Here is just one of the posts I have posted several times....


Hello everyone y name is Calvin Bontrager, I am first and foremost a believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, as such, I am also a part of His family which means many of us reading right now are related…..Oh I know we don’t all have the same physical blood but it is the same blood that has given us all life.

I am not posting this because I am worried about being listed as a dangerous church. I have been enduring that with grace for the past two years and I am confident that I’m not leading or attending one. I am posting because, although I have not followed the site over the past few years, it was brought to my attention that people were asking questions about me and my role. In that past I have made it a point to keep my head down and mind my own business where WOC was involved. To be clear I am not sure I can help or not but as I read some of your posts I did not see heartless, vindictive evil people trying to destroy things….what I saw was hurt and lots of frustration. I told my wife enough was enough, and given that there seems to be no one left in line to deal with things or who is interested or who thinks there is anything left to deal with at all….. I decided, out of respect for you all and your questions that I would at least let you know that I care and am willing to answer whatever I can. I probably know less than many of you but I can offer my perspectives as a bit of an outsider looking in as well as what I have seen from within.

I realize I am entering the conversation late and have experienced personally very little of your frustrations but if it will help I will try. So far we have maybe gotten off to a bad start and I will take the blame for that…..I had no idea what I was in for when I entered the conversation and I am seeing now I came in a bit overly optimistic….. truly I have been a bit taken back by the indignation and curtness of your responses. I’m not offended I was just not prepared and did not know how little is really know about me and TPC Lebanon. That is my bad! Perhaps I should have entered the conversation earlier but to be honest I did not feel it was my business or place. Anyway, I will do my best to answer most of what I think is on your hearts so far as Lebanon and I am concerned then we can work from there.

Before I start I would like to help you to know me. I grew up in the Church of God Anderson Movement under the leadership of many great men of God like Charles Tarr, Grant Fall, Bob Marvel, Sam Dumbar, David Shrout and others. The Church of God is a conservative Bible believing group that, although a bit dead right now, is full of great people. Our polity within our churches has been fairly commonly a Board and Council structure within the church with congregation voting and the entire deal. Many of our churches in the past six or seven years have been looking for better, more Biblical and effective ways to operate. We are seeing more Elder /Deacon models in the past few years.. I have worked a lot with church bylaws in my years in ministry and have helped church plants and others in developing well rounded healthy and balanced leadership structures. One of the things I noticed upon coming to WOC was that there was much going on in the way the church functioned that was really not quite how the bylaws stated it. This is extremely common within churches, Lebanon is actually one of the few churches that I know of that is constantly evaluating and adjusting our bylaws to truly reflect what we are doing and how we are functioning. In the past few years we have been trying to balance the Biblical models of Elder/Deacon and the more democratic checks and balances of the Board / Council model. We see bylaws as a living document that must provide structure/protection/input and promote the needed freedom required for leaders to lead well.

Anyway, moving on. Upon my graduation from HS I choose to attend college at Vennard College in University Park IA where my grandfather (a free Methodist preacher) and my mother attended. This is where I got my BA Degree in Pastoral Ministries. From there I worked as a youth and music pastor in Medford for 3 years and then 3 years in Kokomo IN. under Ray and Tina Houser. I have been licensed and or ordained in the Church of God for about 20 years and maintain a healthy relationship with them today. Our church although connected with TPC remains a part of the Church of God Movement.

I came to Lebanon Church of God around the fall of 1999 as my first senior pastorate role. This was a crazy experience and has proven a challenging one. At the State level I have served on the youth commission both as a member and as the chairman as well as on the State Board of Church Extension where I ended up being the Chairman oversee all church planting in our district for two years prior to our re-launch.

Over the past 12 years or so our church (which started with 35) has grown in amazing ways. We have seen seasons of amazing fruit and God has blessed….. This has not been without problems….about three years into our ministry our little church was exploding and we decided we needed to move to a larger building. In the middle of this season our fairly new music pastor was caught having an affair with two ladies in our church…. (this was really hard because I had felt Lord was asking me to be patient and let Him provide the right person but I got in a hurry…..after all what could it hurt to hire a music guy?) WOW did I ever find out! Remember I was a green horn young pastor and even though we tried to deal with it openly it was a real mess and we ended up in a thirty thousand foot building with about fifty people who were all trying to figure out what the heck happened….. Over the next two years I dealt openly with the fallout and restoring people, building again and dealing with a huge building with very little help…. I had a skeleton leadership team so I ask the State to place two members on our Board to provide additional accountability and insight. Over the years my parents ended up in Lebanon and my brother saw me working alone and they started helping from Albany….we still did not use them on the board but we worked them hard…. By 2002 or 3 we were growing quickly again.. my brother and his family felt lead to start a mission work in MX. so we teamed up and launched Turning Point Ministries MX…(at that point we considered changing the name of the church to TPC but decided we had just moved and changed to a community name so we decided against it) Today the center in Mexico is called New Beginnings and is a healthy 15 acre facility that is used by churches to see new converts trained to live out their faith. Many church groups have brought teams over the years. The ministry is still overseen by TPC Lebanon.

