Just In Time For the Holidays...

...a Reprint of the Famous Life Story of One of Us!

(Originally posted on FN in October of 2005)

A Woman Scorned: How the Cockatrices Came Home to Roost!

“It’s a Miracle salve, but it’s not a narcotic!” -Carl H. Steven

I’ve been slightly apprehensive to write about this story, only because the pastor in question is someone that I do love and respect… even if he did act wrongly. I also don’t really want to get into this story for a whole host of reasons, slander and gossip being among the highest on the list, but the story is very interesting and should be told. I’ll really take the time to get the facts straight as best I can without adding in my own personal two-cents, only because I don’t want to embellish the story and tell falsehoods. Again I really do love and respect this pastor, I just think he was WAY out of line in his dealings with the matter at hand!

Basically, there was a family member of mine who was on staff with the local Greater Grace Church. She oversaw many of the events that would take place – mission’s conferences, special events in the community, missionary contacts – she was in charge of a lot of the goings on. In this position, like so many of you who held similar positions in other GG churches, she saw and heard many things that probably should have stayed at the office, but didn’t. Now please keep in mind that the things talked about among the family where not in a gossipy/slanderous sort of way. It was more along the lines of one of us asking where so and so had been for the past month, and she’d chime in and explain that so and so moved, or left the church for one reason or another; that type of thing. The majority of info she related to us was common knowledge that might not have been common to everyone. There wasn’t any deep hidden secrets or anything – though there were some things that were heard and said during office hours that any normal person couldn’t help but wonder about. So when I say that this person knew things, I’m not saying she ran home and told everyone, “Gee guess what pastor did/said to so and so today…” it wasn’t anything like that.

Anyway, that was her position within the church. She did practically everything behind the scenes; if there was an event like missions going on, she pretty much went out and bought all the stuff, organized the venue, etc. In many ways it was a thankless job. Not that she did it for praise or anything, it was nothing like that; she loved doing what she could for the Lord and to help out the church in anyway that she could. The church was our home. We’d been there for many years; we weren’t your one Sunday a month type of family. We were involved in everything, at the raps, in the meetings. At least one of us was there on the property pretty much 24/7 doing something for the Lord… if you get my meaning.

Now let me get to the overall point of the story. This family member of whom I speak was dieing of cancer; she’d been living with and fighting the disease for years, with many relapses. Towards the end, she was on all sorts of pain pills and pretty much out of it most of the time. She was having doctor appointments up to 4 times a week, and between that stuff, home, church, and office needs, she pretty much ran herself dry. If there was anyone who poured themselves out in the ministry, she was one. She wasn’t a stupid woman by any means, but – being sick and very tired, and all while on the pain meds and other such things – every once in a while she’d say things that would get her into trouble in the confines of the office. She’d been working there for many years and, at times of weakness, she’d let her guard down and, more often then not, say things out of context or simply say something that would be taken the wrong way.

So into this environment came the stories of cultic behavior on the part of Baltimore, of unsavory goings-on, of improprieties. One of the nutty families within our church had gone online, found some damning information about our beloved Baltimore, and began to spread it around. Now, keep in mind that his is pre-Factnet, and pre-Graceways. All of this took place years before the most recent shit hit the fan, so to speak, so this was all news to many of us, plus the people spouting all this nonsense were, well, idiots. No one really took the claims of blasphemy to heart. To many of us these people were knee jerking, spreading evil reports, receiving the words of the devil, and becoming agents of Satan in the mean time. And being honest, the whole family really was out of their minds, so no one really took their words as gospel! Needless to say, when they took their child out of MBC&S and stopped coming to our church altogether, everyone else was happy to be rid of them.

But time went on, and as news of their departure made the rounds I, not really buying either side of the story, decided to check out some things for myself. This was back when we weren’t even allowed to look (DON’T ENTERTAIN AN EVIL REPORT!!). If we looked at such information we were evil and somehow going against the Body (of Stevens). So, being the jackass that I am, I went online and looked anyway – just out of spite, to see what all the fuss was about. This was the time I ran across the Alan Lang Story. I took note that the timeframe of the Lang episode seemed to correspond with the timeframe of a “damage control” trip that our pastor (the one in this story) had taken to Baltimore. Now, being fair, I only say that the timing seemed to align; I can’t claim to know if he was in on any of the cover-up stuff or any of that. He might have gone down there for other reasons, but the word was that he was there for “damage control” of some sort. It was never made clear to me as to the real aims of his mission; I’m only putting two and two together on this so take it as you will.

After reading the events of the Lang Report, I had a lot of questions, a lot of misgivings, and a lot of things I’d seen before lining up in my mind. I could also now sense a sinister reasoning behind the old Greater Grace party line about evil reports being spread by “ex-members who were disgruntled and only wanted to slander!” While I can attest to certain ex-members of our church leaving (for non-cultic reasons, such as how the missions money was being spent) and then turning around and slandering the pastor and the church for it, I had to question how far fetched that talking point line was. It never seemed outrageous before; now I had questions. After taking all this in, I decide to show the cancerous woman in my family this report, and she filled me in on our pastor’s damage control mission down in Baltimore around the time of the Lang mess! We weren’t dropping cockatrice eggs here; we were concerned for our souls! We thought, “Gee, these people are watching over our very souls here… are they on the up and up with that they/we claim to believe?”

