by Tawanda Ray (Hamilton, Alabama)

Dear Darwin & Laura,

I received and read your March/April Newsletter today.

 

I really can and do sympathize with people who have been maligned, abused, and “disfellowshipped“ by those who think they are servants ("ministers") of God. I agree with Arlan Weight's assessment of the status quo system of disfellowshipment. It is not biblical.

 

The elite little group of the hierarchy with the corporation churches hold "power" within the organizations. They are not willing to relinquish that power. When their power is threatened by someone within the common folk, they must be dealt with quickly and severely. I am way beyond thinking that they are doing it for the good of the church. It is my experience that the act of disfellowshipping has been carried out solely to protect and sustain hierarchical power over the people.

 

You mentioned, at one point, that a woman recently wrote to you with a statement of “If you are going to be in a corporation church, you have to go by their rules.” I am assuming you were referring to my letter as I remember writing that statement or something similar. I see by your comment that I may not have been clear enough on my meaning.

 

When I made this statement, I was not referring to a group's by-laws and the nice sounding documents that the "leaders" put together in order to rope the people in, placate them and convince the membership that all will be fair.

 

The rules I was referring to are the basic rules of a hierarchy. We know what those are--if we were a part of HWA's WCG. The rules are--the ministry is always right (and even if they are wrong God will back them up! Remember that one?) and must always maintain control and power. Anyone who has the audacity to question these rules must go! (For the good of the other stupid sheep of course.)

 

You and I did abide by these rules as long as we stayed there. Not only did we bow to these rules, we paid hard earned cash for the "privilege" of doing so.

 

Once we decided that we could no longer abide by their tyrannical rules, we were out either by disfellowshipment or by removing ourselves. You were disfellowshipped--I left.

 

To have remained, we would have been required to continue buckling down to their rules.

 

I hope this explains more clearly what I meant.

 

You made another comment I’d like to touch upon. You stated “We thought maybe our brothers & sisters would go to the ministry on our behalf, however to date, we only know personally of one person who has written to the home office of the UCG-IA on our behalf and that is Norm Edwards.”

 

First of all, most of the people who read Servants' News are probably independent who have had their fill of dealing with these little men who claim to be somebody of power and honor. (Give me a break.) And as you stated Norman Edwards really did a good job in showing why we could not get any place with the UCG-IA ministry," so did we know. The analogy concerning "beating a dead horse" comes to mind, or "speaking to a brick wall."

 

I once went to bat for a friend of mine concerning her D&R situation in the Global Corporation. I experienced first hand the incredible audacity that their “ministry” exhibited in wielding power over the “common” folk.

 

I have written numerous letters to these people for various reasons and all I got was silence.

 

I have ceased in dealing with them as somebody of God. They are not. As time goes by you will see how fruitless and vain it is to deal with them for any reason.

 

The corporations and their leadership are not of God! They do not operate on biblical principles. Dealing with them is useless.

 

I hope this helps to explain why, in all probabilities, most of S.N. readers (if not all) did not bother to write United's home office.

 

Again, I wish to express to you that I do admire and respect what you are doing by speaking out against abusive power and by opening up your home for the benefit of others. I admire your attitude as well.

 

Norman Edwards commented in his response to your letters that he felt certain places were “cynical, insulting and showed disdain for the UCG corporation (rather-administration).”

 

Well, excuse me if I happen to be insulting and show disdain for a group of “Pharisees” who show by their actions what they are about! We are to judge actions! And a “Pharisee” is as a “Pharisee” does. Check Matthew 23 to see how God himself views such practices. These practices we can disdain!

 

I wish you both good things to come.

 

In Friendship,

Tawanda Ray

Hamilton, Alabama

 

Tawanda

We couldn't have stated what you stated in your letter any better. You have brought up so many valid points, I'm not sure where to start with my comments.

 

Actually, when I made the statement, “If you are going to be in a corporation church, you have to go by their rules.” Yes, you are the woman who made that statement. Yes, I understood originally what you said to mean rules of hierarchy, but to us that would also include their written rules and regulations, as each one of these individual ministers or leaders, probably reads the rule, and then bends it to suite exactly what he wants to accomplish from the situation. These men who claim to be of God, will do whatever it takes, to get a person to either leave their group or they will bend and break their own spoken rules, written rules, and definitely God's rules, to get people out of their corporations. When one has been through it, one can understand the craziness of these men holding on to this power and control of people at all costs, even when it means getting rid of one of their own people.

 

We also, very much understand the “beating a dead horse” or “speaking to a brick wall” concept. We certainly did encounter it with UCG-IA. We understand why people don't write to them if they are now independent, however, our newsletter goes into other countries, as well as many states in the USA, and most of our mailing list consists of corporation ministry, and corporation sheep. We believe that corporation sheep should help their brothers and sisters in dealing with corporation leaders. If more corporation sheep even understood that they can be sacrificed so readily just on the whim of another corporation sheep going to ministry to report on them, and that once ministry no longer views you as a corporation sheep in good standing, your downward spiral from grace and out the corporation door is not too long in coming. What corporation sheep also don't seem to understand, is that all these corporation sheep who are now gone from their corporation, were once corporation sheep, who were members in good standing, just like themselves.

 

If the corporation sheep, who are yet members in good standing actually went to the aid of their fellow sheep members, we feel that either the ministry having been put on the spot many times by their member sheep who are currently in good standing, would be forced to change their ways by these confrontations, or the member sheep who is currently in good standing would wake up and see how these corporation leaders treat these sheep. The goal should be to stop the abuse of power and control by leaders. For member sheep in good standing to believe the ministry would never treat them in the same manner as people who left or were disfellowshipped claim to have been treated, is not in their realm of thinking, because they don't yet have a first hand experience with the interaction that takes place in these situations, and even if they do, they sit there and do nothing, claiming God will take care of it. Again God did take care of it. He left us very clear instructions on how to deal with many situations, in His word the Bible.

 

For instance, when you went to help your friend in a D&R situation with the Global Corporation, wasn't it an eye opener for you? These situations, in going to help a friend deal with corporation leaders, do not take on the characteristics of what God wants from his people, and if more corporation sheep would get involved in helping their fellow sheep to deal with corporation leaders, I can guarantee you, there would be a lot less people just sitting there doing nothing, and there would be a lot less abuse going on among God's people.

 

God does not back up corporation leaders who do not follow God's rules, regulations, doctrines or laws. Corporation leaders some how have many people believing that no matter what a corporation leader does or says that God will back him up on it, even if it is wrong. We as God's people, and we here believe, that there are many people and leaders in corporation churches, which are God's people. However, we all as God's people have an individual responsibility to only follow these leaders as they follow God. If we just sit there and say nothing when they depart from God's way, we are putting our approval on it.

 

We do understand that there are many situations where a person will never get any kind of result that a person can see. However, it doesn't mean we should give up. We are not looking for rewards in this life, our rewards will come when Christ returns. When we see these situations which come up in our day to day lives, and we are asked to help someone, let's just do it to the best of our abilities, without worrying about how we will be thrown out or maligned. Our focus should be on other people and not on ourselves.

 

With Much Love,

Darwin & Laura Lee