FORMER CHRISTIAN SCHOOL TEACHER ACCUSED OF MOLESTING BOYS Washington Examiner February 4th, 2013 by Scott McCabe staff crime reporter A former youth worker and teacher at a Christian school in Gaithersburg has been charged with molesting teenage boys during the 1980s and '90s. Nathaniel Morales, 55, has been indicted in Montgomery County Circuit Court on 10 counts of sexually
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MARYLAND CHURCH MEMBER ACCUSED MOLESTATION By ERIC TUCKER The Associated Press WASHINGTON — A Las Vegas man has been charged in Maryland with molesting multiple boys in the 1980s while assisting with youth ministries at a church targeted in a child sex abuse lawsuit. Nathaniel Morales, who had been working as a pastor in Nevada, is accused in an indictment of sexually abusing the b
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HOW TO RECOGNIZE A PEDOPHILE In the early days when our PDI church met in rented spaces, a guy took it upon himself to rent a big-screen TV and set it up in a community center for a church Super Bowl party. The church itself did not host the party, but most members came, and it evolved into a yearly affair with a chili contest. If they censored commercials, I don’t remember, but that was bef
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MOLESTED AT AGE 13 AT AN SGM SUPERBOWL PARTY I’m just going to share a little story and some minor commentary at the end. One Superbowl Sunday, I was at a prominent SGM (then PDI) member’s house. There were dozens of others in attendance, lots of teens and younger adults. Remote controlling and commercial censoring were in full effect, snacks were in abundance, and everything was so bibli
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CHAD MAHANEY - Did he smoke pot? Was he treated different? "In case anyone is wondering, I’m not censoring comments about Chad Mahaney any more. For awhile, I’d felt bad for him, particularly when he was still in high school and trying to make his way into adulthood. The stories swirling around about his pot use were rather nebulous. While it appeared that numerous people were aware
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Charismatic Leader Explains Corporal Punishment Abuse Charge Charimsa Magazine by Steve Strang January 24, 2013 Larry Tomczak, an early leader in the charismatic movement, told Charisma Wednesday that charges he used abusive corporal punishment are “baseless” and he will be vindicated once this case works its way through the legal system. Tomczak had been named as one of several defend
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Sovereign Grace Ministries: Courts Shouldn't 'Second-Guess' Pastoral Counseling of Sex Abuse Victims Legal observers question whether clergy-penitent privilege applies to denomination accused of covering up crimes. Christianity Today Bobby Ross Jr. In response to a civil lawsuit alleging that it covered up numerous cases of child sexual abuse, Sovereign Grace Ministri
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LARRY TOMCZAk / RICE BROOCKS CONNECTION Pastor Larry Tomczak greets members before the start of services at Bethel World Outreach Center at the Franklin YMCA in Franklin Sunday, July 15, 2007. / Sanford Myers / The Tennessean / photo
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Franklin pastor accused of abuse in lawsuit Nashville Tennessean By Bob Smietana A Franklin pastor known for promoting corporal punishment has been accused of physically abusing a woman for 25 years, beginning during her childhood. The Rev. Larry Tomczak, an associate pastor at Bethel World Outreach Church in southern Davidson County near Brentwood, was named in a Maryland lawsuit filed a
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TERRY AND IN THE NICK OF TIME ADDRESS SGM'S TREATMENT OF TOM WILKINS In 2007, I was having lunch with my pastor and my dear dear friend Tom Wilkins (Senior pastor of CoG at the time and who attended SGM PC). I told him then (long before any of this began), that I felt God had a message for him that I was supposed to deliver…I do have discernment but never felt led to “deliver a messag
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SECOND MEFFERD INTERVIEW - BILL O'NEIL
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WOW'S STORY I haven’t revealed much of my story, and it doesn’t warrant the horror of the sexual abuse victims involved in the lawsuit. However, I read and understand exactly how and why parents accepted the church’s stance on these abuses, because I did the same thing in a different way. When we came to SGM (then PDI, the original), my husband was caught up in living a very ung
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LARRY TOMCZAK FAMILY MEMBER RESPONDS TO THE BLOGS To whoever writes these articles… I am a member of Larry Tomczak’s family and we left a long time ago from SGM. We were the pioneers of leaving SGM. Please post something that is correct. No offense but it makes me sad that you have to post things that are not any longer true. I would also like you to respect everyone even if they are wr
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PIA HUGO'S STORY I have been reading this whole thread with interest but I didn’t feel led to respond to any of the posts till I read this one by Kindred Spirit (#402). It said: “I believe that 40 years later, we are coming to terms with the fruit of these zealous efforts and often misdirected foci that the previous generation developed as our legacy. Unfortunately, the previous gen
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Child Abuse Lawsuit Against Sovereign Grace Ministries Adds Names and Charges Lawsuit adds five plaintiffs, seeks class-action status. SGM 'asks for patience' while it investigates claims. Jeremy Weber January 15, 2013 The pending child abuse lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) has been amended, adding five new plaintiffs, five defendants, and 28 charges. The
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Sovereign Grace: More allege church hid sex abuse January 15, 2013 LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Five people have joined a Maryland lawsuit that claims a Kentucky-based evangelical church group covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children and failed to alert police and shield children from known sexual predators. Sex scandal: Church turned deaf ear to alleged abuse Sovereign Grace ac
