The New Year brings an opportunity for the Calvary Chapel Association to make some much needed changes.
Another year, another opportunity for the Calvary Chapel Association / non-denomination denomination to implement some much needed things as part of its Affiliation/Association Agreement to become an “official” Calvary Chapel.
Here’s what we propose: Implement the following things into the Calvary Chapel Affiliation/Association Agreement as mandatory By-Laws and we’ll close down this blog.
1. Require mandatory Child Protections and Policy similar to Calvary Chapel Lebanon Oregon’s here: http://lebanoncalvarychapel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Lebanon-Calvary-Chapel-Child-Proctection-Policy.pdf
2. Open finances. Require at least an annual report available to church-goers and potential church-goers that shows how much money the particular CC franchise collects in Jesus-money and where the money goes. Pretty simple. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to hide” according to a CC pastor who spoke at last year’s CC Senior Pastor’s Conference. Make it priority, not just not being a Calvinist.
3. Grievance policy. Require a By-Law that articulates a Grievance policy for church-goers who find themselves having a beef with the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastor. If the person can’t get some satisfaction, there needs to be some other person or entity they can appeal to. These people are human beings and often have given a lot of their time and money and invested in relationships at the particular Calvary Chapel franchise. It’s wrong that their only recourse when they find themselves on the wrong side of a very human very fallible CC Pastor is “there’s the door!” Some sort of Christian* Mediation provision would be a suggestion: http://www.peacemaker.net/site/c.aqKFLTOBIpH/b.958123/k.CB70/Home.htm
Pretty simple stuff that should have been done long ago. There is an Affiliation/Association Agreement to become an “official” Calvary Chapel that gets to use the licensed name and dove logo and claim Affiliation. There is a Calvary Chapel Association website that defines who these “official” Calvary Chapels are…and it will even help you locate them. There is a Standard to be a legit CC…but the current Standard does not include the very important items listed above.
Our goal is to create a Page on the blog for every single Calvary Chapel Associate on the Calvary Chapel Association website. The Page will include a warning about the other side of the Calvary Chapel story and explain the current non-accountability in the System as there are no mandated checks-and-balances in the CC Affiliation/Association Agreement. This means one Calvary Chapel franchise can be a relatively safe church with good by-laws and good child protections, open finances etc….while another Calvary Chapel has no protections in place and can actually teach its congregation to abuse their children citing Taliban-like Old Testament passages that tell you to beat your kids into heaven.
CalvaryChapelAbuse.com is currently ranked using Alexa.com metrics as what would be the #132 most popular Christian* blog in the nation (and rapidly climbing the more active we are). We have over 6 million hits, according to the internal analytics traffic tracker, in three years. Our ranking will climb tremendously this year with a renewed effort.
I personally plan on hammering away on Calvary Chapel until the day I croak, unless or until some real changes are made or the whole thing disbands into a million pieces and is truly “100% independent” instead of the lie that was propagated by Chuck Smith and is still being propagated now thanks to fear of loss of money to lawyers and lawsuits due to denominational accountability. This denomination when it suits you and not a denomination when it comes to accountability in your System of Churches is total bullshit and you CC guys know it.
Fix it to some degree. It won’t solve the world’s problems, but it will be a hell of a lot better than what you’ve got now and will do something to address the problems and abuses in Calvary Chapel.
There’s no good reason not to do it, other than pride and something to hide.