Happy Birthday Survivors!
November 21, 2011 in Sovereign Grace Ministries
Well, it’s been four years since we started this little piece of the innernet. Four years of making new friends, torquing a few people off, and four years of watching my lovely wife toil.
Love us, hate us, or be somewhere in between….we love all of you and thank you for the “intense fellowship” we have been through, the tears, and the shouts of joy. I’m not sure how long we will be here – that’s up to SGM. However, just know that every commentor, whether you are still around or not, has a special place in our (Kris and Guy’s) lives and we pray for you daily.
God bless each and every one of you…and… Happy Thanksgiving :)
© 2011, Guy. All rights reserved.
Kris and Guy! Congrats!! Happy Thankgiving!!!
I think i barely made it in the last thread so reposting.
You know I noticed the ‘recantation of SGM’ went beyond the PC 2011. They removed it from their blog – http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/error404.aspx
The post was titled ‘C.J. Mahaney’s comments at Covenant Life Church yesterday’
Anyone else pick up on this fact? I have it in my cache but if you upload the page you get this – http://www.sovereigngraceministries.org/blogs/sgm/error404.aspx
:scratch
Mike
Other post is still open for comments. Kris is hanging out with grandma tonight so I took the reigns…
:Elvis:
Has it been four years, wow! Hope everyone has a great holiday.
HAPPY FOURTH KRIS AND GUY!
I can’t believe it has taken this long for SGM pastors to officially recognize this blog or, that it is taking them even longer to fully admit wrongdoing.
But, during this time you have done so much to encourage and comfort hundreds of people who mistakenly thought they were alone in their trials and concerns with SGM. You have given validation and a live mic to those who continue to have little voice or partnership in the governing of their organization. One day I know you will hear “Well done, good and faithful servant(s)” but until that time, I trust you feel His pleasure.
I would also like to invite those who benefit from this site to show their gratitude by helping give back to Kris and Guy. Though there is no direct way for us to donate toward the upkeep of the blog, we can make funds available for the site by clicking the Google ads that appear on the site. You must peruse the ad for at least 30 seconds in order for the click to count. Every little bit will help them pay for the site and relieve them of this additional financial burden.
Well Happy Birthday!
Who knew? Four years of exploring the cultural oddities (plus so much more) of SGM.
That is an excellent (cyber) paper-trail. :wink:
One more thing to add to the list of things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving: SGM Survivors! And Kris and Guy, of course! Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday ~
Kris,
Thank you for being a friend, a voice and an advocate for those who have been hurt and rejected by SGM. Thanks for all the time you put into your brilliant analysis that helps so many realize “I’m not crazy after all!” No doubt this blog has been the catalyst for what we are now seeing exposed in SGM.
Guy,
Thanks for all you do! While I am so thankful for your tech-skills, I am very appreciate of your timely humor! :)
*Should read – “I am very appreciative of your timely humor!”
Pre-coffee commenting, not a good idea!
Thank you both for providing us with a place to opine and a place to discover that it isn’t just us.
And we weren’t punished for opining and we realized that we were made to believe we were the only ones with issues.
Happy Birthday and Thanks for helping many people realize that it wasn’t them but the sgm system that is flawed.
Many, many thanks to you both for this labour of love.
You made me realise I wasn’t alone, wasn’t cast out to Satan, and actually wasn’t that bad a person!!
In many ways the friendship and encouragement saved my life!
You are stars!
Kris and Guy:
Thank you again. After being in SGM so long, it’s been great to have a place to think and speak freely.
For many folks here, this blog has been a place of healing, encouragement and fellowship. A place where folks can talk of their experiences without fear or judgment.
What a blessing this site has been for me personally. I’m in CLC and there is no one in my care group who gives a rip about anything that’s happened in the last 6 months, let alone the sexual child abuse cases than span decades. No one in my care group talks about any of these things.
Thank you, Kris and Guy, for creating this safe haven! I’ve been more spiritually blessed by this blog than my care group. Doesn’t God work in the most unexpected ways sometimes?! :clap
I want to echo the thanks!! One thing I have come to realize over the years is how important it is that you both basically escaped SGM unscathed. You came, you saw, you GOT OUT FAST.
