I decided to create a personal blog so that the updates on my personal health won’t clog up my ministry blog. My new personal blog where I will update my fight against cancer is here.
This is an update to my transitions post. On August 6th I was scheduled for surgery to remove cancer. The surgery did not happen. At the time that the surgeon came to see me, and before I was wheeled into the operating room, he rechecked the site and he was concerned that cancer might have spread to the skin. If he were right, then surgery would be a risk because the wound may not heal and that would delay the chemotherapy that I need. He consulted with a cancer specialist at a nearby Cancer hospital, and he was advised that the treatment plan should be reversed and after taking a biopsy of the skin lumps, I should have chemotherapy as a first line of attack against the cancer. We have been praying for wisdom for the surgeon and so we must believe that God is involved in the process. The disappointment was that I had waited three weeks to get into surgery and there would be another wait to find an available doctor who could administer chemo. I live in a small community with only one cancer doctor, and the oncologists at the nearby cancer clinic are all booked up with new patients waiting three weeks to get into the system.
Yesterday my family doctor came to the rescue and he got the ball rolling by pulling some strings on my behalf. I will enter the “path” of cancer treatment today with a specially arranged appointment at the hospital with the cancer doctor’s assistant. He will begin the work to stage the cancer to see how far it has gone and get all of my tests and blood work up to date so that the day the cancer doctor comes back from vacation I can be bumped directly into the chemotherapy program without a wait to be processed.
I am experiencing leg pain, and I have a concern that the cancer has already spread to the bone. Or it could just be my sciatic nerve acting up. I am also experiencing tiredness, but this is likely from the new cancer-fighting tea that I was recommended by a friend. The tiredness may just be the way my body is fighting the intruder who has invaded my body. For those who have subscribed to my blog and are following my progress, could you please pray that this aggressive cancer is held back from spreading until I can get treatment to shrink and destroy this cancer? Please also pray for strength as I have much ministry work to do, and I would like to carry on unhindered.
On Friday I was rushed to emergency with abdominal pain and my body had gone into shock with very low blood pressure, a low heart rate, and I was as white as a sheet as I struggled to keep from passing out. The tests showed very high lipase in my blood, ten times the normal high rate. The doctor is not exactly sure what went wrong. It could be my pancreas, but the thought is that it was a withdrawal from the steroids that I was given during the time of my chemo treatment and the days afterward. My prayer request is that God will help the doctor to find out how to manage my drugs so that I do not have a reaction like that again. It was a very scary experience.
All future updates on my health will be at my personal blog called On the Path found here.
In life there are transitions. As Christians, we go through many transitions as we grow in Christ and become all that we can be with His amazing grace. Today I am posting about a new challenge in life that involves an area of transition for me. It is about a struggle…a struggle with cancer that I am facing as I fight for my life.
I have been working on a new DVD project, but in spite of the happiness I have felt by the new project, this past year has been an extremely stressful year. I have faced opposition and persecution from places that I never expected. Yet in the face of strong opposition, God’s grace has brought me through so that I have tremendous peace. However looking back, I understand that prayer support would have helped when my work was hindered and slowed more than it should have been. The body of Christ and the prayer support that we can offer each other was not there during that time because I did not ask for help. It is time for me to ask my friends to lift me up in prayer. I need help.
As I fight my battle for life against an enemy that wants to stop my work, and end my life, if you are inclined to pray for me, I would be very grateful. I have been eighteen years cancer free, but it has come back with a vengeance. It is an aggressive enemy, but our God is able. I choose to serve God with every breath that He gives me.
I am still dedicated to serving the Lord Jesus in the ministry that He has called me to. I do not intend to stop. However, I will need every ounce of strength that He provides, as my work will be interrupted by surgery and further treatment as the doctors consider necessary. I will post updates on my health issues and prayer requests on this blog. If you would like to follow my personal journey, scroll down to the subscribe area on the right hand side to follow my posts.
No matter what comes my way, there are so many reasons to bless the Lord for all the good that He has done. Recently a relative sent me the song 10,000 Reasons as a way to encourage me. I would like to share the link with my friends. I hope it will bless you as well.
10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)
God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.
All of the updates on my cancer battle, and my spiritual journey are listed on my personal blog called On the Path, found here.
MM Outreach News & Views #98 features our story of adversity through God’s grace. This will help many of you to understand why I am not always fast in answering or posting here on the Women in Ministry blog. I do want to go back to regular posting articles here through 2012, the Lord willing. I am posting our testimony here to make it public.
It is a joy for Richard and I to be in ministry with MM Outreach and I would like to share the behind-the-scenes story that few have heard. Our testimony is to the amazing grace of God that has kept us standing when it seemed like the enemy was doing everything he could to shut down the work of this ministry.