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Suit Accuses Sovereign Grace Ministries of Covering Up Alleged Child Sexual Abuse Washington Post By Michelle Boorstein January 15 A Montgomery County Circuit Court lawsuit accuses past and current leaders of a 100-church evangelical denomination of covering up sexual abuse of minors, forcing small children to “forgive” abusers and ostracizing families who wouldn’t hide the alleged crim
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FREE TO SEEK THE TRUTH'S STORY y wife worked a job. The dirty looks, the ugly comments to me and my wife by SGM people who supposedly cared for us was nothing more than passing judgement (pure legalism). I cant tell you the pain these interactions had on both of us and ultimately had on our relationship. My caregroup leader took the opportunity to call me out in front of my wi
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New abuse allegations target co-founder, others at Sovereign Grace Ministries Courier Journal January 14th, 2013 by Peter Smith A lawsuit against a Louisville-based denomination has added new allegations that ministers not only covered up the physical and sexual abuse of members but in some cases were abusers themselves. The lawsuit accuses a co-founder of Sovereign Grace Ministries,
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FREE TO SEEK THE TRUTH'S STORY My wife worked a job. The dirty looks, the ugly comments to me and my wife by SGM people who supposedly cared for us was nothing more than passing judgement (pure legalism). I cant tell you the pain these interactions had on both of us and ultimately had on our relationship. My caregroup leader took the opportunity to call me out in front of my w
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RADICALLY SAVED'S DESCRIPTION OF DATE NIGHT IN SGM Let me give you a quick, easy example of how this culture of confrontation plays out in a werid way. Date Nights. We were taught at CLC to have a routine date night (nothing wrong there) but that the main purpose was to help one another grow -- as men we were taught to draw out our spouse’s perspective on any sin areas, and where do
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JUST SAYING'S RESPONSE TO CRITICISM OF THE BLOGS For decades, people like those on these blogs have been in your care groups suffering in silence. Secretly, they’ve been threatened, coerced, manipulated and shunned by pastors behind closed doors. Those pastors freely slandered them behind their backs. If they breathed a word, they were called divisive. It affected their marriages, the
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STUNNED'S STORY The SGM machine has done so much damage to people and families. Then and now. It is too late to save my children the lives they had. But it isn’t too late to speak out for the sake of other children. I was one of those wives who was told by her SGM church that she would be in horrible sin to leave her horrific, hellish marriage. I remember my two small children
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CONTROVERSY FOLLOWS CALVINIST GROUP Sovereign Grace Ministries, which recently moved from Maryland to Kentucky to rebuild a fractured network and strengthen ties with Southern Seminary, is now in the news for allegedly covering up allegations of child sexual abuse committed by church members. By Bob Allen A controversial church-planting network with ties to a Southern Baptist Conventio
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Troubled ministry Lawsuit claims leaders at Sovereign Grace Ministries covered up sexual abuse World Magazine by Thomas Kidd Troubles continue to mount for Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), an evangelical association with about 90 churches and 28,000 members worldwide. The SGM board of directors reinstated the ministry’s founder, C.J. Mahaney, as president of SGM in early 2012 after he took
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Maryland Megachurch Secedes from Sovereign Grace Ministries Christian Post By Jeff Schapiro December 20, 2012 Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., announced Sunday that it is leaving the Sovereign Grace Ministries family of churches after a number of disagreements pertaining to church leadership and direction caused a rift between the two organizations. "For the past 18 months
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FORMER FLAGSHIP CHURCH BREAKS FROM SOVEREIGN GRACE MINISTRIES Louisville Courier Journal December 20th, 2012 by Peter Smith A Maryland megachurch, which was the cradle and flagship of Sovereign Grace Ministries for almost three decades, has become the latest to leave the Louisville-based denomination amid conflicts over its leadership and direction. The decision, approved by 93 percent
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DAVE HARVEY STEPS DOWN FROM THE SOVEREIGN GRACE MINISTRIES LEADERSHIP TEAM I have some news that is now sprinkling our holiday season with an unexpected grace and I’m eager to share it with you. As I’ve been experiencing the care of the elders and reflecting on the way forward, it’s become clear that the connection to my local church, my team, and my family should be prioritized in this
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COVENANT LIFE CHURCH ANNOUNCES DEPARTURE FROM SOVEREIGN GRACE MINISTRIES For the past 18 months, Covenant Life Church has been going through a time of testing which we see as an expression of the Father’s loving discipline. Various circumstances have led us to evaluate ourselves and consider how God is calling us to grow. While we can already see ways in which God has used this experienc
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SGM PASTORS AND THE HOURS THEY KEEP "Regarding SGM pastors and the hours they keep………For my time at CLC, which ended recently, my CLC pastor would never meet with us when it was convenient for us. Every time we met with him, it meant my spouse had to take off from work. And when the clock said 5pm, the CLC/SGM pastor was always in a mighty big rush to wrap up and hit the road for his 10 m
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