A Proposal
August 20, 2015 in Sovereign Grace Ministries
Some days ago, it was announced that Gene Emerson, senior pastor of KingsWay Church, would be stepping down from leadership due to his conviction for soliciting a prostitute. As of now, no one really seems to know further details of what actually happened with Mr. Emerson – just that he was arrested for this crime and convicted of it by the State of Virginia. However, Mr. Emerson himself maintains that he was not actually guilty of doing anything “illicit” but instead had a “serious lapse of judgment.” When making the announcement of Mr. Emerson’s departure from KingsWay’s staff, pastor Matthew Williams reiterated Mr. Emerson’s claims.
I’d like to make a proposal to Mr. Emerson and his former coworkers at KingsWay: publish the police report of Gene Emerson’s arrest. Doubtless, Mr. Emerson’s lawyer has a copy of it. So release it. Publish it.
Let the people of the congregation – the people whose tithes and offerings have paid these pastors’ salaries all these years – read it for themselves. Eliminate the confusion and speculation and publish the police report. Publish Mr. Emerson’s rebuttal of the report as well, if so desired. But come clean with all the facts of the case – both sides’ versions of the facts.
To do otherwise simply fuels further speculation, such as what to make of the fact that the only people arrested on the date Mr. Emerson was arrested – both the alleged johns and the prostitutes – were all male. EDITED TO ADD: Someone just emailed me some scans of the police report. I’m going to upload those in a new post. However, I can definitely clarify that Mr. Emerson solicited a FEMALE.
“For nearly two years now, I have remained silent about a civil lawsuit brought against various parties including myself. During that time, many have urged me to respond publicly and address the accusations against me. These pleas have only intensified over the last week in light of reports of testimony in a recent trial. I look forward to the day when I can speak freely. For now, the simple and extraordinarily unsatisfying reality—for myself and others—is that in the face of an ongoing civil lawsuit, I simply cannot speak publicly to the specifics of these events. Even with those constraints, however, let me be clear about this: I have never conspired to protect a child predator, and I also deny all the claims made against me in the civil suit.”
– C.J. Mahaney
Emerson learned well at the feet of the humble obfuscator – C.J. Mahaney. They throw up a smoke screen of words and will never come clean.
It has been over a year since the civil suit was dismissed. No word from Mahaney, nor will there ever be unless he is forced to testify in court.
I expect similar actions from Emerson.
stmac – check your email. Thanks!
“Let the people of the congregation – the people whose tithes and offerings have paid these pastors’ salaries all these years – read it for themselves. Eliminate the confusion and speculation and publish the police report. Publish Mr. Emerson’s rebuttal of the report as well, if so desired. But come clean with all the facts of the case – both sides’ versions of the facts.”
I have said for many years on this site that when you give (i.e. tithes/offerings) you are “partnering” with whomever and contributing to “their” cause (Phillipians: Chapter 1 & 4:14-20). Therefore, being DUPED is no excuse when evidence presents itself, time and time again… Prov 14:16). PDI/$GM’s teaching that if you don’t tithe is SIN is pure poop…
Foot,
Thanks for the comment, and I do agree with you that tithing members (or anyone who had contributed in any way to KingsWay – through volunteering or special offerings or however else) has a vested interest in knowing the exact situation in which Mr. Emerson found himself.
However, as I have had to ask from time to time here, PLEASE refrain from further debate about the side topic of tithing. Not saying that you yourself want to debate anyone…just that if a debate does arise, I’m going to delete those comments. Again and again, I’ve seen discussions of tithing devolve into extreme tedium.
Thanks, everyone! :-)
Kris – I am always surprised by your observations of “Love-Bombing” in whatever church you attended. Although very much a cultic technique, I think new members at CLC experienced the complete opposite. There was great suspicion of outsiders and new people often found themselves staring at closed doors while nervous, worried kool-aid drinkers peaked out of the curtains at them. It was VERY hard to break in, if ever. Exhibiting the proper culture could sometimes break people in quickly, but for the most part, if you were there ten years or less, you were “new”.