For those of us that arrived at SGM at a young age, drawn by the intense focus on godliness (not smart enough to distinguish for an intense focus on God himself) there is a fine line to how much of a focus the heart can give to processing the abuse. At times, the anger I feel is too much, and I have to look away. But I really think not being actual victims of the cultish abuse of control, power, and more, has allowed you and Kris to really look SGM square in the face day in and day out and call them on their very grievous sins and errors. THANK YOU FOR DOING THAT! There was a time in my life when I needed to get on here and be reminded, I AM NOT CRAZY, just the victim of a very sadly deranged system. Thankfully, almost four years removed, I don’t have that need as much, but remain ever grateful for you.
I am also thankful that God cannot be mocked, that he is a just God, and CJ and Carolyn Mahaney’s abuses of power have not gone unnoticed. I hope to see justice this side of the grave, but however God chooses, I know that he will be faithful to complete the work he has begun, (so largely thru this site!) Thanks again!
Congratulations on four years of the blog. I’ve learned a lot in the few short months I’ve been coming here. Thanks so much.
To DB, #9…That is just how I feel too! :clap
Guy and Kris: Thank you for your service. I have learned so much from you and all my friends and family on this blog. And I do feel as if I have gotten to “know” many of you with much affection through your comments, both the serious exchanges and the humor!
Kris, you in particular, have expanded my thinking in so many ways. I deeply appreciate your analysis of the serious flaws and crazy foibles of SGM. I’m sure that it is a goad in the sides of SGM leaders that YOU are a woman! :D I think you are just brilliant! Thank you for serving God in this unique way.
Happy Birthday, and all the mushy stuff I’ve said before about how awesome this blog site is!
Does anyone know how to get the ads to show on my iPad? Also one day I really did want to order something from one of the ads when I was on my computer but I couldn’t get back to it when I was ready to order, Guy, is there a code or some number that I can use when ordering?
Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you.
Kris & Guy,
Thanks for being a shelter from the storm.
This blog has been an enormous help four years ago. I remember when it fell like scales from my eyes that “hey I’m not the only one who thinks something is weird here”. I don’t really write here anymore and have been out of SGM for 3 years, but am very grateful for your hard work, though I didn’t always agree with its methods. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without you guys.
Famagusta, remembering the golden first days here…
Great work Kris and guy! Thanks for creating a place for those who have gotten out to be able to process what happened to them, a place to inform people who are thinking about attending the truth about sgm and a GREAT forum for the truth about the all of evil things that sgm has done to come to light!
Thanks for being a light in the darkness!!!
wow. I feel just the opposite. That it has “only” been four years amazes me. It feels like alot longer. Thank you for all you do. For those of us deeply wounded there are many threads and aspects of this thing that tangles you up and it is good to have somewhere to come, gain some understanding, and unwind it all. Thanks.
Guy and Kris …. you are quite a team. Kris, you have provided profoundly insightful commentary that not only serves one’s intellect but addresses the spiritual need we have to see things clearly lest we remain deceived. Thank you for thinking deeply. I see you as one hacking away at the weeds so that others might find their way out.
Guy, I’m from Texas, so I was brought up to treat ladies with respect and dignity and always protect them. You are my kind of guy (no pun intended). Sounds like you had the good prviledge of “marrying up” like I did. Thanks for being the nuts and bolts behind this operation. You make a great :cowboyup
You deserve a pair of boots and a good hat!
Kris & Guy
I also want to echo the thanks that others have given. You two make a great team. I appreciate all the work you both put into this.
I’m giving THANKS this Thanksgiving for Guy and Kris and all their hard work and tough love! :clap
Most of us will never meet this side of eternity, when we’re all there…any of ya’ll, please come up and introduce yourself, and I’ll give you a BIG hug!!!! :D
Famagusta (21) hit the nail on the head for me with every word. I can honestly say the work done by Kris has been of Moses-like proportion for many of us who were held in spiritual slavery. Happy Thanksgiving, Kris and Guy!
Happy freedom ‘day’ to all the “survivors” who chose not to kiss the ring of Pope CJ and capitulate with the political corruption that is SGM.
Thanks to Kris and Guy for providing a safe, social refuge for those in asylum.
My wife and I, along with our entire family, left Gathering of Belivers back in 1983. We assumed that the heavy handed authoritarianism had softened over the years as the leaders matured. Imagine our surprise when about a year ago we came across your SGM Survivors web site and read stories that sounded just the same as we had experienced over 25 years ago. Back then, there was no one that we could talk to who could understand what we were trying to say about our experience. We survived because of having been well grounded in the Word years before,
but we were concerned about others who concluded that if what they experienced was Christianity, they wanted no more part of it. Thank you, Kris and Guy for being there for so many of us.
