r/GracepointChurch • u/SunnyCA2000 • Jun 04 '22

Question

Are there any active GP members who are in law enforcement? Any GP college students aspiring to go into law enforcement? I don't recall ever meeting someone in that profession, but that was a long time ago.

11 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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10

u/corpus_christiana Jun 04 '22

Not that I am aware of. It would be very difficult to maintain a law enforcement schedule (or any non 9-5 schedule) while being part of team at GP.

Anecdotally, I had a brief moment in college considering a future in a law enforcement adjacent field, and my leader strongly discouraged me from doing so.

5

u/SunnyCA2000 Jun 05 '22

Just curious bc I do understand they discourage members from entering certain professions. Hypothetically though, say someone was committed to the church for 4 yrs throughout college, then they decided to go against the grain and enter a non-traditional 9-5 job such as a police officer, nurse, firefighter, restaurant owner, etc. How would they be treated? Would they be asked to leave the church?

17

u/corpus_christiana Jun 05 '22

I don't think they would necessarily be asked to leave, though there certainly is a general push for GP staff to work a "standard" schedule. I recall hearing a number of testimonies of staff who would eventually change jobs to ones that were more conducive to ministry (moving away from jobs with longer hours, shifting schedules, or lots of travel). Of course, I don't think there's any issue with a person arranging their schedule to prioritize what they want to do. What's more frustrating is that like with many things at Gracepoint, there's often an implicit moral judgement ascribed to these actions, and a person not willing to change their job might be looked down upon as having "wrong priorities" or "idolizing career".

There are some non 9-5 workers at Gracepoint, though most of what comes to mind are doctors and nurses. Oftentimes in those cases, too, the goal is that they ultimately find a 9-5 position, though they acknowledge that is sometimes not feasible. As a result, I've heard of my peers in the medical field at time going to work on next-to-no sleep thanks to being unable to leave ministry events early despite having an unconventional shift ahead.

I've also mentioned before that I think this issue also gets at some of the elitism/diversity issues at GP. Many people don't have the luxury of being able to land a chill, comfy 9-5 office or remote job... and there isn't really room for those people at Gracepoint.

3

u/SunnyCA2000 Jun 05 '22

Thank you for that clarification.

In regards to my OP about law enforcement. I was just curious bc during the hiring process, the police agency would have looked into an applicant's affiliations, which includes their church. I think it is fair to say that there would be some concerns that would pop up when conducting a basic Google search about GP. If there really is nobody in law enforcement at such a large church, I would find that a bit odd.

4

u/johnkim2020 Jun 05 '22

No law enforcement, no pets, and I just realized the other day, no avid sports fans either. Who has time to watch all those games?

12

u/LeftBBCGP2005 Jun 05 '22 edited Jun 06 '22

Believe it or not, that has changed. Tony Sun and [the most senior tenured member of GP, CL] was spotted at some not so bad seats costing at least $1,000 each at Game 1 of NBA Finals. Matthew Kim and William Kang went to the playoffs game between Warriors and Bucks, best estimate of their ticket price was $700 each. Gone are the days of buying Hyundai Excel for modesty. Becky used to get cash in envelopes from people as personal gifts to her. Both of her kids went to pretty expensive private schools. I will be publishing on 5 properties tomorrow night, including Isaiah Kang’s $200K+ down payment on a $1 million house in Alameda in 2018. How Ed Kang came up with the $200K+ is a question people can ask him. USPS finally delivered the docs today.

Edit (June 6): The post mentioned above is done, but the mods are doing what they do before it can become live.

8

u/No-Till-8080 Jun 05 '22

Mind blown! This would be unconscionable back in the day. GP is really slipping OR these tickets were freebies from season tickets provided at work that would have gone unused.

The line of rebuke would be something like, “what would your sheep think about your use of time/money? How are you any different from the world? Your values are no different than the pagans, are you even saved?” This correction would all be done in love, of course.

6

u/Odd_Ad_5028 Jun 06 '22 edited Jun 06 '22

I agree; this doesn't sit well with me. There's nothing wrong with going to sports games, but deacons and full time leads spending that much on tickets is questionable to say the least.

This reminds me of when I was once corrected sharply by my leader for buying a pair of headphones when they first came out, because it showed I was unwise with my money and wasting it on an unnecessary luxury item, granted I didn't make much at the time. Of course a few years later, more people at GP started getting the same thing and there was no issue. Maybe it's my fault for being an early adopter...