In the late 1980’s when I was a stay-at-home Mom, God called me to minister to Jehovah’s Witnesses. For a year and a half, I dreamed about witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses every night and every morning I would remember my dreams. This was an amazing thing for a shy young woman who feared talking to strangers, but God did such a transformation in my heart that I lived to bring the gospel to JWs.
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I have been notified that my Women in Ministry blog has been picked as one of the top 55 pastor bloggers on the online Christian Colleges website here. My blog is listed up women pastors. Also, my blog has been picked up as a biblioblog by biblioblogtop50.wordpress.com and this biblio blog site. It is nice to see that the issue of women in ministry has received notice.
For anyone in the Pennsylvania area who would like to meet us in person and see the premiere of “The Trinity Eternity Past to Eternity Future Explaining Truth Exposing Error”, we will be in the New Ringgold, PA area at the Witnesses Now For Jesus Convention at the Blue Mountain Christian Retreat October 10-12th, 2008. DVD #1 of the 2 DVD set will be shown at 3 pm on Saturday, October 11th. Information on the conference can be found at http://pfo.org/wnfj2008.htm The sessions are free. If you would like to stay for the entire conference, call the retreat centre at the link above for accommodations or see the list of motels in the area at the above link. The convention has great testimonies and teaching sessions and lots of time for fellowship with a really wonderful group of ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian ministries.
The issue of the Trinity and how the eternal subordination of the Son has crept into the church since the 1970’s will be a hot topic at the convention and if you are also interested in this issue, please feel free to come by and introduce yourself to us. We will be hosting a book table at the conference and will make ourselves available for discussion and questions before and after the sessions.
Cheryl Schatz and her husband Richard, along with ministry partners Keith and Lorri MacGregor, are members in good standing at Bethel Christian Centre in Nelson, BC. The MacGregor’s established a counter-cult/discernment ministry three decades ago and have recently partnered with the Schatz’s to form MM Outreach, Inc. Together, these two couples continue with integrity and a passion for the Word of God what the MacGregor’s had already begun and, recognizing the importance of local church leadership and accountability, operate as a parachurch ministry while remaining closely associated with Bethel Christian Centre.
Rev Derwyn Costinak
Pastor
Bethel Christian Centre
Well, it is finally done.
The Trinity Eternity Past to Eternity Future, Explaining Truth & Exposing Error © 2008 MM Outreach Inc
The 2 DVD set with 3 sections dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity, the biblical support for the equality of the Word of God in eternity past, and the biblical position on the authority of Jesus Christ and eternity future, does not mention the women’s issue at all, but the teaching of hierarchists that use the subordination of Jesus to justify the subordination of women is soundly dealt with.
Our new DVD will be on its way to the duplicators in just a couple of days. Official release date should be by mid October at the latest. There are some loose ends that need to be cleaned up on Monday and I do need to view it one more time to make sure that all is in place as the computer version shows, but my long hours of hard work have come to an end.
Can we say yippee yay?
Also for those of you who have supported MM Outreach in the transition to a US based corporation, will now be able to get a tax receipt for your donations as we are now officially a non-profit organization.
Can we say, wow isn’t the Lord good?
So many good things happening and we continue to marvel at the blessings that the Lord Jesus has given us!
Public Statement regarding the Cheryl Schatz initiated Matthew 18 meeting with Matt Slick (CARM)
A meeting was held on August 22, 2008 in Idaho as my husband and I and our Pastor traveled to meet with Matt Slick. The reconciliation meeting was initiated by myself and we journied 12 hours to try to reconcile over the issues of Matt’s public misrepresentation of my teaching along with the continued attacks on my person. I had patiently waited for almost one year for a resolution while I was being slandered, accused of heresy and my sanity was questioned and mocked all because I support the biblical view that women in the body of Christ may use their gifts for the common good and with the authority of 1 Peter 4:10, 11. It is my position that we are to work hard for unity in the body of Christ and we are to live at peace with all men if possible, so far as it depends on us (Romans 12:18). It is with deep regret that the reconciliation that I fought for and thought I received at the meeting with Matt Slick in August of 2008 has proven to be unattainable.
Matt Slick finally agreed to meet with me to discuss the offenses that were committed against me after he received some “encouragement” from a set of emails he received from a person who wrote as a “man” with authority. Without these emails he would have never agreed to meet with me and I would not have had the opportunity of trying to seek peace with someone who claims to be a brother in Christ but who had been treating me with great disrespect and vitriol.
History:
In 2006 Matt Slick had requested by email that I be a guest on his “Faith and Reason” radio show to discuss my views from my DVD “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?” I declined at that time because I saw him as being disrespectful. After his assurance that he would be kind and respectful and after about a year and a half later when I heard him on the radio discourage a woman from going into ministry, I agreed to discuss the issue of women’s freedom to serve the body of Christ without restriction.
