http://www.sgmsurvivors.com/?p=2495
To all Survivors and Lurkers -
As you regulars know, we (Kris and I) have had this blog as a labor of love for some time now. We have always been more than fair to everyone – from dissenters to supporters. We typically call a spade a spade. We allow for anonymity. We don’t ask questions.
Well, things have changed. It seems that there are some folks out there that have resorted to threatening behavior – to the point of making us fear for the safety of ourselves and of our children. I realize that the Internet can be a scary place…however, I can navigate it. I’m not concerned with these people looking for me…that’s fine, as I can take care of myself. However, my wife and my children are being threatened.
To those that choose to make these threats:
Think long and hard before you pursue what it is you are pursuing. I am not “hiding” behind a moniker – I am simply protecting my family. What strikes me as amazing is the fact that you all profess to be Christians – even pastors. I am truly amazed….and saddened. Instead of working to fix the issues that we have uncovered, you want to shut us up. That, my friends, speaks volumes. It tells us that we are doing the right thing by having this site.
For those out there that have interacted with us in the past – you know who you are. Drop me an email and I’ll fill you in.
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July 15th, 2011 at 11:42 pm
I’m really sorry this is happening to you.
There is a lot of money at stake. And livelihoods.If your leader is a man who would readily blackmail his closest associate, cover it up to all around him for a decade, and then buy his way into positions of religious influence with vast amounts of his own and his company’s cash, you are dealing with nasty people. That sets the tone of an entire organization.
If they didn’t call themselves a family of churches, we would call them mafia.
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July 15th, 2011 at 11:49 pm Send the ones threatening your wife and kids down my way in NC. I may be a Christian, but my father raised me to handle those kind of folks in a different manner. Sorry to hear you guys are being threatened by people who have no concern for any pain and hurt you have experienced over the years. As a former SGMer, I know first hand the elitist attitude and shunning that is portrayed once you leave and journey out into the wilderness. Praying for you guys.
July 15th, 2011 at 11:50 pm Yeah Joe…it’s sad.
July 15th, 2011 at 11:53 pm This is really sad. I will be praying for you.July 15th, 2011 at 11:55 pm Andy -
Haha…we’re cut from the same cloth my brother….i haven’t had to call in any of my boys from the teams in a long time….
July 15th, 2011 at 11:56 pm Thanks loverofclc….
Pray for the morons making the threats as well ;)
July 15th, 2011 at 11:58 pm What you are doing on this blog is saving so many people. It truly saved my family from continuing in this “mafia”, as Joe would say. Wish we could do more other than through comments on cyberspace. Will posting these people’s cyberspace names online with their comments assist in their showing of being wolves in sheep’s clothing? God Bless SGMSurvivor’s Blog for doing what you are doing . . . and continuing to do it! Thank you!
July 16th, 2011 at 12:02 am Um, yeah. What Guy said.
Things have gotten MUCH busier here over the past week or two. Mostly, our new contributors have been wonderful – even those of you who don’t like some of what’s been published here have been polite and respectful.
But we have fielded some emails that have been downright disturbing. People go on rants about how they want to shut us down.
People are also hung up on who Guy and I are. Somehow, they think “anonymous” observations and “anonymously” shared stories are less accurate.
This is a bunch of hooey – it’s a red herring:
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of “reasoning” has the following form:Over the years, Guy and I have chosen to post under just our first names and not discuss more of the specifics of who we are. We have a couple of good reasons for this.
Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.
The first reason was – and still is – that we have a desire to protect the guys who were our SGM pastors. As I’ve said over and over again, we ourselves did NOT have a bad SGM experience. We thought our pastors were really nice guys (although we’ve since discovered that even they – the nicest guys you could ever imagine meeting – have apparently had their share of issues with controlling behavior). When the blog first started getting some traffic, Guy and I made a decision that our SGM pastors simply did not deserve any negative attention that might arise from their previous connection to us. We continue to stick with that decision.
A second reason – and closely related to the fact that we did not have a bad SGM experience – is that (and please hear me) this site has never been about US. We have no SGM story. We have no personal grievance against anyone. There’s no one out who we think owes us an apology. We really have no horse in this race, no ax to grind. We happened to put some noncommittal thoughts about our SGM experience out there, people happened to read them…and then the stories started flooding in. We never sought this out. It just happened. Who we are had nothing to do with it.
The third reason is, SGM does not seem to promote a healthy mindset in at least some of its very loyal members. Some really diehard defenders don’t seem to be thinking straight. They have exhibited a level of blind rage over the idea that SGM has detractors, and they seem to believe that ANYTHING – any behavior, no matter how wrong – is actually good, as long as it “preserves SGM’s good name” or some such. (For you longtime readers, it’s the same mentality that prompted a couple of doofuses to lie for months in order to spin “Roy’s Story.”)
Honestly, it’s this behavior – this weird irrational blind misdirected rage at the idea that SGM actually isn’t perfect – that has lately made us think that we’d be crazy for “going public.” Who’s to say what nutjob would then show up at our front door, looking for more than just a cup of coffee?
(And, uh – just for the record – “normal” churches don’t inspire this sort of loyalty.)
Anyway, please feel free to continue the conversation from the previous post. Guy and I aren’t trying to insert ourselves into the SGM story in any way whatsoever. But if you swing by some day to see what’s happening and the site is gone, you’ll be able to piece together why we decided we’re done.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:29 am Please post the full names and emails or web sites of the people who are threatening……July 16th, 2011 at 12:30 am From “Zenith” comes the following story that he wanted to share:
PDI/SGM Senior Pastor and Songwriter Caves to Leaders in Early 1990’s
I don’t know where you stand doctrinally, but why all the fuss? Brent and CJ and all the other SGM leaders and their underlings should not be upset about any of the things that are going on at this time since God foreordained it from all eternity. Right? Over and over again their own theology mocks them.
