New GCx organizational/affilations shift. Explanations welcome.

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[TheAtheist]

We're aware that as of 2006 GCM published over the internet a list of campus churches, many of which were affiliated locally with a GCC church. This is no longer the case, and a quick review of those campus ministries now indicates that (without any exceptions which I have seen) they all now identify exclusively as Great Commission Churches campus ministries. I know that many of us had formed the perception that they were Great Commission Ministries churches. GCM insists it currently has no churches, and that new churches planted network as Great Commission Ministries Churches (though that name appears to be changing - surprise). How shall we perceive the shift?

[Janet Easson Martin]

Don't worry - God does NOT loose track of false teachers!

Let's PRAY and WATCH Him intervene:

'These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens."
..."They are worthless, as the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes they will perish"  

   

They are like the false teachers of the New Testament.  They devour the pure & simple devotion to Christ, and then the believer's faith is run aground and eventually shipwrecked.  Please read 1 Timothy, chapter one  and chapter six, verses 3-21 , for clarication and better understanding.

We must pray for these believers in these false teaching GCx churches to ask God to open their eyes, see the idolatry, and leave!

Janet

[TheAtheist]

Behold! There are two seperate campus ministries: those involved with GCC and those involved with Campus Church Network (formerly Great Commission Ministries churches). They changed the name this year.

CCN groups: Cornerstone at IL State; Illini Life at U of IL; The Revolution at Ball State; Riverview at MI State; New Life Church at U of MI; New Life Church at East MI; The Rock at U of MO; H2O at Bowling Green State, Kent State, OH State, U of Cincinnati, U of Toledo, U of Pittsburgh; Fellowship Church at TX A&M; Hope Fellowship Church at U of North TX; and New Life at VA Tech

GCC groups: REACH in Denver, The Rock at CO State, U of North CO, College of DuPage, IA State, U of Minneapolis, and U of NE-Lincoln; Gator Christian Life at U of FL; Jacksonville Christian Life at U of North FL; Seminole Christian Life at FL State; Grace Campus Church at Purdue; Grace at State at NC State; H2O at U of ND; Longhorn Life at U of TX; The Edge at U of WI-Eau Claire; and Emerge at WVU.

CCN does not go to Faithwalkers. They go to Ignite. This is the website: http://www.gcmignite.org/
I'd be interested in theological and cultural comparisons.

[Linda]

Ah. Interesting. I think I missed the GCM to CCN name change. Is Tom Mauriello still the top dog at GCM? Did CCN separate from GCM or are they still part of GCM, but now called just called CCN churches. (It's that pesky "Great Commission" part of the name that they must be trying to get away from! Too many Google searches are causing trouble, they needed some new initials.)

[TheAtheist]

GCM, as I understand it, is a missions organization that does leadership and fundraising training for church plants for GCC, Ecclesia and other groups which are not big enough to have their own missions agency. GCM Churches was the church network that they formed different than, but in the same role as GCC. GCM Churches is now Collegiate (name change). An interesting fact is that while they were GCM Churches, they became a signatory to the Chicago Agreement for non-competition between campus groups.

Yes, Tom Mauriello is in charge of GCM. Greg Van Nada is in charge of Collegiate.
I found a posting which seems to suggest that GCM was founded by the churches of Collegiate while completely ignoring the fact that it was created as an offshoot of Great Commission.
http://www.gcmweb.org/who/Partners/collegiate.aspx

[BTDT]

I'm not ready to call this "bad" just yet. I've written here before that, unlike GCC, GCM does not seem (to me anyway) to have gone back to the bad old days. My experience at New Life UMich, plus posts by others on this forum, seem to bear that out.

I've often felt that GCM needed to distance itself from GCC ... maybe this is a start.
-Ed-

[AgathaL'Orange]

So Collegiate Church Network seems to be the new umbrella for GCM Churches. A quick look at the board of directors of both GCM and Collegiate shows the same old people, same old churches.  A quick look at their churches shows the same old history (a few guys from Ames came here in 1977, etc). These people have more aliases than a CIA operative and more "divorces" than all of Hollywood combined.  And the reorganizations!  I can't understand why they still have GCC people on the board at GCM. 

It makes this ones optimistic ex GCexer somewhat cynical.  Also, I love how on the GCM letter page about Collegiate they try to make it sound like they were united with Campus Crusade.  A lot of name dropping, name changes, and attempts at getting away from the fact that they are and always have been connected through DNA to the good old days in Ames, Iowa.  I mean, they still have Dave B on the GCM board.  Dave's a nice guy, but he's still GCC, right?  Or have they changed their name now too?  And where's Rick Whitney?

[AgathaL'Orange]

Simpler options might be:
1.  Cut all ties with each other and go rogue.
2.  Merge with another denomination or parachurch org or both.
3.  Just come out and say, "Hey, our forefathers were cultists, we've sent them into retirement, the old codgers, and now we're taking over.  XYZ was wrong, here's why."  Haha, except that then there will be all kinds of young, idealistic men again trying to do stuff different than it used to be and we'll have problems again.
4.  Give up and become Baptists.  LOL.

[Linda]

http://www.gcmlt.org/what-is-lt/

Collegiate Church Network does LT. I followed the link to LT. It is powered by GCM. So, CCN and GCM are still connected.

Also, brushed over in all of this is the division that happened. Some churches, it would appear went GCM, others GCC. Anyone know why?

[TheAtheist]

Cynics, pat yourselves on the back. I've done the research. No new tale to tell.

[dreamer]

I've been reading these forums for almost 3 years and have been checking to see if anyone had noticed the new alias!

I was somehow convinced to "support" a GCM "missionary" several years ago and have since withdrawn my support. I still however receive the email updates and I was surprised (read: suspicious) when I received an email explaining that the organization that I previously supported had changed its name. Thats the way he put it, the organization just changed its name
. Of course, that is not what the website says but I think he was the most honest about it.

I was a actually a leader (though being a woman, technically only allowed to lead women...but I'm sure you all know how that goes) in the same GCM church that this guy currently works. I can tell you that as far as I can tell GCM (now CCN) is of the same spirit as all of the other GCx churches. I even attended a church that has been mentioned as one of the "good" ones in these forums. Sure, our church might not have been as overtly controlling but it had many of the same issues. We were encouraged to have someone "disciple" us. The woman who discipled me was so sweet and encouraging at first. I felt like I was being connected with a great family of believers and I felt very built up. As soon as I started to have theological disagreements or even disagreements about my own life choices (whether or not to attend grad school, get married, etc). I was told I was being "rebellious" by not allowing others to "speak into my life." One of my friends was labeled as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" because he strongly disagreed with the church and when he spoke out about it it just so happened that people agreed with him and stopped wanting to attend Thursday homegroup, Sunday service, weekend social events, and all of the other time commitments we were "encouraged" to participate in. By the way, his primary complaint about the church was that is was controlling. Almost all of my friends left within the first year. They were bitter, confused, and struggling more spiritually than they were before they joined. I guess I didn't see it because I was so wrapped up in everything. I continued to hang on and even moved into leadership. That's when I started to see the issues more clearly. All of our weekly
"leadership meetings" were primarily gossip circles. We shared specific details about other people's lives and strategized about how we could get them more involved. I felt really weirded out by the whole thing, but I was so busy evangelizing, recruiting, planning, organizing, and attending so many events that I didn't have the time to think about it. Honestly, it wasn't until long after I left and moved away that I really started to see these things. I had one friend who continued to hang on after I left and ended up seeing even worse things than I did. It took her family several years to get her to realize how unhealthy our church was. It took her a while to completely remove herself once she realized she wanted out because by that point she was a leader in the campus ministry, worked for the church, and even lived with a prominent leader (well, "leading sister" or whatever). Again, my church has only ever been mentioned in these forums as one of the good churches that supposedly wasn't as bad as the others. All this to say, GCM is really no different than all of the other GCx groups and CCN is literally the exact same thing under a new name.

[EverAStudent]

Women of the Bible like Phoebe and Debra would be bemused by the attitude that denies women are true leaders.