Dear ACC'ers. I want to encourage you all before I leave on a six-back-to-back-conference tour I'm speaking at in the next eight days.

(Some of you might actually miss me :-)!

I spent a couple of hours last night praying for my sisters and brothers on this newsgroup.

The more I think and pray about goings-on here, the less inclined I am to do what I thought I could best do - try to make sense of the history here in the last couple of years, and from the dealings I have with 'church splits' point to a way forward.

However, a few observations might be useful. Do with them what-you-will, remembering I've been merely an *intermittent* visitor to this group over the past nine years.

I'm going to use some code-words, which those who come here regularly will understand. (Newcomers may not - but don't be concerned about that, and please still feel welcome.) Christians who have felt persecuted through the centuries (and it's happened here) have always communicated this way...

1. Having read more than 5000 ACC posts, archived 652 to study in greater depth (plus 254 I've posted here in the last couple of months), I suggest that something very special has been happening here. ACC is the only newsgroup of about 20-30 I visit where people have got to know one another well enough to exhort one another, pray for one another, contact each other regularly by email and phone, know the names of family-members, and even visit one another physically. Now the evil one (I believe in the reality of Satan) doesn't want that to happen, so he/she (!) arranged for the newsgroup to be 'led' or 'hijacked' (depending on your point of view). The community here then developed into two broad groups, with the 'regulars' dividing roughly into three categories - 'us' , 'them' and 'above the strife'.

2. Perceptions and reality. Now one part of me is astonished that words on a computer screen posted by someone we've never met from Canada, Germany, Australia, the U.K. or the U.S. (do any regulars here come from anywhere else?) can have such a powerful effect on some of us here. Occasionally our reactions can only be termed 'hysterical', 'paranoid' (even, sadly, suicidal). Certainly 'discouraged'. So stand back folks, and on one level don't take it all so seriously :-)

3. But as some of you know I have a counselling practice, which comprises clients who are mainly clergy, church leaders, a few psychiatrists/ psychologists and their spouses etc. so another part of me is aware that we all bring our baggage to this online 'community'. If authority-figures in our past have 'done the dirty' on us, we'll react strongly when someone with *perceived* authority does the same here.

Am I making sense so far?

4. Now... in the last two years there has been a developing tendency for a couple of people, with the consent/approval of others, to assume some power/authority (they're not the same) here - to the extent that they feel they can ask certain folks to *leave*. Now the kindest reaction we can have to that kind of behavior is that it is *mistaken* on an unmoderated newsgroup (which the perpetrators have now virtually admitted/acknowledged). You form a moderated newsgroup, or start up a Yahoo group to do that sort of thing.

5. This behavior attracted the ire of certain folks (I'm being kind) who, when we have come to know them, have either had bad experiences with authority-figures in their past, and/or live with conspiracy theories about who's-wanting-to-limit-my-freedom. The battle lines formed; people were blocked/plonked/ignored; the temperature of many exchanges went through the roof (to mix a couple of metaphors), and people who might have found sweet fellowship (now there's a nice phrase) here have gone elsewhere. All very sad.

6. The 'Irish' folks, I mean the folks that got got their ire up :-) fall into several categories. Now I'm going to name a few initials, (so Google won't help too much with either conspiracy theorists or those with paranoia about being discovered there by another 'authority-figure' :-). MT has two broad issues with many of us here, to do either with fundamentalist thinking, or arrogantly taking authority over others which we're not entitled to. I'm with him on the latter objection; but only partly re the former. And frankly I don't like his tendency to ridicule, and have told him so. DMPP is our resident 'forensic' expert, the digger-up-of-dirt. I don't like that, although I am in awe of his conscientiousness in this quest, and his obviously high intelligence. OWD is a deeply spiritual and sensitive man, but in my view takes some of this too seriously, so there's a dynamic of 'transference' going on there. Another is a legalist, another very rude (to put it mildly), others have a 'beef' about the Trinity or the sabbath, or matters eschatological, or pentecostal, or biblical authority/inerrancy, or what-have-you.

7. On the other side we have a few people and their followers who have had a seige mentality (from which I think they're emerging). They had a Vision (there's a word which stirs up some feelings!) and formed a community-of-mutual-encouragement with an attached website based in Germany. They were perceived by others to be 'exclusive' in their beliefs/behavior, mostly hard-to-moderately fundamentalist in their thinking, and wanted to form a quasi-'church' (my word, not usually theirs) here. Now, that's not only inappropriate on an unmoderated Usenet newsgroup, it's silly, and not Christian, in my view. Christians are people who welcome one another, to the extent that God welcomes us (Romans 15:7), so for one person to say to another 'You can claim to be a Christian, but I don't really think you are and you're *not* welcome here' is unbliblical, and _un_Christian. One who claims God as their Father is my brother/sister, whatever their beliefs - or even their behavior.

8. Now... that matter of behavior. Here are some basic axioms about getting along together, *Christianly*:

8-1. If someone in a moment of candour mentions something they've struggled with in the past (or even in the present), we who are also not-yet-fully-redeemed will be very gentle with them at that point. We have no right to use that issue/problem/sin against them. That is to play God, (or the Devil) and is not our prerogative.

8-2. Those who've 'dug up dirt' may have had the primary motive of discrediting the person involved, but I feel it's generally inappropriate, and usually ungodly. However, if someone has actually done something immoral/illegal against someone else (like assumed another name to harass them), that's serious. If it's disclosed on one or more newsgroups it should be faced openly, but then left. If a poster can only be critical/negative, the problem lies as much with them as with the victim/perpetrator.

8-3. Some here have made mistakes, which either they've admitted freely or grudgingly, or simply left the newsgroup when their 'cover' is blown. People who 'play with prophecy' are bound to get it wrong, _often_ in my view. I remember Frances McNutt saying that of the five-figure number of people he'd met who claim to have a regular or occasional 'word from the Lord' he'd only trust three of them. My experience is similar. So, folks, my words here are *not* 'words from the Lord' as such (as Paul occasionally admitted), but if they resonate with anything the Spirit is saying to you, they can *become* 'God's Word' to/for you.

8-4. There have been apologies flying back and forth recently, as people try to reconcile. In principle, that's wonderful. But occasionally an apology has been couched in some such words as 'I apologize if anything I've said has been hurtful, but you... (are an idiot, too sensitive, must have a victim mentality, or whatever)'. These are *not* legimitate apologies, my friends. They're not-so-subtle attempts at 'one upmanship'. They're put-downs, and create more hurt. (Now, the tendency in some of us will be to think of someone in particular, and respond with an 'I told you so' attitude. You *can* be given the spiritual strength to resist putting that response into words here :-)

8-5. Re theology/beliefs. Some of you have a 'standard minimal creed' which roughly equates to the fundamentalist platform which emerged in the early 20th century, as the church - mainly the American evangelical church - wrestled with 'modernism' and Darwinianism. Now I can live with that, though I don't read the Bible that way, precisely. But I'm not strictly liberal either (although from a fundamentalist perspective anyone to the left of their position is 'liberal'). My counsel would be Spurgeon's, which (as I recall) went something like this: 'You don't have to defend a lion. Let it loose and it can defend itself.' Some of my friends here inhabit 'simplicity this side of complexity' and feel that Christ has appointed you to be the arbiter of truth for everyone else. Some have even said, in effect, 'I have the answers, and I have nothing to learn from anyone else.' Silly, and childish.

8-6. Re being a selective reader of posts. The group is too populous for most of us. We don't have the time to read everything. So we have to be selective. I'm not telling you who I don't read, but I'm prepared to say that I don't read stuff from legalists, people I perceive as unteachable/bigots, people who can only be negative, and some who 'always have something to say when they haven't anything to say'. But that's a personal judgment we must each make. Publishing lists of people we've 'plonked/flushed' is meant to be hurtful, and is wrong, in my view.

Oh, that will do. I hope I'm 'speaking the truth with love'. I am old enough to be the parent of half of you all (my eldest son is 43 this year), so please accept all this as from a loving father.

Can we move along?

Can we *not* respond to repetitive negativity/put-downs? Those people will hopefully tire of it, and cease (though in Usenet I could name a few negative people who've lasted a decade and they're still negative. Amazing!).

I have just prayed over this, reaching my hands towards the screen to bless these words, and to ask the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, and lead us into a loving tomorrow.

May the Lord bless and keep you all in his truth and love!

I'd appreciate your prayers as, in the next week or so, I speak to a conference of school chaplains. give an annual denominational lecture-series in another state, and next weekend speak to all the churches in an area outside Melbourne (and address a few other meetings).

(P.S. If any wish to share their testimony/story, Bradley is happy to include it (with Glenn's/OWD's) on our website. That's *anyone*, I repeat *anyone* who regularly posts here. Email it to me in the first instance.)

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

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