As time went by, many other people in our church were getting the evil wind. The leadership felt that they needed to say something. Then one Sunday morning we heard about the Graceways.org site and its “true reason for being,” which was only to slander, not get out an honest message. Of course, many of us went to read the website anyway. This brought the whole Lang story back to the forefront of our minds as we were reading some of the content. At the time, the site was new and didn’t have much on it so it really didn’t sway us either way. Factnet was just starting to become known to people, particularly in my own family, so there were a whole lot of personal questions being raised here. We were still loyal to the church – the local church. We weren’t loyal to the name, and most certainly not Stevens. We had always openly joked about Stevens and his Orange Twopay; now our half-voiced suspicions were being validated. Again, we didn’t want to really slander the man per se, but things were starting to get polarizing; sides were being taken, battle lines drawn. Our devotion was for the local pastor, and not in some pastor-worship way, rather in a friendship way. We wanted to back up our friends. It was our church and we would be willing to defend it, and we still are in many ways. The revelations coming out were starting to separate people; it wasn’t a cockatrice egg or an evil report either. It was the double-edged sword of truth coming in to our experience.

This environment of questioning created a real tension in the office where my family member worked. She had questions she wanted answers to, was dying of cancer, and was hopped up on drugs; perhaps her better judgment had been impaired. In any case, the circumstances one day conspired to bring some things to a head.

What happened was that all office staffers were essentially required to take a break from their office duties and go sit in on the taped ABD class while it was being shown over in the main church building. Sometimes pastor would skip the class if Stevens wasn’t actually doing the teaching that day, but if he was on then pastor was in the seats with everyone else. Anyway, it just happened to be that Paulie was teaching the class that day, and my family member didn’t feel that she really wanted to view the class. She wasn’t feeling well, she’d have to leave the office and make the trek to the main building and, being honest, she just didn’t want to go. Well, pastor came barreling out of his office when he noticed that she hadn’t vacated the premises and asked her why she wasn’t over in ABD (we were left to wonder why he wasn’t in attendance over there as well). She basically said that she didn’t really like receiving the Word from Paulie. When that came up, pastor got really interested started asking her questions, probing her reasons. It came down to the fact that she had read the Alan Lang Story and didn’t feel led to go over there and listen to Paulie, especially so when she wasn’t feeling all that great.

Well when the Lang thing came up the pastor went nuts. He started yelling and screaming at her, some shit about how he doesn’t want anyone on his staff to ever take in an evil report, and how her cancer (which she’d been battling for over a decade) was “probably a direct result of her intake of evil reports,” so on and so forth. In the end he sent her home with a half day (keep in mind they didn’t pay her for shit and we needed all we could get. Hell we’d go to the zoo and the monkeys would throw us peanuts… that is how little she was making!). So with him sending her home half-day, it meant half-pay, and his reasoning for doing so was, as he said, so she “could think about it!”

She came home in tears, practically ready to quit and walk out on the church altogether. I won’t repeat the exact wording of her exasperation, but let me tell you it was much milder than my response! In the end, she did take time to think about it. Because she was so sick, she knew she couldn’t take another job, so she had to try to patch things up (the fact was she left a really great job for half the pay to come work for the church all those years ago. She really wanted to help the ministry and work for the Lord in the best way she could… funny how loyalty to a sister in Christ and a longtime employee was shot out the window when it came to evil reports!). She went in the next day to apologize and try to defend her family by keeping the only job at this point that she could actually do. She was called into the office of the pastor where she was greeted not-so-warmly by the still yelling pastor and his main associate pastor (this guy probably knew full well that she was getting the shaft…basically he just sat there with his nuts in his hand wondering why it was so cold in there! He didn’t do anything to defend, just let the head pastor berate her into the ground!). They weren’t going to let her off so easily; just an apology to them wouldn’t do. She would have to write up a formal apology to Pastor Paulie for taking in an evil report against him. After that, she would be put under a type of probation; if there were any more signs of sickness (not her cancer, but her evil reports), it would have to be cut out at the root, so to speak.

It was one of those office meetings where you don’t really say too much, even though you just want to tell the bastard off sideways. What could she do; her job was on the line. That one event – where a main pastor turned on someone he’d known for decades, who’d served with him and helped him, and was dying of cancer at that very moment – sure did get around. I think a lot of people got on the phone and slandered the man when they got wind of what had happened; there certainly was a buzz going around about it all. No one thought he had treated her fairly, no one except maybe that the second-in-command pastor, that is!

