SGM Survivors

I'm Guy, husband of Kris.

I grew up in church, beginning life as a Southern Baptist, then explored the world of Assemblies of God, followed by a stint in full blown Charismatic circles. Our experience with SGM was brief. We were both a little guarded, but SGM seemed like a great place. We found ourselves wondering about some of the odd stuff we were seeing - courtship (almost as a mandate), homeschooling (again, a near mandate), plus overwhelming worship of some guy named C.J. We tested the waters for a few months and then packed it in. You can read about it on the blog, just dig around.

Hi Guy and Kris,

It took me a while to find this new site because all of the threads at the old site were no longer listed!! They were complete gone. I hope everyone can find this new site ok. Maybe you can e-mail everyone from the old site the link to this site. It looks great! Great job Guy and Kris. Thank you very much for all of your hard work and this ministry that you have provided! It is a God send!

Thanks Guy & Kris!

I was hoping you were working on a message board, Guy!

Hmmmm, an intro, huh?
I was brought up Catholic and became a Christian in college. I went to a variety of non-denominational churches for several years and then started going to a PDI church in 1983. Around 1995 or so the Holy Spirit started moving in our church and several people went to Toronto and came back all excited. It wasn't long before all that was stopped. There were a variety of control issues going on at the time and by the time the year 2000 hit, almost half of the original church members were gone. The church got a new senior pastor in 2004 and at first everything was ok, but then things started changing. I loved it there and I still love all the people that I had known from the beginning. There are so many newish people there that I didn't even know them all like I used to know everyone. My family and I left last fall shortly after Kris started her blog. I had found the original posts that she quoted in one of her first blogs back in the summer of 2007 and that fall I went looking for it again but it was gone. So I did a google search and then found Kris' blog. Sooo, that's my story.

Hmmm?? Ok, I don't ever remember not being a Christian, but I think I was around 5 and it all started in a Baptist Church in the south. So pretty much grew up Baptist, but visited a lot of different churches through out my life. I married a Catholic, who later converted to Protestant. And we moved all over, and went from a Lutheran, to a nondenominational, former Baptist church, then we discovered a SGM church, moved and joined up with a SGM church plant. We were there for 8 years, were caregroup leaders, began noticing things that just didn't line up and started asking questions. We asked to step down from leadership, because we truly wanted a break, but were told that we needed to be under the authority of a different pastor than the one that we were meeting with and to pray about it. A week later, after prayer, my husband said we have made our decision, we not only wish to step down, and we don't desire to be under a different pastor's accountability, instead we have decided to leave. They asked us to reconsider and take some time to pray, and we formally sent our very lenghty letter of departure and full explanation to all of leadership and left. No discipline process, just the beginning of the shunning. It has been 3 years since we left, and we are so happy that we did. We live just minutes away from many of the families, but no one ever calls, and we never received another word from the pastors. Just plain weird!

I'm Kris, wife of Guy. I was raised in a Christian home, attended Christian schools and graduated from a Christian college...you could say I was pretty saturated with knowledge of God by the time I reached adulthood. And somewhere along the way, this knowledge had become experience. I can't remember a time when I did NOT passionately believe that following Jesus was my top priority.

Growing up, my family and I were members of a very conservative Bible-believing Evangelical church (with a Reformed bent). I think our small town was probably one of the last gasps of the "Leave It To Beaver" era. Our church was filled with Ward-and-June couples, and I went to youth group with a bunch of Wallys. Sometimes in the midst of this sweet Christian culture, it could get a little frustrating to know what parts of our faith were real, and which parts were just...cultural. But the doctrine classes and the leaders' very sensible, stick-to-the-Bible approach gave me an excellent foundation for discernment throughout the rest of my life. Not to mention, if I'd taken one more college course, I could have graduated with a minor in theology.

I share this background about my Christian education because, of all people, I should have known better when, some years back, we first got lured into what I've come to call a "hyper-Charismatic" ministry. Both Guy and I had grown weary of "going through the motions" in our church experience. We yearned for something REAL. We wanted to see the sick healed and the dead raised. So when we stumbled upon a loud, brash, flashy church where the pastor was extremely confident and would declare every Sunday that healings occurred, yokes were broken, and so forth, we almost couldn't join quickly enough. We were attracted to the exuberant worship and the fact that finally, FINALLY, we seemed to have found a place that proclaimed the "full Gospel" of the New Testament.

I can't really understate the magnetic power of this pastor himself, either. The man had a unique blend of gravity, passion, authority, and sincerity. He was also articulate and - apparently - educated. He was an extremely gifted orator with a way of plucking the best promises out of the Bible and stringing them together in a way that exhorted and encouraged people until the entire audience was on its feet, cheering and clapping.

