What Pastoral Humility Looks Like

Glory to God for all things!  

Youtube recently "pushed" me a video about a Protestant pastor who started reading the Church Fathers and discovered a few things along the way.  His name is Pastor Scott Klaudt and he has a rather eye-opening sermon series from his church, Zootown.  

I was curious about pastor Klaudt's journey and found something unexpected and beautiful in his sermon "Where Our Tree Got Bent." Around the 6 minute, 30 second mark, you hear the heart of a true pastor.  

"There was spiritual abuse.  That's on me.  I was the leader.  And I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  We were trained to do it this way."  

Perhaps you are someone, from Milestone Church or elsewhere, who needs (or needed) to hear these words from your pastor (or former pastor) but were denied the privilege of hearing them.  This is for you.  You should have heard them.  

"Please forgive me for failing to love you.  Please forgive me for failing to protect you.  Please forgive me, a sinner," is a core teaching of the historical Christian Church.  

Every liturgy in every Orthodox Church, before offering the gifts at the altar, the priest comes out to his congregation and says, "Forgive me, my brethren," thus fulfilling the command of Christ.  

On "forgiveness Sunday," the day before Great Lent begins, every member of every parish goes around to every other member in a (long) line, prostrating to the ground, asking for and granting forgiveness with a threefold kiss and the precious words, "Forgive me a sinner." And "As God forgives, I forgive."

The ancient Church knows what it is about in this arena.  The modern Church is still offering up self protective platitudes, finger pointing and blame, to its shame.  It is time for modern Christendom to repent and walk in the humility commanded by our Lord and Savior.  It is time for the modern church to return to her holy and orthodox roots.  

In Christ,

Catherine

An Angry God and the Problem of Sin

I was surprised today to get a call from a friend.  I picked up the phone to hear, "I found your blog.  I figured out it was you..."  Our friends had been looking for a new church and were considering Milestone and somehow stumbled upon this blog. As we talked and she (very compassionately) offered to come give me a hug and profusely apologized that our family went through such an ordeal, I began to think about the problem of sin and our human response to it.  

Orthodoxy teaches us that sin is a sickness that Christ came to heal.  We are instructed repeatedly to be angry at the devil but that people in the spiritual hospital don't need anger....they need mercy and compassion.  The medicine most needed for sin from our fellow man isn't anger...it's prayer, understanding, long-suffering, humility, patience, love, grace, more prayer and much more prayer.  It's begging the Lord to help our fallen brother, even when it is US he/she is hurting.  We may be suffering right alongside our spouse because of their sin, but our calling is to lay down our lives for that person just as our Lord laid down His life for us.  

I was also reflecting upon something a friend of mine said the other day, "God had to pour out His wrath on Jesus on the cross because of sin."  I asked her what she felt the problem of sin was (Why is sin a problem for mankind?) and how she felt that God pouring out wrath on an innocent was helpful in curing the problem of sin.  She was, of course, citing the penal substitutionary model of atonement which, to my limited understanding, is a Calvinist doctrine believed by a plethora of Christians today.  I am no scholar but I did begin to connect some dots.  

How do you see sin?  Does it require punishment or healing?  If we believe sin requires punishment, we will very likely fall into being the "punisher," forgetting that we have likely done the same thing, if to a different degree.  If we believe that sin requires healing...we can prayerfully become a "nurse" to an ailing friend and even to ourselves via prayer.  Similarly, how do we see God?  Do we agree with Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon, in which we are presented a wrathful God who needs to pour out his overflow of anger on somebody? Or do we see Him as a merciful healer who laid down his life to keep his Image from disappearing from the human race altogether?  (I recommend reading Saint Athanasius's On the Incarnation with a forward by C.S. Lewis for more on this imagery.)

