Quote
Rensil

I presume in case new people found out and wanted to leave) as "perhaps the biggest test to come against the church and in that test, some people went down" i.e. they left the church, including someone she valued greatly who assisted her in leadership.

So Mrs Black was saying that God was testing the church and its members. And a sign of passing that test was whether or not the SMC members stayed after heading the details ?.

And if any SMC member chose to leave ( in disgust on presumes ) it was their fault for not having the "faith" to see it through ? They were clearly weak and not committed enough ?

Its almost as if no transgression by a leader would ever constitute a valid enough reason for any SMC member to leave.

In other words god was testing how loyal the congregation was to its leadership. COME WHAT MAY.

quote

So Mrs Black was saying that God was testing the church and its members. And a sign of passing that test was whether or not the SMC members stayed after heading the details ?. [Clive]


wow, that's such a clever spin to put on it if that's what she was doing. Once again it's right back at the congregation. Am not sure if God messes around with us like that but if there was a test it was for Mr Black and if anyone failed the test it was Mr Black.



regarding avoiding pentecostalism in general, I wouldn't say that I am, there's another local pentecostal church that I enjoy visiting very much. I've simply decided to commit to the church I've been going to recently which isn't pentecostal. In fact it has no denomination ,but the teaching is bible based and makes sense to me and I feel at home there with the people. A safe place to try to figure things out :)

Just to clarify things
When I referred to Mary Black, she was Mr Hugh Black's daughter, so she was Miss Black, and NOT Mrs Black. Miss Mary Black took over main leadership of SMC after her father passed away and led it until her untimely death in 2004.

I am not kidding with what I posted previously - that is what she said and that is what we were taught. Yes, we were told several times that it was a test and some people went down and left the church. People who remained were those who passed the test and remained loyal to the church and to the leaders. Of course, this teaching was a way of keeping us because, who wants to be one who failed and went down? Very clever and very subtle. I was taken in with it myself - that's why I and many others didnt leave then.

Hi Everyone. I have been reading all the recent posts with interest. What a lively debate over the nature of leadership in SMC. One theme which keeps recurring is the abuse of power. Power defined as the ability to influence the behaviour of others. Power also known as authority is known to be corrupting especially within SMC. The leaders are mistaking God's authority for their own. The paradox of power is that the very traits that leaders acquire in order to lead often desert them when in a positon of absolute power. So instead of being sympathetic, honest, strong and true. The powerful, demand complete unquestioning obedience, believing every judgement they utter comes from God ( not true it is of human origin) This makes them become arrogant, reckless, intolerant, unsympathetic and rude. As the saying goes "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
As CBarb says on 5/9/12 post a form of mind control is practised by those who believe they have been anointed by God. This amplified is by the almost mass hysteria of the group dynamics of praying in tongues. When individuals believe that they have power and authority and that they can do whatever they want believing they are being guided by God, they then have no consequences for their actions and this becomes corrupting. They are actually making decisions based on their own opinions not God's word and do not value others opinions. The fact that people on this forum have been denounced as lesbians , had there marriages and families broken and been emotionally abused by leaders of SMC is testiment to the abuse of authority.

I have heard of one of the leaders of SMC, who is often mentioned in this forum, in another capacity and she is known for being quite manipulating and calculating in that role too.
Peace to all

Quote
Rensil
Just to clarify things
When I referred to Mary Black, she was Mr Hugh Black's daughter, so she was Miss Black, and NOT Mrs Black. Miss Mary Black took over main leadership of SMC after her father passed away and led it until her untimely death in 2004.

I am not kidding with what I posted previously - that is what she said and that is what we were taught. Yes, we were told several times that it was a test and some people went down and left the church. People who remained were those who passed the test and remained loyal to the church and to the leaders. Of course, this teaching was a way of keeping us because, who wants to be one who failed and went down? Very clever and very subtle. I was taken in with it myself - that's why I and many others didnt leave then.

Wow,

And there was me wondering if maybe i'd overstepped the mark and misinterpreted out of context or mis-framed the things reported here about Mary Black's speech at that time !

Simply beggars belief.

Quote: And there was me wondering if maybe i'd overstepped the mark and misinterpreted out of context or mis-framed the things reported here about Mary Black's speech at that time !


Hi Clive

Fear not, many of your observations have actually been quite spot on! And your ability to read between the lines is quite astute at times. I have often found myself having eureka moments when reading your posts.

The abuse of power in SMC is absolute and very scary especially when you know that these people are running a school for children with young and pliable minds. I don't believe the organisation or the teachers in the school are worthy of this most important of responsibilities. And despite some people thinking that SMC teachings will not be perpetuated in the school, I believe this is a most dangerous place for any child to be. Considering the mind control and manipulation is widespread throughout the organisation among the adults, how much easier it must be for them to manipulate the minds of young children.

