First, as David mentioned happens in Chicago, there were many attachments such as passage memorization and answering certain questions. It seemed self-serving, as a way to instill more of the UBF mindset and attitude into a person, or to put attachments on a particular area it was felt someone needed extra attention on. For example, one woman college student was asked, “Will you marry a godly man?” In the NT, I don’t see the apostles requiring passage memorization before they baptized people–the faith and confession of those who wanted to get baptized seemed enough. The case with Cornelius and Peter is also interesting in this regard. I questioned why we require more than the apostles did. Why aren’t the confessions of faith of people enough?

Second, it also seemed to be an event not for the church, but just the person. By this I mean that even after being baptized, people are still judged by how well they perform in the UBF system. I suppose it’s too foreign and the system doesn’t have a designed place for those who are baptized. It just becomes this event that happened to you some time ago, but not a part of the Christian identity and being as an individual and with the rest of the community.

My daughter was baptized in UBF. She was turning six soon and asked me if she could be baptized. Before I went to the church to ask that we hold a time for baptisms, I asked her why she wanted to be baptized. She said, “Because I believe in Jesus.” I’m not sure what others thought about it, but I believe she knew what she was talking about and that I should honor her request. But I rejected that she take the baptism packet and memorize the passages therein and prepare answers to the questions. Maybe because I was a leader and one of the planning committee I could proceed as I wanted, rather than have her jump through the hoops.

Joe already gave some answers. The question is the same for Holy Supper.

I believe the main reason is that these sacraments are symbols for our forgiveness of sins and unconditional acceptance by God – they assure our salvation. UBF does not want to have such “cheap grace”. They want to earn grace. They don’t want people to be sure about their salvation, they want to keep them in a state of insecurity and feelings of guilt in which they are more easily manipulable. You are only accepted as a child of God as long as you are obedient and keep part in the activities of UBF – that’s the state of mind they want people to have.

A second reason is that Samuel Lee created UBF as a kind of “counter-concept” to traditional churches, which were seen as luke-warm and not really following the will of God as UBF did. That’s why he removed much of the symbolism that reminded of traditional churches. For instance, the Chicago headquarters was actually a traditional church building, but the first thing Samuel Lee did was to remove all the traditional interior of a church, pews, church windows, crosses etc. Another example: Our chapter had regular conferences where we rented a hall of a Christian recreation center. This hall had a big wooden cross at the front. But the first thing the missionaries always did was to remove that cross and put it in the janitorial closet over the course of the conference. Then it was replaced with colored letters of the motto of the conference like “feed my sheep”. Also, the simple lectern in the hall was replaced with a UBF pulpit and a pedestal that looked more impressive and authoritative. It always sounded hypocritical to me when we sang about how we love that old rugged cross while it was kept hidden in the closet. In our own chapter, we had a self-made wooden cross, but only at the side wall, and only happened because some shepherds one day simply did it, none of the missionaries thought or cared about this.

Good question. I concur with Joe’s answers and will add one more.

I was told that if I would not allow “sprinkle baptism” to be done to me I would not be allowed to be a Ubf missiobary or to get married.

So sometimes ubf does do baptism but it can be a means of cult control of obe’s life. I hated that baptism. I did it so I could be a missionary to Russia and later get married. I did live as a ubf missionary in Russia for 3 months. So maybe people should call me Missionary Chapter Dierctor Shepherd… Or not. Please not.

Baptisms do sometimes happen in ubf. But on the whole it hasn’t been strongly encouraged or emphasized. There isn’t a single reason, but a combination of reasons, including
* a low view of sacraments (baptism and Lord’s Supper), regarding them as mere symbols
* a lack of connection to historical church traditions
* a lack of staff education and training about baptism and the Lord’s Supper
* leaders not being able to decide whether or not ubf is a church, a
* leaders not really understanding what a church is and what church is for.

I didn’t want a full account of the reformation.

My issue was that the bad definition paragraph made the reformation all about “making many independent organizations.” Most who have been blessed by the teachings of the reformers to understand the gospel more biblically would think this characterization of the reformation misleading.

My article isn’t a flawless monolith impervious to scrutiny. I welcome questions. But my greater hope was that people would move away from the bad definition (replete with unclear statements) and move toward studying the scripture references in section #2 and see how magnificently clearly scripture lays out the doctrine of the church.

Any comments on the scripture references?

And you never will Ian. Instead of comprehending the main point of a criticism, ubf people are conditioned to nitpick and turn the tables back on you, so that the discussion gets focused on non-essential details rather than on the obvious issues. But I suspect you already know this :)

Forests is able to still think critically but it seems his common life roommate cannot. Most ubf are cowards when it comes to actually talking openly and honestly.