During my time on the radio with Matt Slick, I made a special effort to affirm him for his ministry even telling a personal story about some of his articles that helped me deal with a Universalist and a friend who had been influenced in the area of universalism. However I was not treated kindly and on the first of the two programs that I was on, I was yelled at and talked down to and constantly interrupted. By the end of the second program he refused to let me speak on my interpretation os 1 Timothy 2:15 and how this verse is essential to the understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12 and he called me a heretic for my view of women’s freedom to minister with God’s gifts for the common good.
After the radio shows Matt immediately started to post on his discussion board challenging me by name to post responses in order to try to find things to accuse me of. He demanded answers to questions about Calvinism and other areas that I refused to debate over. Before Matt created posts with my name challenging me to answer, I had never posted on his board. In fact I didn’t even originally see the posts challenging me since I was not reading his boards. I was notified by an egalitarian who visited my blog that Matt was openly challenging me on his board. Now he writes that I was the one who came onto his discussion board to cause trouble. No matter what I do, my motives and my beliefs and the facts have been twisted beyond recognition.
In December 2008 after months of speaking against me on his radio show, Matt told a caller a complete misrepresentation of my teaching while he assured the caller that what he was saying was true. I confronted Matt Slick about his misrepresentation and he did nothing. It wasn’t until my pastor wrote to Matt Slick in February and confronted him with his slander that Matt mentioned it on the air, but he said it in such a way that it appeared that I wanted him to make a correction, but that my correction wasn’t true and his original statement was true and it was not slander.
I finally was able to meet Matt Slick in person after Matt received emails apparently from a “man” encouraging him to settle the issue with me as I was requesting from him a Matthew 18 meeting. My husband and my pastor traveled with me for the 12 hour trip to meet Matt Slick. I started the meeting by making it clear that we were not there to harm him but to seek reconciliation after all the persecution that I had received so that we could end the attacks against me and we could move on. I played the audio files I had of Matt’s misrepresentation of my teaching and clips from our radio discussion where I gave my teaching on women in ministry and denied his own declared exaggeration of the view. After listening to the audio file several times, Matt Slick agreed that he would issue a correction and that he would no longer mention me by name on his radio show or on his discussion board or his web site. I agreed that while I would continue to refute his public teaching on women in ministry, I would not post anything against him personally. Although I did not say I would remove any negative comments about Matt on my blog, I did go through all the posts and I removed anything that others said against him that might be considered inflammatory. There were very few comments like that. Most people were frustrated with Matt for his treatment of me and I chose to allow people the freedom to air their frustration without excessive moderation from me. However I have not posted anything of the personal nature since that time and I have kept my word that I would keep any mention of Matt Slick on my bog to the issue of his public teaching only and not in any way on a personal level even though I still have considerable concern about his treatment of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
At our meeting in August 2008, Matt Slick revealed to all of us (his pastor was there along with Ryan Turner a young apologist who had just started working with Matt and who is a gentle natured soul) that his vice-president had purchased my name on the internet three times in an effort to discredit me as a person. Much of the persecution that I had experienced in the last year was done by Matt’s vice-president of CARM Diane Sellner. She openly attacked me encouraged by Matt Slick himself and Matt protected her ability to slander me without sanction on his own discussion board and on a blog that she set up to attack my character and my ministry. Matt said that he would talk to Diane to see if she would agree to stop attacking me personally. (From what happened afterwards, I now do not believe that he ever intended to stop Diane. She has his full support without any sanctions at all.)
Matt asked what we wanted him to say to correct his misrepresentations and although he adamantly refused to apologize for what he had done, he did say that he would make the statement public on “Faith and Reason”. We all worked together to get a statement that would be acceptable to Matt and myself. Ryan Turner proposed that Matt say that he was “wrong” and both Matt and I agreed to the statement even though there would be no apology from Matt. My pastor wrote down the statement that we all had contributed to and Matt and I had agreed to it and my pastor gave the written copy of what we had written to Matt. After over four hours of discussion, we left with that agreement and we went on our way traveling together in the same car and heading back to Canada to try to get across the border before midnight.
However that very day before we arrived home, the agreement made between Matt Slick and myself had been broken by Matt. Matt had changed the statement saying that he had approval from my pastor to change the agreement. However my pastor was in the car traveling with us and not only would he not have had the authority to change an agreement as the agreement was not made with him but was an agreement that I had made with Matt, but I was never consulted by Matt even though Matt knew that we were traveling back home together in the same car. So how did he get such approval and why did he not ask me? Why would he claim to bypass me when we were in the same car traveling home together?