I think a lot of that comes down to the pastoral interview following commitment class. I’m not sure if you will be able to track with me on this, but if anyone could, you could. Ironically, while demonstrating loyalty was the total and complete qualifications for leadership or position, and people were honored for their humility in allowing leaders to trample over them, ultimately I think they disrespected those who allowed themselves to be humiliated while saying they honored it. And, just occasionally, if someone walked in the door who was solid and could stand on their own two feet, they could sometimes get the fast track to leadership without ever enduring the “breaking of the horse” humiliation portion of being groomed. I think you were identified when you walked in the door as being solid and got fast-tracked into “Love-Bombing”. That is highly unusual. Usually, a prolonged period of “loyalty testing” occurred before being love-bombed (10-30 years), with many never experiencing any love.
I distinctively remember invisible, unknown people expressing shock when suddenly they were identified as having “potential” and all of a sudden they were overwhelmed with recognition from pastors who had never noticed they were alive before, some actually enthusiastically greeting them.
The recent TGC post naming the solid, stable Christian guys as the biggest threat to the church was very revealing. If you were solid and stable, sometimes (rarely) you could get fast-tracked to love-bombing and being groomed for leadership. Many of those guys could care less about kissing up and were often so pre-occupied with true ministry like caring for the poor and abused that they were unaware of the culture.
However, if a stable, strong insta-leader were to become aware and question the culture, they went straight down the shoot in a fast way.
I think it all comes down to the needs of the church. In many ways, there was a shortage of qualified strong leaders because of the suck-up environment and sometimes it was hard to build a strong church on the limp suck-ups they had seduced into leadership. So, if it suited them, they would fast-track an outsider that had some b@ll$.
That’s the only time I am aware of newcomers being love-bombed.
In regards to the other conversation, which I think is related:
It is ironic that the men they groomed into leadership had to be degraded to get there in a way that feminized them. And, I agree there was a seductive element to that. Then, they had to masculinize the leaders through bullying and mockery in order to make them seem like men, all the time boasting of the pseudo-masculinity and somewhat repulsive sexual vitality of the top dog.
Pictures of Gollum come to mind.
I remembering visiting CFC once (early 90’s) where they were talking a out being a friendlier church. The speaker (I think might have been DH) talked about being the church of “Dino”, as in the Flintstones. The analogy was that Dino ran flat into Fred, knocked him down and licked him in the face when he came home from work and that is how they should be with new people. Sounds great, but I didn’t know it was supposed to be backed up by a lack of genuine love. I don’t think that principle ever took very well at CFC as people were very cold on my future visits and friends who moved to Philly had a difficult time fitting in. I FO d the leaders in particular to be cold and snobbish.
Ok, so Gene isn’t bisexual … which leaves him only as an adulterer now. Correct?
Kris said “I can definitely clarify that Mr. Emerson solicited a FEMALE.”
Thanks for putting that up asap.
I am sick in my heart after obtaining and reading the particulars of the reports of the undercover female officer and the arresting officer. As Kris said on a most recent post she is trying to get this info up on a post. I was only able to get hard copy and can’t simply copy and paste from the scans (jpeg).
The Word tells us that there is no sin of which we are not capable. We should all be in prayer for Gene, Liz,and his children.
The open question, or at least one of them, is when did MW and others in leadership at KW know about this. Specifically. on 7/12, three days after GE’s conviction and long after his 5/29 arrest, when the sabbatical was announced, standing O for GE, request for $$ for his trip to Bolivia, was it an attempt to let it slide by or had GE managed to keep it hidden up to that point. I am hoping this is all on GE and the others did not know. I do not have a great deal of faith that the sun will ever shine on this.
I am so sad I could cry.
… oh, and a CONVICTED criminal.
New post up – contains the police report. Comments here will be closed.