#WhoWouldJesusSue History, Results, and What Now with Calvary Chapel Lawsuit

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Last week has been a whirlwind of activity.   After spending five days in Vegas with my daughter for a volleyball tournament, we returned home Tuesday as a team was working very hard behind the scenes for the Media #WhoWouldJesusSue Blitz scheduled for last Thursday.

Here’s the background story on how this Media Blitz was started.  I try to keep tabs on media stories of church abuse issues.  There have been quite a few Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) reports regarding their lawsuit, but what struck me about Alex and Tim’s lawsuit was that it hasn’t seen much media coverage at all.  I was disappointed at the last report I read written from a local news source near Visalia.  Think of what happened during the Penn State sex abuse cases.  It was like the media put a giant magnifying glass on top of that campus and there was massive exposure and media attention.  The media put pressure on that very bad system and forced Penn State to come clean.  That is what we want to happen in this Calvary Chapel lawsuit.  The story needs exposure so that the church is forced to look at their problems.

 

My case went viral about a week before the first hearing.  I told Alex that timing was crucial and we needed to get the word out, so we brainstormed.  Another reader was fired up after reading Paul Grenier’s court document and contacted me wanting to get involved.  Through social networking, I had another connection with someone who is phenomenal in social media.  I sent him the story and asked if he’d like to get involved and he said he was in.  Including me, a total of six people were firing e-mails back and forth non-stop last week or so.  Each person stepped up to the plate in whatever capacity they felt led, took the ball, and RAN.  It was an amazing effort and we have seen very positive results.

The group asked me to be contact person and so I was interviewed twice yesterday and Alex was interviewed once.  A handful of bloggers reblogged the Call to Action article.  That was wonderful.  Since then, we’ve seen quite a few new blog articles take off with the story.  Blogger Cindy Kunsman of Under Much Grace shared a deeply personal Calvary Chapel story which motivated her to get involved.  Paul Dohse wrote a great article about the corrupt church system and how social media can play a part in exposure.  Thank you, Cindy and Paul for helping to shine the light on church systems that have become fertile ground for abuse.  Please take a look at some of these links.

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This is a partial list of posts on the lawsuit and the #WWJS campaign, compiled as part of the Grenier Defamation Lawsuit Archive:

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We’re off to a good start.  We will continue to Tweet with the #WhoWouldJesusSue and invite you to continue as well.

Admin note:  I’ve added a Spiritual Sounding Board Facebook Page.   This is just another way to stay connected and I may throw in more freebies and funnies.  Feel free to post articles you run across that may be of interest.  Ya never know, it may prompt an interesting article here!

And finally, in an effort of full disclosure . . . . . . . many, many times I have wanted to share with you about happenings behind the scenes regarding my former church and pastor at BGBC, but made a concerted effort to move on.  Yet, it feels weird for me to not disclose something that is currently happening just because of the desire to “move on.”  I don’t want to ignore the elephant in the room because that is what we did in abusive church environments.  So, anyway, dear readers, it should come as no surprise to any faithful reader that my former pastor is up to new antics.  In addition to maintaining the Impostor blog which I refuse to link to here, we have discovered a new visitor arrived onto the Twitter scene as we were in the height of the media blitz.  Yes, “Pastor” Chuck O’Neal (CON) entered the world of Twitter to spew more of the same ol’ stuff.  It was surprising, yet not surprising.

But as I was sitting in my car looking at my Twitter feed, realizing that CON was trying to infiltrate the #WhoWouldJesusSue Media Blitz, I saw yet ANOTHER Chuck O’Neal.  How can there be two Chuck O’Neal Twitter accounts with the same picture?  Ah, the weirdness of internet personalities.  It was quite interesting trying to figure who the “real” CON was.

This might help alleviate some of the confusion.  I ’bout peed my pants when reading this exchange:

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Since taking this screen shot, the “Fo Real” CON has identified his account to be parody account.  So there ya go!   CON will get to deal with CON FO REAL each time he tweets.  Fun for us, maybe not so much fun for him.

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One side issue to address that I read from CON’s tweets and also from a comment on another forum.  Our agenda at the moment is exposure – mass exposure.  People need to know that there is a problem going on in Calvary Chapel churches.  There is high likelihood that we will be interviewing with “worldly” people.  Some people have big problems with that.  I don’t.  Just because Alex or I interview with someone who has different beliefs than us does not mean we are aligning with their beliefs.  This is not the time to get distracted by this kind of issue.  Let’s keep the main deal the main deal: expose corrupt church systems that allow high-controlling pastors to have no true accountability and abuse members.

Remember:  #WhoWouldJesusSue

Oh, I just took a trip over to Twitter to see what’s going on and have to leave you with this.  LOL

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