Not only was I never consulted about a change to our agreement, but I have no idea what Matt Slick did or didn’t say on that broadcast because he gave Diane Sellner the authority to remove his comment from the broadcast. His comment, whatever it was, was never given to the general public on his “Faith and Reason” podcast and Matt Slick has adamantly refused to allow me access to hear what he actually said. He has refused to give me a copy of the audio that was removed from the broadcast and he has refused to allow the radio station to give me a copy. I have no way to verify that he even tried to keep his word about giving a retraction to his misrepresentation.
By the day after we arrived home, Matt Slick had released numerous pages written against me personally even though he promised that he would no longer speak against me. He also gave Diane Sellner full access to write her personal vitriol against me on her blog, and he also gave his permission for Diane to link my personal name that she had purchased three times on the internet to Matt’s pages against me on his web site and alternately to link one of purchases of my name to her own blog which was created as a way to slander me personally.
Matt has tried to justify his subsequent attacks against me by saying that I attacked him first before I came onto his radio show. This is an unfounded lie and he has no proof of any such “attack”. He also has lied that I came onto his discussion board to attack him. He is the one who wrote numerous posts about “Challenge to Schatz” but after our “reconciliation meeting” he left all the attacks on line and gave Diane Sellner the authority to remove all my answers. In fact my moniker (WIM) has been completely wiped off the discussion board with only small quotes made by others who referenced my original posts. My respectful posts were removed while the attacks against me were kept on line! The boldness of such a move after the promises that were made to me are amazing!
I spoke to Matt Slick on the phone three days after our meeting and he tried to blackmail me to remove any mention of himself or CARM on my blog even from my careful refutation of his exegesis of women in ministry. I have a copy of that phone conversation and I will not allow myself to be blackmailed. Matt will have to stand one day before the Lord Jesus and give an account of the things that he has done. I pray that the Lord Jesus will continue to enable me to have the courage to speak out on women’s freedom in the body of Christ as I work hard to speak the truth with love. It takes boldness to speak out with kindness and compassion for both my brothers and sisters in Christ who are on opposite sides of this theological fence. Each side deserves to be loved as true brothers and sisters in Christ even if we do not agree on these secondary issues. My stand will not change. I will continue to speak out in love even though I have received a great amount of persecution for my stand. The Lord Jesus provides boldness to speak the truth even in the midst of persecution. I have posted my stand from the introduction to my DVD set on youtube to show that my original stand has always been reconciliation between the two sides regarding women in ministry. My stand can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e9TL5TWdac
Those who view this stand can see that I am not aggressive against the other side. I view them as brothers in Christ even though people like Matt Slick characterize me as an enemy of the church. Matt also has not been able to refute my teaching on women in ministry even though he has tried his best. He gave me my DVDs back after a year and a half of having them in his possession claiming that he didn’t even watch them (the truthfulness of this statement is challenged by his early emails to me challenging me on some of the content in the DVDs and bemoaning the fact that I didn’t put into the DVDs some material that he felt was important such as federal headship). My refutation of his attempt to refute me can be found at this blog.
I do not trust Matt Slick or his promises as everything he has promised has been taken back by Matt, and I am very sad that this is the case as he is a fellow apologist and I should be able to trust his word. Matt has given full permission to his vice-president and board member Diane Sellner to do whatever she wants in attacking me and using my name. Let the reader see that I have not posted personal attacks against Matt Slick and I have not bought his name in order to malign him personally nor have I purchased Diane Sellner’s name. I believe that these are shameful acts that do not serve to lift up the name of Jesus. Matt never once approached me for reconciliation – he just produced pages against me personally that contain lies and half truths. I went the extra mile and paid a great price to seek reconciliation. I waited a long time before I went to Idaho to meet with Matt. I even accepted an offer from Matt to make things right without demanding that he publicly apologize. He says that I am unreasonable but my actions prove otherwise. My character is proven by my actions. On the otherhand, Matt has proven his character by his actions in a less than honorable way. The pages written against me, the complete removal of myself and my arguments from his discussion board, the removal of his “correction” from the public record (if he even made such a correction and I have not one thing to prove that he said any part of the correction that we agreed to), the threats against me personally in the form of blackmail, his support of his board member and vice-president to purchase my own name to malign me personally and his continued claims that I, a fellow Christian who believes in all the essentials of the faith, am an enemy of the church are the actions of his own character. If fellow Christians allow this kind of behavior without correction, then likely it will continue. I cannot see how this furthers the cause of Christ or brings the body of Christ closer together in unity as we are required to love one another and work for peace.
