Closing Out the Chapter

[steveb (steveb)]

[Because a partial version of the following messages has been posted on the "Community Chapel Gathering" discussion board (and I assume will remain posted and eventually archived there), accompanied by the misleading remarks of a participant who is personally hostile to me, I repost them here in this thread. They are from a posting I made around December 29, 2005, on the "old" FACTNet board, prior to the (so far) unexplained removal or disappearance of all threads that were created before February 1, 2006.]

I've realized over the past year that Community Chapel has become a nearly closed chapter of my life. I don't mean that I don't think about it anymore, but rather that I feel the insecurities and ignorance that made me susceptible to its call in the first place have all been fully eradicated and replaced with a stable and sound understanding of my faith in Jesus Christ and by normal, fully assenting membership in a good church. I'm ready now to completely close the interesting but very weird chapter that contained the Chapel subplot as the central feature in my spiritual life.

For a long time, without explicitly articulating the thought, I saw myself as a recovering Chapelite. I saw nearly every spiritual issue in terms of the way I believed at the Chapel, and felt compelled to explain to other ex-Chapelites (but really primarily to the ex-Chapelite in myself) why the Chapel was so wrong as I uncovered, step-by-step, how the Chapel had built the foundation and edifice that had once seemed so sturdy to me but had in the end been revealed to be so rotten.

[Continued in the next posting...]

[steveb (steveb)]

[...continued from the previous posting]

At first, the Chapel Web site ("Community Chapel Gathering") provided an outlet for me to share these discoveries. In the first year or so that I participated there (late 1998 to late 1999), an air of critical examination of the Chapel's doctrine and practice prevailed. Since then, I have watched in dismay as it has become little more than forum for the very Chapel beliefs and attitudes I increasingly saw the need to be free of.

Under such conditions, participation there, even reading the postings, has become a rather nauseating experience. I realized at least a year ago that I had completely lost respect for the spirituality, intellect, and, in a few cases, even the emotional balance and morality of people who still defend anti-Trinitarianism and Pentecostalism. (I don't refer here to people who may still be members of "Oneness" and Pentecostal churches who hold an unexamined belief in those doctrinal systems, but to those who actively promote and defend anti-Trinitarianism or Pentecostalism.)

Even after that, an occasional posting forced to the surface some issue or another that I had not fully considered, and provided the opportunity to explore the issue and to articulate what I now believe concerning it. However, those occasions have become more and more rare and have been met with more and more malice from other ex-Chapelites when my beliefs turn out to deviate significantly the Chapel party line, especially when it touches the anti-Trinitarianism so deeply ingrained in them.

In short, I've now realized that there's not much value even in reading the CCG board anymore. I think that, for me, its purpose has been fulfilled. I've learned everything I can learn from it. Further, everything I want to say to them or to anybody else about the Chapel is represented in the introductory postings of the Chapel topic and these three threads: Was Community Chapel a Cult? (http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/17610.html?1139164694), Where Did Community Chapel Err? (http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/17671.html?1139070277), and Why is Jesus' deity so important (http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/3/17707.html?1139165993)?

[Continued in the next posting...]

[steveb (steveb)]

[...continued from the previous posting]

The ending of one year and the beginning of another is a good time for this. I've stopped carrying my Chapel baggage and as a result have already stopped reading the Chapel board. It's out of my life. In relation to the Chapel, I am content to have this board on the Internet (which nicely comes up as the second site when "Community Chapel and Bible Training Center" is googled - and CCG doesn't even make the first page!) as my outlet for all Chapel-related thoughts. I plan on continuing to read the postings here and to respond to any that interest me, but I really don't anticipate having anything substantial to add to the thoughts summarized in the four postings I mentioned above. I plan to continue to bump them up to the top every now and then so those who search for Chapel issues on the Web will find them to balance their view of what ex-Chapelites now think about the things they learned and experienced at the Chapel.

May all of you also have a New Year full of blessings in the Lord Jesus Christ!

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