Quote:
Originally Posted by TLFisher
When I was meeting with Bellevue, it seemed the Puget Sound localities viewed Spokane being out of step. Doing their own thing and not in coordination with the other localities. Personally I viewed Spokane, as a place where someone with a bad rap could go to get a fresh start. That seemed to change once Spokane's lead elder passed away.
Affiliations always seem to have a tie to a parent company. If there is no affiliation, that would be plausible if the volunteers for BFA never met with the local churches, but with other denominations or non-denominational church. I met with the Church in Renton for about a year. Back when their meetings were still held at Renton High School.
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Are you talking about Tennef? Not sure I spelled his name correctly. When I met there he was very old. He owned a jewelry shop downtown Spokane and all his employees were saints. I'm sure he did pass away not many years after I left Spokane in 2006 for Bellevue. Anyway I remember Jim Clark was acting as the lead elder. It could be that he was under Tennef idk. But as I stated earlier I had a certain spidey sense about Jim Clark. But I also enjoyed the Lord a lot around him. But I remember one time when I moved to Bellevue he was visiting and he was meeting with the Bellevue brothers and they had a kind of weird little pow wow in one home meeting that just stood out to me. I see a great deal of clergy-laity type behavior in the Puget sound churches. With a kind of hierarchy and a lot of brothers "in line" for the special class. It's a weird thing that I never experienced in Spokane. I don't want to bad mouth Jim Clark, but I sensed something about him and when he had that pow wow it was something that stood out to me. Years later I see the problem of this hierarchy a lot in Renton and Bellevue, so I wonder how the church in Spokane is doing now. I wonder if they've been affected by any type of clergy-laity or hierarchy problems. I know that a church in Cheney was raised up in the last decade or so. Cheney is about 15 miles east of Spokane
I've only been to Tacoma once, and only to Seattle a handful of times, probably less than five or six times. Anyway, I'm sure that type of leadership problem is all around in this area. I never had a good feeling about Willie Wise or Sherman Robertson, and I've mentioned elsewhere about the line of leadership in Bellevue and how weird those "front row" brothers acted when I was meeting there. I've been meeting with Renton since around 2016ish and it's definitely there latently amongst some of the young leading brothers and I've brushed up against it and I don't like it. There's a lot of brothers who desire to be speakers and others who desire to be elders. To me this is ambition for position, and brother Lee spoke out strongly against it many times. On the other hand we have a verse such as 1 Timothy 3:1 which says 'if anyone aspires to the [eldership], he desires a good work.' Maybe a catch-22 here. But I do believe the motive probably matters here. If one has ambition for a position to glorify himself then his heart is wrong. Whereas if one has the desire to help and serve the saints then possibly his desire is pure. I've heard many times from the ministry that an elder is a slave to the body. But often I see elders sitting in their positions as if it's a position of glory. To me that's the uplifting of the self and should automatically disqualify these ones from the position
But I agree, the whole BFA gospel behavior is fishy and duplicitous. It could be some weird legal reason or it could be these brothers are caught up in what the dissenters say and it's all orders from Anaheim headquarters. Whatever it is it doesn't seem normal or along the line of Christ. I think this special class of leaders hides a lot of their behaviors from the nominal members, and the nominal members don't think to ask. I was literally at the gospel preaching watching it happen and it didn't come up in my mind to really ask WHY he made a point to differentiate the two. To this day I don't really know. But I also am happy that the Bible expounded is going out and reaching people and they are gaining the full truth of the word. I am thankful for that regardless of whatever duplicity is going on