I ask that those who read this page, please pray for Matt. There are accounts on the internet of others that Matt has attacked just like he has done to me. This greatly concerns me. The concern that I have is not so much about the lies that he has told about me but the unsaved that have experienced the same things. They see Matt as a representative of Jesus and the Church and when he launches an attack on anyone who he sees as a threat to his person, or to secondary doctrinal issues that he sees as a hill to die on, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth and many have reported that they have been harmed because of this. If there are any who have been hurt by Matt’s attacks who are reading this, please be assured that this is not representative of Jesus. There are many godly Christians who witness of their faith and who do not personally attack those who do not agree with them. Jesus had compassion and care even for those who attacked him. His love even reached out to the one who betrayed him. Jesus called him “friend”. If I can help heal the hurts that you have experienced, please contact me. My email address is on my contact page.
In conclusion, although our long trip at our own expense to meet with Matt Slick to seek reconciliation has not brought resolution as we thought but only brought further attacks against my person, I have to let God work on Matt Slick’s heart because he refuses all forms of reconciliation demanding instead that I apologize to him for following the scriptural approach regarding dealing with issues of offense or else he will work to destroy me. I followed every step that scripture gives for dealing with an offensive brother. Matt Slick on the other hand never once tried to contact me privately to reconcile with me but has kept up his attacks against me as if I am not worthy of being called a Christian sister and a fellow apologist. For Matt Slick to ask me to apologize for following through with what the bible sets forth for disputes between Christians is unthinkable.
This puts a period on any contact with Matt Slick. I will no longer discuss him although I will discuss his theology on women in ministry especially if I become aware that he has tried to answer my refutation of his articles. Sometimes there cannot be a resolution other than complete separation and this is where it stands.
I have also posted a public statement regarding my Matthew 18 meeting at http://www.mmoutreach.org/slick.htm . Keith and Lorri MacGregor have posted their own comments regarding this issue along with this statement at http://mmoutreachinc.com/cheryl_slick.htm This brings to a complete end any words that I have regarding this matter as I have been pushed to produce a public statement about why I have been silent on this end about this very public disagreement.
I think this piece will put a huge period . on this matter as I have long ago moved on. If anyone has any questions regarding this public statement, please email me privately for clarification. Email me (mmoutreach (AT) gmail (DOT) com or go to the contact page above for a contact form).
Keith and Lorri MacGregor are my ministry partners and have been privy to the attacks against me from the very beginning. Having heard Matt Slick for themselves speak in angry tones toward his sister in Christ calling me a heretic and twisting my words, their wisdom to me is to follow scripture to ignore a divisive person. My pastor has also given me this same admonition and he too has been privy to the attacks against me both on the radio, in emails sent to him by Matt Slick and in our meeting in Idaho and his words have also been twisted against him.
While I am sad that I was not able to be a peace maker in this dispute, I did appreciate that by taking the time and effort to make the twelve hour journey to Idaho, I had the opportunity to meet Ryan, the new apologist on CARM. I really appreciated his attitude and his demeanor. I pray that God will help him to make a positive impact in a godly way in the calling that he has.
Cheryl Schatz
May Jesus get the ultimate glory for He is our peacemaker who brings peace between God and us.
I will be taking a break for some rest and relaxation for the next two weeks. If I find myself near a computer I may post some articles if I find the time and motivation 🙂
I am also at the stage of fixing some minor glitches on the Trinity DVD #1 and this means that so far I have been able to keep on track with the scheduled completion of the 2 DVD series in September. I am pleased with the work so far and between the 2 different trains of thought on the DVDs, I think there will be a lot of material that will help people not only to get a handle on what the Trinity is and what it isn’t, but also to give people ammunition to refute the hierarchy movement that has downgraded Jesus to the God who had to have permission to create the universe because he does not have ultimate authority. Stay tuned for more information later.
This past week has been an extremely busy one for me. I have been editing our Trinity DVD project and have gained a lot of ground by putting everything else pretty much on ignore. I want to take some time this week to post a few more articles so I will come out of the woodwork for a bit to get that done 😉
Also I am very pleased to give an update on the sale of our home. Today the conditions were removed on the offer to purchase our home and so it is officially sold and possession date will be June 20th. It has been a very difficult year financially with our old home on the market for a full year. We came here by faith just wanting to give our lives to serve the body of Christ and it has been a test by fire that we have survived. We are praising God for the blessing that he has given us in moving us on. We have been living by faith for a year now and we are very excited to see how God is going to continue to bless our ministry. We have given ourselves to full time ministry to teach the church not only how to minister to those lost in the cults, but how to love and accept sisters in Christ who have been called by God to use their God-given gifts for the benefit of the body of Christ. I was also very pleased last week to receive news that my DVD set “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free” will be used in a new doctoral program at a southern USA seminary to teach on the issue of women in ministry. I trust that many more women will be released into the service of the church and for the good of the body of Christ because the DVD series.
