For all the talk today in the Sunday morning service in Graham by M.C. Kekel (yes, I watched the whole thing) as he preached and lauded the dads in the congregation on this Father's Day, my mind immediately went back to 2004/2005:
It was a regular Saturday morning soul-winning meeting with the lay pastors and all of us in their groups. We were getting a pep talk from Mike Kekel before heading out to follow up on people for church and/or find new places to go to invite folks out.
A young man named Chris Fears and his wife were sitting to my left. When it came to the point in the meeting where Kekel asked if anyone needed a soul-winning partner – Sister Fears stood, along with several others. This left Kekel befuddled because her husband was sitting right next to her. Why in the world did she need a partner?
Chris had to explain…..in front of everyone….how that he needed to go home to work on his car because it wasn’t working. Kekel upbraided this man to what I thought was a ridiculous degree. I was highly agitated at what I witnessed that morning and I could tell many others were uncomfortable as well. Not only for the sake of the Fears, but also because you never knew if you would be next in the hot seat. It was extremely difficult to watch. They were crestfallen. Was the god they served this uncaring?
Here was a man who had a brand new small baby ---a new father. The baby needed to be in a car seat and he and his wife had to ask permission to get a ride with another brother so as to get back and forth to church, work, the grocery store, etc. This put them out and whoever they had to ask to help them as well.
Kekel had the audacity to question this man’s faith and devotion to God as both a Christian and a minister based on the fact that he wanted to go home to take care of his car and in turn take care of his family. Wasn't his soul worth caring for as well? Why couldn't Kekel scrape up even a modicum of empathy for this couple and realize the amount of stress they must've been under? It was outrageous and there were those who had the guts to mention it after the meeting. I held my outrage to myself. Kekel wasn’t the one who had to bum rides from others and shuttle his little baby around with a car seat and also burden someone else in the process.
This was the culture of NTCC !!! This was R.W. Davis !!! As Olson always taught and preached: the organization is R.W. Davis.
The baton was passed to Kekel and he not only learned how to humiliate good, decent people just as his father-in-law had always done but he did it with the same uncaring righteous indignation.
Happy Father's Day to you Brother Fears....wherever you are. I hope you and your family are well and far away from this group of authoritarians.
How dare they laud dads in their services today.
What would have been far more appropriate is for apologies to be issued to all of the fathers who had ever passed through the doors of that place and who were constantly denigrated in the name of god.
Happy are the fathers who escaped this group. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment