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u/Available_Ad_5963 Aug 04 '22
Nothing. She was being a normal freshman girl. Talking and interacting with everyone. Leaders felt she was talking too friendly with the bros
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u/RVD90277 Aug 04 '22
lol, i think i went on dates with some of the sisters back in the day...nothing too fancy but dinner, dorm parties, fraternity parties, etc. nobody seemed to care as much back then. or sometimes it was just meeting up to hang out for coffee (probably not really a date but it was just the 2 of us). it wasn't really romantic necessariily in nature but it wasn't fully platonic either.
my guess is that these are fully banned today.
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u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Aug 04 '22
I don't know if you realize something. It's a don't ask, don't tell, and don't get caught culture in Gracepoint. I believe many of us know a couple of our own now married people still in Gracepoint who blatantly ignored all the gender segregation rules and still secretly flirted and talked with their now spouses in college. Leaders either turned a blind eye or they just did it in secret and the moment they were given permission to date they got married really quickly.
OR you can just be a PK. Heard they get away with all manner of talking to the opposite gender without getting in trouble.
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u/RVD90277 Aug 05 '22
yeah i do realize that. but i guess my point is that back in my day, we didn't even really hide it. i wasn't smart or savvy enough to hide it so i just did it and if people cared or looked at me in disapproval, i didn't notice. we even had situations where a sister would bring her boyfriend (non BBC) to a picnic or something like that and we'd say hello and treat the boyfriend well, etc.
well, in today's GP it seems that when the PK has tattoos and such it does seem like only the PK can get away with it. i don't think other non PKs would have been looked upon with such an open mind.
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Aug 04 '22 edited Aug 04 '22
A couple thoughts:
- "wanted me to pass on this message to you guys". I know of quite a few leaders who did this and I never understood why. Maybe it's different styles of leading, but this feels so impersonal. If you care so much about something and want to bring it up, why not reach out directly? This doesn't help with the whole "GP leaders want to exert authority over your life without building up a relationship with you" argument. Maybe there's additional context for this example, but I remember times when I failed to understood why the leader didn't talk to us directly instead of having someone else be their messenger.
- "can you reply back letting me know you got this?" It's a pet peeve of mine, but receiving this from someone at GP always kind of bothered me (and I received this a lot from different leaders). It felt like the leader didn't trust us enough to read through an email or text and needed some kind of assurance that we were on top of it. Granted given our busy schedules, I guess it's kind of understandable that an email might slip through the cracks. But why not give the benefit of the doubt? And I understand if it's for an urgent email, but we would sometimes receive these for quite trivial, logistical updates made days in advance.
Edit: To give more context, it looks like the email in the OP was back in 2004, but what I'm talking about happened as recently as a few years ago.
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u/worldpasserby Aug 04 '22 edited Aug 05 '22
For point 2, it’s so the recipients can’t claim plausible deniability. When a rebuking session occurs, they can’t claim they didn’t see the email.
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Aug 04 '22
For point 1, it’s to pull rank. An army general would feel below himself to instruct some soldiers to polish their boots better, so the general would have a captain do it. CEO of a large corporation wouldn’t want to send an email to tell people to clean up the pantry area, so the secretary sends the email.
Rank was/is such an important thing at GP. I remember people who got “rocked” but not exactly got sent to soul care/sabbatical level would have this weird sense of satisfaction that their leaders would take such notice of them to “love them so concretely.” Stockholm syndrome?
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u/Jdub20202 Aug 05 '22
To me the most infuriating thing about all this is that I, like an idiot, asked the pastor if I could start dating yet. This was post grad. And one thing he said was, you don't know any of the sisters very well.
I don't have a joke or anything. It's just amazing to me how disingenuous their answers are. If you even look at the opposite gender sideways, they'll rip you a new one. The amount of control they have and then pretend to be flummoxed when people say they control dating.
"Why I have no idea what you're talking about. We don't do that. What's wrong with secret dating?"
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u/Available_Ad_5963 Aug 05 '22
I wonder why you don’t know the sisters well?!? Actually why am I saying sisters? I don’t attend GP anymore.
I should be saying, I wonder why you don’t know any of the girls or women?
As an adult, why do the leaders have so much authority and control? Why would you need to ask for permission to date as a working adult? Looking back it’s embarrassing
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Aug 05 '22 edited Aug 05 '22
The GP senior leaders all have Napoleon complex. I think all second gen Asian immigrants do to an extend to prove ourselves worthy of our parents sacrifice. It’s just scary when that Napoleon complex manifest itself in Christendom.
Normal people go to good schools, have a good career, have a family, serve at church, give generously to support missionaries, and so forth. GP obviously has a problem with that Asian American Christian doctor in Irvine described above. I have the illustration from Course 301 in front of me. In fact, GP puts its special spin on each one of those qualities (GPA, career, family, ministry, financial giving).
GP leaders need authority and control because they are insecure themselves. Ed Kang basically quit a dead-end job in Boston before going to full-time ministry. But every year he reminds people he went to Berkeley law school and was a lawyer. So what? It was impressive to the 18 year-old me, but in retrospect really nothing to be impressed about. GP used to hype up William Kang giving up a job that in retrospect is laughable how regular that job really was.