What my family experienced at Milestone was a paradigm in which a perceived sin deserves grace "to a point" but then (mainly when I have lost my patience), needs to be punished and I just happen to be available to meet out the just desserts.  Moreover, rather than seeing my lack of patience or grace or prayer or understanding as the problem, I get to see them as a helpful and loving "correction" for the sin I perceive in those around me.  Did I live my life like this?  You bet I did!  I still struggle against this tendency daily.  

The ethos or aura or aroma of deeply understanding that sin needs healing and that anger at people doesn't effect any healing was missing at Milestone.  When we are angry or raging at someone, our anger is as sign that we are offended or wounded or embarrassed. It is a sign that we do not yet understand our purpose and our role in the kingdom.  We aren't here for our comfort.  We aren't here to look good.  We aren't here to have an easy life.  We are here to help one another through the sickness of our sin, and that entails suffering.  When one among us is ill, we don't cast him/her out after an angry tirade. We don't manipulate or cajole, connive and scheme to "spin a narrative" so that we come out looking better.  We take a deep breath and pray before we speak.  We think first of how to help our brother heal (knowing we will suffer right along with him)...not of how to get rid of him so that he doesn't cause more problems for us.   That's our calling.  

Mars Hill and Milestone

I have long since abandoned this blog which was started as a cathartic exercise and a means to warn others away from a controlling, unhealthy church if not to exact some sort of revenge on the players involved. But I had to revisit it for a brief moment to share some insight I recently found.   

Over the last ten years, I have certainly grown spiritually and had many ups and downs.  Four years ago, this Pascha (Easter), our family was received and baptized into the Orthodox Church.  Our children are almost all grown and are spreading their wings into adulthood.  We have started successful businesses, become more politically active, become more active in our community, and wrested with covid and masks just like other Americans.  We are learning that everyone is spiritually sick and in need of spiritual medicine. This is true of us, like everyone else.  

Recently, in a classical education group, someone shared a podcast that spurred me to write another blog post.  This podcast has really helped me see churches like Milestone within the historical landscape of the 20th-21st century American protestant church movement.  After listening to the podcast, I had so much more empathy for both our younger selves and Milestone Church and its leadership.  We are all players in historical and philosophical movements that we did not create nor even consciously choose to participate in.  I highly encourage you to listen to the podcast, start to finish.  You can find it here.  

Many times while listening I was amazed at the similarities between Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church and Jeff Little and Milestone Church.  The sense of real community, the reliance on a strong pastor as a draw and a glue, the treatment of women, the bravado, the call for men to be "real men," the narcissism, the lack of authority, these are all commonalities between these two churches and their pastors.

It was a deep sense of relief that came over me as I listened and I said, aloud, "Thank you, Lord, for delivering us from that situation."  That attitude has been a long time coming.  I truly feel lifted up out of the mess of American Protestantism that Milestone represents for me.  I understand so many things now, philosophically and theologically.  

While listening to the podcast, I found myself asking: Why, at Milestone, was there so little focus on humility and our own abject sinfulness, pastors or laity?  Why was there no legitimate authority structure to protect both pastors and laity?  I know the answers to these questions now.  I have a totally different perspective on what it means to be led by a pastor who is compelled to ask the forgiveness of the people he serves every single week, multiple times.  I understand now that authority needs to be legitimate and have a solid historical underpinning.  I understand what it means to swim in the water of humility, where the root understanding of everyone in your church is that we are all in need of a hospital, that we are all horribly sick and need spiritual medicine, and that to judge your brother who is struggling says more about you than him.  

As I listened, I found myself praying for Jeff Little, the Wilsons, and the other leadership figures in our situation.  They, too, were caught in a wave and a response to what had come before and what was going on culturally in our society.  The things that happened at Milestone were so eerily similar to what was happening hundreds of miles away in Seattle at the exact same time...it wasn't a coincidence.  We are all marching through the parade of history, often not able to see the forces at work in our lives because we are so close in proximity to them.  