I’m thankful that forests shows a healthy amount of courage and autonomy to share here. It really does not take a HUGE amount of courage or thick skin, just a normal, healthy amount. Most ubfers lack that normal, healthy amount of self-worthiness to make even one comment here.

1) Your friend is right to raise questions. One of mine is “What does the ‘blueprint’ metaphor even mean? The burden is on the UBF history page writer to define “blueprint” and provide scriptural proof that “the apostles had no blueprint.”

But even on a biblical level, before Paul wrote letters, Jesus said “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt 18:16). So, you mean that Jesus did not have a blueprint in mind when he uttered this, or that if he did, he withheld it from the apostles? The words “I will build my church” to me ring with the intentionality and sovereignty of a God who has a “blueprint.” Again, what does “blueprint” even mean?

2) Your friend is right that church infrastructure can be flexible. But which aspects should be open/closed to flexibility? Just the leader election process? How about frequency of Communion and who can perform them? What about licensing/ordination requirements? Why not change requirements for doctrinal beliefs of those who seek ordination?

My approach above understands “infrastructure” never to be an isolated thing, but something always connected to your ecclesiology, which connects to your Christology, which connects to your soteriology, etc. Where do you draw the line with “flexibility.” Again, things aren’t as self-evident and simplistic as presented, and I am trying to get people to ask themselves “Wait, was it really flexible? In what way? What does flexibility mean?” So let’s get more precise on 1) our terms and 2) the extent to which a term applies to biblical/church-historical reality.

Please remember that my purpose was to point out that an unclear statement of biblical theology /church-history (“infrastructure was flexible”) should not be taken at face value, especially when it’s trying to be used as support for the structure of an organization, but should be rigorously compared to scripture.

3) Your friend misapplies the term “Non sequitur.” Non sequitur means a line of reasoning does not follow from its premises. However, section 2 of my article is not meant as a premise for section 3. Section 3 is just an added personal note at the end about something that’s been in my mind over the years. Section 2 does, however, supply the content necessary for understanding what a “local church” is. How can you understand what I mean by “UBF should reform into an association of local churches” unless you had a definition of “local churches,” which section 2 supplies. So, there is coherence.

But I feel like I may not have satisfied your friend by my answers.

You know, because Toledo ubf was so amazingly successful in purging 50% of their leader families and is such a healthy ministry. I heard they have such high quality spiritual messages too.

Here’s the full version with all scripture references:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9sj91zzdg14gryb/Church%20Definition%20with%20scripture%20references.pdf

1. I prided in the fact that UBF was not like any other church, no laws, no accountability and no doctrine…this became my downfall when our family fell apart and my children grew older and asked real questions

2. I remember once we received a church booklet but nobody read it

3. The whole idea of Bible study was to chop down the stupid theology and framework of churches so that people may depend on God

4. The chapter director was a “clone of Samuel Lee” even practicing some of the abuses such as pepper and onions in my brothers eyes, all night testimony writing to break us and he practiced much spiritual abuse

5. Whenever I had a problem, he never helped in practical ways, but told me to repent and my faith was faulty…he called students names and even told me my wife “is out of her mind”

6. He told me that all other churches teach “Bullshit” and he asked me to stop visiting my family and friends…

7. He never practiced any of the sacraments

8. At the time, I thought it was cool not to be held accountable and to just live as I pleased but this was my downfall as I became determined to tear down any Christian who did not belong to UBF

9. For 15 years, I worked full time and went to school (often full time) and taught the Bible and raised a family of 5 children but I was so burnt out that I even mixed my wife and childrens names up…

10. It seemed like everyone was on a different page and that I hated the depression and the poverty that I endured while the chapter director lived in a mansion and never seem to relate to us

11. It seemed that things got worst when I got a family…my children did not need to suffer under such inhuman treatment but there was no way out and no support for my children (one was raped while in ministry in Cincinnati)

12. Though I have been out of UBF for 2 years now, my children and my ex wife still suffer from the fall out and lack of support…we had to go to counseling and gradually learn what it means to be in a healthy church…

13. There must be a framework of accountability and abusive leaders must step down…and a new way must be paved through all these discussions…

14. UBF must join the body of Christ and start to love the true church in which all believers are a part of it..

So happy to be out of UBF….if not a cult…it is nightmare on families and eventually the truth will set you free…

If you are looking for the UBF by-laws, they are available publicly.

