Spiritual Abuse Forum???

Originally Posted by stmatthew

On a side note, I wonder if the Spiritual Abuse site could be liable for a law suit from a disgruntled poster there for practicing without a license. I have not been there and do not know what they do there. Just asking a general question here.

Hardly, Matthew. We are simply a support group. We never claim professional counseling or anything of that nature, so there's no practicing anything w/o a license. We have told people with very serious issues to see a professional. Kind of an interesting question seeing how these boards have been threatened with lawsuits.

The rest is not a response to your post.

It would have been nice to see the issue discussed w/o people starting to bite at each other who differed in view. It's great how on my board we can discuss matters and have a group of people who have varying beliefs and none of them feel a need to belittle or attack other members, even when they greatly differ in beliefs. There are things that go on here that never would be tolerated on our support group board. And as I shared before, there has been more bashing and bad-mouthing of the UPC and people running wild with UPC "news" here than ever would occur on my board.

There are also ones who speak loudly who act like they know what happens on the site when in fact they have read very little of it and were never a part of the support group. They claim they "know" what we do, when in fact they cannot.

For the record, I didn't leave "truth" because of anything that happened in my former church. When I first left the UPC, and for some time thereafter, I was very much yet apostolic, but had changed my views in the area of standards.
My exit away from main apostolic teachings came over quite a bit of time- years- and when I started the web site, I was yet looking into some things. I didn't stomp out of my former church and chuck everything aside out of some type of bitterness due to being wronged. I made my doctrinal changes over much time and after study of the Bible.

Next, I have always recognized that ministers have also been abused. And some DO share about it. This abuse is just as wrong as the other. But trying to throw that out in an attempt to diminish the fact that there is abuse that happens to people in churches will never accomplish what you want.

Saying that no one should ever publicly share about wrongdoings and attempting to make it appear biblical that we cannot or should not, please remember that writers of the Bible shared things that people from across the world have read and will continue to read for years. Not only did their friends and peers read about them, but also those of us who were never there and don't know the people involved....and it's there for all to read, hundreds and hundreds of years after the events.

If you have been hurt and have been able to never share about it, that is fine. But please don't try to make this a rule for everyone. As another mentioned, some don't share and it eats them up inside and causes much damage.

Again, we do not encourage people to "wallow in their hurts." We do not encourage bitterness. We strongly teach against it. We do not encourage revenge against those who have caused harm. We don't encourage people going on campaigns against their former church. We don't send our members to places like AFF to cause trouble. We are against this type of thing. But some people who don't like the site will continue to share their untrue characterizations. Feel free to dislike the site. Feel free to hate it. That is expected and I even address this on the site. But stop portraying us as fueling bitterness or hatred or similar things. We do not. We tell members they must forgive- and some through the years have gotten very angry at me for it- and they must not allow bitterness to remain in their heart. We won't even allow any members to attempt to push another member to make changes in the standards area.

I probably won't post much more on this due to the direction the thread has gone. Anyone is free to contact me privately. My contact into is posted on my web site.