For those of you who are interested, we have finished filming our Trinity DVD and I am in the process of setting up the editing studio. This may keep me off line for a day or two. The editing will continue until about September when it goes for duplication. The DVD is copyright 2008 and is called:
The Trinity eternity past to eternity future: explaining truth, exposing error
This will be a 2 DVD set with my script as the 2nd DVD exposing the errors of the eternal functional subordination of the Son. There are quite a few audio bytes in the DVD that should be quite surprising to many concerning what is now being taught as historic Trinitarian doctrine.
On Thursday our ministry partner Lorri MacGregor was on the radio program called Iron Sharpens Iron speaking about the situation in Canada that forced us to either compromise our Christian faith, be shut down by the Canadian government if we refuse to comply with their demands or shut down the charity ourselves. If you want to hear the heart of this ministry and what our year long fight with the government has been, you can go to http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2008/02/lorri-macgregor-canada-gags-gospel.html where there is a link to the mp3 file of Lorri’s interview on Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast from New York.
On Friday February 22, 2008 Richard and I were interviewed on Frank Pastore’s radio in Los Angeles, California show regarding the way that Canada is forcing Christian ministries to either go against their Christian faith or have their charity status revoked. You can hear the interview here in mp3 format. It is 9 minutes long.
There were some details that were left out of the interview such as the Canadian government attaches a 100% tax on a Charity that is closed down whether the people voluntarily revoke the charity or whether the government comes after you and closes you down involuntarily. This means that we were required to purchase our own editing and office equipment at fair market value and the proceeds from this “sale” as well as the money in our Charity bank account that had been set aside to build a state-of-the-art video studio will be confiscated by the government or we will be allowed to give it all away to a Government approved charity.
What is happening in Canada is outrageous in what used to be a “Christian” country. The cults may flourish and write their literature attacking Christianity but a long-term ministry dedicated to bringing people to faith in Christ in a loving and thoughtful way is not “charitable”!
For more information on our ministry to the cults more information is available on our websites at:
mmmoutreachinc.com (Keith and Lorri MacGregor’s web site)
It’s time for an update especially since I have been so busy that I haven’t been able to post much for awhile.
[Updated] First of all regarding the Boise Idaho radio station that will be broadcasting the audio version of my 4 DVD set “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?”, the radio station has confirmed the following dates and times [all times are Mountain time – for Eastern time add 2 hours]:
KBXL 94.1 FM
KSPD 790 AM
The programs can be listened to live at http://www.myfamilyradio.com/cms/index.php. Go to the top right hand corner for the live audio feed.
For those who haven’t been following my blog, the radio spots are free air time that I have been given because Matt Slick of “Faith and Reason” has been misrepresenting me and my teaching for months now and in December he made some very untrue statements that went far past the place of a Christian apologist. In fairness to me, the radio station that hosts Matt Slick’s program has agreed that it is only fair to present the opposing view in an honest and fair way so that the misrepresentation will be put to rest.
Secondly on an update on our ministry, there has been a type of closure on our fight with the Canadian government – a fight to have the freedom to preach the gospel to the lost souls in the cults. While it may appear to be a defeat, we believe very strongly that God has orchestrated the recent happenings so that we have actually expanded our vision past what our comfort zone has been.
Briefly, here are the things that have happened to this point. In 2007 there was a complaint to the Charities division of the government of Canada against the work that we do as a ministry. Our ministry is called MacGregor Ministries (MM Outreach for short and to represent the joining together of MacGregor Ministries and Media Ministries). The complaint resulted in an audit in June of 2007. While our books were fine, it was determined that there was a question about our qualification as a Charity since the majority of our gospel preaching focuses on the topic of the cults. Not only do we actively reach out to those who have lost their way in the cults but we also teach Christians how to reach Jehovah’s Witnesses and others in different cults and bring them to faith in Christ. This has been deemed as “uncharitable” by the Canadian government representative who took over our case from the original auditor.
We did retain a lawyer to help fight our case but there was not much we could do as the government agent was determined to shut down our ministry and squash our work with the cults. In the end we were given an ultimatum that our web site was to be “gone”, our products geared to reaching those in the cults for Christ were to be “gone”, we were to stop writing material on the cults and stop doing “persuasive” biblical teaching on DVD and finally that we were to treat all religions as equal in value with no teaching to be done as “persuasive”. This is completely unacceptable to us and would compromise our Christian faith. The only options available to us would be to shut down our own ministry and ask the Canadian government to de-register us or do nothing and wait until they come and get us and forcibly de-register the Charity themselves. We chose to be proactive and send in our letter voluntarily de-registering the Charity under protest.
The effects of de-registering the Charity is the same as having the government do this to us. In closing the Charity, it involves a 100% tax by the government. We had to dig deep into our savings to purchase our own editing equipment at fair market value and purchase our own stock of products at fair market value. The money generated by this “sale” along with the money we had saved up to build a state-of-the-art video/movie studio will either be confiscated by the government or we can give it away to a government approved charity. Everything that we have worked so hard for as volunteers for years (the MacGregor’s have put in 30 years of ministry and we have been working as volunteers in ministry since 1988) will be gone except for what we are able to purchase back (again!) with our own money.