We loved focusing on the positive aspects of our Christian faith, and for awhile, we felt like we were thriving spiritually there, even though we'd been uneasy about some things from almost the beginning - things like the fact that the pastor answered to no one and exerted tight control over everything...or things like the very obvious nepotism, where both the pastor's young adult sons were on staff in key positions, even though they hadn't even graduated from college yet...or how we were subtly taught a view of the "end times" where the church was just going to grow more and more glorious, with more and more money and power and political clout at her disposal...or how the pastor drove one of the most expensive Mercedes vehicles I'd ever laid eyes on...or how in a congregation of over 1,000, there were very few genuine relationships among the church people. Very occasionally, there'd be socials, and it was always weird to me how the only animated conversations we'd ever have would be when the subject of the pastor would come up. Everybody would then get all excited and talk about how they'd come to love Pastor "Smith" (a pseudonym).

As long as the pastor stuck to a straightforward reading of the Bible in his sermons, though, things were still good. Along the way, we did notice that the healings and the miracles were, unfortunately, almost always a lot more hype than reality. I'm not saying that no healings ever occurred. But we'd have these healing services, and time and again someone would be "healed" of something like a hurt shoulder, only to show up with their arm in a sling the next Sunday. Or there was the little child who was told that her eyes were healed...but then she eventually had to put her glasses back on. It bothered us that in these services, God apparently thought migraines were more worthy of healing than the child suffering from cerebral palsy or the totally blind man with the white cane.

After a few years of gradual disillusionment, we sort of got what I began to think of as "Charismatic fatigue." The simple truth was that at least at this church, with this pastor, the "presence of God" had been reduced to a formula that the pastor obviously believed was under his complete control. Also, we began to realize that there was an ever-increasing amount of preaching about money. The pre-offering "pep talks" were getting longer and longer, to the point where sometimes it felt like the pastor preached two sermons - one on tithing, and one on something else. But then, when the church went through some major financial upheavals, even the main sermons began to have a very crass, materialistic focus.

We found ourselves noticing more and more that "making an impact for the Lord" seemed to mean promoting our pastor and his ministry. It was a really weird realization to make, but one day it hit me - practically out of the blue - that although I was more passionate and "on fire" about witnessing than I'd ever been before in my life, the main push of all my "witnessing" ALWAYS seemed to come down to trying to get people to go to church with me so they could "experience the anointing." Looking back now, I am horrified at the genuine opportunities I passed up to present the simple Gospel of Jesus. Instead, I trampled over them with invitations to go to church with me. I could even see their eyes glaze over, and yet it took years to realize that I'd fallen into this twisted thinking, where I'd confused sharing CHRIST with sharing my CHURCH.

Guy and I went through this process of disillusionment so gradually that we did not even realize what was happening for a long while. We spent a lot of time analyzing, just between the two of us, the ways that the teachings had gone south, and the ways that we saw the pastor manipulating people. Most of the time, these conversations would come back around to, "Well, of course he doesn't realize what he's doing..." But eventually, we were forced to acknowledge that he was a very smart man and simply HAD to be doing at least some of these things deliberately.

There were several straws that broke the camel's back, but perhaps the most strikingly obvious was the Sunday when a guest speaker gave an altar call for "those of you who want to prosper." Although he did mutter a sentence or two about "asking Jesus into your heart," his entire point was that Jesus could make us rich. He had everyone file down to the front, to the altar, and rather than offer a prayer of repentence, we all made declarations about how we were going to go forth and prosper.

That pretty much did it for us.

About two Sundays later, we landed at our Sovereign Grace church.

(to be continued...)

(part II - our time at SGM)

Previously I shared in some detail about our time at the hyper-Charismatic church, where we were for several years before stumbling onto SGM. I realize that the hyper-C part of our story might seem sort of off topic, but the truth is, the years we spent in a ministry that focused so much on one charismatic individual (the pastor) and talked so much about money and earthly blessings were what caused us to find our Sovereign Grace church such a breath of fresh air.

For awhile, anyway.

I remember the first Sunday we walked into the SGM church. We were very early, and there were a bunch of people hanging around in the foyer. We felt so self-conscious, but they were all very friendly. They helped direct us to know where the kids' classes would be, and they asked us questions, wanting to know all about us. We also found it touching that there was a banner on the wall that read, "Where the Cross is central to all we do." Later, when we sang all the songs about the cross, I remember thinking that the solemnity and the focus on our sin were a much-needed change from all the hype and flash of our previous church.

