Bill Gothard and his ministry

[JoshCasey]

Bill Gothard -- the man and his ministry. I don't know how much conflict has surrounded him in the general church, but I know in many of the circles I've been in there has been a tremendous amount of discussion. Our family has been exposed to his ministry for well over twenty years at least, and had been heavily involved with it for most of those years before we eventually took another course. Many (if not most) of my best friends are still involved in the ministry, and I've had a huge amount of experience with it. However, I consider my views heavily stilted, and would appreciate some more open advice, especially on their doctrinal and practice teachings.

http://iblp.org/iblp/
http://billgothard.com/bill/
http://ati.iblp.org/ati/
http://iblp.org/iblp/contact/websites/

 

[LadyFlynt]

Gents, please move this the whatever the appropriate forum is (I nearly chose one other than this, but it can fall under several).


Bill Gothard, IBLP, ATI, The Red Book, the Brown Books, Character First, and many other sub organizations and booklets.

Several problems arise falling into two camps 1) the doctrinal, theological, and philosophy mixed with psychobabble 2) the scandals, the results, the hipocrasy.

(This is just to get started...I'm working on a longer reply)

 

[LadyFlynt]

Josh, The first things that need to be looked at is the foundation of the "ministry". First, it claims to be a ministry for anyone and does have ppl from all backgrounds in it...yet it puts out a particular doctrine (and several groups have formed because of this doctrine...The Charity Churches are very Gothardized). The doctrine itself is works based. It upholds the law over grace. Gothard cherry picks through the levitical law. It goes downhill from there. Gothard is under no authority but himself. He is accountable to no one. (That right there should be a red flag) I believe Gothard's type of "chain of authority" stems from what is called Sheperdism.


On a personal note: my parents took his seminar when I was a child...it increased and justified some of their ungodly actions towards me as a stepchild (if you are as familiar with Gothard as you say, you should understand what this means). My husband and I were in a church that was involved in Gothardism. The church was pretty well split because of it. The abuses that happened, there was no recourse or anyone to turn to. I took the basic seminar, had ATI friends who were encouraging us to become ATI...and it was tempting, but we didn't have the money to invest. Another ATI family came in, I watched the "courtships" begin and explode to the detriment of the families (and I am for courtship, just not Gothard style), I lost my closest friend because we never became ATI and because she (admittedly) was so busy trying to perfect herself, she literally didn't have time and couldn't see those around her. She was always beating herself up about her diet and weight...she was not overweight by any stretch of the imagination. Everything had to be done according to an outline...and those outlines ran through her head constantly. You know, I would borrow her stuff and I started to get sucked into it also. It was a set up for failure...there is no way one could keep all that in their head and function too. I've kept my red book...with the intent of going through and writing down the twisting of scripture I've found in them.

There is a gotharddicussion group on yahoo and there is a site out there for those kids that came out of Gothardism...gives them a chance to tell their stories. Some of them were locked up in his Juvinile home. The damage to their families is in many cases irrepairable.

 

[PresReformed]

I went to a Gothard seminar when I was a teenager. I can best sum up the experiance from a line out of The Wizard of Oz "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".