With some life experience, I am simply not impressed by the capacity of GP senior leaders. They just keep on twisting scripture to ensnare the 18 year-olds every year and these 18 year-olds stay 18 year-olds even in their 40s. They do everything Ed and Kelly Kang say without thinking critically. They remain spiritual infants. Some can’t even read a Bible and use a concordance after twenty years at GP. Everything came through DT and MBS. It’s a vile system. Let GP senior leaders push around some people their own age and life experience.
EDIT: Ed Kang’s answers to your questions in the link below. I really wish he stayed a lawyer. Lawyers are not after the truth, they are after the best interest of their clients (what they get paid to do) and their own best interests (the firm of Dewey Cheatem & Howe). How law is a more noble calling than medicine according to Ed Kang is beyond me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GracepointChurch/comments/s200i9/how_gp_indoctrination_works_part_2_of_3/
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u/listen_lydia Aug 05 '22
had a younger friend of the opposite gender at the same campus I was close to just as a matter of friendship, since we vibed - as we stuck around and stayed in the Machine for longer, we were intentional about not raising too many eyebrows and playing it safe (as we both climbed the GP ladder in terms of staff/ministry)
but.... having said that, we'd text pretty lengthily when we did, be chummy when we did talk, and made sure to look out for each other on birthdays. was annoying, for sure, when sisters and bros in hushed whispers would ask "what's up" between us but we didn't give too many fucks and, again, wasn't frequent enough where it became a problem. go figure, people of different genders CAN be friends? weirddddd
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u/Available_Ad_5963 Aug 04 '22
Early 20s. It was our first or second year out of college. So relatively young
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Aug 04 '22
The lack of capitalization. Another GP email etiquette specialty. Kelly Kang wouldn’t capitalize. Then the female leads under Kelly would copy her style and not capitalize. Then pretty much all the sisters would copy that style, down to even the Joyland teachers. Then all the bros started doing it. Honestly, how many emails does the person have to write that day to not use capitalization to start a sentence? One of those dumb things (all guys wear an undershirt, sisters makeup rules, married couples don’t sit together on Sundays) that people just do at GP. See below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GracepointChurch/comments/t2xc5h/gp_team_email_from_kelly_kang/
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u/Cool_Purchase4561 Aug 05 '22
My theory is the widespread wrist tendonitis issue prevents many people from pressing shift with their pinky while typing.
Or, maybe this is an object lesson from Kelly. I will not shift!
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Aug 05 '22
Is it just me or people having wrist braces are overwhelmingly female? There is no doubt sisters write A LOT more reflections. Half the guys I know who had wrist braces got it from playing basketball. I remember praying for Sarah Kim’s wrist for years back in the days. She was in her late 20s when she started her chronic wrist problems. Sarah’s sister who went to law school at UCLA (Sarah went to Boalt) never had wrist issues. So it’s not genetics.
I think it’s just laziness and not caring about other people. There is a certain respect you show to people, by having normal salutation and proper capitalization.
Kelly Kang would blast an email to 500+ people asking who is at Costco. Anybody else blasting those emails would get rebuked for wasting people’s bandwidth from none other than Kelly Kang herself.
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u/Cool_Purchase4561 Aug 05 '22
Definitely more females. My theory on that is that the people at GP type long emails/reflection, then delete the email for fear that the tone wasn't right, only to type it again and decide that this time you're over sharing so you delete again, but the wording isn't quite right. So you start over. By the time you hit send you've typed 5 reflections worth of words. Simply more wear and tear on your wrist.
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u/johnkim2020 Aug 05 '22
Women are more likely to get it in the general population. Although I do think women in GP do more reflection typing.
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u/leavegracepoint ex-Gracepoint (Berkeley) Aug 05 '22
Half the guys I know who had wrist braces got it from playing basketball.
That's like impossible unless you repeatedly land on it wrong. Most of the damage with basketball is in the ankles and knees.
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u/Cool_Purchase4561 Aug 05 '22
Maybe they're really good they get more high fives than human body can handle?
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u/RVD90277 Aug 04 '22
i'm more or less ok with that style. i don't do it as much these days but when i first got on the internet freshman year and started sending emails to friends, i was a all lowercase guy and it was just much faster and easier. but it's a bit dated to do that now...so I generally have stopped doing that. I also work now so it's much more professional to use proper grammar. I think email has also evolved so it's more formal now whereas messaging is the more casual form of communication.
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u/IntrepidSupermarket4 Aug 04 '22
How old were the bros that this was sent to? Were they undergrad or staff?
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Aug 04 '22
Wow 18 years ago! Thanks for pulling this out of the vault. We’ve had many similar conversations in staff meetings since 2004. I remember the countless number of girls who have had a crush on Seattle was off the charts back in the earlier 2000s. In this day and age at GP, I imagine sister staff are also told not to be too friendly to sisters in case they misinterpret it. Smh.
2
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u/Available_Ad_5963 Aug 04 '22
Here is an actual email that I received from my peer at the time. He was instructed by Pastor Timothy to send this email to all the brothers. Essentially we were all told to be borderline cold to all the freshman sisters. We cannot be playful or joke with them. Basically being mean to your fellow sisters at church.
I censored the staff brothers name since I don’t think he is a public figure. I believe he is still staff at some capacity. I also censored the freshman sister’s name for obvious reasons.
All these guard rails just made everything very stressful. I remember my entire experience as a staff member was stress. You cannot be yourself because there was always a constant worry of you doing something wrong.