A brief account of what I think took place
This is what I think happened at Grace Evangelical church, Carlisle.
(a) I sensed that I had discovered a really useful tool for biblical semantics research and that this had enabled me to develop a useful development to the presuppositional apologetics approach of Van Til and reconcile it with the more classical approaches of Aquinas and Warfield using theistic proofs. This methodology was galvanising my approach to biblical exegesis and preaching and my whole spiritual life. I sensed that God was in it with me.
(b) I became even more deeply convinced that what we call Christian apologetics was actually foundational truth upon which the gospel sits. It is not an optional extra - it is an integral part of the gospel for the Gentiles according to the Apostle Paul as defined in Romans 1-3.
(c) In preaching through Hosea I became even more deeply convinced that unbelief is in part national and structural. There is a hierarchy of unbelief linked with the devil and the demons which results in a clear choice at every moment between idolatry and true godliness. In dealing with the text "Like people like priest." I had a lifelong concern about Christian Education re-ignited and I became even more deeply convinced that Father's have a duty to ensure that their children are educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and that education is the mission of the Church in combination with Christian parents. The state has a role in the provision of higher training but this must be an assisting role to the church and parents not an ideological control.
I was seeking to make a clear biblical case for these three positions.
Steve and Val Glass and Malcolm and Audrey Noble opposed these developments strongly and threatened to leave the fellowship if I did not revert to my prior approach.
1. I had to choose between what I believed was the leading of the
Holy Spirit through my study of the scriptures vs Steve and Val Glass + Malcolm
and Audrey Noble[SVMA].
I sought to choose God and the Scriptures.
2. John Tredgett and John Crosby[J&J] had to choose between me
and SVMA.
They chose SVMA
3. The church had to choose between me and [SVMA+JJ].
4. J&J could not afford that the church choose me. In their
minds, their position and the future direction of the church was at stake. They
had to undermine my position and vision and ensure that there was not a
majority of members to support me. I gave them an opportunity to do this. They
took it. This involved a complete change in their stated position with regards
to my preaching and teaching. This involved the inclusion of M&A in the
“members meeting” to bolster their stance.
5. The overheard conversation between John Tredgett and M&A was
with regards to their attendance at the “members meeting.”
6. Had I been aware that M&A were invited I would have insisted
on being present at this meeting. I had every right to insist on being present.
I had trusted J&J to present the situation fairly. They did not do this.
7. Allegations of mental health problems were part of the process
of undermining me. When someone is under extreme pressure they will behave
differently from usual.
8. When someone has their job and life attacked there will be
strong emotions aroused.
9. When someone thinks that they have made an important discovery
they will behave differently from normal.
10. 7, 8 and 9 were used to suggest that I was mentally unstable and
that it was this that was resulting in the changes in my preaching.
11. The church was given a choice of fully accepting my resignation (even
though I was maintaining that they were rejecting the new vision that I was
claiming to have received from God’s Word) OR rejecting my resignation and
calling for a fuller investigation of the situation along the lines that Alan
Pallister was calling for.
12. It was a very close split and Jess Stephen’s vote could have
made it a 50:50 split. Jess was a student member who had moved away from the
area some time prior to the events of the split.
13. Jess Stephens interacted with John Tredgett in such a way as to
result in her resigning her membership on 5th January.
14. The church chose to fully accept my resignation with no further
investigation of the rejection of my new vision.
1. God gave me a vision of where he wanted me to take the church.
This included a new understanding of the nature of Christian apologetics and a
vision of the Church as primarily a real school. This was my vision when I
originally became the pastor and it strengthened and clarified over the years. This
meant a reappraisal of the churches calling in terms of Christian education and
the importance of a Christian culture.
2. There was a conviction that my preaching and teaching was
changing and there was a concern over whether it was changing in such a way as
would mean that I was departing from biblical truth and the historical
doctrines that the church was committed to.
3. Most church members were aware of a change. The two elders while
expressing that they were as yet unconvinced by my views on Christian education
were convinced that I had not expressed unbiblical views and that I had not
departed from the historical doctrines of the church. These views were
expressed in their letter of Friday November 10th 2023 and in John
Tredgett’s recorded message on 3rd July 2023.
4. Two couples became the mouthpiece of the concerns about these
changes. Steve and Val Glass were church members and Malcolm and Audrey Noble
were not.
5. Malcolm Noble was not entirely happy at GEC. He had stayed after
Philip and Jean Slater left because I asked him to do a little more preaching.
