A follow-up to my previous post on the readiness and eagerness by SGM top-dogs to use "excommunication" as a very real threat to those who don't toe the party line. I was alarmed and distressed to read about a rather strong sermon that Jared Mellinger (senior pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church - Dave Harvey's "base" and SGM's 2nd big flagship) preached yesterday on divisiveness.I've been keeping my eye on Jared Mellinger ever since my dear friends Julie and Aaron Morris suffered under this guy's leadership. I follow him on Twitter and have observed some tweets from him leading up to the sermon on Sunday - so I guess it was no surprise. The essence of his statement was this (and here's the link just in case you need the source document);
"It was said that it may be more destructive to go to an un-gracious website where half-truth and opinions are put forth, than to go to a porn site".
This seems to me to be an incredibly stupid as well as unwise thing to say - and something that is fired by Mr Mellinger's eagerness to keep Dave Harvey and returning President and Chairman C J Mahaney - sweet, rather than something that is driven and guided by the Word of God.
The aim? Let's not deceive ourselves - Jared Mellinger is clearly keen to keep his church members from looking at SGM Survivors, SGM Refuge and Brent Detweiler dot com. However maybe he would do well to learn from the experience of the past. I remember when our elders at our home church were trying to put us off going to any churches involved in the Toronto Blessing and spoke very strongly against it. The effect? Generally we were all quite interested in what was so bad about Toronto and many members went - or at least watched videos about it.
I think Jared would do well to learn from Josh Harris's godly example. The websites critiquing SGM are out there and are not going away. Rather than putting your church leadership under scare tactics by saying something like this - he should do well to admit they are there. Face up honestly to what is true - and speak honestly about what perhaps is exaggerated. Maybe that will make his members relax and trust in his leadership - rather than feel under MORE condemnation and guilt;
1. Those members who have read the sites now are (by his teaching) worse than those struggling with porn.
2. Those members who genuinely struggle with porn now feel they aren't quite as bad as those who read those sites.
Both of which are ridiculous statements. ALL sin is sin in the eyes of God - and ALL sin was dealt with at the Cross of Christ (that SGM purport to trumpet so much).
3 comments:
This was a stupid thing to say by a foolish young man elevated to "the level of his incompetence" (as R T Kendall would say).
This "foolish young man" is the son of another SGM Pastor. What else do you expect with all the nepotism in SGM?
Hey Dan, just to clarify, we were never under Jared's leadership. We were gone by the time he got there though we did listen to a few of his messages online (heard enough to know the people are no better off either). Dave Harvey was still in charge there during our time.
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