Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, August 14, 2003
I'm seriously considering a radio documentary to follow up "Preying from the Pulpit." There have certainly been more molestation, sodomy, and statutory rape cases committed by graduates and former members who can be linked back to First Baptist Church of Hammond Indiana and Hyles-Anderson College, so there's enough material for follow up. I've sounded out some potential candidates for interviews, and they are positive about contributing their expertise to the microphone.
Yesterday as I outlined a possible presentation, I realized that I am no Vince Wade (the reporter who did Preying from the Pulpit). I started to see how much skill went into PftP. Yet as nobody else is tracking the abuses that are still traceable back to that place, I think I should do it. I do have the equipment and the means, and I know the requirements of solid research. I found a Baptist church in my own city that broadcasts itself as **NOT** KJV only. I think that pastor may be a good candidate for an interview as well, if I can catch his ear. It looks like he's pretty fed up with the Hyles-style version of Fundamentalism.
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The problem, of course, is getting thorough research done 700 miles from the site of interest. And the second problem, even with some of the heavy hitters ready to tape interviews, is getting enough sound footage to create a 30-minute presentation. And finally, it means having to spend hours each week for several weeks listening to those awful sermons from Jack Hyles and Jack Schaap. I have to find a way to present their side of the story without getting lynched. |
Yesterday as I outlined a possible presentation, I realized that I am no Vince Wade (the reporter who did Preying from the Pulpit). I started to see how much skill went into PftP. Yet as nobody else is tracking the abuses that are still traceable back to that place, I think I should do it. I do have the equipment and the means, and I know the requirements of solid research. I found a Baptist church in my own city that broadcasts itself as **NOT** KJV only. I think that pastor may be a good candidate for an interview as well, if I can catch his ear. It looks like he's pretty fed up with the Hyles-style version of Fundamentalism.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
The meeting with the pastor went very well. Of course, he wants me in church---even if it's not our church. He went through some Scripture with me to show me that Christ has appointed the assembling of ourselves as the means He chooses to meet with us. I don't agree with this sentiment to the extent that he took it. I don't think church in and of itself is a sacramental transaction, (hence I don't have a problem with a sabbatical under the supervision of the eldership), but I do think we believers are meant to be members of an assembley that preaches the Word of God faithfully, administers the sacraments (both of them) biblically, and administers church discipline.
The fact that most churches omit numbers one and three and often two is a pointer to the fact that so many people are alienated from church. It has become a social entity but has lost its relevence and pertinence to a lot of people. He agreed with this assessmnt but took me back to the undeniable fact that we start addressing the problem from within.
He is a kind and godly man and he listened to my side of the story, and even agreed with a lot of the problems I raised. We agreed that there really is very little fellowship available to me at the church. In the end, I promised him I would go to any church that popped up during my sabbatical and give it a try, but I've visited a lot of churches in this area already, and I'm not going to get back on that carousel. I'm not going to go hunt for a church again. I will put the matter into God's Hands, so that God can direct me. (But I think God is fine with my choice of taking a ssabbatical; I think the time favors solitude for the next several months.) The pastor told me he would try to think of some churches that might be more aligned with my type of outreach. So we parted with better understanding on both sides.
I do present something of a problem. I'm a single, Christian Fundamentalist/Evangelical, five point Calvinist, fourth degree black belt, single woman who studies astrology and is convinced of the divine inspiration of the Bible. I can see that I don't quite fit the mold anywhere I go. But I'm not going to apologize for it any more.
The fact that most churches omit numbers one and three and often two is a pointer to the fact that so many people are alienated from church. It has become a social entity but has lost its relevence and pertinence to a lot of people. He agreed with this assessmnt but took me back to the undeniable fact that we start addressing the problem from within.
He is a kind and godly man and he listened to my side of the story, and even agreed with a lot of the problems I raised. We agreed that there really is very little fellowship available to me at the church. In the end, I promised him I would go to any church that popped up during my sabbatical and give it a try, but I've visited a lot of churches in this area already, and I'm not going to get back on that carousel. I'm not going to go hunt for a church again. I will put the matter into God's Hands, so that God can direct me. (But I think God is fine with my choice of taking a ssabbatical; I think the time favors solitude for the next several months.) The pastor told me he would try to think of some churches that might be more aligned with my type of outreach. So we parted with better understanding on both sides.