UBF by-laws

Some chapter (like Toledo) have started creating their own constitution/administration documents:

Toledo UBF administration doc

Side note: They created this document based on my recommendation. I don’t agree really with what they did with my suggestions.

I completely agree with you on that, Forest. The bpok “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” which I recommend to all UBFers explains that such “unspoken rules” are a hallmark of spiritually unhealthy environment. However, the existence of “unspoken rules” does not mean that they are always ambiguous and have different renderings as you see now in UBF. In the times of Samuel Lee, all chapters implemented the rules in pretty much the same strict way.

Forgot to say, I heard the grapevine stuff too (I keep involved). But, until stuff is written down… you know…

I do look like you, or is it the other way around :) — but at least you have hair.

Thanks for the insight, and feel free to use the above in any capacity.

On your church discipline point, I would argue that it would be an error even to say “the grace of Jesus should be our guiding ethic” in church discipline as long as Jesus himself already, intentionally provided a more clear ethic to guide church discipline.

“The grace of Jesus” sounds spiritual, and who can deny it in a conversation? But, as you said, dig deeper, and you find that scripture does not leave us to vague statements, but speaks clearly.

Jesus himself and the apostles already laid out a biblical ethic for church discipline, pertaining to at least 7 situations, directly or by inference:

1. For private offenses (Mt 18:15-18)
2. For divisive persons (Rom 16:17-20)
3. For public Scandals/Excommunications (1 Cor 5:1-13)
4. For disorderly persons (2 Thess 3:6-15)
5. For Heretics (1 Tm 1:19-20; 2 John 7-11)
6. For public leadership failures (Gal 2:11; 1Tim 5:19-20)
7. For disqualified leaders (3 Jn 9-11)

It seems wrong to say vaguely the “grace of Jesus” when in fact such clear scriptural guidance is already in place.

And it is by the “grace of Jesus” that we even have such clear scriptural guidance.

Those vague, super-spiritual one-liner-conversation-enders are really annoying.

The statement “nobody should depend on church membership or any church to save them” sounds like a pious promotion of salvation through faith in Christ alone, that is, before the water is stirred.

Stir #1: “He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church for his Mother” (Saint Cyprian, AD 200).

Stir #2: “If you call yourself a Christian but you are not a member of the church you regularly attend, I worry that you might be going to hell” (Mark Dever, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 21.)

Stir #3: The chapter director’s comment was probably not pious, but even if it was, it still is no basis for HAVING ABSOLUTELY NO CHURCH MEMBERSHIP AT ALL.

Water now muddy.

I’d call it idolatry.

Creating a religious system that elevates your tribe to heroic status.

This story makes my heart feel like your tongue does when you stick both leads of a 9-volt battery on it. The pain just shoots through me, for I can almost hear, see, and feel exactly what went on.

This highlights well why the issue of church membership, so central to a healthy church, has been close to my heart, and why it must be reclaimed, if for no other reason than scripture mandates it.

The implication of this statement might be near the core and root of UBF theology and Bible study being “off.” I regard it as anthropocentricity, or an anthropocentric way of interpreting and explaining one’s Christian life, church and ministry.

This invariably puts God being handcuffed until we lazy sinners “devote to world mission” and to obeying the Bible.

This statement is at best ignorant and simplistic, at worst blasphemous and evil.

First it needs to be said, that it is already a progress that UBF now has by-laws. I remember that reformers complained that there were no written by-laws and I guess they were only written when UBF tried to get re-admitted to the NAE. The by-laws I saw were the by-laws for USA/Canada, version of 2009. There may be a revised version now. Some chapters may also have individual by-laws.

I did not really go deep into the matter, but after a quick read, these were my impressions:

Section 1 fails to define what UBF even is. It does not say whether UBF understands itself as a church, parachurch, ministry, mission whatever. It also fails to say how UBF is connected or not with other churches. In section 2 it starts addressing UBF as a “corporation” which does not help much in understanding what UBF is.

The purpose and scope of UBF is mentioned in 1.1 in a vague and dishonest way: “Encourage the propagation of the gospel”. That can be anything. It should clearly state that UBF is all about “raising and training disciples”. It does not even mention Bible study, it does not mention whether Sunday services are held and by whom.

Section 3.1 says that the annual meeting elects the board of elders and a corporation president. But it fails to explain how this election should happen, what the qualifications are etc. Section 4.3 which has “qualification” in its title also fails to list the qualifications. Then in section 4.10 qualifications is covered again, and again no real qualifications are listed.