It was during this season that I first heard of TPC in Marysville. Corey (my brother) was the youth pastor that followed Mike after he resigned at the Edmonds Church of God. I did not know Mike but I did know Corey had a high respect for him. Corey approached WOC about being a part with us in the MX endeavor…..they agreed and donated about 800.00 a month on average out of their missions budget. At one point Corey had considered placing the Mission center under TPCM but he and Mike could not come to terms given that Mike wanted more control over the dealings than Pastor Corey felt the Lord would release him to give. TPCM was gracious and supported without a voice or any control over the next two years while we launched…This was the only money we (or I) have ever received from the church for anything….that I remember….at one time Pastor Jeff wanted to hire me as a consultant and wrote me a two thousand dollar check but I did not feel good about it at all so I returned the check…. My consulting firm was also given a check for 4000 to get some grant writing done….2000 from PNBC and 2000 from UGM but I returned that money as well because this was just after pastor Mike had left and things were weird.
Oops…I got side tracked but someone ask if I had been paid by WOC….The answer is no….The church did ask me to attend the mission trip and bought my ticket…. Mostly when we came up we tried to be a blessing rather than just receiving… we would try to bless students and others with financial gifts from Lebanon.

Anyway, at this point I had never met Mike of Cindy but this crazy youth pastor (Jeff Mores) started annoying me and showing up at my church in the summers with all these kids….For two or three years Jeff Mores started bringing the summer tour kids to Lebanon. The first year I was gone so I did not meet anyone. But the second year God blew me away! I can remember being grumpy about the hassle of the entire deal when I walked into the gym and the Spirit of God hit me like I had never experienced… The kids were just in there worshiping and encouraging one another but God was moving powerfully and I began to weep… It was dark so I did not think I was noticed in the back but one by one God began to send youth back to me with prayers and words and encouragements….. At first I thought who were these kids to pray for me….I was the pastor, we were in the middle of a building expansion, I was the chairman of the state over church planting….what do these kids think they are doing….but God had sent them, they began to speak to me about things that only God could have known. (by the way let me add here that our church has never gone through a split…we have had people leave us at times, especially years ago when we faced the issue with our music pastor but that was long past. We had had a few key leaders leave when our Music Pastor Moved on but nothing drastic. Prior to our re-launch the church was doing fine as fine goes, we were even in a building project and had had the best financial year ever) Maybe Orval’s comments were about the two leadership families that had left I am really unsure.

Anyway, I left the room that night and walked through the building project and remember telling the Lord. Lord I don’t know what that was but if that kind of anointing and fellowship is available I will not go on without it. For several weeks I stewed about what I had experienced and felt in my heart. I felt the Lord stir my heart to contact the pastor of the church (Mike, who I had still never met) and be humble and submit myself to the churches authority and God would show me. If you knew me at all you would know this was a hard request on my life……It was not some weird give up my mind like a robot and let someone decided for me and teach me…… it was a practical and spiritual request of me to shut up and listen to someone else for a while…. My entire life had been predicated to this point on my ideas! I was not a dictator but my personality had always made room for me to get my way and my gifting as a strong decisive leader made me a hard person to say no to. Perhaps this is why God sent me to Mike…. He seemed unaffected by me and had no problem being honest with me. For the first time in my ministry I had someone being honest with me about my issues and things that might be good for me to consider. It was weird I went overboard trying to practice my submission but Mike would never give me clear instruction he would only make suggestions and remind me I needed to seek the Lord and find His purpose for me. This is one of the reasons I have had a very hard time understanding all that has gone on at the church….because my personal interactions with Mike were very different than what others have described. During this time Mike and I developed a good relationship and I began to feel the Lord nudging me to pour into him about some issues…. Particularly in regard to how he was handling several things. It was a bit hard but I was faithful to bring the issues up that I saw. I was particularly concerned that he not push the Lead Apostle stuff. I encouraged him, that if there was teaching that was needed on apostolic gifting and leadership it needed to be done by others and not himself… I encouraged him in his gifts but told him the way he was teaching it and the amount he was pushing it was going to cause trouble. I also told him the Lead Apostle teaching was largely un biblical in the way he was defining it. I disagreed about the entire way the Jackie thing went down and sent Mike a text warning hime that the meeting needed to be cancled or the ajenda changed. This is not to say I was innocent in the dealings because I drove up and attended the meeting giving support to it with my presents and intertaining its validity because the leaders would surely know best. This part is on me! I am sorry and I was wrong to just sit there and go along when I had recieved a warning in my Spirit about it. I guess that has really been my sin as we went along several places.... In my attempt to walk out my humbling I sometimes forgot that I was not only there to learn but I carried a God given calling to be a voice of reason and balance that I to easily laid down. (remember I saw my role as one who was here to receive so I only mentioned issues and did not push) Looking back maybe a little more pushing would have helped but I did not feel I had the right to get to involved. I do not know if it would have helped but I should have been more vocal or at least less supportive of the things I did not feel were right.

