UPDATE: I have created a survey for Calvary Chapel pastors, staff and members regarding Gospel for Asia and church support. Please click through via this link to take the survey.
Phoenix Preacher is reporting that Joe Focht, pastor at Calvary Chapel – Philadelphia announced to his congregation on Sunday that it would not be “unreasonable” to suspend support for Gospel for Asia. According to PP, Focht added that donors might reconsider if ECFA membership is restored.
Last week, Calvary Chapel – Oxnard (CA) advised members to stop support. In late September, Calvary Chapel pastor Bill Gallatin rebuked K.P. Yohannan’s Believers’ Church rituals.
Historically, Calvary Chapels have helped sustain GFA. A Google search finds numerous (well over 100) CC’s which support GFA or GFA staff.
Some CC pastors/staff have made blog comments about GFA. I invite others to do so as well. If you are reading and pastor at a CC, consider leaving a comment about GFA with your name and church. If you support GFA, chime in and say why. If you have changed your view, then leave a comment to that effect. Given what has been revealed about GFA’s dealings, I think it would be hard for a church to do nothing. A review of the issues is in order no matter where you eventually land.
Tag: Calvary Chapel
Gospel for Asia to Calvary Chapels in 2014: We Are Just Like You
As facts have emerged in the United States about Believers’ Church in India, Gospel for Asia leaders have scrambled to respond to worries that Believers’ Church is not evangelical. In 2014, Believers’ Church worked on a response to questions coming from within Calvary Chapels. Historically, this movement has been supportive of GFA financially and otherwise.
Thus, in the summer of 2014, an assistant to K.P. Yohannan drafted a letter under his name and reviewed by top management to address rumors about the governance and practices of Believers’ Church. I have obtained a copy of that letter. My source for the letter does know for certain that it was sent and so I am calling on Calvary Chapel pastors to read this and let me know if such a letter was ever received (remember GFA won’t respond to my questions and haven’t since May).
Even if the letter wasn’t mailed, it contains talking points geared to Calvary Chapel stakeholders being used in the present and provides an insight into GFA’s stance regarding Believers’ Church. Yohannan makes the surprising claim that Believers’ Church practices are similar to Calvary Chapel polity. Recently disclosures regarding ordination rituals (ring/hand kissing), liturgy, and Communion practices cast doubt on the claims that Believers’ Church is thoroughly evangelical.
The letter in a draft form:
Dear ___________,
Greetings to you in the name of our Lord.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. In the recent weeks, a few of our Calvary Chapel pastors and friends told us of some misinformation someone was spreading around, saying K.P. Yohannan and his ministry had become Catholic, etc.
This letter is to say we are not Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or any such denomination in faith or mission. This rumor was originally started by a few Pentecostal brothers who wanted to discredit us for their own gain.
For the sake of the work of the Lord, and to continue the outreach to the most unreached, we had to choose a form of governance that is accepted by the governments in the Asian countries where we work known as “constitutional episcopacy” (this is not the same as an Episcopal church with their , but rather it is the governance of the church). This is exactly what is described in the Calvary Chapel Distinctives book by Pastor Chuck Smith. The church is ruled by episkopos (bishops) and presbyteros (elders).
In order for our pastors to conduct weddings and other legal matters for the church, each one must be licensed by the Magistrate from the judicial system, or be ordained by a bishop of a church within the constitutional episcopacy.
Thus, when we ordain our pastors, sometimes 100 or 200 at a time, the bishop that does the ordination is required to wear a certain attire/uniform and head gear that makes the ceremony authentic, much like is done during a college graduation ceremony here in the west. The wearing of the head gear is only done when he pronounces the statement, “By the authority vested in me, I decree you are now an ordained minister in the church of our Lord.” The wearing of the cap is only for a few minutes during the entire two hour ordination service.
Someone has taken one of these pictures of me in my formal dress as the senior bishop of the church, performing the ordination service. That person is using the picture to try and mislead others by accusing me as Catholic or Orthodox, etc.
We are NOT Catholic, nor are we Episcopalians, nor Anglicans, etc., etc. Rather, we are a Spirit-filled, evangelical church, born out of obedience to Christ’s Great Commission commanded to make disciples in all the world. We are radically evangelical both in our doctrines as well as in our spiritual lives. Please read more information about Believers Church on the page we have on our website.