6. After Malcolm felt that I was insisting that if he continued to
preach he needed to become a church member he was increasingly unhappy. (I had
not said this explicitly but this is the direction the conversations were heading – I
felt that Malcolm was not willing to put himself under the oversight of GEC
elders.)
7. Malcolm and Audrey became very hostile to the change in my preaching. This
hostility was expressed to me towards the end of 2022.
8. There was a conversation between the two disaffected couples
which consolidated and emboldened their opposition.
9. Val and Steve announced their opposition to John Crosby and then to the elders but it was only in terms of a general hostility to my preaching as a departure from a clear and more orderly, less impassioned expository approach.
10. I was convinced that the matters that they were expressing hostility with regards to were not the underlying issues that were at the heart of their concerns. Their complaints were “surface complaints.” Their problems were really theological and foundational. The “surface complaints” were to do with “lack of a traditional expository style”, “excessive emotion”, “too passionate”, “departing from a properly ordered and measured approach” with “introductions becoming too long”, “sermons becoming too long”, “too extemporaneous”, “not getting to the end in an orderly way”, “too much focused on the children”, “too difficult and too complicated” etc etc etc.
11. The real problems I believe were as follows:
(a) The relationship between divine sovereignty and human moral
responsibility. Some believed that I was departing from a Calvinistic
position and expressing views that seemed to them to be verging towards a more
Arminian position. Is this true? I do insist that there is more going on in
terms of salvation/damnation than a simple switch that God makes with regards
to each person. I insist that damnation occurs not because God did not switch
your switch for salvation but because you chose to continue apart from God at
numerous key places in your life. Damnation will be known by the damned person
to be the result of the damned persons evil choices not because of God’s
failure to choose that person. No damned soul will be able to blame their
damnation on their non-election. To insist that there is nothing that a sinner
can do in order to be saved is unbiblical and entirely alien to the biblical
message. The sinner is given every possible encouragement to seek God with the
certain guarantee that those who seek will find.
(b) The nature of the gospel. They believed in the power of
the “simple gospel of the cross of Christ.” They believed that in terms of
evangelism there should be a commitment to “be determined to know nothing but Christ and
him crucified” and that we should be entirely dependent on the power of God to
use these despised means to transform human lives, families and nations. Their
understanding of this resulted in a hostility to, what appeared to them to be,
a rationalistic approach seeking to argue logically with regards to the
foundations of the Christian position. There was hostility towards the idea of
Christian apologetics. This seemed to them to be an unwarranted dependence on
human reason when all that was needed was “simple faith.” Their understanding
of faith was that it was a gift from God and imparted immediately and directly
by God through the hearing of the simple gospel in a somewhat magical fashion
which did not involve logic or the reasoning faculty of the mind. Their idea of
faith was that it was despite reason not because of reason. In
their minds faith is not a response to reason and evidence but a kind of
spiritual magic which causes a leap or lurch of a changed heart and that this
was not a rational change of convictions and beliefs but a direct act of God
bypassing our rational faculty and bringing spiritual life into being. There
was an understanding of faith being separate from reason and logical argument
and more to do with the “heart” than the “mind.” This resulted in hostility to
my apologetics work and hostility to an evangelistic approach that seemed to be
trying to deal with foundational issues of atheism and the law of God and its
interaction with the conscience.
(c) The relationship between the Church and the State. I was
arguing for the reality of a Christian culture and a Christian nationalism. I
was arguing that the Churchs’ responsibility was primarily educational and that
the delegation of education to a hostile atheistic state was a catastrophic
disaster. I was arguing that the state and every person in it did have a
responsibility to believe in the true and living God and legislate and live in
accordance with this. I was arguing that the church as a united single
evangelical (interdenominational) body had a responsibility to lead and educate
the nation. This resulted in a conviction that there were powerful evil
spiritual forces at work in the UK in terms of the governing authorities with
which we were at war and with which we would inevitably come into collision
sooner rather than later and that we needed to be prepared mentally,
spiritually, legally, financially and even physically for this. This was
alarming for some and may have seemed extreme to them.
12. It became increasingly clear to me that this was a battle over
authority and the direction that the church was to go. Steve and Val refused my
request for a meeting to discuss this. I then refused to continue to administer
the Lords table.
13. John Tredgett arranged a meeting with Steve and Val. During the
meeting it became clear to me that John Crosby and John Tredgett were aligning
with the two dissenting couples. John’s report of that meeting indicates this.
