Statement on Commitment to the Local Church

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

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[Janet Easson Martin]

If truth is a good thing, I suppose error is a bad one; and if large numbers of nice people are held captive by error that is all the more reason for destroying the error and setting them free.

—GK Chesterton, March 26, 1910, Daily News

Wow! Forgotten about this courageous and motivating quote. Thanks, Linda. Being held captive by error is a very sad and real thing. Being taken and kept captive by intentional lies is something much worse.

Release your people to find healthy churches led by shepherds who care more about the truth and the condition of their sheep then the exultation of yourselves, GCx-rooted leaders!

[Janet Easson Martin]

Captive to Debilitating Error

This an excerpt from my copy of “Disappointment With God” by Philip Yancey. This impactful book received the ‘Gold Medallion Book Award’ for Excellence in Christian Literature. I am posting this from the chapter, A Fatal Error, to make a point about the serious consequences of abusive error in so much of “GCx Teaching.” Repetitive error about God in teaching or practice from church leaders can have severely debilitating damage to people’s lives. As it seems Chesterton in the above quote might elude—Destroy the Error before it destroys any more people!

Here is the imperative excerpt from “Disappointment With God.” (Bold emphasis is mine):


On a map of the United States, a Tribune artist had drawn tiny tombstone symbols to mark where people had died after refusing medical treatment in accordance with church teaching. There were fifty-two tombstones in all. ...

I visited the mother church in Indiana... Parents loved their children as much as any parents on earth.

And yet—the map of tiny tombstones leaped to mind—some of these same parents had sat by the bedsides of their dying youngsters and done nothing. One father told the Tribune of his prayer vigil as watched his fifteen-month-old son battle a fever for two weeks. The illness first caused deafness, then blindness. The pastor of the church urged even more faith and persuaded the father not to call a doctor. The next day the boy was dead. An autopsy revealed that he died from an easily treatable form of meningitis.

By and large, the members of the Indiana church do not blame God for their miseries, or at least they do not admit to doing so. Instead, they blame themselves for weak faith. Meanwhile the tombstones multiply.

I went away from that Sunday service with a profound conviction that what we think about God and believe about God matters—really matters—as much as anything in life matters. Those people were not ogres or child-murderers, and yet several dozen of their children had died because of an error (I believe) in theology.