In one version of a series of events, Russ Ewell of San Francisco, err - Bay Area Church sent Kip to Portland. I’m certain that Kip would have been hired somewhere eventually, but not in 2003.
Now, there is an International Christian Church in San Francisco.
This is a ‘thank you’, I guess for all the help in getting a job when no one wanted to acknowledge that he existed.
There is something that I am noticing about these new churches, though. As best I can tell, none of them are larger than 15 - 20 folks. They are meeting in homes and loathe to mention their numbers. It seems that these new churches are basically made up of a Bible Talk or Family Group that wants things back the way they were.
Remember the group in Stockholm? Maybe ten people, if that. Hilo? 12 -15. Honolulu? Less than that. LA? Not the 10,000 of yore (though it was later found that the Rose Bowl service actually had closer to 8900 in attendance). LA is Ron Harding and a couple Bible Talks. The only exception seems to be Kiev, Ukraine, but there’s no telling which source is correct in estimating their membership. (For the record, ICC says about 200, ICoC says about 20. Guess which acronym is which.)
The Bay Area Church, by the way, is the largest non-signer of the UP. They went to the ILC in Va Beach, but they are still the largest non-signer. I wonder if anyone is going to visit them to share perspective (based on my experiences with Russ, I doubt it).
Don’t know why I mention all this except to say that I was in the middle of writing about my past and its connections to Halloween, sorta. I think I needed a break from the heebie-jeebies.
Comments
7 Responses to “Bite the Hand that Feeds You”
if I go by the sermon - SF is a church of 1. There’s no clapping, etc….nothing. So, I think it’s a canned sermon to use to recruit only.
ttk
seems to be Matt Sullivan (reference himself and he’s a little more polished, after a fashion, than the folks Kip’s got in LA)
ttk
I remember meeting Russ in DC one time and I remember liking him but I don’t remember anything else. Minds going I guess. Course, with some things it’s good the mind goes.
One other thing,
Boston and SF are the closest thing to ‘reteaching’ that has happened in the ICC. Athens doesn’t necessarily count as Sam had always been the kinder,gentler ICC since 1997. I’m not saying that the reteaching was vastly different or even helpful. Just saying that those two in particular appear to have, in some measure, sought to explain what being different means.
It makes me begin to wonder if reteaching would have prevented what Kip is doing. Maybe there is just a certain percentage that want the old ways. Looking at the Worldwide Church of God as a comparison, it makes sense. Their reteaching led to a split. Then again, their reteaching was from the top-down.
I started to scan the article on the SFICC website and saw a sentence that began with the word “excitingly.”
How in the world am I supposed to stop laughing long enough to read the rest of the article.
Interestingly, starting a sentence w/an adverb is the real test to determine the ’sold-out’ from the ‘lukewarm’.
ttk