I think what drove me somewhat crazy during my years in Gracepoint Fellowship Church was not that its teachings were squarely wrong. Rather, it was that most of them, perhaps a good 70 to 80% of them were good, but that what was enforced in its culture was completely opposite.
As one commenter mentioned, this leads to cognitive dissonance, [also see "doublethink"] where you know one thing, but do another. At GFC, you learn something, but in the atmosphere there, under pressure, are impelled to do another, and you find yourself having to constantly reason with yourself that it’s not really different and there’s a ‘good reason’ for it.
I think after years of this, one would go crazy, or altogether surrender the ability to think and reason and become a drone. Who knows, perhaps it’s part of what has led some people into depression, which has happened to some who have left.
I already alluded to this in this post about freedom, but here are some other ways that one will experience this at Gracepoint.
What is taught:
Don’t be so self-conscious. Don’t be so fear-driven.
What is enforced through actual implementation:
There are mandatory writings of weekly reflections to your leaders in which you are expected to confess all your sins. The sins you share here are often shared without your permission to other leaders. Sometimes, they will be aghast at something you’ve shared in a reaction of “can you believe she did that?” and that will be shared with another staff, so that “they can pray for you”. I’ve been at those staff meetings. The staff do talk about you and what you’ve done, not all the time, but frequently enough.
Sometimes, as a member, or a midlevel or lower level staff/staff intern, you get surprised. You shared something in your WR thinking it was only for your direct leader, and that it would be held confidential. However, it’s not. You might get an email from Kelly or Pastor Ed wanting to meet with you over something you shared. Or some other leader later on will keep that in memory, and share that with you to accuse you of something.
“Why did you do that? I heard that this other time you did this, that was similar”.
This jars you because you didn’t know that this person knew what you shared. You begin wondering who else might know, and end up logically assuming that EVERY staff member knows.
So think about this. There is this culture of sharing your secrets and sins without your permission. You don’t know who knows what you shared, which you thought was in private. But they tell you, “don’t be so self-conscious!”
How paradoxical, unreasonable, and plain stupid is it to expect that?
What is taught:
Hey, it’s a free country, it’s up to you. It’s your choice. You don’t HAVE to do anything.
What is enforced:
If you’re a staff, you have COMMITTED to EVERYTHING. I’ve heard that these days, they require you to sign some kind of contract form. [Does anyone have a copy of this?]. I’m not opposed to commitment and yes, people should be committed, but I believe that the staff title is really too readily handed out, and it’s main goal is for Pastor Ed and Kelly to control people rather than to allow for individual personal growth in faith. What business does a person who just became saved within the past 2 or 3 years have becoming a “staff” member? In the Bible, there’s no such thing as a “staff”. There are leaders, and these leaders were elders and deacons who have proven themselves over time.
There’s a good reference to leadership requirements in 1 Tim 3. One of the requirements is vs 6:
“He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil.”
This is a topic for another more extensive post, so I’ll stop here on this digression for now.
My point about this is that you are required to be at EVERYTHING, and family is supposed to be secondary to any GFC activity. This means although you might have a good reason (you already made an appointment to meet an old friend), but there’s an impromptu staff meeting called. You’ll have to either cancel your meeting with your friend, or come up with a REALLY good reason as to why you need to meet your friend, and why you can’t postpone it to another time. Same thing with anything outside of GFC meetings or activities.
This kind of culture causes passive people, who never schedule anything with their lives. They place holds on anyone outside of church that invite them to anything else. The seasoned ones know not to commit to anything outside of GFC too early because your schedule will change.
“I’m not sure yet, let me get back to you.”
“No, I’m busy.”
How many times have you midlevel staff had to say that to your friends/family/coworkers?
The irony of this is that when there’s a church activity or outreach even like Gracepoint Live or so forth, they’ll eagerly prod the same people that invited them to their functions, but always held off, to come to GFC and make a decision quickly.
What a double standard in a relationship – just strictly speaking from a relational, not-even-Christian point of view, such a person would be viewed as an egocentric person who doesn’t know how to give and take in a friendship.
It’s no coincidence that if you look at your older staff members among you, that they barely have any outside friends. They preach “getting out of the saltshaker” but really what they live out is just friendship among themselves. Sure they have acquantainces and coworkers, but no one that they are able to rub lives with and minister through their character. They ask you to do ministry and invite outsiders, but you’ll barely see any one of them invite any of their own friends.
Furthemore, some people at GFC were even ‘corrected’ for wanting to go to see their family over the holidays such as Christmas and New Years, because there was something “more important” at church, and after all, you are “staff”. Or it was simply that you were missing Watchnight Service – “How can you miss out on that? Don’t you want to spend time with God and your church member and hear all the testimonies?”
