Guest Post: Bill M’s Compilation of the Comments by Members of Fellowship Memphis and Downtown Church

Bill M’s first guest post for this blog. His compilation of comments from members of Fellowship Memphis and Downtown Church. This reveals the tactics and methods that detractors can, and how they act. Good job Bill!

“A man can fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else.”

John Burroughs

 “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad. ³⁴ You brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say. ³⁵ A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. 

Matthew 12:33-35 NLT

This is a quick post by Bill M out west. He compiled a lot of the things people had said an illustrated the problems with them. I really appreciate Bill’s work, analysis and his heart. So I wanted to preserve this in a quick post. This illustrates why so many parts of evangelicalism are so un-healthy today. The messenger is always hated those of you below who made the comments I want you to know that I hold no ill feelings. You are free to post your thoughts and feelings. If any of you guys from Downtown Church or Fellowship Memphis find yourself in the D.C. area please look me up. I will be happy to meet and discuss in person. That said I will turn this post over to Bill.

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Now that I have a little more experience and this story is not my first rodeo, I have taken notice of the comments on Eagle’s blog. While there have been a couple of defenders that stuck with the facts or legitimate questions most are of the silencing variety. Hopefully it is okay with Eagle that I post them here as education for first timers. (My comments are in parentheses)

Done
“you have an entire blog dedicated to how angry you are?!?!”
(gaslighting)(Done is also a reason I am almost a “done”)

Questioning
“I understand that you were hurt by the church, and I have been deeply hurt as well. But writing things that are both untrue and vindictive…”
(gaslighting, discredit Eagle, he is just irrational because he is hurt)

Loritts
“I think once our conversation is over you’ll have incredible clarity, and may even want to take this down.”
(classic, you don’t have all the facts)

Absurdity
“Curious…do you realize that Rick will probably not serve time for this? It is only a misdemeanor and not a felony. I’d love to see you put your writing to good use and spend time arguing that this should be taken seriously by the justice system.”
(shifting, moving the goalpost)

Anonymous
“You are sick and obsessive. … Rick will probably not serve time or be on a sexual predator list? Why don’t you take time to fight that instead of attacking a bunch of people who actually did the right thing? Instead of attacking Rick you’re attacking the church?”
(gaslighting and more shifting, same argument as Absurdity, are they the same person?)

Anonymous
“Rick read a statement of confession regarding what he’d done at Fellowship to all of Downtown Church’s members before he was hired, and the whole church still didn’t object to his being hired.”
(shifting – hide behind the church members)

Me – As a follow-up exercise do an internet search on (silencing techniques). It is very helpful to understand the manipulation behind such comments. Much of churchianity has ingrained into us that some things should not be talked about and it takes only a few unchallenged “silencing” comments to send first time readers back to their sound proof chamber. At first such comments troubled me but now I see them for what they are, evil attempting to cloak itself.

Thanks for doing this Bill, for the record I dedicate this Disney classic to members of Fellowship Memphis and Downtown Church. As its stated in the ESV (Eagle Standard Version) Philippians 4:13 means “I can do all things with Kool Aid.” I did that in one point of my life as you can read about it here as I have written about it. Love you Bill, love you guys!