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Writer's pictureRuth Wise

Response to "Shepherding Words: Encountering Opposers"

Updated: Sep 14

Confronting abuse and sin in any community, and expecting accountability from leadership responsible for the well-being of members of that community, is NOT opposition to that leadership nor to the community. It is faithfulness.


Misrepresenting, smearing, excommunicating those who expose sin that continues to be covered up and to stumble members should not be the approach of leaders of any organization or community.


In this video, I respond to just the first paragraph of this posting; if I could, I would respond to every line, but the video would get too long. I believe this video is a start, and hopefully communicates clearly enough my heart and perspective.


I don't think believers should be accusing one another, even of being "opposers" unless they have done all they can to fellowship. However, leaders in "The Lord's Recovery" too often refuse to respond to and fellowship with those of us who can't bear the abuse and sin any longer and who speak out.


Again, silence doesn't make sin and abuse go away. It merely isolates victims from the healing they so desperately need, that comes through fellowship, the flow of the precious Spirit through communication.


Communication and fellowship are what many of us are seeking, along with the confession of sins and repentance - of ALL of us who have participated in any illegal or immoral works of darkness. Instead of enjoying normal and precious fellowship about important matters on our hearts, however, many are labeled as "opposers", "poisonous", etc.


To refuse to fellowship with victims and witnesses who are pleading for fellowship is not keeping the oneness of the Spirit. Such refusal to fellowship creates divisions.


When I could bear the patterns of maltreatment no longer, I searched to see if anyone had experienced similar things, beyond those that I already knew. I began to read letters written by those who had been, in various forums within "The Lord's Recovery," publicly accused as being "opposers," who had been "quarantined", labeled as "rebellious" and "poisonous." As I read everything I could find, letters they wrote and other material they authored, ALL I read were words of love and truth and righteousness, pleading with those in leading positions to deal with sinful, stumbling, disheartening and divisive practices IN the church. At worst, there may be some reasonable misunderstandings which could be (or could have been... some are now with the Lord) cleared up with loving fellowship... but no such fellowship was granted by leading ones they were addressing. Instead, these dear ones were cruelly ostracized by their church community, and perpetrators they had tried to report were "covered."


These dear believers whose letters I've read, who tried to speak out against gross sins, financial abuse, systemic abuse and other stumbling practices, include Jo and her late husband Greg Casteel, Steve Isitt, Steve Nelson, Al Zehr, Al Knoch, Bill Mallon, John Ingalls, and Don Hardy. I heard many of these names in contexts of how "negative" and "poisonous" they were, how they "left" during "storms" in "the Lord's Recovery." In contrast to what I had heard, I read their loving, peace-seeking words, sometimes addressing unmentionable maltreatment of God's sheep. They were NOT opposing anyone, but rather opposing and exposing sinful and abusive practices in "the local churches" aka "the Lord's Recovery." They are dear saints seeking fellowship, trying to address matters that their consciences cannot ignore.


Here is yet another feeble attempt to express more of what is in my heart:






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