I do present something of a problem. I'm a single, Christian Fundamentalist/Evangelical, five point Calvinist, fourth degree black belt, single woman who studies astrology and is convinced of the divine inspiration of the Bible. I can see that I don't quite fit the mold anywhere I go. But I'm not going to apologize for it any more.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Incredibly nauseated today. But I'm at work. Have a meeting with my pastor at 4:00 this afternoon. My self-imposed "sabbatical" from church is not going over well, apparently. He says he wants to pray with me, and I have to take this at face value, so of course I agreed. I suppose, if it turns into an argument, I can just leave. I really don't want to argue.
After my experiences in Indiana, I realized how very little church impacts what I do. I also felt the smart of having no support whatsoever from my church while I was in a very difficult situation. (Well, there was the little old lady who wrote and told me it was all my fault.) The sermons are terrific at my church. In fact, he's the best preacher I've ever heard since Alan Cairns. (and he doesn't go nearly as long!)
And, of course, my recent back trouble was at once attributed by one woman from my church as possibly being the Lord's way of getting my attention. I think that was the final straw. For a few days I had a negative and combative attitude. But once again, my calming friend Deb up in Indiana urged me to use this opportunity as a means of letting my pastor and elders see the gaps in their own care of their flock. They left me on my own to face the troubles in Indiana, and I learned to lean on the Lord and employ His wisdom in ways they had never supposed. By relying on the principles of good and evil, I learned to dodge attacks and survive until the power hungry people attacked foolishly, and then I counter-attacked with the law and with composure and courage. Once they were under stress, they began to destroy each other; hence, they destroyed themselves. I won in a fight against very cruel and very powerful people. And now I've become even more independent than I was and cannot go back. (You can read about this battle on my web site. Check the Big Pharma link.
Well, We’ll see how it goes. I am starting to feel better. I’ve eaten everything in my lunch box and it is only 10:11 a.m. (Fortunately, I have food in my overhead, enclosed bookshelf.)
After my experiences in Indiana, I realized how very little church impacts what I do. I also felt the smart of having no support whatsoever from my church while I was in a very difficult situation. (Well, there was the little old lady who wrote and told me it was all my fault.) The sermons are terrific at my church. In fact, he's the best preacher I've ever heard since Alan Cairns. (and he doesn't go nearly as long!)
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But everything else at church is really designed for families. There's nothing there for a single, educated woman who has written advice for broadway actors and government researchers and been a witness to high powered corporate executives (as well as contract tech writers and refrigerator repairmen). I realize that I present a pretty oddly shaped peg, but that doesn't mean I'm content anymore to get jammed into any place on the pegboard. Church does not offer support to me, and so I'm on a sabbatical (six months into an 18 month sabbatical), studying out what is important to me and once again resorting to a hard seeking of the Lord's will. It may lead me to change churches, a change that I will undergo only after hard thought and prayerful consideration. Or the Lord may lead me to lower my expectations of church fellowship. Yet day after day as I pray to see the grace of God and how it falls, He shows it to me in the lives of other people. At this point in the 18 month plan (six months into it), I am realizing that the church has hedged itself in too much. Grace is at work everywhere, but we are not listening to the sound of rain that’s falling on parched earth. |
And, of course, my recent back trouble was at once attributed by one woman from my church as possibly being the Lord's way of getting my attention. I think that was the final straw. For a few days I had a negative and combative attitude. But once again, my calming friend Deb up in Indiana urged me to use this opportunity as a means of letting my pastor and elders see the gaps in their own care of their flock. They left me on my own to face the troubles in Indiana, and I learned to lean on the Lord and employ His wisdom in ways they had never supposed. By relying on the principles of good and evil, I learned to dodge attacks and survive until the power hungry people attacked foolishly, and then I counter-attacked with the law and with composure and courage. Once they were under stress, they began to destroy each other; hence, they destroyed themselves. I won in a fight against very cruel and very powerful people. And now I've become even more independent than I was and cannot go back. (You can read about this battle on my web site. Check the Big Pharma link.
Well, We’ll see how it goes. I am starting to feel better. I’ve eaten everything in my lunch box and it is only 10:11 a.m. (Fortunately, I have food in my overhead, enclosed bookshelf.)
Monday, August 11, 2003
So I snagged an audio copy of “Preying from the Pulpit,” a 40 minute news expose on Jack Hyles and his wacko church/college and the history of child molestations associated with them. It was in RealAudio. I converted it to a WAV file and then tried various filtering techniques, but anything that cleared up one type of distortion just increased distortions at the other end of the sound scale. So I left it as-is in terms of wave form.