The claims that are made of being 'annointed' and 'all seeing' are akin to the claims made by mediums and spiritualists all over the world. I'm no mind reader but I do know that not everyone who claims to 'know things' is to be believed and SMC teach strongly against any of this, denouncing it as the 'devil's work' but they claim to be able to do these things themsleves? That, therefore means that they too are evil and doing the devil's work, does it not?

Someone (yourself,Clive I think) posted, not so long ago, that you would want to see absolute proof of what is being claimed with regards to healing etc. I too would think that this would be forthcoming and, in fact necessary, to back up these claims. As I've said before, I know my Mum has been healed because I've seen the evidence with my own eyes but we had private family prayers with her around her bed, Mr. Black was also there but I don't believe he facilitated the healing; I actually think that came through my Dad because he was actually 'shining' as we prayed - no joke!

Having said that, I recently watched a program about three old ladies who claimed to be mediums and danced around in quite a silly way to try and rid a house of a ghost. I know it sounds silly but one of the camera men had a particularly bad back complaint and one of these women began praying for him and waving her hands around his back... they were using a thermal image camera during part of this ritual and there was a visible black mass which travelled down the spine of the camera man, following the woman's hands and it could clearly be seen that she was pulling the mass OUT of his back and into her hands. As she walked away, the blackness, which looked just like thick black smoke, remained in her hands as she walked into a different room and dusted her hands together, the black smoke just broke up and drifted away. Now the camera man, in interview later, claimed that he had never had any problems with his back since.

Of course I know that camera tricks are used constantly in films and programs about this sort of thing but, if it was indeed true, then the proof was very visible to all who watched the thernal images and I agree that, where people claim to have these kinds of powers, then there ought to be complete and absolute proof that something out of the ordinary or supernatural has happened.

Someone else (sorry I can't remember who) made reference to people's faith being under question if their complaints returned and being told that they obviously didn't believe enough or needed more deliverance. This sticks right in the middle of my craw because when Jesus healed people they were healed absolutely and completely and with absolutely no doubt about their healing. Lazarus rose from the dead, the blind man saw and the lame man jumped out of his bed; you don't hear of Jesus telling them that their afflictions would come back again if they didn't have faith.

SMC is a dangerous environment for anyone especially for the kids in Cedars and, like others here, I would like to know why there are so many heads of department when there are no staff under them? This is obviously to line their pockets with larger salaries than a normal teacher would receive and who pays their salaries? Does all of their salary come from the members of the church, or are they subsidised by the Government because they are a charity? This raises another three questions in my mind:

1. Many of the present congregation are struggling with money worries themselves, so why are they paying these inflated salaries to the same two families in a 'charitable' organisation?

2. If they are being subsidised by Government funding then why are the congregation paying for any of it at all?

3. If they are such godly and holy people why are they contributing to and compounding the congregations' financial worries. Surely they should be helping the members of the church to avoid financial disaster by reducing their own demands on their already strained purses?

I think the teachers in Cedars have a very cushy number going and it must be very hard for the members of the church, who are less well off, to be able to reconcile this with the teachings of the Bible, where we are told that we should give even the shirt off our backs to someone more needy than ourselves.

None of what SMC teaches makes any sense at all when put beside the true Word of God; except in the context of being wary of false prophets and that is what the leaders of the church truly are - false prophets and charlattans! They are the ones who ought to be shunned, they are quite outrageous and disgusting!

As always, Biiiiig love and God bless xxxx

to clarify

my reference to 'spin' was in relation to Miss Black's interpretation of events, not Clive's

Why is no one from Struthers strong enough to even attempt a reply to anything on this forum? So many chances given to them.

It is an absolute disgrace what is and has been going on for years(OVER 30 IN MY EXPERIENCE). It is despicable what has happened to people from all walks of life because of their genuine desire to walk a Christian life.

I hope people who read this forum realise the dangers and the truths. In a court of Law Struthers (leaders past and present) would not survive.

I hope parents of pupils in the school question the safety of their children from the clutches of the Church.(OUTREACH)

I hope that the congregation starts / continues to wonder where their hard earned money is going. Paying other congregation members salaries in the "school" and shops- that`s where. Thank God , He gave us intelligence, free will and and a freedom to question. No leader in Struthers ever answered questions. We were not allowed to ask.
Delusions of authority, importance and absolute corruption have caused unnecessary hardship in many lives.

I hope people from the education authorities read this and wonder what is happening in Cedars school. They are basically making money out of people (not necessarily Struthers parents ) and the children are being used as pawns in their BIG game. So are the congregations being used? Does any of our posters Know anything about the Houses (communes) where people live and rent out their own houses to make even MORE MONEY?