Then it starts to get really ugly. All kinds of non-biblical offices, directors, presidents, executives, staff, boards and committees are introduced so that your head starts spinning. Particularly the office of the “general director” and an ominous “international executive board” who seem to hold all power are finally mentioned; they seem to nominate and elect each other. In 2.1 the document says that the Bible should be “the only rule of faith and practice” but then it fails to explain how these offices can be considered a Biblical practice. The Biblical office of a “deacon” is not mentioned at all. Board members and all kinds of directors have more power than elders. The UBF offices of “missionary” and “shepherd” are not mentioned at all. Fellowship leaders are mentioned, but it is not explained who they are.

Just as no qualifications are required for elders, no qualifications are required for chapter directors either, even though they are “authorized to baptize, administer communion, perform weddings, funerals and do any other pastoral function”.

Powers are described very vaguely, e.g. “the general director shall have such duties and powers as are necessary to carry out the purpose of the corporation”. There is no mention of “limitation of power”.

There is no mention how salary or insurance of staff or directors is handled. I think that should be also mentioned in by-laws.

The most astonishing thing for me is that the whole document refers to the Bible only when it quotes the world mission command. Otherwise, UBFers never fail to quote the Bible, but here I do not see anything that is derived from the Bible.

I have had a look at the by-laws of the Presbyterian church for comparison. Superficially, they look a bit similar, if you ignore all the directors and boards stuff. The Presbyterian church has only regular elders and deacons. However, what I think makes the huge difference is that the Presbyterian by-laws refer to their “constitution” which comprise a book of confession and a “book of order”. Their by-laws have the crucial passage “Governance of the Church” which says that the church shall be governed according to this constitution. The UBF by-laws are completely missing such a paragraph! So they are just like a facade, all the meat is missing.

The “book of order” of the Presbyterian church has all the details I had expected. It explains exactly what the Presbyterian church is and how it is conducted. It explains what elders and deacons are, what their gifts and qualifications shall be, it explains the difference between “ruling” and “teaching” elders etc. It explains how worship, baptism, Lord’s supper should be conducted etc. And it also contains very detailed “rules of discipline” that we were missing in UBF.

Let me quote from that section in the “book of order”: “The purpose of discipline is to honor God by making clear the significance of membership in the body of Christ; to preserve the purity of the church by nourishing the individual within the life of the believing community; to achieve justice and compassion for all participants involved; to correct or restrain wrongdoing in order to bring members to repentance and restoration; to uphold the dignity of those who have been harmed by disciplinary offenses; to restore the unity of the church by removing the causes of discord and division; and to secure the just, speedy, and economical determination of proceedings.”

I think, since UBF has separated itself from its mother church and thus rejected their constitution and church order, it has the duty to define its own constitution and church order. The by-laws do not provide anything helpful in that direction.

If anyone wants a copy I will freely distribute them. Heck, I will even post them publicly. We have something called the “freedom of information act” in the USA. ubf members have a right to know.

Even if you were not driven out, you were misunderstood, marginalized, maligned, shamed, slandered, frowned upon, gossiped about, called into question, assigned and ascribed all sorts of “cute” ad hominems, and have this question asked about you, “what’s wrong with (your name)?” This actually makes life fun and exciting!

“Funny how so many former members were condemned and driven out; where was this guiding ethic of grace then?”

+1 million, Like, Share, Tag, Pin, Digg, Yes and Amen.

Interestingly, when I bring up the topic of church discipline with elders or leaders they will often cite that the grace of Jesus should be our guiding ethic. This should be the case, in some sense, but underlying that assertion lurks a kind of permissveness or excuse for the aberrant or abusive behavior of certain leaders to remain unquestioned. My hunch is that many leaders have begun to realize that their prior or current abusive actions would not remain unnoticed or unpunished in a real church organization. So now they want to lean on the side of grace in order to save face or what have you. Funny how so many former members were condemned and driven out; where was this guiding ethic of grace then? My opinion is that if UBF wants to healthily move forward then a full audit of the leadership needs to be done. Not a witch hunt, but a careful evaluation of leaders’ practices in order to determine if they are biblical, practical and truly carried out with an ethic of biblical grace. If not, then they should step down. But this is problematic for UBF because as you pointed out there is no explicit documentation on many of UBFs implicit teachings nor guidelines for discipline. In addition to this I think that we are still largely concerned with conducting leadership practice which are more in accord with Confucian practices rather than biblical ones (though I would like to believe that we are moving toward the latter more these days).