My prayer for every person is that we would come to know Christ, His Church, and His salvation, that we would become worshippers in spirit and in truth.  As we pray and work daily to develop virtue and to control our passions, as we wrangle with the most hard-to-tame beast, the one within us, may we all repent of the sins we have committed and the ways in which we have hurt others.  We are all victims here, of a sort, and we need to pray for one another and to forgive one another and to heal.  

My Responsibility to You

As my family and I journey through the Orthodox Church and the spiritual atmosphere there, so many things strike me as truly wonderful.

Recently my husband, who has shown little interest in joining any church since Milestone, was speaking to our priest about becoming Orthodox.  He related the conversation to me later as very striking.

"When I asked Father what is entailed in joining the Church, he said,

'Well, when you become Orthodox, my responsibility to you becomes much greater.'"

My husband said this struck him as such a different attitude.

"He didn't say, 'Your responsibility become greater: you have to tithe, attend so many services,' or anything like that.  He said that HIS responsibility to ME increased.  That was very unexpected."

I was pleased to hear this, of course, and I immediately contrasted it in my mind with a pastor who has a "goon squad" to keep "undesirables" away from him.

Come to think of it, that is simply NOT a pastor.  That is a preacher and CEO who feels that you ought to call him your spiritual leader, that you ought to tithe to his church, that you ought to bring more people in, that you ought to attend services.  But he does not feel the obligation to hear your confession regularly, inquire after your family, check up on you personally.  He does not feel that he is obligated to actually interact with you versus having people "keep you away from him."

This pastor is full of himself and his title.  He feels that he is too important for you.  Too important, even, to call you when his Associate Pastor acts in an unseemly way.  Too important to reach out to those in his church who have been hurt or injured.  Too important to humble himself to those he has wounded.

All I can say is, "Praise God for delivering my family out of such an environment."  This is not Christ-like.  This is not humble.  This is not something I'd wish on any family.

I now have a firm conviction that there is, in fact, one true church.  And, sadly, many millions of people are sitting in seats in heretical churches in which a man or group of man determine doctrine apart from the wisdom of the true church.  My experience at Milestone convinced me of this more than anything else.

It's not that people are deliberately doing wrong.  They genuinely believe that are doing as God would have them do.  But, I am convinced, they are hurtful and ineffective because they are in a heretical church.  Most of the problems encountered are a direct result of a body cut off from orthodox attitude and teaching and any accountability.

I urge all of my Christian friends to research their own history.  I urge them (and you) to take a good long look at what happened at the Great Schism and then later during the Reformation.  In my opinion, it's not pretty and is the root cause of all of the modern church ills that we have.  We are a body divided and it should not be so.  It causes undue pain and heartache for EVERYONE involved: pastors and laity.

Reflections on the Difference Between "Church" and "Business"

My journey through Christendom has given me so much to think about over the years.  It has led me in many different directions and to many different types of churches.  A theme I constantly come back to when thinking about our time at Milestone is "The Church as a Business" or "The Church as a Pastor's Kingdom."

Church is, after all, a market share kind of thing.  There's one on just about every corner (sometimes four).  People are no longer denominationally oriented and are quite willing to flit about from church to church gathering what nectar they may.  I've done my share of that in the past as well.

So where does that leave churches themselves?  Vying for market share.  Leadership conversations start sounding like this, "How do we retain the members we have?  How do we recruit new members?  How do we make this building a place people want to be?"  As opposed to, "Where is the Holy Spirit leading us this year in terms of spiritual growth?" or "How can we better learn humility this season?"

I personally think it is sad.  I also think it's artificial and unnatural and not the way church was ever intended.  I also think it lends itself to "pastoring" turning into something more akin to "CEOing."