Thank you, Kris and Guy, for this site. Thank you for the effort and expense to maintain it. It must be like a second job at times! I appreciate the time you have taken behind the scenes, as well.
I hope you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving holiday!
Wow!
Thank you, Kris, for all you go through to provide the safe haven that we all need. I so appreciate you and I so appreciate this blog!
Sidney
My foot must be asleep, as I am a late-comer to this site, just the later part of this year. However, I want to “THANK YOU,” Guy and Kris, for being obedient to God and creative in the endeavor. To see a couple, equally-yoked is no joke. You 2 are 1! May our Lord Jesus Christ richly bless you in this MINISTRY, which is submitting yourselfs to God and caring for HIS people! It truly truly is more blessed to give than receive. I hope God allows you to see how you have blessed others by doing what PDI/SGM failed to do, and that is “listen.” How so many hurry to perform, rather than bask in God’s performance. Listening is an art form, and you 2 have shown a masterpiece. Well done! :D
Kris and Guy, thanks for your sleepless nights, your thought-provoking insight and your tireless patience. You are rock stars!
Words cannot express how much this site has meant to me and my family. Thank you to Kris and Guy and every single commenter who has spoken out on this and other sites. God has used each of you to change lives!!
Forgive me if I’m rehashing too much, but all of these debates over the past few days about proper pastor education have given me a thought: Education/Seminary, itself, is NOT what SGM leaders lack. What I think everyone here can agree on is that the pyramid-style leadership structure makes formal accountability for leaders virtually impossible, which in turn squelches honest discussion and healthy debate. That is what this and a few other sites have facilitated. Reading these discussions and testing the varying opinions against Scripture have awakened my heart, soul, and mind–I am learning so much! THAT is what current SGM pastors and members need–they need to be encouraged to think critically about God’s Word. Discussion and debate cannot and should not be equated with pride, slander, and selfishness! I pray that the Holy Spirit lights a fire under each and every member of SGM, like He did under Kris and Guy 4 years ago.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!
Kris and Guy, people have come and gone, people have been here and taken a break, people have come here sick at heart and then leave healed, people have found understanding and take that understanding with them…in the midst of people’s emotional journey, you have remained strong, steadfast, steady. You have sought Godly wisdom and have used wisdom in sharing insight from hours worth of “homework.” Kris and Guy, Happy Birthday on your service to the Body of Christ.
Kris and Guy, avert your eyes.
Everyone else, if you would like to thank Kris and Guy in a tangible way for all they have done for all SGM survivors, please go to this website.
http://sgmsurvivors.giftcards.com
Kris and Guy – I can’t help but think of those who have suffered emotional, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of not only SGM churches and leaders, but other churches which run like SGM (and there are quite a few). So many have come here having a hunch that something wasn’t quite right without being able to put a finger on it because it is so confusing. You have provided a safe haven – a place to vent, a place to question, a place to pour out hearts and finally a place to get on the road to healing. Quite frankly, for some, this site will be life changing not only to one person, but perhaps to an entire family with the possibility of affecting a generational line. Hopefully God will restore what the worm has eaten in many families. Thank you for the sacrifices you have made to keep this site running. This site has personally helped me. Thank you so much!
Happy Birthday! If it wasn’t for this site, I would still be thinking I was the only one who thought how I thought.
Happy Birthday! Guy and Kris God has used you to shine a light into the darkness of SGM! :clap Thanks for giving us a safe place to gather and realize that we are not the crazy ones!!!
Praise the Lord for His blessings! Happy 4th!!
We too were in the category of people wondering why we saw it and so many hundreds of others apparently did not. It was amazing to stumble across Survivors and Refuge.
I have prayed for years that the Lord would tear down the SGM infection as representing what it means to be “Reformed and Charismatic” in the Reformed community. It is exciting to see things getting exposed now, and hopefully many younger folks who want to be Calvinist but not cessationist will be delivered from a really tragic snare. Kris and Guy, you and Jim and Carole have done an enormous service to the Lord’s kingdom, as have the many great posters here.
Kerrin, nice to see you! Happymom, continued prayers for healing for daughter and the many other wounded folks here. Prayers for all those like the guys at CLC taking a stand. To God alone be glory, and let no man ever try to take what is God’s alone.
