Dear Reader:
Some of you are wondering if I’m the same Mike Phillips that used to post at both theopengates.com and natomaschurch.wordpress.com.
I am.
I owned both of those sites and this one, as well as my business site mikephillipsministry.com. I have decided to move in a different direction and I’m consolidating all the blogs to this one.
This blog will continue to promote the following three concepts:
1. The dangers of Patriarchy and the exciting possibilities as we enter a new era of gender cooperation.
2. Concepts related to counseling and protecting victims of abuse
3. The beauty of God’s image stamped in each person, and what that implies regarding violence and pacifism.
I believe these three concepts have not been given enough notice in today’s church. Oh yes, there have been crusaders for all three–valiant people all–who have toiled away among God’s family, telling us about these things happening. But now is the day when prophetic and justice-minded people are standing up in the center of churches to say “Listen Carefully”.
Thus, this blog.
ah, that explains it… i just found this blog today… and I saw the 10 year gap on this blog and wondered if you had just refound your voice or what.. I’m not familiar with your other blogs and if these are similar topics to what you posted on those, but very thankful to have found this and very thankful you are being very forthright in addressing these abuse of power issues that have been ignored/silenced/hidden for decades… it is exactly what I’m addressing in the denom I’m a part of… in the process of bringing a proposal to get the issue of abuse of power on the table for discussion at the regional and denominational levels… it’s on the agenda for the regional gathering and then after that gathering, it can be submitted for the denominational gathering agenda… Bless your heart!
Yes, I produced about 300 blog entries at each of the other blogs…I will bring some of them over slowly. I was trying to have each blog dedicated to a different focus. And that just got too tedious with my speaking and counseling.
Most denominations now are having to wrestle with the realities of abuse by clergy. This topic will grow in size in the days to come.
It’s been amazing watching this all come out since early October… October 1 was the actual date I started processing the possibility of the proposal… and asked God for confirmations to confirm that was what He was asking me to do… I have never had anything confirmed this powerfully or frequently… the sad part, is the world is responding better than the Church… don’t get me wrong, I’m very, very grateful for the response of gov’t and many others in society has been amazing, but what I have found so far from Church leadership, if not outright resistance and retaliation, is a very loud silence…
The evangelical church especially has this pride thing. We have believed we are above such stuff. We look at Catholics, cults, mainline denoms, etc. and say to ourselves “At least it’s not us”. But from my experiences, evangelicals and charismatics attract narcissists just as much as everyone else. And now it is all coming out. If the church doesn’t handle these things with great fervor against the abusers and grace and care toward the victims, the church buildings are all going to empty out.