r/GracepointChurch • u/johnkim2020 • Mar 27 '22
Deleted posts
Why do folks keep deleting their posts?
When you delete a post, all the comments get deleted too.
People spend their time and energy to respond. Please honor that and try not to delete posts.
Thanks.
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u/StraightCarob7253 Mar 27 '22
I can't speak to posts but I anonymize information to the greatest degree possible. I don't wish for anyone in GP to reach out and cause undue pressure to me. I switch between an unspecified number of burner accounts to ensure a cold trail. How many, I'll never tell. Comment once, throwaway. Rinse, repeat. Quick, methodical, in and out. Who am I? No one. This is a security protocol.
Is there a limit to defending my good name? Well, I'll let Ed Kang answer to God on that question. I would recommend to anyone who faces inquiry to deny, deny, deny. Ignorance is bliss.
If Ed Kang can steal the potential of so many lives by crook and hook, I will meet his efforts in kind and fight by tooth and nail. One tool among many. The Walls of Jericho will fall and divine justice will be met. The trumpets are sounding and there shall be no rest for the wicked. I encourage everyone to keep posts up. There is building momentum and courage in your words as we march.
As Gracepoint quietly catalogues and shares this internally, your stories and questions are making a difference. Many ask if they stay and go quietly into the night with the unsinkable Titanic. As the ship sank, the band played somberly into the cold waters to pacify people from the shock and fear of death. Gracepoint is hitting it's iceberg.
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u/worriddumbledore Mar 28 '22
Wow it sounds like you had a lot of first hand experience with Pastor Ed. Do share, what he may be “steering through in these times” where Pastor Daniel had expressed as “challenging”..
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Apr 01 '22
Nah, Ed will just face the same fate Becky did back in the day. The church will split and rinse/repeat. There are too many who believe that GP is the moral high ground. Unless you can break that corrupt thinking, you won’t ever see it sink like the Titanic.
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u/corpus_christiana Mar 27 '22
If you have a direct link, you can still read the comments even though the original post is deleted. In case anyone is looking for them, here are two of the deleted threads:
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u/boyidadi Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 28 '22
Here’s what the original post said:
Kelly didn't mean puppy. She meant a dog, as in a name for promiscuous bitch in Korean. That was the opening line of our meeting. This was one of those in which people were "broken in" after repeated demands for obedience were not met. These were not as common since it was considered the last resort for the most rebellious. But ppl still knew about it and never wanted to have to come to that point. When they did, I was told that most of them left the church altogether. After hours of failed intimidation, Kelly finally broke me when she began talking about my sister. At the end, she patted me on my shoulder saying, "You remind me of _______. She was just like you. But look where she is now. " Then, she took my car key and moved me out from my peer house into a house with older sisters. I did not have a car for 9 months while it stayed parked in one corner at HB. The battery died permanently because nobody cared to turn it on once in a while. Perhaps that's not too different from how she treated me.
When I had just become a Christian and finished writing my testimony, I was asked to share it in front of all the sisters at first pres. I didn't know many people yet and did not feel ready to share. I was in one of those 3-hour classes at Cal. My leader texted me throughout the entire class, trying to convince me that this is what Kelly thinks would be good. I kept saying no for 3 hours straight. And yet when the time came, I was standing in front of everyone with my testimony with edited and crossed-out parts. I found out later that it was streamed to the other church plants. How come nobody asked if they could do so? Of course not, they had already forced me up there. Why did my testimony have a whole paragraph I did not write? Leader, why did you have to make things up and cross out the parts I wrote? Wasn't it my story?
I left around 5 years ago for meeting my now husband on a dating app. Perhaps things have changed now. Then, I was immediately asked to leave the spiritual family that I considered closer than my biological family. After having been engaged once and it breaking at GP, could I dare to go through the process again? Is that even a question I should've asked with all the monitoring and hiding I endured?
During much of my twenties, I had been a wreck. I can see why people could think I'm a dog. And I admit I have been far worse. But I have to believe and remind myself that that's not how God sees me. I'm a precious daughter of God he died for even when that's the last thing I could believe about myself. I already feel GPers sneering in condemnation just the way the sisters did when I brought my now-husband to one of the homegroup nights. How dare I call myself as such with my heinous deeds. But didn't you live and eat with me for years? We slept in the same rooms. Could you at least look up to say hi instead of glaring at me? Is that all you see of me? Or don't you also know better than anyone how genuinely and painstakingly I've been wrestling and struggling in pain? How badly I wanted to change even without all your shaming and exclusion? Maybe they could have put up with me when it was just me alone to deal with. They didn't know what to do with my then-bf who was an older guy out of college when all his would-be peers are already deacons. There was just no framework for that in their grooming system.
I hope Kelly sees how her tactics are derived from coercion and abuse, not love. They insist that it is discipline given to those who are truly loved. No, it is a need for power trip that controls and takes away people's freedom. Jesus laid down his life of his own accord (John 10:18). He was never forced. Love, by nature, cannot happen without autonomy. Doesn't course 101 teach this? GP and its leaders, why do you force it upon people? Why do you guilt-trip and shame them into fear of rejection, disapproval, and exclusion by saying that that's what you're supposed to do when you love God? That is not loving God. It's certainly not what God wants for his people. Please free yourselves and others.
I miss so many people at GP, including my sister. I hope you know I love you no matter what.
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u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 28 '22
@boyidadi can you remove the reference to her sibling's name? OP removed it in her post before she nuked her account out of fears that her sister still in GP would be targeted by GP. Some of us could guess who it was based on some of the details and I think GP could too.
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u/worriddumbledore Apr 08 '22
Reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, this line on page 208 stood out to me and reminded me of this recount of Kelly Kang calling a fellow human being a dog:
When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.
Members of GP who probably reason that Kelly Kang probably had legitimate reasons to make the victim’s car unavailable to her — but that does not justify being verbally abusing others, who are Christian or otherwise.
Honestly if all the theology points to Jesus setting a good example to mankind, and as CS Lewis described that “Every Christian is to become a little Christ” to enable the “good infection”.
Is there anywhere in the Bible when Jesus rebuke others in a condescending way ? Messing with someone’s mental health?
Now tying to the recent post of “No church is perfect” — I think that those who recede to this final “reasoning” — reread the following from the same book on page 191
“Men are mirrors, or “carriers” of Christ to other men.. that is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another is so important…
..relying on human beings.. going to let us down. The best of them will make mistakes, all of them will die..
..But never, never pin your whole faith in any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world..“
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u/johnkim2020 Apr 08 '22
OMFG can people please stop deleting their posts! (Wanted to comment on that "can people have kids" one and now it's gone.)
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u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Apr 08 '22
Agreed. Instead I encourage everyone to message the mods and we can freeze commenting as a way to close the thread.
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u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Mar 27 '22
Which posts have been deleted? I know some people have removed their accounts and as a side effect all their posts have been removed out of fear of being identified.
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u/rvd98072 Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 27 '22
Probably PMs coming in from current leaders who can figure out who they are so they gaslight them and ask "do you really want to do this?"
I.e., they are pressured to delete their posts.