Oh yeah I am supposed to be telling the story……. I wrote a very long email to Mike and the Elders, prayed and sent it off. The church and leaders accepted our request and we linked up….we were not sure what that meant but we were excited….. As I said on the outside our church was actually doing fine but we felt the Lord was saying to shut the church down for season and establish leaders. This is a commonly taught church planting practice called a re-birth but we were not trying a new method we were listening to God. We decided together that we would not hold public services until the Lord helped to establish in us humble hearts to lead….Maybe it was me that was the biggest pride issue but we all obeyed together. I remember when we would get together on Sunday nights for our family services…..The first time the Lord ask me to wear a sign around my neck that said pride and preach with it on…. WOW, that was one of the most healing messages for me and the body that I ever spoke and I don’t even remember what I said. The next week he had me sit behind a wall of pride and preach…..what I found was God wanted to heal us by starting with humbling us… For months we just humbled ourselves and prayed, we were completely oblivious to WOC’s issues we just knew God was doing something…. The few times we came up there was so much anticipation and eagerness about what God had been doing we were on cloud nine….we still had no idea that there were issues with anything….even after the sabbatical we knew nothing…..we were excited….Mike and Cindy and the team were full of grace and love toward us…I have never been more blessed nor my life more changed… because my issue was pride …..I was obeying God by working hard listen to advice and be receptive….. remember we were never dealing with theology when we were at WOC…..we were being encourage, planting a church and worshiping and praying together along with dozens of families and leaders that would hang out at their house….. We were truly blessed and inspired and our lives will never be the same….. It was only toward the end of the sabbatical that I began to get wind that Jackie was a rogue leader that was causing trouble. As I did not know Jackie and have dealt with my share of leader issues I had no reason to doubt the validity of the comments and I moved on.

During this time we brought our group to two intensives that I thought were good. There was noting there that I saw, was Biblically off…. I still have the detailed notes. All of it would fall well within the guides of almost any mainstream evangelical Bible believing church. One was on church planting and the other was about finances or missions. I came to several others by myself but after the sabbatical they were never the same. They became anemic and I was unable to listen to the teaching on the Apostolic any more without going crazy….I quit coming to them. The last one I attended I actually brought a guest pastor but I felt the meeting was more harmful to him than helpful….Something was shifting and it was unhealthy. I mentioned it to Mike again but he did not understand…. After the Sabbatical things were never really the same… conversation and teaching turned from outward to increasingly inward. It seemed like the reasons we came to WOC were being lost in a sea of Apostolic confusion……I noticed the leadership was frustrated and the honor was becoming more and more canned. The church was changing and moving a new direction….I desperately tried to pull it back and keep things focused on the Kingdom but by this time it had become all about the attack of others and the evil coming against the church and nothing else could be seen or talked about… I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into… but then I remembered where I was when I came and the great things the Lord had done in me through my connections at WOC and I decided I would just try to stand and be glue where I could and balm where I could. I am not sure how well I have done but I still love Pastor Mike and Cindy, I still love the leaders that are there and have left and my heart is broken beyond measure for those who have been hurt.

It is easy to look back and see all of the “I knew it’s” and the “I told you sos” now but they are of no importance to me. I have counted my reputation as loss before I got to WOC. Yes, I told the Elders not to publicly shame Jackie…. I pleaded with them to face the issues directly and not hide. It is obsurd to hold a meeting like that and at the end of the meeting say, "now we know all of this could quite possibly be innocent BUT... we just thought you should know" We have faced an actual verified case of theft in our church and till this day we have protected that laies reputation and restored her without having any public shammings. This type of dealing is not Biblical and in my opinion.