When the pastor preached, he alluded to his own faults and sins - another majorly refreshing thing, having come from a place where the pastor thought that he had God Himself "on tap" and could control "the anointing" at will. Our former pastor never acknowledged a single mistake or personal flaw. In comparison, this SGM pastor seemed the height of sincerity, humility, and honesty. We were so impressed.

Week after week, we kept coming back, mostly because of the friendships that were so openly and fully extended to us. We also thought that we'd had the amazing luck to stumble upon a place that valued "correct doctrine," so much so that when a visiting musician wanted to sing a new song, the pastor and one of the prophecy microphone watchdogs first had to check it out to make certain that its lyrics were OK.

As I've said many times before, there was nothing in particular that was "wrong" about our SGM experience. We continue even now to think the world of our pastors there. But always, beneath the surface, there were things that seemed "different" - most notably what I came to think of as a thread of control that ran through everything, whether it was people's parenting practices, or courtship, or the supreme and automatic agreement with CJ Mahaney, or even the way that we were taught to "root out" our own sin.

I'd never really paused to articulate any of these things until after we'd decided we were just too culturally different and had moved on to another church. But last November, on the night before Thanksgiving, I felt compelled to throw together some of my thoughts and post them on the blog that I called sguncensored.

Kris-

And, we are so glad you did!!!

My story is almost identical to yours. So, I don't even need to post it!

I will someday. I just spent most of the day getting my dumb avatar. Whew...finally figured it out. Now, maybe I will have time to write some serious stuff!

Thanks again for sharing and for creating this forum....it helps to know that you aren't 'the only one' to sense something weird in the midst of SGM perfection.

It'll take me a while to get used to this new forum... I'm such a creature of habit!

I'm not sure where I went to church as an infant... But I've been attending church services since before I was born. When I was two we moved out to CO where my parents joined a charismatic presbyterian church of some sort. Six years later we moved back to MD where my parents decided to check out CLC because of their connections with some of the long-time CLC/GOB/TAG members there. They'd kind of lost touch with many of them but still had ties from TAG and went to high school with several of the early founders.

Hmmm... What else... I started attending CLC in the first through fourth grade ministry (which, shortly after I moved up, switched to 1-3rd) and kept going to every Sunday service and youth group and care group and whatever else until a couple years after I graduated high school.

The general assumption when I stopped attending was that I was in a phase of youthful rebellion. More accurately, though, was that I was finally starting to think and reason for myself and could no longer blindly accept all the blatant contradictions and hypocrisy I saw within SGM. All around me leaders were instructing me to atrophy my reasoning abilities and just trust what they were telling me, since they were better educated / had been Christians lnoger / had been given authority over me / were God's chosen ambassadors and therefore could not make mistakes since God doesn't make mistakes.

The way I saw it, God had created me to be a thinking, intelligent being founded on logical processes. If my God-given reasoning told me there was something wrong in SGM maybe I should listen to it rather than just shutting up and going along as I'd done for so many years.

Many, many other factors contributed to my decision to leave (not the least of which are ongoing struggles with severe clinical depression and anorexia nervosa) but primarily I still point it to the logic thing. Other aspects served more as catalysts than foundational rifts.

CLC itself acted to push me away... Once I started to question they gave me two options: shut up and suck it up or leave. I didn't want to leave in many ways because I had grown up there and didn't know any other way to live than what I had experienced within the confines of our SGM community. As I tried to make friends outside I found that I even had a pretty distinct dialect from people in the real world.

In some ways, CLC did me a service by giving me such a black and white choice. Since blind acceptance just wasn't an option anymore I had to leave and learn how to deal.

Or, start learning. Nearly four years later I am still trying to learn the ropes of real life! It's much easier to be a sheep than to operate independently, but this is a whole lot more satisfying and interesting.
~PDiddy ( ')<

Pdiddy-

That was beautifully written. The whole logic thing resonates with me. And, I also agree...It is easier to be a sheep and just follow along than to think and act independently and take whatever post-SGM judgement that comes with it!

Good to see you here!

Hi guys,

Just stopping by for a quick hello. What an incredible resource this site will be. Thanks again, Guy and Kris, for all of your efforts.

~Takin' it Cas

Bout time you showed up, young lady!

Hi Cas,

Love your gravitar!



Canary:

You've got to get a canary gravitar! If I can do it, you can do it!

Oops!! I think I just barged in without an introduction or saying hello and plunged in to the discussion that Julie raised!! I do apologise!!