Considering that GFC staff already do so much at church, I would think it’s fair to say that it’s very unreasonable to correct someone for wanting to see their family for a week or 2 over the holidays. Those who ’sacrificed’ their time with family were seen as more faithful.
But at random times, the older staff will continue to say things like “It’s a free country, you can do what you want.”
Can I call this what it is?
It’s a LIE at GFC.
What they really mean is, you can do what you want for really minor things, or you can do what you want when there’s nothing else going on at GFC [which is very rare].
What is taught:
Don’t be so performance oriented. Competence does not matter.
What is enforced:
If you’ve been at GFC even for a short while, you know that competence and performance matters a whole lot.
If they are planning for some BBQ or some whatever outreach event, the excel sheet is created with all the tasks that the women staff typically have come up with. There’s shopping to do, there’s flyers to create, there’s videos to be made. That’s all good.
But what happens is that as a result of this kind of high activity culture with many programs to run, naturally the more competent people who “get things done” are more valued. It ends up running like a corporation – those who produce the most goods/services with the best quality are the ones who are prized. These are the ones that typically get married off more quickly, and these people are praised as the faithful, diligent ones. These people that often neglect responsibility to their own family and friends for the sake of church are the ones that are praised.
It’s not unlike a CEO that praises a person for working countless hours [neglecting his family] for working so hard at Google/Apple to develop this or that.
Ministry is not about programs. It’s not about the New Student Welcome nights, the planned mass care package giving during finals time. Ministry is first and foremost relational, driven from free will, because only by free will can you have love [as I've reiterated about a million times now].
But at GFC, ministry is mainly about programs and activities planned in Kelly Kang’s mind, and you abiding to fit into them. Anything else, you are supposed to consider secondary.
If you were to say “no” to participating in any of those programs, you will get your heart for God questioned. You’re “free”, but you’ll be accused and questioned.
Back to the point I was making – Gracepoint’s all about performance to produce the “goods” of ministry. Pastor Ed will preach Grace on the pulpit, but when the rubber meets the road, he values Performers that gets things done and obey him without question.
That’s what I have for now, please feel free to contribute other ways you’ve experienced as such in the comments.
Filed under: hypocrisy, legalism, truth | Tagged: church leaders, conformity, Gracepoint Berkeley, leadership, mandates, pride
I wonder how Berkland/GP would do on the Reveal survey… I think it’s a great tool to assess how church is doing. My church did it… I wonder if Berkland/GP leaders have enough guts to do it at GP.
Here’s the survey online – just googled it.
http://www.spirituallifesurvey.com/
I just wanted to say, again, that I appreciate your work.
IF Gracepoint were to take this survey, anything but a positive score would be ignored & belittled by the Kangs. They would either call the test invalid or somehow spin it so the results didn’t really reflect the true state of the church.
It’s much how they deal with criticism from individuals in their church. Invalidate, belittle…
Or they frame it as persecution, and present themselves as righteous, zealous people who are misunderstood by the “lukewarm” Christians out there.
I remember asking my leader about television once, and he said “You’re free to do what you want. Go ahead and watch tv.” A few months later during a Bible study, he revealed that there was concern over the fact that some brothers had moved into an apartment complex that provided free cable (and they didn’t even have a tv).
Officially, you are “free” because no one can tell you what to do. But doing something outside the church culture will dock you points in your leaders’ eyes, and that is what everyone fears.
To give that leader the benefit of the doubt, he was probably concerned about any sexually charged shows that can come through cable.
But on the other hand, he should not have blatantly said you’re free to watch TV. A wise leader would have talked about the need to check what we let in to our eyes and our heart.
It was probably out of his effort to seem like they are such a free church that he said that (b/c inside he himself suspects that they are not).
ihaveTVnow, St. Augustine once said, “Love God, and do what you want.” Ed probably knew of this phrase, and then used this in his sermons as empty assurance. Ed gives a lot of these to offset concerns he knows is brewing in the congregation. I repeat, he does this without batting an eye, e.g. “It’s good to have non-Christian friends. We shouldn’t live in a Christian ghetto,” but his conscience does stir.
Ed realizes that it is strategically advantageous for leadership for him to simply say what people want to hear, because the disconnect between what is said and how the Berkland community rules contradict it in execution takes a while for people to recognize and reconcile in their minds.
Your direct leader is parroting a phrase he himself has heard from what his own leader told him. It’s an empty phrase, and its main purpose is mollification of suspicion. He does not feel personally accountable for giving this advice; his own personal integrity is not on the line, as he is merely representing the leadership.
“empty assurance” – what a fitting, well-described term to explain what Ed does.