It was almost the end of Mikes ministry until I even knew there were serious marriage issues, I did not know about Tony Cunningham other than they said he was a guy that used to teach at WOC but they no longer held that all of his doctrine was sound so they distanced themselves from him. Most of what I have found I found out after Mike and Cindy left. Given that Mike put me in charge of PNBC and UGM when he left I began to see a different picture of things as I got more involved.... The problem was, at that point, I only had a position given to me by someone (without authority) who had lost the respect of his leaders and therefore I could do noting to effect any change in any direction. I did push hard and get the church to publish a bit of a public letter about Jackie but even that was modified and extreemly difficult.... and ended up with me being on the outs with some of the leadership... This was a complete supprise to me! I had accepted the positions thinking that everything was diong better and the church was on the mend. I thought there was support for UGM and PNBC but neither was true. When I tried to set a course that would bring correction and clarity to the doctrines that were being taught I was met with "the church has suffered enough loss...." I could see what needed to be done but was powerless to do it. I spent weeks setting out courses of actions, a new teaching plan for PNBC and a redemptive plan to bring help to the church...thinking that was part of my role in UGM...all of which was met with no action, other than trying to maintain damage control.... and move on. There is no blame to be placed here, just a lot of hurt and confused people not knowing what the heck was going on. They were so used to Mike and Cindy doing and carrying every decision no one had a clue how to set a course and just walk it out without fear... FEAR was everywhere.... and lots of painful confusion. I felt like someone caught in a meat grinder and the people caught in the middle were people I really loved.....there is a lot that could be said here but you get the picture.

I do not tell you this to convince you of anything or to seperate myself from Mike and Cindy or WOC, I am as willing as ever to be in relationship with anyone who want's to seek the Lord together. I am however not willing to proceed on their terms but mine. I tell you this so that you will know the truth. Maybe you allready know all of this but the Bible says the truth has power to set you and I free. If the truth had not come out about the issues at WOC I way well be a slave to it today, who knows. And if I go away quietly without addressing all of you maybe you will remain or become a slave to a feeling or a frustration that will hurt you. So I will promise you all the truth…candidly without embellishment of color. To the best of my recollection that is what I have provided with this post. Be sure it is not a complete version given that much has happened but it is the truth.

To answer a few other questions, After receiving questions about our bylaws I decided to review them and make sure they were a good reflection of where we are and what we believe. I believe they are balanced but after all that has happened and some of the points that have been brought up we are reviewing them and are going to be making it easier for the congregation to call a meeting. With any 501c3, if you understand the nature of them, the congregation when in session always has all the power. So we are putting in some new ways to call congregational meetings. We are also prayerfully evaluating all aspects of our bylaws. If any of you would like a copy I can provide that and in the future we hope to have them posted on our web site….

I also have a doctrinal statement that is mine personally that I put together years ago that I can provide but I far prefer open conversation about doctrine and theology than written dogma. Over the years I cringe to think how much my theology has grown and changed. I am quite sure I have preached many times thing that now I would see as false ideas….and I am sure that as careful as I try I will do it again and again as my life with Christ and my faith grow… When we start out as DOGMA we get bit by the DOG but when we walk in grace we receive grace. I am trying to live in grace yet be ready to show myself approved to rightly divide the word of truth.

As far as questions about my education I have already told you I have a BA from Vennard College. I am three classes short of completing my Master in Business Leadership and Management from Liberty University and I hold an HONARARY Doctor of Divinity from Saint Thomas Christian Bible College, which is a nice way of them saying we believe in you…..it really means nothing practically.

Most of my ministry I have tried to pay my own way and not be a burden to the church so I have been bi vocational… In the past two years I have received my highest pay ever from any church and received a blessing of 2400.00 a month plus my health care. All of or pay information in the church is public. I do not believe it wrong to pay a pastor well and encourage churches to do so I just simply have a different calling. I am a cabinet maker/ construction guy/ investor/ business guy….or whatever else I need to be to be available to serve my family and my Lord.

I have been very happily married since 1988 and have four great kids that are doing well, my son is a ministry student at Warner Pacific College in Portland and has a super soft heart toward the Lord.