So how is this a good thing? Well it has pushed us to go beyond our comfort zone and to look to the Lord and his call to us in ministry. The government of Canada is not the one who called us into ministry and the government of Canada cannot take us out of ministry. This has pushed us to take a step of faith that without this push from the threat of de-registration, we would never have stepped out in faith. We have with the support of a dear US friend, started a US corporation dedicated to continue on the ministry of preaching the gospel to those lost in the cults and this will be based in the US. We also have a Canadian corporation in place to do the work in Canada. This Canadian corporation will be a taxable corporation and while we will no longer be able to give tax receipts in Canada, we will have something that is very precious – that is free speech and freedom to preach the gospel with power in order to benefit those whom the church has long ignored.
The government agent responsible for trying to shut us down told us that there is no such thing as free speech while operating as a registered Canadian charity, yet praise God we are now free to preach the gospel without government intervention and we are working on expanding our ministry base directly into the US. We do not know how all of this will work out financially since we do not as yet have tax exempt status in the US, but we are confident that the Lord Jesus will fulfill his promise to us to bless our efforts and he is the one responsible for taking care of all the details.
All of these changes has been very time consuming for me. While I should be nose to the grindstone on our newest DVD project on the subject of the Trinity, I have been waylaid by the immediate need to switch our web site over to reflect our product ordering pages to the new US corporation so that any product sold from now on will go directly into the account of MM Outreach in the US and will enable us to start getting some income in order to purchase the rest of our stock.
For those of you who haven’t been on our product pages to see where my DVD is sold along with other materials that are used to reach out into the world of the cults and aberrant Christian movements, now would be a good time to visit. Any proceeds from the sale of our products will go directly into helping our ministry to move forward. Click here for our DVD ordering page and there are other product pages that can be accessed from this page. I do not yet have the Canadian & Overseas links working yet as it is very labor intensive. Hopefully this will be done by sometime this coming week, Lord willing.
While we may not understand how the Lord is going to work all of this out, we do trust him that what was meant for our harm, God is going to use for his own glory. Praise the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!
I do still intend to do a post on circumcision and how this “sign” is meaningful to the issue of women in ministry, but right now this post is having to take a back seat until I get the most important things done first. Please keep our ministry in prayer as we go past one hurdle after another. We are trusting in God, but you can also join with us in the prayer of faith. Also pray for me for my work on the Trinity DVD script. All of the changes in ministry have come at a time that I should be coming to the end of my research and writing and I am way behind schedule. The filming is scheduled to take place by the end of April to keep us on schedule so I could use some prayer too to keep me focused and on schedule.
So now you know why I have been distracted and largely unavailable. I am so glad that you guys have carried on without me 🙂 I really love the community that comes and visits on this blog. For those of you who haven’t received an email answer from me for sometime, I won’t be able to catch up too quickly. I have the rest of the product pages to update and then some catchup work on the Trinity DVD. I will try to pay as much attention as I can to my blog, but if I am somewhat spaced out, at least you now know why ’cause y’all now know the “rest of the story”.
Just a quick update to let you all know that our ministry is working on a DVD project on the Trinity. While it isn’t directly on the women’s issue, it will deal directly with the complementarian view of the Trinity and a biblical refutation of that view.
Until the DVD is done, I will be blogging less regularly so that I can keep my nose to the grindstone on this very important project. I do hope to get my next post up regarding the issue of marriage next week, God willing.
Any thoughts about the Trinity and complementarianism?
Dear friends,
While freeing women to minister with their God-given to the entire body of Christ has been a very strong passion for me, it has not been the main focus of my ministry. In 1988 God called me to give of my time, my money and my talents to help Jehovah’s Witnesses find the truth about the real Jesus Christ and to come free from the bondage of the Watchtower. Several years ago the Lord answered the desire of my heart and allowed me to go into full-time ministry. As a video editor, researcher and full time apologist, I have been busy serving the Lord and my husband joined with me as we joined our ministry together with Keith and Lorri MacGregor of MacGregor Ministries working as a team to produce instructional DVDs on witnessing to the cults including correcting false doctrine spread by the cults against the essentials of the Christian faith.
In June of 2007 we moved to the city where the headquarters of MacGregor Ministries is located and we prepared to take over this very effective Canadian ministry/charity. However there has been very strong opposition to our ministry by those who oppose anyone who preaches the Gospel to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and other cult groups. The Canadian government has received several complaints against our charity that witnessing to the cults and exposing the false doctrine is not a “charitable” work.