Church Splitting and the Ordeal of Those Who Were Wronged

All the above took place over a year or so ago. Since then, the Pastor in question has come to his senses (to some degree) about the church in Baltimore (though he’s still in bed with Paulie, which makes me wonder about the whole ordeal even being real, frankly). What I mean is you have to understand this pastor, he worshiped the shit out of Stevens ass, I’m not kidding! The base line belief of the church was, “You can’t ever get as blessed here as you can in Baltimore by Pastor Stevens!” That line was always bullshit to me; I could tell that Stevens was a fruity bastard when I was twelve! But being honest, I always felt that our local Pastor (the one in who screamed at the woman above) was, in fact, a damn good pastor… minus the entire cult-like bullshit he was taught. Putting all that aside, however, he often told us not to take every word he said as fact, to check him, and to study for ourselves. Though it was intimated that we should be able to trust him and his years of study, we were encouraged to check it for ourselves to keep him accountable. Because of this and other characteristics, I’ve always felt that he was truthful and honest, a man who loved Christ and the lost, in spite of the tripe he passed on from the Baltimore posse from time to time. Though I do have issues with some of his teachings, such as “No Touch Love” and how every young male is an evil sexual predator whose hands are like ravening paws (all the while his kids were smoking dope and whoring themselves out), but that’s my own bag to sort through.

Now we find ourselves alienated away from our main church in Baltimore, which is certainly a good thing. We also find ourselves in some new organization, which seems like the same shit with just a different name. I do believe that the people in this new thing really do want to do right by the people this time, but I just have misgivings. Let’s face it; at least two people from the power structure of the old empire are still floating around in this group like they know what’s going on. I just hope my old church and the precious people there can keep things going, looking all the time to Christ, and not men!

The frustrating thing about all this stuff going on is that the female family member from the above story pretty much had the inside track on everything going on and, sadly, she died while it all went to hell. So there are a lot of things not known at this point that she would have been able to illuminate. The church is out in limbo because the main pastor is leaving, and leaving it in charge to someone who, God bless him, isn’t really all that great! I’ve got nothing personally against him in any way, but the fact is he’s just not that great of a preacher yet (and hey, this GGWO topical mode of preaching doesn’t work too well with people who aren’t charismatic – funny, eh?). Let’s just say it doesn’t make me want to run right out there and be sitting in the front row every Sunday! I, like many, just don’t know what to make of it all right now. What we need is a time of definition as to all the bullshit we were taught. What should we believe? What should we disregard as being cult-like? Our pastor taught us shit for years, then he got a light bulb and started leading us away from the cult only to pick up and leave us all for dead! No one has the heart to say it like this, and I truly find that sad!

I really wanted to go into detail about the church split because I had a lot to say about it, but at this point it’s not really my place to say anything. Besides, I pretty much got in everything I wanted to say in this abridged version. It’s just a sad deal seeing your pastor coming to terms with his own personal wrongs while realizing that the reality of his own pastor being an asshole; it is just an amazing thing to watch play out. I’m sad to see the man leave even though he acted like an asshole in the story above. The worst part is the very thing that made him an asshole was the same shit that caused the split in the first place. I find that sad and ironic.

I’m having a hard time understanding why some people from the disaffiliated folks from GGWO are now sniffing around us, trying to get into the new affiliation. I guess if they have repented then they should be welcomed, but under the circumstances perhaps they should take a back seat in terms of their being in leadership positions. My point is that they shouldn’t be as upfront about what they are doing to help, but rather just be behind the scenes. I could respect that – them wanting to continue their ministry. What I can’t get behind is these people trying to act like they know what the hell is going on, acting like they are just going to jump into a managing position when they need to take some time alone with God, if you know what I mean! They come around, saying they want to “lend their leadership skills to the new organization!” when it was their “leadership” that caused 90% of the shit in the first place! They might have been run out, marked, or any number of things, but that does NOT exempt them from the issues at hand!

Anyways enough about all that, they haven’t done anything to me, so I can’t say one way or the other as to what they might have done in the past. The truth is that the past is the past and there is nothing that can be done about it now. What some of the hurt folks need to do now is just try to move on. My fear for some of the Factnet forum posters out there is that they’d wallow in their self-pity, end up feeling better, only to not get any real growth or healing out of the experience. You can only bitch and moan so much; it isn’t your place to demand redemption or confession from these people. If you want a public confessional then you’re missing the whole point of it. Sure, the bible says this, the bible says that, but sometimes life just isn’t fair. You either deal with it and move on, or you wallow in it until you die (and I know a lot about wallowing)! The fact is all you have to do is worry about yourself. You might say, “Well, so and so wronged me!” Hey, many of us got wronged; get in line! You and I weren’t the first and we won’t be the last to get wounded in this battle. All we can do is take care of our own shit; we get right with God first so that no matter what happens, we’re ready to go. Most people won’t get right with God until the person who wronged them repents. But if our walk with God has to be put on hold because of other people then it’s not much of a walk after all, is it? I need to learn this most of all!