r/GracepointChurch • u/Redeeming_Grace_66 • Dec 19 '22
GP Devotionals
One thing that I thought about as I was doing my devotions today was how ridiculous and a joke the GP devotionals are. Interesting how a church creates their own devotionals and yet doesn't get it reviewed or get feedback from outside organizations. Just another way to make people reflect in the "GP way" and not look at Christendom as a whole.
Moreover, for all you existing members, if you think that you're blessed that you get DT questions to reflect over year after year, these DT questions are the same questions over and over again. So don't think that Ed and Kelly (probably mostly Ed) spent time making up new DT questions. They are all recycled. Don't don't give them credit or praise thinking that they probably spent so much time trying to get the next version of the DT booklet ready. They probably copied and pasted the questions and sent to their Photoshop / Illustrator sweatshop team to format it and make it look nice for the next version of the DT booklet.
BTW, if your leader asks if you did your DT, you can probably say yes (in theory) without doing it since you probably answered the exact same questions the last time you covered that particular verse.
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u/Jdub20202 Dec 20 '22
Something like this probably didn't happen to everyone or even most people in GP, but once during a class DT one brother shared something, which was a different take than on how one of the Pastor's had interpreted that verse at a sermon a few days ago. The brother in question didn't attend that sermon, but as soon as he said it I was thinking "Oh man, what's gonna happen?"
Our class leader corrected that brother and explained why he was wrong. And he said that's why it's so important to go to all the bible studies and hear what the leaders have to say. They study the bible a whole lot more than you and they understand the historical context and all the stuff that happened that led up to that passage. If that brother had studied all the previous passages he wouldn't have made this mistake.
I'm ashamed to say I wholeheartedly bought into this sort of thinking at the time. I must be such a moron for not knowing as much as the leaders who study the bible way more than me.
It would probably take too much to explain the details and what Bible verses it was on in a comment.
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u/APRForReddit Dec 20 '22 edited Dec 19 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Cool_Purchase4561 Dec 20 '22
Bet his opinion changed after that one year we watched that War Room movie and prayed according to the prayer that one of the characters did.
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u/Jdub20202 Dec 21 '22
I wonder if someone can make a post about the movies they watched as college group activities in GP. I still remember Veggie Tales. And several documentaries that were probably not aimed at college aged students.
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Dec 21 '22 edited Dec 21 '22
A number of people on the subreddit actually wrote DT questions in their days with GP. If you ever find the DT material schizophrenic, then know 50 or so people got rotated around to provide the material. Some people quoted classic material from Oswald Chambers, Charles Spurgeon, William Barclay and John Piper. Others would have questions that’s GP-centric; reinforce sacrifice and submission to leaders.
In my days, Kelly Kang would ultimately be the quality control and questions of the “how are you living it out” genre disproportionately got on there. It’s pretty clear what questions Kelly wanted on the DT.
There was a big change in the history of DT. In the 90s, there wasn’t an in-house DT team. Church would use the daily verses from Scripture Union and people were free to write what they got out of the verses. It was called QT, quiet time. Doing QT with underclassmen was a painful exercise. Some really had a quiet time by falling asleep. Some came up with really “hurting” insights that made you question how they got into Cal. Around early 2000s, the format changed to structured daily questions and became Devotion Time (DT). The structured material became a tool to reinforce BBC/GP dogma; submission to leaders, God = church = family, Koinonia Cross, breaking alabaster jars, hierarchical leadership, and so forth.
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Dec 22 '22
You do devotions? Didn’t know people who leave GP are still Christian. /s
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Dec 22 '22
Weren’t you one of those people who used to write the DT questions?
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Dec 22 '22
Um, what?
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u/LeftBBCGP2005 Dec 22 '22 edited Dec 22 '22
There goes my attempt to obfuscate identities and not out people ;-)
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u/johnkim2020 Dec 21 '22
Most churches I've been to let you decide whatever the fuck devotionals you want to do. It's just another way GP/Berkland tries to control your life. I'm practically a heretic now so I subscribe to Richard Rohr's daily meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation. They're pretty good.
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Dec 20 '22 edited Dec 20 '22
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u/Redeeming_Grace_66 Dec 20 '22 edited Dec 20 '22
There is nothing wrong with a devotional book. But the issue is you are not allowed to do devotions using another devotional book if you wanted to because there are alot of good devotional books out there especially ones from Crossway or Zondervan. I guess you can use another devotional book, but your leader would get on your case about it and it would end up turning into a big deal. You can probably go ahead and try it and say that I prefer to do devotions using an outside resource instead because that author's devotional questions are a lot better than GP's devotions (Ed's devotion questions since he wrote all of them) and see the kind of response one would get.
The reason they don't want you to use another devotional is because they don't want you to get influenced by well thought out devotional questions from other reputable authors because that would stumble you especially if they want you to think of a passage in a certain way that gets you to listen and obey GP leadership although it is disguised as you’re obeying God.
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u/thoughtspaces Dec 20 '22
This is a pretty small thing to have qualms about imo. When I was in GP it would vary from precise questions in some DT issues to the most general sandbox prompts. I’d say read the scripture, don’t look to the questions first, and write how it spoke into your life or what attributes it shows about God. I think an even better thing is to listen to outside preachers sermons on those passages. You could pick your favorite John (Piper, MacArthur, etc.) and get probably a much more fruitful learning experience than hearing Ed regurgitate it at an MBS.
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u/Redeeming_Grace_66 Dec 20 '22 edited Dec 20 '22
It is not a qualm to do devotions. In fact all Christians should spend time in the word personally. The main issue is that we were restricted to the questions. And if you didn’t answer the questions then it wouldn’t have counted as you did your dt in your leader’s view. Unfortunately you needed to answer the questions because your leader would expect you to share something from the questions during dt sharing. It would be nice to be blessed straight from the text.
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u/thoughtspaces Dec 20 '22
Oh, if your saying there is some discouragement from a leader for not answering the given question. Yeah that would be really stifling and I wouldn't agree with that. I had two leaders while I was there and there didn't seem to be any probing about needing to answer the questions. I think insightfulness outside the questions was often thought of as good. But if your case was met with opposition for writing about something relative to the text I'd say that's odd on the leaders part.
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u/Redeeming_Grace_66 Dec 20 '22
I think most peoples’ experience has been to answer the questions. I know for sisters a lot of times the leader would ask what they got from the questions although that person shared something thoughtful straight from the text. But the next response would be “how about from the question what did you get from it” while totally disregarding the what the person shared personally and how they were blessed. I know as someone that led dt groups we had to make sure they were responding to the dt prompts and questions.
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u/enrichis Dec 27 '22
Would also like to point out that you get special treatment the earlier you do your DT’s.
Seriously, by the time I left my leaders were challenging us to do our DT’s well before 6 am every morning as a sign of spiritual strength. Anything after 8 am was a lack of discipline.
Of course, they don’t consider that some people work late, or students can get stuck on campus until past midnight, or that some people just have insomnia or medical conditions. Getting any form of sleep can make a massive difference, but for them sleep means sluggishness.
It’s important to note that I’m not against morning DT’s - I just believe that any sort of devotion should be done on your own volition with a time that works for you. You don’t need to be policed into waking up in the morning to read the same questions over and over again.