I broke the 40-minute file down into 6 shorter pieces of 5 – 7 minutes each: the way it was originally broadcast on successive nights by the news station in Michigan. If you don’t see links to it on the right side of the screen, go to the “Secret Radio” blog and you’ll find the links there. I hope to create a sequel to it and update listeners on the sex abuse cases that have occurred since the Michigan news station did their broadcast, for surely at least an equal number of graduates of Jack Hyles’ college have been convicted of such crimes since the documentary was broadcast. And Joe Combs, the notorious wretch who told his adopted daughter that God had made her his concubine and raped and beat her all her life (until he and his wife Evangeline were caught, convicted, and tossed into the pokey), had been a faculty member at Hyles Anderson College. In fact, a bunch of the “suits” from HAC showed up at Combs’ trial to speak on his behalf. From what I heard, they left with their tails tucked between their legs.
I broke the 40-minute file down into 6 shorter pieces of 5 – 7 minutes each: the way it was originally broadcast on successive nights by the news station in Michigan. If you don’t see links to it on the right side of the screen, go to the “Secret Radio” blog and you’ll find the links there. I hope to create a sequel to it and update listeners on the sex abuse cases that have occurred since the Michigan news station did their broadcast, for surely at least an equal number of graduates of Jack Hyles’ college have been convicted of such crimes since the documentary was broadcast. And Joe Combs, the notorious wretch who told his adopted daughter that God had made her his concubine and raped and beat her all her life (until he and his wife Evangeline were caught, convicted, and tossed into the pokey), had been a faculty member at Hyles Anderson College. In fact, a bunch of the “suits” from HAC showed up at Combs’ trial to speak on his behalf. From what I heard, they left with their tails tucked between their legs.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
So after Friday night's whopping illness I tried fasting yesterday on the "Master Cleanse" program. People write in and say, "I felt great! I was never hungry!" Oddly enough, I was hungry every minute. Not agonizingly hungry, but tantalizingly hungry. I kept thinking about thick tomato sauce, and big steaks, and baked potatoes. I don't eat that stuff when I'm well, but I kept thinking of it. Every time it got too bad I would drink another lemon juice and maple syrup with water drink. The drinks tasted great. But within a minute and a half Iwould be hungry again.
However, nor more inclination to throw up, and no more sick feeling. By about six last night I ate some applesauce (a whole jar, in fact) and then some strawberries, and then went to bed.
Today I started with coffee but I'm back on the lemonade/maple stuff. I'm not sure why. Partly because I slept so well last night, and partly because I have all these lemons and Grade B Maple syrup in the fridge.
I also found the TV documentary, "Preying from the Pulpit" on a real audio file onthe web. So I re-processed it as MP3 (playable by just about any audio software) and broke it into smaller pieces. I'm posting it in the links section.
This documentary shows the allegations of child abuse, molestation, and sodomy of graduates from Hyles-Anderson College, who also attended First Baptist Church of Hammond Indiana. Made in the early 1990's this documentary alleged a pattern of behavior that has since been repeated by graduates of this Independent Baptist, KJV-only school. In spite of legal convictions of graduates (and one former faculty member) of this school in churches in multiple states, these horrible behaviors, as the documentary points out, have not been repudiated from the pulpit of FBC. Indeed, AV Ballenger, convicted of molesting a seven year old girl as a deacon in the church, was welcomed back to the congregation with a standing ovation. Each MP3 file is 5 - 7 minutes long.
However, nor more inclination to throw up, and no more sick feeling. By about six last night I ate some applesauce (a whole jar, in fact) and then some strawberries, and then went to bed.
Today I started with coffee but I'm back on the lemonade/maple stuff. I'm not sure why. Partly because I slept so well last night, and partly because I have all these lemons and Grade B Maple syrup in the fridge.
I also found the TV documentary, "Preying from the Pulpit" on a real audio file onthe web. So I re-processed it as MP3 (playable by just about any audio software) and broke it into smaller pieces. I'm posting it in the links section.
This documentary shows the allegations of child abuse, molestation, and sodomy of graduates from Hyles-Anderson College, who also attended First Baptist Church of Hammond Indiana. Made in the early 1990's this documentary alleged a pattern of behavior that has since been repeated by graduates of this Independent Baptist, KJV-only school. In spite of legal convictions of graduates (and one former faculty member) of this school in churches in multiple states, these horrible behaviors, as the documentary points out, have not been repudiated from the pulpit of FBC. Indeed, AV Ballenger, convicted of molesting a seven year old girl as a deacon in the church, was welcomed back to the congregation with a standing ovation. Each MP3 file is 5 - 7 minutes long.