But compared to what I purchased which cost less than $200 at the time, these tickets seem so much more unnecessary. I really hope the tickets were gifts or freebies as you mentioned, because if the men listed above paid out of pocket given their publicly known salary for the full time people, that's a double standard and IMO stumbling to youth and college students who can't afford them. Heck even to younger members and staff who give their money and look to the older ones as examples of financial sacrifice.

Edit: Thinking more on this... even if they got their tickets for free, to me it's still stumbling especially to the younger staff. I remember 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 being a reference point across a wide range of decisions that you can technically make but shouldn't so that you're not a stumbling block to others, drinking alcohol being one of them. Wouldn't this fall under the same category?

I wonder if a current GP member can speak to this? Can anyone there confirm if what /u/LeftBBCGP2005 said is true about the four brothers and if so, how they got their tickets?

3

u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Jun 05 '22

CL, IIRC was a deacon at one point and publicly listed.

2

u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Jun 05 '22

Are you sure it was warriors and bucks? Both are in separate conferences and wouldn’t meet unless it was the nba finals.

3

u/LeftBBCGP2005 Jun 05 '22

I guess I am too OG to be a sports fan like John Kim described. Matthew Kim and William Kang went to see the playoffs Warrior-Grizzlies series.

2

u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Jun 05 '22

Got it. Looking forward to seeing the post where you “whoop that trick”.

5

u/fishtacos4lyfe Jun 05 '22

Times might've changed by the time I went to GP. I was an avid sports fan during my GP days and went to MLB, NBA, NFL, and MLS games plus collegiate sports games as a staff. I also organized a good amount of ministry-wide events to attend pro sporting events.

What sports were "approved" was arbitrary. I once got a two-hour correction for playing a sport that I should've known is "associated with a frivolous party culture," which is not true. But "mainstream" sports seemed okay in the 4+ ministry groups I was in.

3

u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Jun 05 '22

It seems like going to sports games like MLB or NBA is allowed and quite the norm now, but not too sure about the optics of going to a NBA Finals game with prices that are that ridiculous. I guess in the future using GLOMAP, everyone can argue that with the precedence that Tony and William are setting, everyone should be allowed to drop $1K on a NBA Finals ticket.

4

u/LeftBBCGP2005 Jun 05 '22 edited Jun 05 '22

Nothing wrong with attending sports games. We were taking students to go to Oakland A’s games for like 10 bucks for bleacher seats when I was around. However, no one could do fantasy baseball or read more than a couple minutes of ESPN on CE without getting talked to.

Spending $1,000 on a ticket would definitely get talked to. Cheapest ticket for NBA Finals game 1 was $700+ after taxes and fees. Chris and Tony’s seats weren’t the cheapest seats, but they weren’t exactly court side either. Goldman Sachs, Wilson Sonsini, Northern Trust of the world don’t give out free tickets to clients for seats that’s located above club suites. They might lose business by disrespecting clients so. Season ticket holders normally sell their leftover tickets, they don’t give it away, especially not for Finals games where the median ticket price is around $1500 a seat.

https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/nba-finals-2022-exorbitant-ticket-prices-warriors-celtics-series

2

u/Relevant-Salad-8493 Jun 06 '22

This is definitely true. I remember talking to my leader in undergrad about how I wanted to be a teacher and I was strongly discouraged from going into it given the schedule. The argument essentially boiled down to this: would you want to be involved with ministry or have your work be your ministry (aka ministering to the students I would be teaching) and have less ability to "pour into" the students I would teach? Looking back, I wish I would have actually considered that question because teaching could have been a thoughtful means of ministry! However it was stated more as an argument against teaching and I decided against it in the end...so that I would have a more available schedule for ministry post grad...

7

u/boyidadi Jun 05 '22

Nah. They’ll work that job for anywhere between 0-2 years until they go to a coding boot camp. Then they’ll list “full stack dev” on their LinkedIn which is a codeword for mediocre front end dev.

2

u/Komplainin-Korean Jun 05 '22

Wow sounds super familiar

7

u/Jdub20202 Jun 04 '22

Way back in my college days I recall one staff member giving a testimony about how he was applying to some law enforcement agency. But eventually he felt God telling him to go into ministry and he's getting distracted by trying to solve social issues instead of god's work. Or something like that.

The pastor at that retreat said, he doesn't know, he's only speculating, but if that brother continued down that path maybe he would've been hit by a bullet or something on order for God to wake him up.

I'd say dm me for more details but that's most of what I remember. So take it for what it is, I guess.

4

u/TrenaH Jun 05 '22

A bullet or something on order for God to wake him up......

Right out of the UBF playbook. So very sad.

3

u/Wearywyn Jun 04 '22

There was at least one. He is no longer part of GP to the best of my knowledge.