Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
It all depends on which side of the divide one stands.
The church in Moses Lake was condemned for no other reason than they wanted to remain true to their vision: a "local" church, with local leadership, answering only to the Lord. LSM will never accept that! They condemn it as "independence," but consider that every single positive example in the Bible exhibited "independence" also. What about Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua and Caleb, David, Samuel, Jesus, Stephen, Paul, and so many others I left out? They all were independent, and dependent on God alone! Otherwise they could never be faithful to their Lord and God.
We applauded W. Nee for leaving the "system," but now that same "system" inside the Recovery goes after those who leave for the same reasons!
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I'm reading this comment again and there's a lot there is either wrong or missing in your thinking here. First of all I was born in Moses Lake in the early 80's and my family was in the middle of the turmoil there. My parents decided to stick with LSM and Lee and we got ostracized because of it, and basically we all stopped meeting. Which was good because that church had a ton of problems, physical abuse of children being one of the major ones
Anyway where I think you're wrong is that I don't at all believe that the leading brothers decided to break away from Lee because "they wanted to remain true to their vision: a "local" church, with local leadership, answering only to the Lord." This may have been said by them as a kind of veneer. But I think it was related to the dissent from a great deal of leaders in general around this time. The leading brothers call this "a storm." But in this particular "storm" there was a ton of testimony going around about Lee's bad business dealings and the serious problems with his sons, and the very serious allegations coming out about one of his sons in particular. If you read Ingalls letter to the church 'Speaking the truth in love' (which you can easily find online, a link is on this website I believe, or just google it), you will see that there was actually quite a few elders and leaders around the country who were really struggling with what was going on. Ingalls resigned as an elder along with at least one other brother, and maybe more over the situation
So with that said, it's entirely within the timeframe that the leaders in Moses Lake were "dissenting" because they didn't want to go along with Brother Lee in his nepotistic protection of his son(s) with regards to their allegations of bad business deals and sexual assault. That makes perfect sense. Now, idk for sure, but it's possible that there was attempted coup on Bro Lee by some of these brothers. I know that Bill Freeman was quarantined in all of Washington state. I was in Spokane around 2005 and meeting with the church there and the elder stood up and told us that Bill Freeman was going to be visiting the city and that we all should stay away from him. How he got that information I don't know, but even in 2005, which is around twenty years since the church in Moses Lake broke away from bro Lee and LSM, they were STILL quarantining Bill Freeman. Which is pretty wild
At any rate we'll probably never know exactly the motivations for the bros in Moses Lake to dissent. But also it's some great points to consider with regards to the abuse of leadership, or the mishandling of leadership and alleged protective nepotism
I don't think it was regarding simply the church in Moses Lake wanting local autonomy. That's too basic in my view. I know that they did want this and I see no reason why Lee would seek to not allow them local autonomy, because as far as I know that's how the local churches function. They are or should be autonomous in a lot of their local dealings and functions. How exactly they interact with LSM is anyone's guess, or maybe people have certain experiences of control idk. But I seriously doubt this was the reason for the dissent in Moses Lake. For sure there was a disagreement between Lee and the leaders of the church of Moses Lake. The details of that I don't know. But I do know that Lee was saying they needed to fall under him and if they didn't they could go their own way, and they chose to go their own way and cut themselves off from the fellowship of all the other churches. I guess you could take from that that Lee DID in fact have autonomous control over all the churches. But again, I highly doubt that the only reason the dissent ensued was simply because Lee wouldn't recognize their autonomy. That doesn't sound right