Our church, with my support, and has recently hired a pastor to lead TPC Lebanon so that I will have time to help work with our church plant in MX, our missions endevors, preach the word to hurting churches, and fulfill the calling we feel to press into the nations with what God has shown us. We are hoping to see God revive the Church of God movement where possible and are believing for UGM (United Global Ministries) This is the ministry Mike and I started to be able to unite bless and support the Body of Christ. I am not sure how it will all look and this is really new territory for us but we are trusting. We are launching some community ministry centers and looking at how to love and support the different parts of the Body. I will not be receiving any compensation from UGM, it is a faith venture and we are trusting that the provision of our businesses will be adequate to sustain us given that Angie (my wife) is a stay at home mom.
I have given PNBC back to the church and resigned off the Board. I had high hopes of re formatting the class structures and moving ahead with it but as many things that I found at WOC they were more broken than I ever imagined.
I do want to start another ministry training school but I do not know if it will happen

I have no plans to be the next Pastor at WOC nor do I think they would ask me, I do think I would be a good fit to clean up the mess but that is one the Lord would take me into kicking and screaming because I have no desire to do it.

Ok, well I am not sure what else to say so I love you and I hope this helps…. If you have any questions please shoot me back…. Also please be kind and try to believe that there is no deception in my heart. If I have answered something in a way that bothers you it is not my intention to hide anything it is simply the way I said it.

I also posted another post on Sunday... I am not avoiding questions I am simply not getting my answers through the system....I would think if some posts are getting to you they all would be

Once again you are making the assumption that I am a liar which is not the case. So If you will look into it I am confident you will find a few posts that have yet to be posted or that there is some tech. problem

Calvin Bontrager:

There are no other pending posts from you at this time.

Whatever you have submitted has been passed through.

As long as you stay within the rules you agreed to before posting here your posts will go through.

There must be a problem at your end, as there is no problem with the board and no other complaints about posts not going through.

[mikevillamor.wordpress.com]



It would appear that Mike is the (self appointed?) head apostle that has been (self trained?)chosen to train apostles that can "raise up" apostles ! Who was it that was saying a while back that they had never heard Mike make such outlandish claims of being an apostle? Mike what were the qualifications you met and can I get a copy of your "certificate of apostleship" ?

Calvin I'm looking at your church web site and I see you have a "4s.pdf"

4s
Four things every new follower of Christ should know

So I open it up and start reading....
............
.........
hey! it's a nice puff piece for X-Pastor Mike Villamor!
Mike is mentioned 12 times in this brochure, and Jesus is mentioned 24 times
Example

Quote

WORDS FROM PASTOR MIKE
Excerpts from the messages on CDs that you will be
receiving each week from your discipler. Each excerpt
corresponds to one of the weeks and sheds a little more
light on that week’s lesson.

For real this is the best you can offer? That is sad.
If your church is healthy then why are you leading people astray with a piece like this?
Calvin, Did you say you here to be honest?
OK
We are asking you to stop with patronizing and being dishonest.

BraveHeart



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2011 08:19AM by BraveHeart.

thanks the last on got through...I posted it three times so I will make sure I am doing it correctly

thank you calvin for posting that long post, as I read it my heart felt bad for you, and glad that you are a principled person. the fact that you who werent at turningpoint in the biginning could see changes in things, and even if at the time you didnt do or say anything, saying them now seems to be the right timing, the fact is if you would have said anything, you too would have been labled a rouge leader. I'm sorry if any of my posts seemed accusing, I was just wanting to hear the truth and its true it set a person free. you mentioned fear, and I had just read the other day how we are no longer slaves to fear, to me following fears directions is following the enemies directions, in the world you can suceed at this for a while but in Gods house it can only lead to distruction. so far you seem to be the only one who has come forth (who hasnt left yet) and speak exactlly how you saw things. the other leaders seem to want to keep things vague and never take responsibility for their fear of standing up. or just stick their heads in the sand and hope it all just goes away.

Well for sure the piece needs to be updated...forget the fact that Mikes name is there and deal with the content .... what do you think about the process that people are being taken through? Actually Mike did not create this document Jeff Moores and some of the youth staff did. When we posted it on the web there were no issues with Pastor Mike that we knew about... I dont do the web site and I had completely forgotten about it. Given the current state of things I will remove it and we will rebuild the piece with some new people and using words from Pastor John or myself... Thaks for the heads up... I had forgotten the piece was still on there in its original form.

well it has been a hard season but even in this I am believing GOD for great things... I will keep praying that every heart is healed and that out of this God brings each of us to a better....stronger....place. I am trying to grow from it and I am sure you are as well. God bless you and if you ever need to chat or have any other questions plese call me I am sure you know how. If any of my actions have hurt you or my lack of assertions were offensive please forgive me...I am truly sorry.

Calvin