MacGregor Ministries (MM Outreach) has been a registered Canadian charity since 1979 and neither Keith nor Lorri MacGregor have taken a salary from the ministry choosing instead to use the funds to spread the gospel of Jesus. Richard and I have also joined with the MacGregors working for the ministry without salary. With this complaint on file the Canadian government has chosen to start the process of shutting down our ministry saying that while preaching the gospel is a valid charitable work, reaching those in other faiths for Christ is not charitable and because this is considered to be our primary work they want to pull our charity status and take away our equipment and our funds that we have set aside for ministry work.
We have made attempts to separate our work of preaching the gospel to the cults from our regular work of ministering to the body of Christ by placing our web site and our quarterly magazine into the control of a new incorporated business that we set up, (MM Outreach Inc) however we are unsure if this will be good enough to stop the Canadian government from shutting us down. Yesterday we received another notice about still another complaint from someone who said that exposing other religions is not charitable.
Would you please pray for us that God will be glorified in our lives and in our ministry so that we can continue ministering to those who have lost their way in the world of the cults? We need God’s protection through this time of persecution. The next few weeks will be crucial as the Canadian government may or may not allow the changes that we have made to stop the process of deregistering the charity. Almost 30 years of ministry is at stake and freedom to minister as God has called us.
Will you stand with us in prayer?
Hello all. I am leaving for a conference in Oregon and will be back in about a week. When I get back we will start a series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how these gifts affect the issue of women in ministry.
I will miss your great thoughts.
Anyone going to miss me??
We are in our new home, although we have not yet finished unloading our trailer and our new home is still full of boxes needing to be unpacked. We were one day late in arriving as the tires on our trailer were overheating and the first tire exploded within an hour after we started on our final move. My husband risked his life changing the tire on a very busy highway and after we got started on the road again, a minute later the next tire blew. We ended up in a motel for the night waiting for a nearby tire store to open in the morning. With a new set of tires that weren’t supposed to overheat, we were back on our way the next day and the rest of the trip was uneventful except for driving through my first torrential downpour. We did arrive safe and sound and for that we praise the Lord.
We still have about another week of unpacking and getting settled so the 1 Corinthians 11 study will continue in a few days as I find time to get my thoughts together between unpacking boxes. After that I hope to be more regular. Thanks for your patience and please feel free to comment as we go through the studies.
Oh dear, I thought I would have so much more time, but the race is on…
Our final ministry and household move will happen this Sunday June 10th. We are working day and night to get the final packing and cleanup done. (Oh why or why were we both such packrats??) The imminent move means that there is no time to put together blog articles until after we arrive at our new home and have a few days to unpack. Our house still hasn’t sold yet so we are leaving it in the (hopefully) capable hands of our Realtor. If you think of us, please pray for this final move that we will arrive safely and that our home will sell quickly. It will take us two days to get to British Columbia and it will be my first time driving such a long distance so I am a little apprehensive. I will be following my husband the whole time so I won’t get lost but I am a bad one for getting sleepy in the car.
This means that the tortoise (me the slow poky green guy a.k.a the “turtle” in the moving race) will be back on line after June 15th. SO much to say and so little time…..
See y’all soon!
1 Corinthians 11 part two on the meaning of “head” is delayed for another week as our timeline for getting our home ready for sale has been pushed up. Today we signed the papers to list our home and we have until Monday to get everything in order as that is the day that the house goes on the market. We still have so much to do by Monday and it is overwhelming to say the least. The final move-out should happen sometime in June so hopefully the stress of the long months of moving our ministry and household to a location twelve hours away will come to an end.
The discussion of “head” from 1 Corinthians 11 should be an enlightening one and I look forward to your comments too!
We are mostly moved into our new home and much of our time has been spent in unpacking boxes. Our living room now feels like home since six book cases of my research and bible study books have been unpacked.
Now that we are starting to find space on the floor to walk, I am trying to find time to work on a new blog article regarding the latest audio files from the complementarian camp. I was saddened to hear how they are continuing to become more militant as the time goes by. It is now claimed that those who do not accept a patriarchal view are guilty of dismissing the gospel. This is one of the main reasons why this blog exists – to show that those who accept an egalitarian view regarding women who use their God-given gifts for the entire body of Christ, can view the Bible as God’s inspired word and God breathed. It is imperative that we give a basis for our belief in a reasonable and respectful way. The body of Christ is hurt when those who hold to a restrictive view of women use this non-essential issue as a way to build barriers and even “rip apart” other sheep, doing much damage to the very ones whom Jesus commanded them to love. Christians on both sides of this debate should remember that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes, it is essential to expose error, but godly Christians should be able to interact and dialog in a loving way without attacking one another by making this non-essential issue into an essential doctrine by accusing the other side of denying the gospel.
Keep watch for my new article. I plan to include audio clips so you can hear the material for yourself.