“I had the chance to visit more than 30 UBF chapters around the world, including England, Russia, Germany and South Korea. Each time, there was an ever-present, unmistakable layer of guilt and shame. I felt this dark cloud during much of my 24 years at UBF. We all knew it, but few spoke about it. We never tried to identify why we all felt so bad. Instead we kept to ourselves and thought to ourselves, “I must be the only one who feels like this. Everyone looks so happy.” But the reality was that we all wore “happy masks”, keeping face and pretending to give glory to God so no one would notice the pain we kept inside.”

Goodness Found: The Butterfly Narratives

Her experience is not so different from mine. I saw almost all the same things. Two big differences: 1) she only stayed 3 years in a Canadian chapter 2) Sister’s ministry is different from brother’s ministry at ubf. I won’t speak for the women in ubf, but I really really really wish the women is ubf would speak their mind publicly!

Changing hearts and minds is God’s job. Reconciling with each other is our job. If the ministry of reconciliation (given to us by Christ Himself) was not possible, I would not still be in this fustercluck of a conversation regarding ubf.

So yes I’m tired of talking about ubf. But I will never tire of talking about the ministry of reconciliation.

Free Kindle edition today – Rest Unleashed: The Raven Narratives

The problem was when you get married and pioneer new chapter..the support was not there….ignore problems and not listening to loving and sound doctrine will be UBF downfall…we cant ignore obvious abuses and sins….it is hard for top down leaders to listen because it is about religious pride and it means change…they will hold out until the bottom falls out..I had to change when I found myself living on the water’s edge of the Ohio river…it is difficult and painful to become bankrupt but liberating and free..love blooms..if enough people stsnd up in UBF against the abuse and system it will change…I applaud Joe, Ben, Brian and others on this website and for standing up….I had no where to turn when my UBF world fell apart…but this website was very helpful in my healing process andbwriting a book..still not fully recovered but with God’s love I am eing to commit to God work in a healthy church and plan to get a Master degree at a Bible college and serve in a new way in the body of Christ…want to thank you all for speaking up..
Joe told me about this site while still in UBF…but laughed and stayed away…was to proud to listen…but now I am all ears:)))

Welcome again, AndreyP! I think most UBFers basically know that only God can change anyone, including ubf leaders. As a GHE (glass half empty) person, I realistically do not see any major or significant change happening anytime soon. My main struggle is not to become bitter, resentful, vindictive, retaliatory, vengeful, overly angry, etc, (which is hard, and which sometimes keeps me up at night especially when my mind is tired), but to continue to enjoy love, joy and peace in the Spirit (Gal 5:22) in the current situation and climate.

As I have expressed before, my hope and prayer is that enough young people in UBF will begin to speak up on the basis of truth and not be intimidated by what is not the truth.

That is why the post by Friends and Forests were both so encouraging to me. I believe that there will be more and more UBFers like Friends and like Forests, who will not cave in to unhealthy authoritarian practices that are abusive, intimidating, coercive and oppressive, but become humbly assertive and bold by God’s grace and develop critical thinking, which has been suppressed for 5 decades and counting.

I would love to read it now. Seems like he address it to me, as I can related to being an “Incipient Heretic” :)

I wrote lengthy comments to Friend because I wanted her to know how hard my wife and I worked over the past five years, to do exactly what she suggested — to help UBF leaders learn how to open up lines of healthier communication and start to listen to members who were being hurt and oppressed in various ways.

After giving it our best try, we concluded that they really did not want our help and were never going to listen anyway. So for the sake of our health and our family and others close to us, we are now doing what you have suggested. We are letting UBF leaders do as they wish. And we will no longer sacrifice ourselves or our families to fulfill their dreams.

I wanted Friend, and anyone else who is still in UBF and who may be thinking about helping the leaders to rescue the organization, to be fully aware of what was tried and how it failed. I won’t tell them what to do. But I want them to be as aware as possible.

Brian, my heart resonates with every word in these lines (even I went to urban dictionary for patookie).

Joe and Ben, after reading your comments on Friend’s post a question came to my mind: what are the reasons they are so focused on changing ubf leaders? At least you get upset when they do not change. It is interesting to note that Brian has different priorities: me, my family and other enslaved sheep and families. What if you continue “serving” ubf leaders by neglecting your full ability to help some others to get free of ubf and at the cost of helping yourselves and your own families?

““A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine – a Speaker for the Dead – has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I’m going to tell you.

The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. ‘Is there any man here,’ he says to them, ‘who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?’
They murmur and say, ‘We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.’

The Rabbi says, ‘Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.’ He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, ‘Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.’

So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, ‘Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.’

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’

As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’

So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.

So of course, we killed him.

-San Angelo”

Orson Scott Card Speaker for the Dead
Letters to an Incipient Heretic”

During those first years at UBF, I studied all 50 chapters of Genesis four times. Chapter by chapter, verse by verse and word by word, we interrogated this first book of the bible. We called this bible “study” but in reality, we were combing the text to find justifications for our noble dream. We used the same questions (from a mandatory UBF study sheet) over and over and rarely used Christian commentaries or other books. We wanted a “pure” interpretation, untainted by people’s opinions. Ironically, we were listening only to people’s opinions, specifically one man’s and one woman’s interpretation, since we only used the UBF founders’ question sheets.”

excerpt from narrative 1 – Why did I join? source

So now I don’t give a dirty flying rat’s patookie whether they listen or not. I write for myself. I write for my family. And I write for the families and sheep stuck in the ubf entanglements.

This second book should be subtitled “The definitive guide to surviving in ubf ministry”. But that would have given them too much credit.

If UBFers can’t, won’t or refuse to hear this, or if they insist on their own paradigms, perspectives and prejudices, then Lord have mercy on us.