Yes, I joined the discussion with Nestor (Gregory) on the other site:
The questions asked are good. As I understand them they are two:
1) To what extent did Linda’s transfer of membership violate denominational policy?
2) Why would I consider it to be unethical for the Thompsonville congregation to determine whether or not Linda should be disciplined?
The above questions are valid and complex. I will respond to them.
It is thought by many, to include myself, that there are two (2) fundamental rights that belong to the local congregation and that cannot be abridged by outside influences. Those two rights are:
1) The right to determine who is and who is not a member of the local congregation. This includes the ability to discipline a member and exiting them from membership.
2) The right of the congregation to elect whomever they chose to the offices in the congregation that are elected by the congregation.
These two rights are perceived by many to “trump” other issues of denominational policy. This is where I personally am. IOW, a local congregation may be advised that they have wronged a person in the discipline that the congregation has administered, but the congregation cannot be compelled to effect a change in discipline, membership or elected office. The congregation can only be advised to do so.
This is how that policy works in actual practice: Congregation X exits a person from membership and that individual appeals to the Conference. The President advises the congregation that they have acted wrongly and the congregation refuses to change. At that point, the President has the option of going to another SDA Congregation and recommending that it accept the individual into membership on Profession of Faith. NOTE: That can only be a recommendation and cannot be forced upon that congregation.
NOTE: There are some minor alternative ways to address specific situations which I will not mention here as they are not relevant to this discussion.
When a congregation places a member under censure, that congregation continues to hold by denominational policy some responsibility for the spiritual nurture of that person. Under this condition, it is problematic by policy for that person to transfer membership, even though a receiving congregation may have the right to do so.
When a member is exited from congregational membership, that congregation is no longer responsible for the spiritual nurture of that person. In this case, the receiving congregation is only obligated to take steps to understand the issues involved the loss of membership prior to taking the person into their membership either by baptism or profession of faith (POF). IOW, the previous congregation can only advise or inform and cannot prevent the person from becoming a member again of POF. If the receiving congregation believes that it has enough of an understanding of the issues involved, it is not required to make any contact with the other congregation. Frankly, this happens often in actual practice.
When the Thompsonville congregation acted to remove Linda from membership, it opened up the way for her to be taken into membership of another congregation which would only have the obligation to become informed of the issues to the point where it would be willing to take Linda into membership on POF. By removing Linda from membership, the Thompsonville congregation no longer had much input into her membership into another congregation.
Folks, you can quote the CHUCH MANUEL to me. You can challenge me. The CHURCH MANUAL does not lock congregations into concrete. People who have been exited from SDA congregations are quite often accepted into membership into other SDA congregations by either baptism or Profession of Faith.
So, what about the Thompsonville congregation and ethics?
As the question was asked, there was an implication that the Thompsonville SDA Church and/or Pastor L. might have acted inappropriately toward Linda. Ethics does not require such to be determined. It does not have to be an issue whether or not individual people would have been unjust to Linda. Perhaps they would not have treated her justly. Perhaps they would have been both just and fair. That is not relevant.
A major aspect of ethics is appearance. Professional organizations have rules of ethics that deal with appearance. One such rule involves “dual relationships.” Ethical standards uniformly require that people with dual relationships recuse themselves, or be removed, in cases of dual relationships. Pastor L. might have been fair and just in his treatment of Linda. I do not charge that he would have been either unfair or unjust to her. But, due to his relationship to 3-ABN and Danny Shelton and how his salary was paid, he had a dual relationship. So, did other people. The common ethical standards of the secular world today raised real “red flags” in regard to the Thompsonville congregation determining discipline for Linda. Compliance with those standards would have required another forum to determine whether or not to discipline her. Such is not easily done in the SDA Church. So, her transfer was arranged by another method that was within the boundaries of SDA policy and is done more often that you may realize.
Gregory Matthews
I find this discussion quite interesting because it reveals more to me on what Cindy & Co are basing their assumption. If I understand you right here, it appears like you presume that Linda did not follow the "rules" as outlined in the Chrurch Manual and you take that as a proof that she avoided the Church censure because she did not want to "admit" her mistakes? Is that right? Could it be that all of our discussions and "acccusations" are caused because we thus do not base our reasoning on the same premises?
Gregory is right that he was one of the pastors suggesting Linda should request her membership be dropped from the Thompsonville Church and then joining another church by profession of faith, but he was not the only one - besides me - who did that. All basing their suggestion on how such problems have been solved in a number of other instances within the Seventh-day Adventist Church, so this was far from a new idea just out of the blue. People who have used this method before feel it is not against Scripture, the Spirit of Prophecy, nor the Church Manual.
Let me just add right here that by using modern communication vehicles I was in constant communication with many individual thousands of miles apart, and as I have said several times before, one of my best sources of what was happening was Danny Shelton himself. That does not mean that we agreed on things, nor does it mean that I will dig down in my archives to post a quote from his letters to me just to satisfy any demands.
The procedures in the Thompsonville Church lasted many months. At first Linda requested her membership be transferred from Thompsonville to Springfield, but there was no reaction for several months, and this was one reason it was sugested she would ask for her membership to be dropped since it looked like John Lomacang was not doing anything.
Another reason was that at least a couple of people closely associated with the Thompsonville Church made it known that John Lomacang talked to the board members. What happened then could be compared to what happened between Jesus entereing Jerusalem and a few days later when the same people who had been hailing Jesus shouted "Crusify him!" Insiders warned Linda that the board was prepared to lynch Linda if she came to their meeting - all this in spite of the beautiful and seemingly "christian" letter he wrote.
Since this warning came from at least one member of the Thompsonville Church board, what would you have done in Linda's case? At least a couple of people supported this warning. Would you have just ignored it by stepping into the lion's den? Also when Gregory and others assured her there was a better way out of her situation. How would you handle that?
Johann Thorvaldsson
