sometimes i hate the internet

There are days when I hate the internet. The same freedom that allows me to post allows others to do the same but what they write just drives me nuts sometimes. Here is a cached copy of a post by the folks at Slice.

50-year Member of Church Arrested for Trespassing

James Sundquist of RockSalt Publishing sent me some news stories on this situation today. If I hadn’t heard of so many other similar situations in churches in the last few years, I would be tempted to ignore stories like this. But the basic details always seem to stay the same, whether it’s a country Baptist church or a huge church like Bellevue Baptist. A new pastor takes over and immediately goes about implementing his agenda, running roughshod over those who kept the church going. Youth always seems to trump age in these cases. Elders who complain are almost universally seen as troublemakers who just don’t get the paradigm change. These situations are terribly sad, particularly for bewildered older members who can’t figure out how their church got hijacked.

A 27-year-old pastor had an elderly member removed from a Sunday morning church service and arrested. The story is here. It seems that the pastor had been making big time changes in the church, just like Rick Warren suggests pastors do if they want to grow, including dismissing the entire deacon board and church officers. Then he took control of financial accounts. This guy was a man with a plan, and that plan didn’t include a 50-year, giving, faithful member of the church. This appalling story illustrates what happens when 20-somethings, armed with church growth manuals and their heads full of plans for greatness seize little churches that were once peaceful places of worship. Here is the testimony of the woman’s friend regarding the matter.

“As a personal friend of Karolyn Caskey I need to say that what happened to this wonderful senior lady is incredible. This lady is a giver and a doer, gives to you without asking, and will do for you without asking. She was the biggest supporter of this small church where she has been attending for 50 years. Despite all the problems and having been asked to leave the church, she decided to stay because this was her church. She was one of the highest members but this so called new pastor got rid of all the heads of the church, saying he will take care of all including the church money and sent most of the members letters asking them to leave the church. She was the one who put the most money in as a member, and when the church needed extra money for anything she was the one who gave it. She was the one paying for cable to this new P astorBurrick (if he can be called pastor, a 27 years old big overweight person who came to ruin this small but wonderful church that is turning into a cult. Poor Karolyn, at 71 years of age, with 2 hip and knees replacements, had to be humiliated, taking her out of the service in hand cuffs and taken to jail, all from the house of GOD. This man needs to be out of this church but the question is how to do it…

Sara Robison

Advice to Sara: Until enough of the congregation rises up regarding these issues, there’s no strategy or plan that will get you back your church. Walk out, shake the dust off your shoes and try to find an assembly where God and His Word are still honored. If you can’t find one, meet in a home and find some preaching on sites like sermonaudio.com. Just don’t stay and fight. If the rest of the church wants this kind of pastor, you just end up making unsavory headlines and ultimately shaming Christ publicly, as this pastor has done. There’s a time to leave a place that has sold out to church growth methods.

The part that really hits hard is Ingrid's added comments:

Had I not learned of so many of these cases over the years, I would dismiss this. But the pattern is always the same. The similarities are a result of pastors essentially reading from the same set of instructions handed out by men like Rick Warren. They literally provide lists of things to do to change your church into a happening place. That’s why these cases look so similar, regardless of where they take place.

Todd Rhodes has decent report on this. What's with these guys at Slice? How could people read such stuff? I still find folks blind enough to buy into it. There's little way to know the full truth of what really took place, the only thing that is clear is that Rick Warren is Satan incarnate - well, at least that's the way the Slice folks see it. I wonder if Slice readers ever open their eyes when reading the blog?


UPDATE: A few posts ago, Centuri0n requested that I show him where the Pyro guys took someone's words out of context. He thought that this may somehow help them toward sanctification. I passed on the opportunity since he already missed that the post itself was an example of just that - plus I really didn't have time for that kind of fruitless persuit. Anyway, today I dropped by team pyro to see what I could glean and guess what, the first post had another example. I wonder if these guys read their own stuff?

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