I was sitting in a restaurant one morning with a girlfriend and right behind us was a pastoral team meeting with a church consultant.  The conversation ran to business...the same kind of questions I mentioned above.  Basically, "How can we structure your church so that it appeals to the largest number of people?"  I think both of us were a little shocked.  We were both still at Milestone at the time and had that moment of realization.  This is what is going on behind the scenes at OUR church too.  This is what our leadership is saying about....us.  Somehow feels a little less spiritual, doesn't it?

Well, so what?  For me, the big "so what" is this:  It wasn't supposed to be this way, it doesn't have to be this way, and it should NOT be this way.

As I have mentioned before, I spent a good deal of time researching church history and tracing the origins of my faith back to the roots of it all.  I landed at an Orthodox Church.  An ancient church.  Based on about 2,000 years of tradition and not prone to having planning meetings on how to appeal to the masses.

The focus of my faith has shifted BACK to where it started when I was young...my personal walk.  My personal sin.  My personal repentance.

What would happen if every Christian, church, and pastor had this experience?  What if we properly understood evangelism as an outgrowth of spirituality, closeness with God, and humility vs. the PRIMARY goal of our faith?

What if pastors who had seen people injured under their watch got a hold of this idea?  What if they dedicated the rest of their spiritual lives to humility and repentance and seeking out those they had neglected or ignored because they were too "busy" or "removed" to do anything?  What might happen then in a church, a city, or a nation?

We need a restoration in the church today.  Yes.  A good history lesson, some sayings of the church fathers, and a big-time restoration.

I Saw the Sign Part Deux

Remember that friend who was telling me about her AWESOME new church and I knew immediately it was a cult-church?  Yeah.  I was right.  If you didn't catch that post, it was in December of 2014.  Check it out.

So for the past 9 months or so, I've been checking up on the status, trying to find out how it's going.

Here are a few of the things that she's told me.

"One time, I went to the pastor because I had a question about something in the sermon.  The next day he sent out an email to the whole church saying that if women have questions about anything, they need to be accompanied by their husbands if they want to come talk to me."

My friend says she was "annoyed" by this.  I thought it was a good indication to head for the hills, personally.  I contrast this with my priest who has no problem (nor does his wife think it odd, nor does anyone else think it odd) privately counseling with me.  He apparently understands that he as a man is responsible for his own self-control and behavior and, shockingly, appears to trust both himself and me.  It's so nice not to feel like I've grown a third eye simply because I was born female.


"I really enjoy the fellowship of the church but it's hard for me to find women to talk to.  None of the women have jobs and when I go to Bible study, any marital problems immediately get thrown back on the woman."

Ah yes.  Don't forget this is a women's only Bible study.  Her church doesn't believe in integrating the sexes, apparently, to study scripture.  This line of thought is all too familiar to me.  "Have you read Debi Pearl?"  "Have you read The Excellent Wife?"  "Are you being submissive?"

Oh dear.  While recalling those titles, I found this one: "Wired for Sex: What Christian Wives Should Know About Husbands."  We got a chuckle out of this just now.

I quipped to my husband, "Oh...you're wired for sex?!  I think I was wired for baking....am I supposed to want sex as well?"

His response?  "You're wired for baking?  Why don't you go bake me a cake and come sit on my face?"

Funny.  But this patently ludicrous book title exemplifies the sheer stupidity of this gender segregation in many cult churches.  Men are wired for sex.  Women are wired for....???


"I really want to leave the church but I am putting it off because the pastor has already told everyone that if anyone decides to leave that he is going to have a meeting with you and ask you why and I just don't want to get into all of this because I know it will turn into a theological argument."

Do I even need to say anything about this?  Yes, it is immature on the part of my friend not to be able to simply be herself, speak her mind, etc.  Yes, she needs to work on this.  This was my problem as well.

But what of the pastor who threatens, oh, sorry, I mean "declares," that you are going to get grilled, I mean "interviewed" if you decide to leave?  Good heavens.  I'm sure this is simply a quality-control measure to make sure they're doing everything that they can to make their laity happy.  Ahem.