14. At the following elders meeting John Tredgett took the
leadership and made clear that he thought that I was the person who was at
fault. This is evident in his report and it was this that resulted in my resignation
as pastor. Both of the other two elders basically agreed with those opposing my
preaching.
15. At this point I still trusted the two Johns and believed in
their full integrity.
16. I wrote a resignation statement for the members meeting to make clear why I was resigning and I thought we had agreed that this would simply be read to the members who would make their decision whether to accept my resignation (and thereby reject my vision for the church) I still hoped at this point that there might be a change of heart and that the new vision might be accepted.
17. Malcolm Noble had begun a process of seeking to undermine my
ministry with Philip Slater. There was a group of men who had what I would
describe as having hyper-calvinistic tendencies believing in a "divine
Zap" theology alongside an anti-apologetics "simple gospel"
approach to evangelism. These men (I believed) over-emphasized a monergistic
approach to the new birth which undermined any value in real human involvement
in seeking God or turning from known sins. This seemed to me to radically
undermine the biblical approach to human moral responsibility.
18. Audrey was influencing John Crosby via Joan. One instance of
this was where there was concern expressed with regards to a sermon that some
hearers felt was too sexually explicit in my preaching about Gomer in Hosea.
19. Malcolm sought to undermine my position with regards to my son
in law James Chittenden and my son in law Will Frizelle. This was done in what
I would describe as a malicious and underhanded manner. He sought to establish
a link between my grieving over the death of my parents and mental health
problems and a change in my preaching in an “unbiblical” direction. He argued
that attempts to argue for clear evidence for design in an evangelistic service
was out of place.
20. John Tredgett became convinced that what I described as “agony”
in and after preaching was a symptom of mental illness.
21. Val Glass and Malcolm Noble felt that arguing for the reality of
design in nature in an evangelistic sermon was “a wasted opportunity” and “not
preaching the gospel.”
1. The two Johns were faced with a difficult dilemma. They did not
want me to resign and depart. They did not want the two couples to leave. At
this point they made it clear that they supported my preaching including the
new approach. This was made clear in a letter that they wanted me to sign which
would be sent to the two dissenting couples. This letter made clear at this
point their full support of my preaching including what was being perceived as
a new direction.
2. When John Tredgett became convinced that my decision to resign
was settled and firm.... (and maybe to some degree before that) he assumed
leadership and along with John Crosby switched positions completely with
regards to my ministry and preaching to align fully with those who had been
hostile. John Tredgett wanted to provide a good basis for this new alignment
and a justification for it. This reason became "the problems with my
preaching and mental health issues" he was anxious to cut off
communications between me and the church members so that his new view of me
could prevail amongst remaining church members.
3. The problem with reading my resignation statement was that it did raise the issue of my claim that I had been given a new vision of Jesus and it was this that was the impetus behind the changes. I was claiming both Biblical authority and the living influence of the Holy Spirit as the agents of the changes I was seeking to implement.
4. Instead of a simple reading of my resignation statement the
church members meeting became a meeting to frame me and my ministry and
preaching as "suspect". Part of this framing involved an
unprecedented invitation to Malcolm and Audrey (non-church members and a couple
who were actively resisting strong encouragement from me to become church
members) to be part of this church members meeting and to speak of their
concerns about me at that meeting. The two John's knew that had I known of this
invitation I would have insisted on being present at the “members meeting”. The
invitation was therefore secret. I was not told about it before or afterwards.
I was told that it was a “church members” meeting and I was told "all the
members were present apart from Joan." This became an act of
unfaithfulness. Linda overhearing the conversation was an exposure of this
unfaithful approach. This is why a cover up of the conversation and a denial of
it took place.
5. The attempt to gas-light me and my wife was despicable and vile.
It was also a serious and very dangerous psychological assault. I believe that
such acts are even more dangerous than GBH.
6. The subsequent treatment of Linda and Maree and Bryony was not
just heavy handed it was despicable and vile. The abrupt termination of Jess
Stephen's membership was also entirely inappropriate and the interaction with
her was also dishonourable suggesting that I had effectively “purchased” the
support of Alan and Celeste by offering to help with their housing needs.
7. The dramatic switch of position by the two remaining elders and the failure to take the necessary steps to clear up the denials surrounding the overheard conversation remain issues that need to be faced and dealt with appropriately.
3. The events following my resignation
1. Following the problems surrounding my resignation John Tredgett began a rather abrupt process to remove Jess Stephens and my wife and daughters from church membership.
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