If you have any further questions, please call me, or you can ask Pastor Skip Heitzig or a host of other Calvary Chapel Pastors that have gone to the mission field with us to teach God’s Word..
Thank you again for taking time to read through this letter. It won’t be long before we stand before Him. Like you, I am longing for that day, for the sake of two billion that wait to hear our Lord’s Name.
For the unreached,
K.P. Yohannan
KPY/sck
Note the appeal to board member Skip Heitzig as a way of addressing concerns with this group. More recently, CC pastor Damian Kyle has been added to the board, probably for similar reasons. Some in the CC world are questioning the practices of Believers’ Church.
The BC liturgy, particularly regarding Communion appears to be dissimilar to what I know of Calvary Chapel. Certainly the ordination service seems more high church than CC. Yohannan has denied he allowed people to kiss his ring. This video seems to contradict that claim. Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfHoh6xMEkM[/youtube]
If you are a CC pastor and you received this letter, please let me know either in the comments section or via email.
Calvary Chapel Pioneer Rebukes K.P. Yohannan's Church Rituals
Last night, Phoenix Preacher posted audio of Bill Gallatin, a pioneer in Calvary Chapel circles, rebuking the hand kissing rituals of Believers’ Church recently brought to light here and by former staff of Gospel for Asia. At the Northeast Senior Pastors Conference going on now in upstate New York, Gallatin said during a speech:
and you got a man in India who says he’s a Calvary Chapel and he’s wearing robes like the pope and he’s even having his own people come up and kiss his hand…and no ones even blinking.
You can hear the full audio at this link (at about 30 minutes in).
Those familiar with Calvary Chapel are telling me that Rev. Gallatin’s statement, while brief, is significant. As this kind of sentiment bubbles to the surface, it makes me wonder how long GFA will remain silent, even in response to donors and supporting churches.
Gospel for Asia Exhibiting at Calvary Chapel Pastors Conference; Any Answers There?
Earlier today, Danny Yohannan (K.P. Yohannan’s son and in leadership at Gospel for Asia) tweeted the following:
#ccspc15 Come by the Gospel for Asia table and get some awesome free materials. #veiloftears #books… https://t.co/rJWNoAf2WT
— Danny Yohannan (@DannyYohannan) July 6, 2015
GFA is exhibiting at the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastors Conference (watch live here). I wonder if GFA will address any of the CC pastors’ questions.
Tomorrow will be two months since GFA told me they would answer no more questions. GFA reps have time to exhibit at this conference but they can’t be bothered to address other matters such as:
- Why GFA leaders prevailed upon their own students to carry envelopes of undeclared U.S. cash to India in apparent violation of U.S. law. Thus far, GFA has not apologized for violating their own financial integrity guidelines or requiring students as young as 18 to engage in smurfing of large amounts of cash to India.
- GFA’s audit (conducted by Bland Garvey) failed to disclose three related NGOs which received funds from GFA’s American donors. Furthermore, between $30-50 million of money GFA said went to India in 2013 does not show up in reports submitted to the Indian government.
- Another question I hope someone from GFA will address is why there is a massive surplus of funds being stored in Indian banks.
- Perhaps leaders at the exhibit table could address why K.P. Yohannan claimed he didn’t allow men being ordained to kiss his ring but a video shows the men kissing his ring.
- An ongoing concern has been the stories of around 100 former staff members who have unresolved problems with GFA. Current turnover in U.S. staff should be a red flag to any supporter. Reports are now that few students are returning to the School of Discipleship for a second year.
- Maybe GFA reps could also say why GFA–India did not disclose to the Indian government the amount of money given to GFA–India by Canadian donors.
In addition to the “awesome free materials” perhaps Mr. Yohannan could give some free answers to these questions. If anyone attending the Calvary conference gets any responses, please add that information in the comments or send me an email.
David Barton on Real Life with Jack Hibbs: Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?