Hi guys

quote: In a court of Law Struthers (leaders past and present) would not survive

To a certain extent I agree, lintar123, but not all of the past leaders should be called into question since some of them left because they could no longer agree with what the main leaders were teaching and, when they questioned the way things were heading, they were severly admonished and even had the main leaders turn up at some of their meetings to 'bring them back to heel' (usually Mr. Black and his daughters) especially if they were being funny during sermons. This was considered unholy and frivilous by the main leaders because they believed that sermons should be full of warnings and calls to self-flagellation and SMC is no joke (in every sense of those words). The leaders who left were approachable and did use Biblical references and teaching when answering the questions of their congregations and none of those leaders (all of them male) claimed to be in any way 'annointed' or holier than their flocks. I'm reminded here not just of my Dad's time on Port Glasgow pulpit but also Hugh McConnachie and Johnny Hamilton and others who were very down to earth and approachable leaders; I think there were others too whose names I, sadly, forget. These were the young men who were 'being too funny' and therefore un-holy (referred to in at least one sermon documented on the Latigo site). I believe that the loss of these normal and healthy preachers sent SMC on a complete down-ward spiral into the doom and gloom of the jumped-up old maids and interfering busy bodies who occupy the pulpits today. These were also the young men who questioned the SMC teachings against what is written in the Bible but were cut down severely and then bad-mouthed from the Greenock platform behind their backs.

Strangley, the more I cast my mind back the more I have come to realise that the claims of 'annointings' and special discernment seem to come from the women leaders rather than males. I don't remember Mr. Black ever claiming to be annointed or able to 'see' things but I do remember Miss Taylor's rants about passing on the 'mantle' to this one and that one who were all female and in the teaching profession. Perhaps I'm wrong about that and no doubt someone will tell me if I am but I really don't remember any male leaders claiming to have any special 'God given' powers but of course most of the male leaders have been shunned by SMC and moved on to different ministries where they continued to do God's work with other congregations in healthy, growing churches.

I'm also reminded of Saturday clubs which were run for outreach to young follk in the local areas of some of the branches (with male leaders) and I wonder if these clubs still exist today. I'm not talking about meetings and services for young folk but the Saturday afternoons of games and trips to the swimming pool in Paisley, canoeing in Castle Semple Loch and the social nights where the kids put on plays for the parents etc. Does anyone know if these types of youth outreach still exist today?

Certainly, the Port Glasgow branch of the church had quite a large youth population in those days and we had fun as well as being taught proper Bible studies. I remember that we would be given a verse or two from the Bible which we had to memorise and then we would discuss the verse(s) in the next Bible study and what we thought they meant to our lives today, these were very lively and informative debates and we weren't told to just accept what the leaders said about the verses but were encouraged to bring our own views and experiences to discussions. Many of the kids could eventually recite whole chapters of the Bible without even looking at the words and were encouraged to ask questions about things they didn't understand. The idea of NOT questioning the leadership came originally from Greenock and I think it was because the more healthy leaders were encouraging their congregations to ask questions that they were eventually drummed off their platforms by the Dictatorship that was the Greenock church. Once these young men (not so young now) left SMC the church also lost the only balancing influence they had and numbers of the various congregations began to decline rapidly in the years which followed.

I've said before that there was a specific and distinct point in time when the whole atmosphere of Greenock changed and became very opressive (I think Miss Taylor was beginning to go off her rocker at that time). Saturday night meetings which previously had been about an hour long began to drag out to two and three hours or more of ranting and raving from the platform about the iniquities of the people sitting on the pews. I also remember one Satuday night when my brother, who was about 8 at the time, fell asleep during a meeting and he fell right through the back of the pew and onto the floor at the feet of the folks in the pew behind. The guys couldn't help but have a giggle over it and they were chastised so sternly from the platform that my brother ended up crying most of the night because he thought God would punnish him for falling asleep!

Fortunately my parents are normal people and they spent a lot of time reassuring my brother that God loved him even when he fell asleep. I believe my Dad (knowing him as I do) probably had a few words to say to Miss Taylor about her treatment of my brother and the guys who laughed. However, after that my Dad told us that we should try to listen as much as we could and take, from these long sermons, whatever we thought related to us and just ignore the rest. It shocked me at the time because Dad had never said anything like that before to us but it was also reassuring to know that it was OK for us not to take everything that was said as Gospel truth and he encouraged us to debate and ask questions and he did his best to answer our questions and discuss the Bible with us. After that day I began to realsie that it's OK to question a human being about what they are preaching to me and that I don't have to just believe because they say they are 'annointed' and questioning them is akin to questioning God.

