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This is classic. The mainstream media seems to get it before common church leaders get it. No wonder Christians look like such fools before the world. Read this teaser headline:
A pastor whose family was murdered in New Mexico belonged to a large association of evangelical churches that, critics allege, stands behind misbehaving pastors and looks away when they are accused of sexual abuse and other misdeeds.
Which association of evangelical churches do you suppose this article is discussing? If you’ve watched the news in the last week or so, you probably know that this story is connected with Calvary Chapel. This particular tragic story involves a 15-year old boy who killed his mother, father, and two sisters. His father, Greg Griego, was formerly a pastor at Calvary Chapel in Albequerque, New Mexico.
Reporter David Sessions of The Daily Beast did a great job piecing together the stories of church abuse making their rounds in the media lately in his article: Calvary Chapel’s Tangled Web. He connected the patterns that I’ve been discussing for a while now. It’s not just about a particular church’s problems, or a particular leader’s problems, it’s about a pattern of church governance (or lack of) which creates an environment conducive to abuse and cover-ups. We MUST look at the patterns in order to tackle this mess.
Unlike the centralized, bureaucratic Catholic church, some upstart evangelical denominations have less explicit authority structures that remain opaque even to members. Because networks of churches like Calvary Chapel and Sovereign Grace often have an ostensibly informal relationship with the flagship church, denominational leaders can find themselves in the difficult position of having to take responsibility for the abuses of an affiliate church—or, more often, refusing to do so.
If you belong to a church lacking adequate accountability among leaders, this is important to consider. With no accountability in check, it is a breeding ground for abuse to occur:
This tension is especially acute in Calvary Chapel, where pastors are given a great deal of individual authority, but it seems have sometimes found senior Calvary leaders asserting their prerogative in doctrinal, financial or administrative matters. Turned off by the micromanaging he saw in other evangelical denominations, Chuck Smith, Calvary’s founder, developed a church model based on near-absolute sovereignty of the senior pastor.
“I feel my primary responsibility is to the Lord,” he explained to Christianity Today in 2007. “And one day I’m going to answer to him, not to a board of elders.”
We’ve seen a pattern of cover-up among leaders in the Sovereign Grace Churches. Take a look how Calvary Chapel founder, Chuck Smith has dealt with leaders unfit for ministry:
Chuck Smith has injected himself into conflicts in other Calvary churches, almost always on the side of authorities accused of abuses. According to the Christianity Today investigation, Smith protected several Calvary pastors who were accused of having affairs and sexually harassing women on the grounds that they were “great Bible teachers” who would be “totally destroyed” if they weren’t helped by the church.
And here’s another disgusting pattern we have seen time and again in unhealthy churches regarding pedophiles and how they have been given access to minors without regard for their safety:
In 2011, four young men sued both a Calvary church in Idaho and Smith’s “mothership” in Costa Mesa, alleging that Calvary leadership had protected a pedophile youth minister who molested them as boys. The suit reportedly claimed that the accused pedophile, Anthony Iglesias, had been previously removed from a Calvary ministry in California and sent home from a Thailand mission trip for sexual misconduct with boys, and that the churches allowed him continued access to children despite knowing his history.
The final paragraph of the article says it all:
Clearly, Smith and other Calvary leaders are able, at the very least, to put pressure on affiliate churches to investigate wrongdoing, or get rid of abusive leaders. But Smith only seems to have the response he gave Alex Grenier in their radio confrontation: “We did everything we could.”
Pastor Smith and Pastor Grenier as well as CJ Mahaney, et al of Sovereign Grace Ministries may be in for a rude awakening. The Spiritual Sounding Board will be blowing the whistle on these shameful behaviors.
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For those following the Calvary Chapel lawsuit initiated by Pastor Bob Grenier and his wife Gayle, against their son, Alex Grenier and a former church member for cyber bullying, etc, I have an update from Alex Grenier from his Calvary Chapel Abuse blog:
Hi Guys!
Sorry I’ve been a bit silent lately. Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes.
Dates have been pushed back a bit in the lawsuit, February 19th looks to be the big day now.
My take is that things are going well and I’m confident we’ll get a good and just outcome. Our attorneys are awesome, we’re on the right side of the issues and we have the truth on our side.
Prayers are appreciated. Thanks for all the private emails of encouragement and the public comments of such as well.
I’m not at liberty to discuss details at this time, but when I am, I’ll share more.
So, in just over three weeks, we should be hearing from Alex regarding the Calvary Chapel lawsuit and I’ll be sure to update as soon as I hear something. The Sovereign Grace lawsuit has months to go. The lawsuit has been amended. Who knows what will happen next with that situation!
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photo credit: stevendepolo via photopin cc
Spiritual Sounding Board 
Good lord! David Session’s article was enlightening. I may never set foot in a church again. They aren’t any better than every one else, and they are salaried off the very people they abuse.
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BTDT- yes, I was very, very impressed with the article. I encourage everyone to read the whole thing.
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I live in the same county where Calvary Chapel began some 35-40 years ago. Calvary Chapel (various “franchises”) dominated the local Christanese AM radio stations in the Seventies & Eighties. I have run into a lot of Calvary Chapelites.
