dream of even talking back, let alone raising my voice at Christ’s apostle.”

His words stopped Mr. Armstrong in his tracks.

“You’re right!” the Pastor General said with some volume as he made an instant 180-degree turn in thinking. “If he ever screams at me again, it will be the last time!”

Mr. Armstrong’s perspective was the same as most others. He had grown accustomed to things a certain way. However, when someone presented him with the reality of the situation, he realized, “That’s right…That can’t happen. What is being tolerated here?”

Gerald Weston: Says Mothers with Children Out of Wedlock Are A Terrible Embarrassment To The Congregation.

A comment from another thread:

"I understand, everybody has a double-life to some degree."

What Weston seems not to understand is that LCG (and Armstrongism in general) encourages people to maintain a double-life, and to be more and more two-faced as they continue in the church, unlike many other churches that allow people to feel that they don't need to put up a false front of near-perfection.  

There are of course a few brethren who for a while try not to live a double-life, and who try to admit their weaknesses honestly and sincerely as they repent and strive to be better Christians. Before too long, these people either run away from the falseness of ACOG spirituality or learn the two-faced ACOG standard and become twice the sons of hell they were before they joined their ACOG (Matthew 23:15).

In his sermon today, Weston made it clear that he is going to set a standard, and if you can't fake it you won't be allowed to make it in LCG. Does he not realize that this won't actually make the brethren holier? It will just make them more fake. Weston would rather have a church filled with people who know how to fake a certain level of Godliness, rather than a church filled with imperfect people striving honestly to reach a greater level of Godliness.  

Perhaps the saddest part of the sermon came when Weston attacked innocent children and their mothers. He mentioned that when he was pastoring one large WCG congregation, there were perhaps 14 young women who had children out of wedlock and brought their babies to services. To Weston, this was a sign of scandal and liberalism. Other pastors might rejoice that a woman had learned a hard lesson, and that instead of aborting the baby or abandoning her responsibility she had repented of her damaging sin and was now seeking to live a better life. But that's not what Weston said today. Instead of praising the women for their repentance and desire to grow in difficult circumstances, he described them as if they were a terrible embarrassment to the congregation.

How will repentant sinners thrive in LCG, if they know deep down that Weston and their pastor see them as embarrassments and failures because of prior sin, instead of seeing them as God's children striving to atone for their earlier mistakes?  

All in all, it was a sickening sermon that I would have expected from a man like Pack. I was one of the many who thought LCG would become more balanced after Meredith's death. I was wrong.

Dave Pack Takes Control of Degenerate Liberal Youth In The Church

Even the youth of the church could not escape Dave's self-righteous judgement!

As was the case with brethren in the Church during the 1970s, the youth programs in Buffalo and surrounding areas had become liberal, and mirrored the permissive leanings of the Church and a deteriorating society. Larger youth activities in the Church degenerated into breeding grounds for bad attitudes and unacceptable behavior before Mr. Armstrong directed radical changes be made. Sports programs had become overly competitive, with spectators sometimes hurling insults at opposing players and stomping wildly on the bleachers, as would happen at a worldly high school game.

As doctrines were watered-down, youth constantly pushed the limits of tolerable behavior. Without guidance and clear standards, their behavior, as well as their appearance, soon became almost indistinguishable from teenagers in the world.

In many congregations, teens and preteens ran wild, giving themselves over to inappropriate music, underage drinking—even drug abuse and fornication. The situation became so appalling that Mr. Armstrong temporarily shut down the Church’s regional youth activities and national tournaments, as he prepared to doctrinally straighten out the Church.

From 1978 forward, the Pastor General worked to re-insert God’s Way back into youth programs, starting with new leadership at Ambassador College, and reorganization at the S.E.P. summer camps. Next was the introduction of a groundbreaking youth magazine (called Youth 81, 82, 83, etc.), which taught teens how to strive against the pulls of the world and attain their full potential. It also provided instructions to the ministry on how and what to teach young people.

Along with removing teens who clearly did not belong in the Church, the introduction of new activities with the right focus caused young people to once again bear the fruit of living God’s Way.

“I came to understand that the spiritual health of the youth was directly connected to the focus of the local minister. Congregations in which the minister looked to God—and Mr. Armstrong’s direction and example—for guidance brought huge rewards. Conversely, ministers who allowed permissive attitudes to permeate their local youth programs reaped what they had sown—and previously (before Mr. Armstrong’s course correction) so had the entire Church.

“The Church as a whole was not performing its God-given duty to its young people during these years. Teenagers are incredibly perceptive. They immediately notice hypocrisy when leaders allow certain behaviors in one congregation, but not another.”

The field pastor stressed holding to God’s standards and insisted that parents train their children properly. This was a big reason some viewed him as too strict.

Much to the chagrin of some youth, Bible studies were also held for parents on the trends of the day regarding rock music, dress, alcohol and drugs. These candid discussions gave parents the assistance they needed to teach their children properly.

Mr. Pack remembered countless times when he nicely, but firmly, told teenagers, “I do not care what’s going on with your friends outside the Church or who is allowed to attend, and what is permitted, in other congregations. You are here. If you want to hold to right standards of conduct, wonderful. If not, you will be happier elsewhere, meaning outside the Church.”

While some may think this harsh, obeying God is always a choice—for adults and teens.

Along with explaining to teenagers what they were not to do, it was always a priority to show them the right way to live. Campouts, canoe trips, talent shows, sports programs, special group trips and other activities were held—all with the correct focus. A tremendous amount of effort was exerted in reviving the youth programs to God’s standards.

Dave Pack: I became the "field" advisor to HWA while he was in Tuscon

Everyone in Pasadena has said that this is absolutely not true when Dave started spouting this years ago.  HWA never considered Dave an advisor of any sort.  Dave as considered more of a tattle-tale than anything else.  In those conversations he did have with HWA his glorified himself as HWA's true supporter.  This is just one more of Dave's tall tales.

It was during this trying time for the Church that Mr. Pack’s relationship with the Pastor General grew much stronger. On many occasions in the summer of 1978, the men spoke on the phone, sometimes at length, and discussed an array of subjects.

These long, detailed discussions laid the groundwork for more extensive talks about liberal doctrine and other wrong ideas permeating the thinking of certain senior men in Church Administration and many in the field ministry. The subject of these talks slowly rolled into reorganizing the Work “post-Garner Ted” and the Church’s overall condition from a field minister’s perspective.

That Mr. Pack was a field pastor was helpful to Mr. Armstrong. At the time, the Pastor General was surrounded by administrators at Headquarters who seemed to have their own agendas, while he was at the same time somewhat isolated living in Tucson. (A recent heart attack, plus a second marriage, had temporarily taken Mr. Armstrong to Tucson to live.) 

It was through these phone conversations that Mr. Pack slowly began to realize his relationship with Mr. Armstrong had changed. He had become an advisor from the field perspective.

“Many will dispute this, and our enemies will call this characterization false, but this is what our relationship became. Only many years later did I understand why God engineered circumstances as He did. But this description is the truth of the relationship—and many knew it.”

Mr. Armstrong expressed that he appreciated frankness and honesty, even when it meant respectfully disagreeing. It stood in stark contrast to the usually sugarcoated, self-serving political anglings he often received from those at Pasadena. These were people who either shielded him or told him what they thought he wanted to hear (generally, because they had their own agendas).