Well ... I am Dan, a 30 year old single guy living currently in Birmingham, UK. I have grown up in a charismatic church all my life but became a Christian at a conference my church was running when I was 10 and got baptised in Spirit when I was at university doing my nurse training. I was involved with a group of churches run by Terry Virgo called Newfrontiers and we went to a Bible Week they used to run called "Stoneleigh Bible Week". The first year I and my family went there was a very exuberant loud speaker there called C J Mahaney who was bald and liked to wear open flapping chequed shirts and T-shirts, and laughed a lot and wept a lot usually when mentioning the Cross.

My family were very impressed with him and were thinking about moving anyway. So I put them in touch with the senior pastor of the only SGM church in Newport, Wales at the time. They visited the church and liked it and heard about a church plant into Bristol so decided to move. I was struggling with some personal issues at the time so my parents offered for me to move home and become involved in the SG church plant. The senior pastor of the plant "head-hunted" me and actually travelled up to visit me for the day and brought me a commentary which I still have for nostalgic reasons!

I became instantly uneasy and uncomfortable when I joined the church as I was the only single guy in the plant and so didn't have any social fellowship. The preaching was unapologetically solely on the Cross from Day 1 and indwelling sin. I thought rather naively that because it was a church plant we would all be involved in decision making and helping shape the church, but the leadership was very tightly controlled by the pastor who was travelling across every week to meet with the "apostle". Furthermore the pastor's friendly overtures were not continued - he would tell me he was "too busy" to meet anymore.

After 2 years of this I became increasingly depressed and lonely and stopped coming to the church but rather travelling to other churches I felt welcome in such as a pastor friend of mine in London and Terry Virgo's church in Brighton. I was troubled however that I felt obliged to be going to the SG church in Bristol so I decided to meet with the care group leader and his wife who I was probably the most closest to. I made a clean breast of my history which included being abused at my church school and struggling with same sex attraction ever since - and then to the present day having an eating disorder (yes I am a guy and yes guys do struggle with eating disorders! )

The couple were very shocked and informed me they had to tell the senior pastor. A meeting was then arranged for me to meet with the care group leader and the pastor. They initially offered support but presented four ultimatums that they demanded of me if I was to get the help and support. I had to move back in with my parents, cut off all non-Christian friends (especially gay ones) and vow to be present at church EVERY Sunday regardless. I was confused as to why this hard-line approach was taken and on investigating was told they didn't believe I was being sexually celibate and believed I was involved with someone (although they admitted they had no proof).

I was given two weeks to think about it - and so did, seeking advice from my former pastor and several other respected Christian friends all of whom were unanimously shocked. I went back to see the pastor and caregroup leader after the fortnight and informed them I could not comply with the "ultimatums" - feeling it was against my conscience and against Scripture to do so. I also felt I couldn't stay under the pastor's leadership if he was willing to think evil of me (against 1 Corinthians 13; "Love believes all things") despite no proof or confession.

They then told me that although I was resigning from church membership they didn't accept that - and were going to "disfellowship" me. I was banned forthwith from Sunday meetings and if church members met me they were not to talk with me. Also the pastor would write to any church they heard me going to and inform them of my "sin". They insisted on this even though I continued to state that I was resigning and therefore not under their authority. The care group leader ended up shouting at me at one point

My family are still in the church and believe that I was "exaggerating" what happened at the meeting (as I wasn't offered someone to come to the meeting to support me) and so there are obvious problems and divides in the family with church matters. For example my younger sisters are getting baptised at the church at the end of the month and my mum can't understand why I don't feel it would be appropriate to come (without the senior pastor's invitation).

I personally am wonderful!! I have sorted out my eating disorder and related problems by myself with some support from counselling and am now regularly going to church and am involved in writing and reading for church leaders as well as running my own blog. So it's true; "God does work all things together for good to those who love Him".

Wow Dan, I remember you sharing at least some of your testimony before, but don't recall the shunning thing. Brutal! I hate the shunning, it's becoming more common, ugh!!!!
Anyway, God has definitely overcome evil with good in your life!!! Yahoo!!

Kris
I am grateful to hear your personal church history, hehe...honestly it was so helpful to me, more than you know, Thanks!!

Prodigal Daughter,
It's interesting to hear your story! I am wondering if the term rebellion in Christian circles when applied to a teen that seemingly turns away from God or church or their parents can even be truly accurate anymore. I honestly think most teens who are said to rebel, are actually just being put under the law and legalism and are getting crushed by it and that is ultimately what drives them away, and rightly so! I am glad you started to think for yourself and got out of dodge!! We have a wonderful God given conscience, do we not!

One of these days, I will share my whole saga....

Hi All.