Social Media Campaign to address Calvary Chapel Church abuses.
#FreeSaeed and #SaveSaeed has been extremely successful and very encouraging. The World has heard us, our Government has heard us. Social Activism and Social Media Campaigns work.
We here at Calvary Chapel Abuse have been tackling the Ideas and Institutions in the Church, specifically the Calvary Chapel System of Churches, with regards to addressing core Problems of bad doctrine, bad best-practices, bad by-laws, bad leadership models, bad cult-like indoctrination that the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastor is “specially anointed by God!” as well as financial opacity, zero or lax systemic accountability, no mandatory child protections in place to be an “official” Calvary Chapel Associate/Affiliate/Franchisee….all of which are the Disease that leads to the many Symptoms we see in the news regarding abusive CC pastors, CC financial scandals, CC overlooking child abuse, pedophiles and felons working at the churches with kids, large-scale spiritual abuses and many cult-like practices.
In working our way through the Calvary Chapel System to address the issues of abuse and corruption and spiritual abuse etc, we have encountered many obstacles and many naysayers along the way. Michael Newnham over at PhoenixPreacher.com has come to the conclusion that to make any real change, the responsibility is on the “sheep” to quit supporting this particular Church System with their money and time and attendance when changes aren’t made. No butts in seats, according to Newnham, no particular Calvary Chapel with bad practices and abusive dynamic.
These “sheep” who are recruited by Calvary Chapel through their advertising, rhetoric, websites, crusades, radio programs, conferences, books, videos and person-to-person proselytizing need to be reached with the other side of the Calvary Chapel story, the side of the story that CC Franchisees and the CC System of Churches doesn’t disclose. We need to warn the “sheep” and the general public who is considering trusting a Calvary Chapel for spiritual guidance and giving them their time, money and often their submission and belief etc.
One area of disagreement between me and Michael is the role the individual Calvary Chapel Franchisee plays in the Problem. CC Franchisees enjoy being a Denomination and Association when it suits their particular interests, but when it comes to church discipline, church accountability, making reforms in Calvary Chapel…with one voice, the individual CC Franchisees cry, “We have NO responsibility for our System of Churches! We are all 100% independent!” This simply isn’t true and it’s wrong.
If the Calvary Chapel Franchisees won’t take responsibility for their Church System and won’t provide the whole Calvary Chapel Story to their communities and their “sheep” and won’t bring needed Reforms to their System of Churches, then we will do our best to stand in the gap.
Welcome to Project Accountability.
The new year provides us with new goals…we can make 2014 a productive year in taking the Cause to the hyper-local level.
Here’s the rough outline of the Campaign and we’re open to your input:
1. Create an online article/profile for every single Calvary Chapel Affiliate/Associate church and community. This will identify who the local CC Franchisee is and document their connection/association/affiliation to Calvary Chapel and then document the massive amount of info available that presents the other side of the Calvary Chapel Story. There will be links to the articles in the news about Calvary Chapel abuses, corruption, molestation, etc as well as to this site and others. Each individual CC Franchise will have the opportunity to present how they are different than the norm when it comes to open vs. closed finances, child protections in place, by-laws that are transparent and good, Matthew 18 resolution processes, who owns/controls all the church stuff, etc etc.
We will have the article/profile open for comments so folks can share of their experiences at each CC. The particular CC is welcome to present their story and answer any questions or concerns.
We will have a rating system: Jesus’s and Moses’s. 5 Jesus’s and 0 Moses’s is Best, 0 Jesus’s and 5 Moses’s is Worst.
2. We will focus on a group of CC Franchisees at a time. We will blitz Google Reviews, Yelp, Topix, etc. with the Project Accountability Campaign and drive people to the particular CC Franchisee’s page on here. We will review Calvary Chapel in general and our general experiences and ask if that particular CC Franchise has addressed the issues in its by-laws and practices that we have all experienced negatively.
We will do blitz searches for each group of CC Franchisees we focus on, searching key words over and over. This drives our page up the Search Engine list and puts us in a top position so our information will be accessible for review when someone is looking into attending a particular Calvary Chapel Franchise in their local area.
3. We will send out press releases to local media in the particular CC Franchise area articulating our Campaign, why we are doing it, what we are calling for and requesting that the particular CC Franchise responds with transparency and information about how they address the issues that are important to all of us.
We’re open to ideas. We’ll flesh this out more in the coming couple of weeks. We’ll pick the first round of CC Franchisees, articulate an outline of To Do’s and then we’ll hammer away for a specified period of time on each group.
We’re running a test case-study to the right in the Pages Section regarding our PhxP friend Jeff Jones’s CC Franchise of Calvary Chapel Foresthill. Jeff has been emailed and asked to provide his information so we can include it on the page and give him our Rating.
Some are already crying, “Guilt by ASSOCIATION!”….well, last I checked, the Calvary Chapel Association says it’s an Association: http://calvarychapelassociation.com/