My wife and I were part of a PDI/SGM church for over 10 years. I had been an assistant homegroup leader. When the radical change in doctrine occurred I strongly spoke out against it. At that time hardly anyone, if anyone, in our local congregation agreed with TULIP. But they eventually became heavily indoctrinated, (sort of the way the JW’s do), as had our pastor previous to that. At one point, before my pastor gave in, during the second of the two three-hour knock down face to face meetings, I asked him how long he had been a Christian. It was like 25 years. I asked him if during that time he read God’s Word regularly. The answer was yes. Then I asked him if he read it prayerfully during that time. Again the answer was yes. Then I asked him when he came to believe in TULIP. He knew at that point he was just busted and uncomfortably admitted that it had been about two years earlier when CJ started propagating and later pushing it on people. My pastor agreed to read any book of my choice which took an opposing view to Calvinism. I asked him to read Robert Shank’s “Elect in the Son”. He read it and about three weeks later came up to me before a church service he called me aside and very quietly and almost secretively told me that he completely agreed with Robert Shank’s position.
Now he had to break the news to Brent or Dave Harvey or whoever was “Over” us at that time. They were panicked as he was one of their main songwriters. He had actually discussed pulling some of his songs that had a Calvinistic bent to them. He was asked to write a position paper and he asked me to help. I did, but it was very lengthy. So he wrote his own, which was very pointed and well written. He then submitted it to the PDI leadership. Also during that time he had even seriously talked with me about leaving PDI, and we discussed whether or not he should turn the church building over to them. After submitting his paper he was asked to “dialogue” with them on the subject. When I asked him how the supposed dialogue was going he said that they gave him several books to read and discuss, like Anthony Hoekema’s “Saved by Grace”. Then CJ even invited him to speak at CLC, which of course was PDI’s mothership. I very much doubt if he would have ever smelled CLC’s pulpit had they not been going all out to dissuade him from what he actually believed. It was either conform, conform, conform, or out, out, out.
Towards the end of our time at that church I continued to address many of the following things listed below, but our pastor refused to hear. I had been saying and have continued to say that:
- PDI/SGM leaders and local pastors are elitists who think they have a corner on the truth; they are very proud and arrogant; they view themselves as the enlightened ones, while viewing all other Christians and their church affiliations as the unenlightened; in other words, those who do not agree with their theology are looked down on as second-class Christians and denominations; they are manipulative and controlling; for most of the time they act like a bunch of clones; and that they are absolutely obsessed with TULIP.
Over the years there has been lots of hypocrisy and a clear double standard regarding how they treat certain people and the way they treat certain other people. I’ve always likened SGM to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. At the very top you have the infallible Pope CJ. Then the cardinals, arch-bishops, bishops, priests, etc.
In his 7/10/11 Sunday evening message at CLC it was refreshing to hear Josh Harris finally admit to several of the same things. In Brent’s “documents” I found the part about CJ blackmailing Larry, Doris, and Justin sickening and reprehensible. Isn’t it interesting how even though CJ is supposedly so close and in tune with God, it took him some 13 years to acknowledge his sins of pride, hypocrisy, manipulation and mistreatment of others; and now finally he has gotten around to making things right with Larry. It so obvious, as is evidenced in Brent’s documents what an idol Reformed theology is within SGM. Case in point, within these documents, CJ stated that it would have been OK and that he wouldn’t blackmail the Tomczak family, if Larry left the movement, but did not say that it was over “doctrinal” differences. It has become clear that CJ is not the most humble person on the face of the earth. As a movement they need to realize their facade of humility is nothing more than false humility, which of course is just another form of pride. It is apparent that CJ has always craved adulation and the leaders of PDI/SGM have always fallen over each other when introducing each other. And if they happen to be introducing one of their gods like RC Sproul it is downright scary.
As a post script I want to state that before CJ changed in the early 1990’s, he was my very most favorite Christian teacher. In my cassette/CD library I have by far more of CJ’s messages than anyone else. Unfortunately, his desire for prestige, power, and recognition made him the lesser man that he is today.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:31 am Kris and Guy,What a frightening experience. Hate mail is one thing but open threats? Bad form, very bad form. You know, the devil gets really mad when something good is about to go down, when he knows he is loosing a battle. I’ve seen it. That kind of rage is a sign that a break through is on the way. Standing with you!
July 16th, 2011 at 12:31 am We aren’t going to post names and emails. The right people know who they are.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:32 am Canary, thanks.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:38 am It’s really interesting, though, in the abstract, if you think about what is fueling people’s misdirected anger. I mean, think about it. People discover, some for the first time, that their church organization has real problems. There are actual emails from the organization’s founder that demonstrate the sick control and the weaseling so many people here have described. It’s pretty undeniable.
So what do some of these folks do, when they are faced with the fact that their church organization is messed up?
Well, apparently, they get mad at the people who already knew that their organization is messed up – the people who have been talking about it for awhile.
This makes no sense.
And for those of you who are wondering, this response is just not normal. It is not normal to become irrational when faced with unpleasant facts about your church organization.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:44 am Kris your correct that some christains have woken up to a different world. Everything they know has been shattered. Some will react poorly 
I do forget to quickly the troubled times I had when I first left SGM