David Barton was on Calvary Chapel pastor Jack Hibbs’ show Real Life with Jack Hibbs last night. Part one is available on You Tube with apparently more to come. They didn’t get into much until near the end of this segment. At about 22 minutes into the video, Barton accuses others of using history to support an agenda. Then he illustrates how he revises the work of PhDs in history with original sources by citing his involvement in a 2011 book with Daryl Cornett, William Henard, and John Sassi titled, Christian America? Perspectives on our Religious Heritage. In that book, Daryl Cornett said about the University of Virginia:
At the University of Virginia there was no Christian curriculum and the school had no chaplain.
Barton cited that claim to Jack Hibbs. Watch:
Barton claims to have refuted Cornett by going to an original source. While it is true that the University of Virginia eventually created a chaplain position, this was not the case from the beginning of the school. Originally, UVA did not employ chaplains. Barton doesn’t tell you that scholars are concerned with the founding of the school and no academic historian I am aware of disputes that the school eventually added chaplains.
Barton tells Jack Hibbs that the claim about chaplains and the UVA is made in connection to Jefferson (who died in 1826). In addition, Barton says he has a newspaper from “that era” which contains an ad by the chaplain of UVA. However, what Barton does not tell Jack Hibbs is that Jefferson was long dead before that newspaper article was published in 1837. By not placing the events in proper context, Barton misleads the audience to think the existence of chaplains at UVA came when Thomas Jefferson was alive. Not so.
The claim about chaplains at UVA is also in Barton’s pulled-from-print book The Jefferson Lies and was one Michael Coulter and I addressed in our book Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President. To fully address Barton’s claim and our response to it, I have taken that section from our work on the 2nd edition of the book and made it into a pdf file for review.
Barton’s claim to correct academic historians is stunning. From the pdf, let me take just a bit of what Barton does to James Madison. From Getting Jefferson Right:
Another aspect of the chaplain story bears comment. Barton takes portions of a letter written by James Madison and selectively portrays the quote as an announcement about chaplains. Here again is what Barton quotes [from The Jefferson Lies] from Madison:
By 1829, when the nondenominational reputation of the university had been fully established, James Madison (who became rector of the university after Jefferson’s death in 1826) announced “that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”
Rather than a public announcement or a policy change, Madison wrote those words in a May 1, 1828 letter to Chapman Johnson, one of the members of the university Board of Visitors. The actual quote depicts a completely different meaning than Barton implies. Here is the entire section of the letter, from which Barton lifts his quote. Barton leaves out the words from Madison which are required to understand the meaning. Another unwarranted change Barton makes is to add the word “permanent.” What Barton omitted is in italics below:
I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.
Contrary to Barton’s claim, Madison did not make an announcement in 1828 that permanent provision for religious worship would be made by clergymen. Instead, he told one of the university board members his hope that parents and students would voluntarily secure clergymen to provide religious services if so desired by the parents and students. Indeed, reading the entire letter, Madison’s view was that such instruction should come in this voluntary manner rather than having it come via the hiring of members of the clergy to teach.vii Such an arrangement would preserve the independence of the school from religious entanglements and disputes while respecting the free exercise of religion. Barton’s selective quotation of a primary source obscures Madison’s meaning and adds a revised one he apparently prefers.
Obviously, Barton is the one doing the revising. Barton said Madison wrote this:
“that [permanent] provision for religious instruction and observance among the students would be made by…services of clergymen.”
However, James Madison actually wrote this:
I have indulged more particularly the hope, that provision for religious instruction and observances among the Students, would be made by themselves or their Parents & Guardians, each contributing to a fund to be applied, in remunerating the services of Clergymen, of denominations, corresponding with the preference of the contributors. Small contributions would suffice, and the arrangement would become more & more efficient & adequate, as the Students become more numerous; whilst being altogether voluntary, it would interfere neither with the characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated principle of the law, nor the spirit of the Country.
I hope it is obvious that the import of this is not about when UVA had chaplains. It is about credibility and what appears to be an intent to mislead people.
I have images of the Globe newspaper Barton referred to. Barton touts his original documents but I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t get via an historical data base. The letter was in an 1837 edition but wasn’t an ad to get students to come to UVA.
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To read the segment on chaplains at UVA, click Did the University of Virginia Have Chaplains?