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Old 01-21-2024, 09:48 AM   #1
Jay
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Join Date: Sep 2023
Posts: 157
Default Re: More questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by ACuriousFellow View Post
There may always be ulterior motives, such as those of Titus Chu in Ohio, but you can see in John Ingalls' testimony that autonomy was a primary concern of many elders and localities even long before Phillip Lee's sins were widely known. John Ingalls and Godfred Otuteye made much of this clear in their fellowship with other elders and regional/national leaders of The Local Churches. More and more orders and demands were coming in from LSM as if they had some kind of authority over the church, and those who resisted were often reprimanded by Lee or his subordinates. This only became worse when Phillip, who was not at all seen as a mature believer by many or even a believer at all by some, began to exercise this authority as well with little, if any, checks and balances from the churches. With time this culminated with more and more authoritarian teachings within The Lord's Recovery with doctrines such as "Minister of the Age," "God's deputy authority," "apostolic succession," "1000 years of darkness," "one publication." This goes hand in hand with their teachings of reflexively labeling any critics of LSM materials as "dissenters" and "poisonous" people who should absolutely be avoided regardless of whether or not you think they are right or are good people.

Autonomy was a pivotal and foundational reason for the localities in the Local Churches to express dissent because what they were seeing over the years reeked of the hierarchy and clergy/laity that Witness Lee had supposedly been standing against for so long. It went against everything that Lee had supposedly taught that The Lord's Recovery should be. Many elders disregarded the red flags for many years, but it became clear what kind of system was being built by Lee and his loyal followers, and it wasn't at all what Lee had promised them. Lee's reaction to these concerns was not proper humility, fellowship, and assurance, but public shaming of others, the tightening of the noose around many localities, and the culling of any who would speak up against him, leaving him and his successors with even more absolute control over the localities associated with The Lord's Recovery.

So while you may technically be right in saying that the issue of autonomy was not the only concern or motivation, for there are many involved with their own personal ideas and goals, it was the foundational and most widespread one since it led to Witness Lee's and Phillip Lee's abuse of power not only within the publication company known as Living Stream Ministry, but over many localities in the Local Churches.
Ok, thanks for bringing more clarity on that point. I talked to my sister last night who was older than I was during the Moses Lake schism and she said that from her viewpoint and understanding of the situation that:

1. Brother Lee was very critical of the church in Moses Lake, claiming that locality was full of works of the flesh and full of fleshly believers doing whatever they wanted. Which I can somewhat confirm. For several reasons-

A. I believe there was a type of hierarchy for sure being practiced there with Bill Freeman and Ken Sandburg, brothers who acted like supreme authorities in their leadership. And I know that these brothers went around Washington state to recruit members. Which is actually how my family ended up moving there from Seattle a year or so before I was born. They promised my dad that the elders there were "really cool, and really loving" and because he had problems with his dad he was always looking for a father figure type and he bought into the story and moved over there. There may or may not have been some opinions about the leadership in Seattle from the lower ranking members which may have precipitated certain feelings which led my dad to want to leave that area. In the sense that let's say hypothetically he felt that the leaders in Seattle were too legal or were too stuck in their power and rigid.....then that would make an elder who is "really cool and really loving" seem very attractive to a downtrodden member like my dad who needed a lot of brotherly love and care at the time

B. There was physical abuse of children in their daystar meetings (they named the school attached to the church 'daystar'), where if a child did something wrong it was permitted behavior for ANY adult to use physical punishment on the child, regardless if the child was their own or not. Which they absolutely did and practiced, which reminds me of the Catholic church. I was too young to attend the school, and ultimately never did because we left that locality, thank God. But my brother and sister were spanked for very very questionable offenses such as like not tying their shoes correctly and things like that. Which is pretty much abuse any way you slice it and would damage these children. My brother grew up to have a lot of psychological problems

C. I know that some members got away with a lot of bad behavior such as drinking and certain familial abuses that was not called out because there was a type of brotherhood there that just fostered and tolerated certain loose behaving brothers. Possibly because they had experienced legalism from elders in other localities and they didn't want to be controlled or dictated to anymore. But that doesn't excuse the bad behavior


2. she confirmed that she felt the church in Moses Lake was very fleshly and they were doing things that were kind of outside of the scope of what a normal local church would do. but I suppose this falls into the local church autonomy category. But again, she felt that Lee was correct to say they were a rebel church because of how they behaved and how they didn't have much outside fellowship over decisions they were making. she felt they were hiding a lot of bad behavior and they practiced a lot of things that were just kind of culty. Didn't get much examples of those things from her, but I know that sometimes localities can get weird in their behavior

I'm not saying all that to say brother Lee was 100% right about them in every aspect and he was right to assert authority over them or anything like that. But rather say that to say on both sides it seems there is a lot of extra information and nuance that could be being overlooked. Maybe both sides were majorly wrong in a lot of their behavior. so ultimately brother Lee just claimed the high ground and stood upon his laurels of being the founder of the local churches in America and this meant the bros in Moses Lake got cut off if they chose not to fall under him. He basically just claimed superiority through past merit and accomplishments despite both parties being majorly wrong in certain things. so to simply say that "the church in Moses Lake was rebellious for not bowing down to Lee" is really shorting the scenario of information. Probably both parties were majorly wrong and possibly because of Lee's major wrongness in certain things the Moses Lake brothers felt they had impetus to dissent. Now maybe they wanted to dissent anyways because they didn't want to be exposed of their bad behavior, but if Lee was majorly wrong then they had justification to "rebel" against him

Last edited by Jay; 01-21-2024 at 01:49 PM.
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