Unfortunately many of the people who post here haven't had the balanced view that we were lucky enough to have back in those days. I'm not saying that the teachings coming out of Greenock were better back then but the teachings in most of the outlying branches gave a healthy balance then which is sadly lacking since these ministers have left SMC - the old maids and busy-bodies now have full sway and a complete monopoly over the ears of all of the remaining congregations and it seems that megalomania rules among SMC leaders now. They don't want to be questioned about their teachings because they have no grounding in what the Bible teaches and they therefore do not have any real answers to the questions their congregations have. They can't justify what they say from the platform in Biblical terms so they therefore refuse to answer questions or blame the questioner for not having faith or being posessed by demons because they dare to question 'God's annointed'.

The 'spin' put on the shares fiasco by Mary Black is to be expected from SMC because they justify everything that goes wrong as a 'test' of the congregations' faith and that way they don't feel obliged to explain any wrong-doings in either earthly or Biblical contexts. It also makes it easier for them to denounce those who disagree as having 'failed' the test. They are probably right now using this site and the Latigo site as yet another 'test' of the faithfulness of the remaining members and no doubt those who are leaving now will be getting denounced from the platforms as being faithless and demon possessed. It's sad and as far from the truth as it's possible to be but I've no doubt that's exactly what's happening. This is why we are not seeing any posts from Pro-SMCers because they are being told that their faith should allow them to completely ignore what we are saying. I've no doubt at all in my mind that we are all being branded as satanic and demon possessed right now but we know we are right and we deserve to be treated as intelligent healthy adults. Unfortunately SMCers are a bit like lemmings and if the leader jumps off the White Cliffs of Dover the congregation will blindly follow.

God willing though more people will begin to wake up and realise that they are not being taught God's Word from the Bible but only the rants and raves of some very disturbed and manipulative people who are drunk on too much power over their fellow human beings. You only have to listen to the sermons to realise that they never make any sense and are full of contradictions and, very often, just plain rubbish which the speaker has made up in order to 'prove' a particular point which never seems to be very clear to begin with. After listening to, or reading, a sermon from SMC, I'm always left with more questions than answers.

God bless and biiig hugs to all xxxx

PS. If there is any demon possession in SMC I'm quite convinced it will be in the leaders and not the congregation.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2012 08:55PM by cbarb.

Quote
cbarb

"The claims that are made of being 'annointed' and 'all seeing' are akin to the claims made by mediums and spiritualists all over the world. I'm no mind reader but I do know that not everyone who claims to 'know things' is to be believed and SMC teach strongly against any of this, denouncing it as the 'devil's work'"

I agree, cbarb, with what you posted (above) re mediums and spiritualists, but can I again say that I believe there is a genuine gift of the Spirit which allows anointed people to "see things" and also prophesy things to a person and there is the gift of discerning of spirits which is clearly outlined in the Bible. So in case there's a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath-water and saying that all spiritual experiences are wrong and suspect, I just wanted to give my views. I know that not all the readers/contributors on this Forum are Christians, but many of us are and we follow the teachings of the Bible. How these gifts operate in SMC and how accurate and genuine they are, I do not know for certain, but I do know that a lot of mistakes have been made by the leaders and many hurts caused as a result. Where you get control and manipulation, then you are likely to get a misuse of the gifts.

Yes, there is something amiss when it's only, or mostly the female leaders who operate in these gifts. The only man I've known who did operate in them was Owen Martin who ran the Bridge of Weir church. You're right, the men seem to get shunned and held down.

That was interesting what you wrote about the past male leaders and how their humour and funny stories were frowned upon. I remember hearing your dad. By the way, I thought that leaders spying on small meetings was a recent thing; I see you are saying it happened way back years ago! They definitely lost a lot of good people from the church by setting out these rules and forbiddding humour. No wonder so many got depressed if that's what we were being told: Don't laugh. But, explain this: if you listen to the podcasts, there is a current leader who tells funny stories and gets lots of laughs. How does that fit in then?

There certainly seems to have been a big change at the point when Miss Taylor took complete charge. I think lintar123 is referring to the main leaders since then, when she says the leaders wouldn't stand in a court of law. The youth outreaches on Saturdays with fun activities, I have never heard of and never known such. They must have been stopped. There used to be occasional Barbecues or outings but they were for Sunday School kids. I know SMC hold Youth Weekends in Greenock every few months, because a friend's children used to attend them, when the kids stay overnight in the School or at Cedars house and go to the meetings. On Saturdays they have outings and activities. That's the only stuff I know of. These were for church kids though, not kids outwith the church.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2012 04:25AM by Rensil.