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Originally Posted by aron
I have a similar testimony. I was out of contact with this group for a number of years, and when I encountered one of my old friends in the LC, and asked, "What's new?", I was told, and I quote, "Titus Chu rebelled". Same kind of information control pervading the ranks. Everything else is hunky dory, we are all happy here in LC-land, except that bad old Titus Chu up and rebelled on us.
Well, back in the day, that's the same spin I heard about John So and John Ingalls and so forth. When I was deep within the LC "information fold", I got the FPR and that was the source of all my information on the "turmoil". The mere suggestion that there might be another side of the story worth hearing was never broached.
That is one of the reasons I feel rather tolerant, occasionally even magnanimous, toward all the posters on the LC-related forums. Anything is a step up from that kind of information control. Any poster, no matter how zany, is an improvement from the Big Brother Truth Machine. I vastly prefer the "free market" exchange of ideas over the totalitarian "only LSM-approved materials/thoughts/information can be disseminated" reign of error.
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Hello everyone,
Wasn't the information control kind of mind boggling. I noticed that many of the saints in "the Lord's Recovery" had a very very linear way of thinking. It was on-off, black-white, right-wrong, good-bad with no gray areas or margins for operating in. Thus, the headquarters did not need much control to be effective in stopping the free flow of information and ideas.
Is it not amazing that a Doug Krieger, a Max Rapoport, a Sal Benoit, a John So etc can go from being a wonderful hope for the Body of Christ to a pariah in one week-end? How can anyone be so narrow minded to think God has only one flow or work or ministry in any time period? Once in Dallas, we were having a Bible Study at the Medical School. Some other medical students were also sponsoring a Bible Study. A brother from the church in Dallas who was a med student and I were together and he proposed a question. The other group was growing in number faster than our group. He wanted to know how that could be since we were who we were. I answered that "maybe they are just better than we are. Maybe we should have a contest and see who wins." What a double take I got back! I realized that I need to restrict my ironic humor and subtlety. My real concern was "why are we comparing ourselves to others."
EASY NOW FORUM, EASY, but I have noticed that some posters who left the local churches still have that narrow linear mindset. This does make life a lot simpler. If we can boil down a world-wide movement to one or two events or personalities, we can easily explain it. We can easily make some kind of sense out of our own experiences.
Another type of thinking in the local church was simple cause and effect. For example, George Whitingtion and others are meeting as some sort of independent church in Denton Texas. George meets WL and appreciates what WL shares on 1 Corinthians chapter 14. George visits church in Waco and asks us to come visit them. Hip, Hip horay. There is now a local church in Denton. Or in the fall of 1989,Don Rutledge invites John Ingalls for a conference in mountains of NC at same time WL is in Cleveland. (Actually, WL is not running his schedule by Don Rutledge it just happened that way.) But now Don Rutledge is in league with the rebellion of John Ingalls and in competition with the ministry.
Just consider it. Be flexible. Be open to more than one interpretation. As amazing as it may seem, It is possible for there to be multiple views and explanations for the various experiences we may have had in the local churches.
I propose an unofficial moratorium on telling others who may not see things exactly the same to sit down and shut up.
Hope, Don Rutledge
A believer in Christ Jesus