[TLFisher]

Reading 5 letters included in The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion, they were all based on a meeting at the Church in Anaheim held October 9, 1988 and subsequently audio tapes began to be circulated.
The letters were from Mike Wright, Bill Lawson (Church in Hartford), Phillip Staples (Church in Lewiston, Maine) , Bob Little, and the Church in Seattle. By themselves these letters were quite condemning , but last time I checked there was two sides to a coin. Meaning what was the other side of the story?

The Anaheim elders could have ended the meeting immediately. They didn't and were included in the criticism. Following are some excerpts from Speaking the Truth In Love to present the other side of the coin.

"The next Lord’s Day morning, October 9, 1988, Godfred, Al, and I met as usual in the Elders’ Room before the meeting. We were expecting to fellowship that morning regarding the last part of Ephesians chapter 1. I went upstairs to the meeting hall, the other brothers lingering behind in the Elders’ Room to attend to some matter. As I reached the top of the stairs, I saw all the saints who had spoken out hotly against Brother Lee and the LSM office lined up in the rows near to the front. Some of them had ceased coming to the meetings, but this morning they were all there in force. Moreover, I saw saints from other churches entering the meeting hall whom I knew to be agitated and vocal concerning the current problems. There were some from Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Torrance, and elsewhere. I knew something was up. Obviously, others had been alerted and they were planning to do something. I turned around and hastened down the stairs to notify Godfred and Al. This was it. We must decide what to do.
We sang a hymn or two and had some prayer as usual. Meanwhile Godfred and I were conferring together in whispers as we sat on the front row. We could just dismiss the meeting. But that, we knew, would cause a tumult to erupt. After a little consultation we felt it would be better to just let them speak and get it over with once for all, and then we could go on in the coming meetings with a good order." Page 47

"It was said then by these saints that since the elders had not dealt with problems publicly, they could not keep quiet. They felt fully exasperated by the elders for continually delaying to take public action against disorders, the judgment of which they felt was long overdue. Such feeling had intensified to the bursting point.
Further reference was then made to the misconduct in the LSM office, and a brother in the meeting who was a former law enforcement officer interrupted the speaker, shouting, "Did you see it? Did you see it? And indicated that if he did not see it he should not talk about it. This ignited some other brothers, one of whom claimed to be an eye-witness, who proceeded to give detailed accounts of the misconduct in anguish and outrage, mentioning the names of involved parties. Such things never should have been spoken publicly. He said, "It’s a shame for us to have to stand up here and talk like this, but if we don’t do it there will never be any blessing on us, " indicating that because of a sinful situation among us, God’s blessing was not with the church. These saints surely felt they had cause for action. For over two hours they went on exposing some things and accusing the elders for not having dealt with them. The elders were just as much a target of their accusations as anyone else. One sister said that "the elders were weak spiritually, psychologically, and physically," and that is why they hadn’t dealt with the problems." Page 48

The Anaheim elders were under scrutiny in the letters for allowing audio tapes to be circulated. How were the brothers supposed to stop it. It would be one thing to control Anaheim's own recording, but what about saint's who did their own recording? Following are the responses to the charges in Speaking the Truth in Love,

"To our great dismay we learned later that some saints who had recorded the October 9th meeting had sent out copies of the tapes to the elders of the churches in this country. We had no idea that they intended to do this or were carrying it out, and when we heard we strongly disapproved of their action. Just recently (March 1990) we found that the one responsible for this distribution was someone in another place, another church, altogether apart from the saints in Anaheim. But he had used the P.O. Box of someone in Anaheim who was not meeting with us for a return address.
We then began to receive numerous letters from elders all over the country addressed to the elders in Anaheim, castigating us for allowing such a meeting to take place. Many of them sent a copy of their letter to Brother Lee. But I wonder what they would have done had they been in our shoes and passed through what we had passed through. It is easy to criticize from a distance (I think that many who wrote were glad to be at a distance from the church in Anaheim), but when you are in the middle of the problem and have to deal with it, it is another story."

Several quotes from Mike Wright in The Fermentation of the Present Rebellion follows as:

"And why was Don allowed to speak things that he had observed at the Living Stream office as if they were a church matter? Things occurring at the Living Stream are the Living Stream's problems. Things belonging to the church are the church's matters." Page 152

My response I would quote Ron Kangas and Kerry Robichaux from A Response to Recent Accusations:

"Since the material in this document concerns an event that took place in the church in Anaheim and since we, the authors, do not live in Anaheim, we believe that it is appropriate for us to state our grounds for writing this material. First, we are organic members of the Body of Christ, and what took place in Anaheim was not only a local matter but also a Body matter."