[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

This morning on the Jo Casteel FB page there was a post by one who defended the LC as "a particular and unique place" to meet with others as a Christian. It's actually part of a veiled threat, which folks like LSM President BP have made blunt: "If you leave us, you will have no way to go on, spiritually."

Here is the last paragraph of that post, which followed an extremely humble apology by the poster.

Finally, I wanted to say that I do still believe there is merit to the local churches. They are a unique and particular place to pursue the Lord, grow in Christ, and meet with fellow believers on the ground of oneness. I also think the ministry is full of riches to feed the saints and help them in their walk with the Lord. Just as none of us are perfect, none of the churches are perfect either. There will be saints at all different stages of life - some dealing with sin, some who are judgmental, and some who are actually mature and can shepherd us according to God. While there have been catastrophic failures, it seems that to throw everything away on account of a few (albeit deplorable) instances would be to "throw the baby out with the bathwater," as it were. I feel like there is much more to be gained by learning from the past and continuing from where we are than scrapping everything and trying to find an entirely new way to go on.

The difficulty with the ideas here are several. The poster considers the "deplorable" instances to be few in number and from those young in life still "dealing with sin." This is hardly the case. Abuses in the Recovery start at the top, with Lee and his boys. These horrible patterns passed on have wrongly trained generations of saints.

The poster has also wrongly concluded that the leadership has "some who are actually mature and can shepherd us according to God." I could not disagree more. Proof positive are the very actions of these leaders to the Casteel letter -- deny, smear, cover, deceive, dissemble, slander, attack, etc. -- but never take ownership, repent, humble themselves before the Lord, take action, make amends, seek out the truth, etc.

Here is one question I had to deal with when leaving the LC -- are exclusive, elitist, and esoteric LC doctrines the same as the apostles fellowship?