Btw, Mark Driscoll actually has outlined a very detailed practice of church discipline within his own organization: http://marshill.com/2012/01/27/church-discipline-in-the-bible

As for your two suggestions on the structure or function of UBF, from what I’ve seen and also heard through the grapevine is that the organization is moving toward #2, that is becoming a full-fledged, functional church. We’re beginning to baptize more regularly and also we are attempting to implement church discipline, albeit this is still largely in its infancy. Some leaders have also intimated that documents are being drawn concerning membership, explicit practices, etc.

All in all this is great food for thought. If you’d permit me to, I’d like to share this with some elders and leaders who would perhaps seriously consider the points you’ve made. I also think that this article would serve as a good discussion starter at a staff conference.

Indeed ubf is at a crossroads.

I shared my thoughts on the para-church nature of ubf a while back. Many ubf chapter have tried to do both. They self-proclaim themselves as a “church”, re-title their director as “pastor”, start calling some long-time members as “elder” and put links to bible.com on their website. At the same time, they have created some front groups.

My question, like bigbear’s, is this: what happens to the familes? I asked this before:

“But where are the American families in all this? They are squeezed in between UBF church and UBF para-church. There really is no good place for them. They are simply demanded to suffer and sacrifice their family life in order to remain part of the campus ministry. For example, my wife and I had to live like single college students for 15 years in order to remain part of UBF ministry. The solution for American shepherd families is often to leave or pioneer a new UBF chapter.”

My only advice to families in ubf is to find out how to leave.

I would like your comments and critique about what I wrote regarding West Loop in 2009 one year after we started: http://westloop-church.org/index.php/about-us I obviously did not address ecclesiology, baptism, sacraments, or membership, but only very briefly expressed who we are and what we are about.

I guess the thing about what UBF writes is that we write all sorts of things that are often not very scholarly, often with poor grammar and sentence construction, formulaic and predictable by following some script or agenda, repetitious and as someone said, boring.

Thus what is written is often just ignored, glossed over very rapidly, or read without critical thinking (which is often implicitly regarded as anathema because it is treated as criticism, breaking spiritual order, disloyalty, and who do you think you are).

I agree with your demand to make a decision to either follow path 1) or path 2) instead of staying in that convenient in-betweenness for decades, being inaccountable to both Christians inside or outside.

Concerning “membership”, I hadn’t thought about it so much, but now I see it’s an important point. Real churches take membership seriously. In my current church, my son was baptized and this Sunday he has his “confirmation” after which he clearly is a member of the church. However, in UBF, there was no baptism and no point in time after which you became a member. That became clear to me when one day, out of the blue, my 1:1 missionary told me he didn’t want to see me anymore and I should not come to UBF anymore (the reason was that either he just had a bad day or I hadn’t shown enough respect and obedience and was considered a bad influence to others, but I was never explicitly given a reason). At that point I had already served UBF for several years, was addressed with the title “shepherd” and had given a lot of tears, sweat and money to UBF, at the expense of my university study. Only one (Non-Korean) member visited me at home after my expulsion, when I was trying to re-adapt my life and felt abandoned by God. But that person was only trying to convince me I needed to simply forgive that missionary who expelled me. This showed that there were no rights or rules of membership, anybody could be kicked out of the church any time without explanation. There was also no real love and friendship that was independend of association with UBF. And then, some months later, out of the blue, I was re-invited again. Again without reasons. And was immediately re-instantiated as a shepherd. Fast forward several years, shortly before my marriage, and being engaged for one year already, I experienced a similar thing. When I showed a sign of disobedience, suddenly my marriage was cancelled. Nobody told me about that, but my fiance suddenly disappeared. They had told her I had become “unspiritual”. The wife of the chapter director then told me (litterally) “I do not know if you are still a member”. And then again, one day later, I was suddenly a member again and we were married. I’m writing this because all of this “in and out” had deep implications for me. I had been brainwashed to believe that UBF is not only “my church”, but actually “my calling”. Being out of UBF meant having lost my calling, my purpose in life and being abandoned by God. And I know for sure it was not me who thought that way in that time, everybody did. Therefore leaving UBF was always a traumatic experience. This is because the water was so muddy that we could not distinguish between heavenly calling, calling as a shepherd, calling for Campus mission, salvation, God’s work, church, spiritual gift, fellowship etc. – it was all one and the same, and they created this muddy notion and perception of church and calling on purpose.

By the way, in all of my 10 years there was not a single baptism. There was exactly one Lord’s supper on a Wednesday meeting, because one Korean missionary insisted on it and conducted it on his own, but it was never repeated and that missionary left UBF some years later.