Jefferson and the Bellevue Crisis

Today I had the incredible honor of sitting in a class taught by William Kristol. If you don't know Kristol's name right off, you can tune in to Foxnews Sunday and often Special Report with Britt Hume to catch Kristol in a panel debate. One of the powerhouse minds behind the neocon movement, he's teaching a class that I've the pleasure of taking this semester.

Kristol kicked the class off by taking a look at the Declaration of Independence. It's been a couple of years since I read it, and as Kristol noted, this would probably be the only class we'd have here that would require reading the Declaration (the sadder since I'm at a school of government). A couple of things struck me during his lecture:

Noting human nature, Jefferson tosses out the line, "that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

If that line isn't an apt description of the nature of the beast at Bellevue, then I don't know what is. Penned 231 years ago, Jefferson's ink still glistens in my mind's eye. Men, given their nature, are disposed to suffer, suffer, and suffer more, if the price for such suffering's abolition is the sacrifice of the familiar. That is Bellevue. People know there is a problem. Lots of problems in fact. People know something isn't right, that things should change. That all grievances, allegations, and explanations should be heard. But this would require a change in the congregation's spiritually affluent lives--a sacrifice too great. Indeed, such is the hallmark of civilizational decline as Mark Steyn has noted in America Alone: the abandonment of self-determination to apathy.

Bellevue is declining just as civilizations do when they refuse to confront their internal rot and external threats. Bellevue, like the US, has both. Internally, BBC has corruption, sin, and hardheartedness. Many at the core of the church have sacrificed Right for expedience, choosing to run the church as a business without accountability to the shareholders (members) or transparency to the world. In the same way, Bellevue has external threats from seeker-friendliness, trendy spiritual fluff, and simple secularism. There are also many enjoying the unseemly mess that the BBC administration is exacerbating.

Many would argue that those dissenting are the real problem. This is only true if the dissenters are wrong. But if they are right, then there are huge problems at BBC which should be solved. Those concerned have tried to address the problems within the framework of the church via Matthew 18 and have been told to leave. This then raises the question: Is it better to leave a corrupt church to prey on innocents, or is it preferable to expose such corruption (vis a vis Matthew 18--which as an aside says nothing about excluding the World from knowledge of the conflict) so that pressure from the Christian world and the secular world may force a cleanup? Obviously the latter is the answer. For there are no downsides to showing the world our willingness to 1) admit sin, and 2) repent of it, and 3) restore fellowship.

Jefferson follows up saying, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

We have been abused by a pastorate intent on obfuscating (to know laughable levels), using church largess for personal gains (to be paid back purportedly, but at what cost to Cesar both locally and nationally), intimidating those who would question its actions (the dream, Mark Sharpe, other staff members who shall remain nameless here), cloaking itself in secrecy (vis a vis confidentiality agreements for multiple ministers, no business meetings or access to church documents and policy), harboring a child molester (after the molester purportedly offered to resign no less!), lawbreaking (both by trespassing (and from all signs falsely calling such trespassing an errand of reconciliation) and refusing to release documents as required under TCA 48-66-102).

One must ask what is so important that a CHURCH administration would break the law to conceal its actions.

Folks, Jefferson was right. We will suffer until we feel we can suffer no more. It shouldn't be that way. We can be free. We can be restored. We do not have to tolerate this dictatorial administration which removes deacons at will, attempts to coerce non-disclosure signature, and simply lies.

There have been "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same Object . . . a design to reduce [us] under absolute despotism."

Now the question is, will you do your duty and change our church, providing "new Guards for [our] future?" Will you? Will you force to an end this administration that does not comply with Matthew 18, refuses to open the administration to transparency, and refuses to obey the law? Will you force the administration to be accountable to the people themselves? Will you force the church to operate transparently, like Focus on the Family, such that anyone from anywhere can examine our books and non-confidential records to keep us honest?

If you will not, then I must ask, why?