Scientological Similarities

Tonight I decided to watch a documentary I've wanted to see since I heard about it.  Being a blogger about cult churches, I felt I needed to see it.  I highly suggest watching it.  It's called Scientology-The Ex Files and you can find it here amongst other places.

Right around 13 minutes and 30 seconds, you'll begin hearing the story of Joe Reaiche.  I want to detail his experience here and compare it with our experience at Milestone Church in order to highlight some characteristic tactics of cults and cult-like churches.

1. Reporting

Joe began questioning the church.  "I had mentioned various things I had disagreements with...then that person {to whom he was speaking} would write a report about that and send it in."  Sounds pretty familiar.

In churches and cults where top-down control is key, those in leadership (or those who want to be) know that the best thing they can do "for the church" is to tattle.  This means they won't hesitate to forward your private emails, go"report" things to the pastoral staff because they are "worried about you," "worried about 'unity'," etc.

2. Internal Investigations

In 2005 Joe was summoned to an internal inquiry called a Committee of Evidence where the secret internal reports on him were disclosed.  He was accused of....breaking the rules of the church.  He says he wasn't allowed to see the reports, call witnesses, or have any kind of legal representation.

This is a classic tactic and is very much what we experienced as well.  You get called into a private meeting where your various sins (as reported by your friends and fellow members, allegedly) are laid before you.  In our case, as our associate pastor was laying out all my various sins and foibles to me as "reported" to the leaders (see #1 above), I was aghast.  The names of some of our very closest friends were being brought up as accusers.  I pointedly asked about one of our best friends who supposedly "reported" on me and was told that this man "wasn't on trial here."  But I was, apparently.  And that's what I wryly noted.  Of course, none of these people were actually present or invited or even called on the telephone.  If they had been, they might have said, "Why are you asking about that?  I never meant that in that way." Or, "I never said that."  But then, that wouldn't serve the purpose of control.

Getting back to Joe: when the final Committee of Evidence report came out, here's Joe's commentary.  "It basically listed out all of my crimes.  Where they accused me of things I said I wasn't guilty (sic)...they said, you're guilty and here's the evidence.  But the evidence was from the reports.  They were here-say."

Yes, this sounds familiar.  Look...our report says you are guilty of these sins.  You might say you are not but the evidence is right here in our internal reports so, therefore, you are guilty.  

3. Problem Children and Containing the "Problem"  

Joe was labeled a "suppressive person" and expelled from the church.  But that's not really the worst of it.  When he went to call his children (also in the church) and tell them about what had happened, he couldn't get through to them.

Joe says, "And then I realized, oh my God, here's what they did.  They had already had me declared a  'suppressive person.'  They told everyone else, including my children."

Well, I can certainly identify with this.  Except we were not labeled "suppressive."  We were in "disunity."  We, too, had broken the church "rules" barring disunity.  We were problem children of a sudden, threatening the whole structure of the church, apparently.

And, of course, this tactic of asking us not to mention anything to anyone while frantically making phone calls to key leaders themselves and telling them about our situation was obvious damage control.  I'll never forget the phone call I got from a friend.  I can remember exactly where I was standing.  She said, "The church is calling people telling them that you guys are taking a break.  What's going on?"  This was not even 24 hours after we had been explicitly asked not to speak to our friends about what had happened.  The sheer balls-iness (read: testicular fortitude) of this is shocking.


After watching this bit of the film, my husband queried, "Is there a playbook they have or what?"

"Yes," I said.  There is a reason it's all so similar.  There are playbooks and there is one author for all of them.  It's the Devil.

I say all of this to point out that there is a SYSTEM of dealing with people in dysfunctional churches.  If you see any of this going on in your church, open your eyes!
If someone from your church tells you that this happened to them, please, for the love of God, believe them!
The worst thing you can do is to look at them incredulously as our best friends did as they sat on our living room couch for the last time and say, "That doesn't sound like the character of our leadership."