Kris and Guy,
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sacrificing so much time, energy, & heart to serve us. The Lord has used you to point our family to freedom. We are so grateful for our new church home which is a much, much healthier place for us. Thank you also to all of those who have shared your stories here in order to sound a warning and call SGM to account for their deeds. The sharing of your stories inspires many to long for and chase after freedom, freedom that only comes from our one and only hope, Jesus. Years of fruitful service have been multiplied in us for the Kingdom because the chains fell.
Kris — you are off the charts amazing!! Thanks for your persistence and long suffering as you have helped so many people — more than you (we) could count. And for Guy —
I will be in Gaithersburg on Friday. Daughter has decided to come ‘home.’ She is an adult and home should be wherever she wants to makes it. But for now, we are packing up her car and driving all the way home to WA. I know that Daughter would have preferred that BF(ex) could see everything most of us see, but, maybe, someday. Thankyou Kris and Guy and all the others who have taken the time to care here.
Patti, blessings on your trip and on you and your daughter. I hope that returning home will be a time of inward renewing for her.
I also want to thank Acme for posting the link that led me here almost three years ago. It was amazing to me to see that there was a website–that I wasn’t the only one–and then a couple of days later she posted a link to the Refuge. Reading here has helped so much with processing what I know and clarifying my understanding. Thank you.
And I want to thank Don for coming and staying to figure out what the fuss was about, and for reading Brent’s documents eight times, and for caring about truth and justice.
Just a quick note to assure Kris and Guy that you are, indeed, doing the Lord’s work. I regret that I have not been able to read everyone’s stories here, as much as I would like to, but I hope that everyone here would know that I understand your pain, betrayal, the frustration at not being heard. I wish this site had been around in 1996 when my ordeal began. I am not still hurting, praise God–but the continued hard-heartednessand willful blindness of SGM still burns me up at times. Thank you Kris and Guy. God Bless everyone and Happy Thanksgiving.
Hear hear…to Kris and Guy! Your time and efforts are so appreciated !
I left an SGM church about 1999. I still tried to ‘like’ SGM — talked to people about the wonderful ways they did church — still listened to the music — but couldn’t figure out why the very thought of my former church and the ‘machine’ gave me an unpleasant gut reaction that I tried to ignore. I believed that what happened to me was simply an aberration; they really didn’t mean to treat people that way; they were due a pass, everybody slips up now and then, right?
Sometime a few months before Survivors’ 2nd birthday, I was a new subscriber to facebook, and ‘liked’ or joined some kind of SGM group, pushing past that strong gut reaction to click the mouse. A link to another SGM-named thing popped up, and I clicked on it — a few clicks later, I had stumbled upon SGMRefuge, and began reading. A few clicks after that, I found Survivors.
Within a few minutes, I felt a quickening of the Spirit — and realized that He had been quenched in my life for quite some time. Suddenly, I felt His love and life again after several years of going through the motions without even realizing what had happened. And a thought hit me like a ton of bricks. “Wow. I am NOT CRAZY. I am not ALONE in this. These pastors do NOT deserve a pass. They do horrible things to people over and over again.” The next few days, I read constantly, everything I could find on both blogs.
Healing began. I began to feel so burdened and sad for my SGM friends — I was SURE that nobody in MY SGM church had ever seen a problem or even knew that the blogs existed. To my surprise, my former church became entangled in major controversy. Most of my friends left the building; many of them are not just surviving, but thriving after SGM.
I am so thankful that through Kris & Guy, Jim and Carole, and those of you who have participated here, the truth found a way to be told. What’s the old saying…’the truth will out’…yes, it will, and it did — and through you, the Lord made it possible.
I won’t go into detail with this next sentence, but the implications are very sobering. I know for a fact, that if you had not been here, I would be in a dark and difficult place today.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, JESUS — thank You for sending, empowering, and equipping Kris and Guy to go into the internet and offer a place of love, truth, healing, and kindness, in Your Name!
And THANK YOU, Kris and Guy — and ALL who have posted here. Whether or not I agree with what you’ve said, you’ve had important things to contribute.
Happy Thanksgiving, and much love to all of you — May God load us up with blessings to carry to others in need.
Brent posted letter from Josh to CLC church. Outstanding!!! Go Josh! HE IS HEARING THE HOLY SPIRIT!!!
CJ and Dave … please repent … please repent … please repent!!!