And I have always had this gut feeling of something WRONG with Calvary Chapel and its Christians(TM). Nothing I can point to and say “AHA!” (or hold up against a defensive barrage of proof-texts from God’s Anointed), but a general feeling of something WRONG. Like CC has embodied much of what can go wrong with Fundagelicalism, in so many and so diffuse ways you can’t grab hold of it.
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I think I should mention that when I was listening to Calvary Chapel on AM radio around 1980, Calvary Chapel was RABIDLY Anti-Catholic. Whore of Babylon, Antichrist One World Religion, Satan’s False Church, Babylon Mystery Religion, Nimrod/Semiramis/Tammuz, etc. Raul Rees of CC West Covina was probably God’s most fanatical enemy of Romish Popery, exploding if anything even resembled anything Romish.
Given that background, I have no doubt what was being preached from CC pulpits and radio when the Catholic clergy pedophilia scandals broke. Of course, God’s True People (Calvary Chapel) were too holy and pure and sanctified and Saved and Full-Immersion Baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit to EVER pork kids like those Antichrist Romish Papists… Or EVER cover it up in the name of the Church/Calvary Chapel…
“I THANK THEE, LORD, THAT I AM NOTHING LIKE THOSE ROMISH PAPISTS OVER THERE…”
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Julie Anne – I thought your first sentence spoke volumes. Again, I’m not a Christian in the sense most of who read this blog are, but there is a better way. If you Facebook, check out these people. I glean a lot of wisdom from their posts.
https://www.facebook.com/UnfundamentalistChristians
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Our family suffered spiritual abuse under a CC pastor. We limped out the doors bloody and bruised spiritually. It was targeted at two members of our family but the rest suffered from collateral damage. It is hard to believe that a pastor you looked up to and trusted, who is supposed to love and care for you would treat in such an ungodly way as the board members rallied around the pastor supporting his every word & deed! Thank God there is healing and recovery in Christ Jesus the Great Shepherd! The main problem with CC’s is the Moses Model form of church government. It literally breeds abusers because of a lack of accountability! I thank God for blogs like this and websites for those hurt by church. I really don’t know wht I would have done without this info on spiritual abuse.. Thank you Julie and God bless your ministry!
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Thank you, Karen, for your comment. I hear you about spiritual abuse blogs because the same thing happened with me when I was wondering what in the world we had just gone through. Although abuse can occur in any kind of church, the pattern set up by CC’s Moses Model as well as SGM and other church groups definitely makes the environment ripe for a pastor who does not behave like a godly shepherd. How are you and your family doing now?
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We are doing fairly well considering all. But we definitely have a new normal. We will never be the same. Our youngest watched and listen to the pastor browbeat his sister from the pulpit (he had just come back to the Lord) so needless to say he is still trying to find his way back to the right path. Slow but sure but he may never trust another pastor again. The main targets are actually doing quite well. They are being loved on and nurtured and mentored by a healthy pastor in a healthy church. Thank you for caring enough to ask.
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You’re welcome. I really do care. Is there anything that you have done that you can share that has helped your family transition through this difficult process? Does your new pastor know of your past experience? Please only share if you feel comfortable. It’s so helpful to hear how others walk this journey.
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The two that I mentioned who were the main targets of the abuse was my adult child and her spouse. They go to a different church than her father and I do. Her pastor does know because they were not the only victims. The other victims who were “chewed up and spit out” over the years, many of them are at the church she now attends. So her pastor has seen a lot of bloodied saints come from the toxic church to his healthy church. He is good under-shepherd and has counseled them well. My husband and I ended up at a much smaller church. The people there are very loving and embraced us and made us feel very welcomed. However , as gracious as they are, they are not that opened to hear about spiritual abuse.It’s taboo.. There is one lady there that I was able to share my story with because she had also been abused by another CC pastor. So she was thrilled to have someone she could share her story with. We also found out that many in our congregation were also abused and came from our x church (it is a mega church) so we did not know them. I am pretty sure even our pastor was spiritually abused because he used to be associate pastor at our x church (we were not going then so we did not know him).. He is silent about it though and does not think it’s right to talk about it. To be fair, he did not say that but someone told me that about him. What helped me was the research I did. I was consumed with finding our as much about this phenomenon as I could. Boy were my eyes opened! Spiritual abusers world wide use the same “rule book”… The more I read about what spiritual abuse was and the steps to recovery it moved me to a place of healing over time. Of course everything I researched I forwarded it to my daughter in the hopes of her and her husbands recovery. I also bought them spiritual abuse books… So in a nutshell that is my story. It really is my daughters story but our whole family witnessed it happen to our daughter and her husband. It is very much like a spiritual rape.. I also put post after post up on my Facebook page on spiritual abuse so that any on my friends list might be helped also…
Karen
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Karen – I’m glad to know your daughter and her husband have found a good church home with a caring pastor who really understands. He sounds like a true shepherd, someone who cares for souls.
I think your experience is probably more of the norm, however. It seems for some that if you don’t experience spiritual abuse up close and personal, it’s hard to get a handle on it. It not pretty and you can’t put it in a box. What a shame that your pastor has instilled the no-talk rule on these difficult issues. However, I’m glad that you’ve been able to use your experience to help others. Spiritual rape is such an appropriate way of describing this kind of abuse – it is a violation of the soul and you’re right – it can affect the whole family. Thanks for sharing your experience here, Karen.
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Thank you for allowing me to share. It was a privilege!
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