[Indiana]

What would indicate to us in the following example that Brother Lee was remotely concerned for "keeping the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace?"

As was stated previously, “He let the violations of the oneness of the Body occur, and he did so “at any cost”, losing co-workers, churches, and saints. He was after a new way, new “elders”, and a new mentality in the “churches”, while he labeled those who raised challenging questions as slanderers, perverted ones, rebellious ones, and so forth. He showed little regard for keeping the oneness of the Body. He was “cleaning house” and starting something new."


For two years before the new way began in the churches, Brother Lee did not attend meetings of the church in Anaheim. He was “disappointed with the church”. He spoke of going to another locality to build up THAT church, not Anaheim, as a model for others to follow. He considered Seattle and other places. Yet, he was in the church in Anaheim and not attending meetings. During that time away, at any rate, he considered intently a new way for the churches to take. He was nearly eighty years old and very much concerned for his ministry and the future.

In October of 1984 he initiated a new way to be taken in the churches, with strong emphasis on his ministry and on himself as the unique leader in the recovery. It is that strong emphasis that became such a problem and cause for consideration that the church ground had changed, as serious local needs were ignored, while LSM prospered in gaining their objectives in localities.

The entity called Living Stream Ministry still looms large today. It surely is not limited to what Brother Lee stated were its limitations in Elders’ Training Book 9. He said it was “a little business office to serve my ministry for two things: to publish the messages in book form and to distribute these messages in both video and audio tapes. That is all the ministry office should do and nothing else.” He continued with a misleading word: “I did not have much time to check on everything related to the office in the past, but the ministry office has always had this specific function and no other function” (p. 61, ET Book 9). Actually, he had both the time and the knowledge of what his “little office” was doing in different localities and regions, because of contacts he had with such brothers as Bill Mallon and John So in the Southeast and in Europe, but he chose to ignore their pleas for his help in the midst of serious problems they were having with LSM. He also had the opportunity to understand more about what was happening in other localities had he been willing to listen. LSM was on the move into various localities according to plan.

Examples of Ignoring Local Needs

1. Ignoring LSM Sister’s Report (see appendix 1, third point)

As a sister working in the office of the Living Stream Ministry, the wife of former elder Ken Unger from Huntington Beach, wrote an eleven-page letter to Brother Lee expressing her concerns of the ill-treatment of the saints in different places at the hands of the LSM. She and her husband, in fact, went to Brother Lee to read him the letter, and as she began to read, Brother Lee cut her off soon after she started, and he took over and dominated the time, sharing his own burden about “the Lord’s move.” The same thing took place in a subsequent visit when Brother Lee stopped her before she could get through half a page. He, then, dominated the remainder of the time with his own burden concerning the progress of “the Lord’s move” on the earth, not showing interest in her fellowship. The sister had become quite disillusioned about the church and now about Brother Lee, and withdrew herself from the church and LSM permanently.

It was not that Brother Lee didn’t know what his representatives were doing in many places. He either knew or chose not to know. He knew that the function of his “little office” had grown enormously and that LSM was way beyond its bounds in their activities and disturbances in the churches in order to satisfy their objectives, and his. LSM had become far more than a publisher and distributor of books and tapes. (taken from Deviating from the Path)