It is also painful for me as well. ubf was my church too. People are mistaken if they think I love using the words I use. But deconstructing our community belief system is a part of genuine community. What has happened here is indeed genuine community. Just because ubfriends is virtual does not mean it is not authentic.

One aspect of genuine fellowship that gets overlooked is the fact that genuine fellowship grows and changes and eventually dies. The reason the fellowship at ubf is often so fake or falls apart and crashes is because people are unwilling to let it die. At some point, you have to let go of the past. Yes I had wonderful fellowship at times at ubf. But if we cannot let it go, the community crashes and burns.

This virtual fellowship here at ubfriends has already died, at least once. Joe’s original vision and belief for this website, which I shared with him, died. We let go of our wishdream. At times this virtual community seemed dead. No one discussed anything. But as different people shared different thoughts, the community grew and changed.

At our local church, people freely come and go. No one freaks out if you are not present some Sunday. At ubf, you never leave, unless you are willing to experience the traumatic fellowship. Even after leaving on relatively good terms, former members report the clingy nature of their shepherds.

So yet another angle to see the ubf community from is this: people leave in a crisis situation every 8 to 10 years because the fellowship is static and intended to be permanent.

Hmmm…Mom, very interesting that you would consider an online blog an authentic community. But you do have a point, all view points are welcome here. And I really appreciate that. I abhor censorship of any type. Your comment reminds me of something I read today.

“In a democratic society, we do not practice the savage methods of an autocratic regime, but we find new and pernicious (bad) ways of expressing our prejudices. Education’s goal is to impart knowledge, and knowledge is not only heretical but unpredictable and often uncomfortable. One has to pause and imagine what it would mean to censor all that is uncomfortable from our textbooks. How, if you cannot face the past as it was, can you ever hope to teach history?”

Later the author compares knowledge to, “the bite of the forbidden fruit, with its promise of a different kind of power and freedom.”

One of my teachers mentioned how after his class, we were all empowered to become better heretics. Knowledge is dangerous; education is dangerous; it is unpredictable. It scares people. But it is authentic. I don’t want to be a cynic, but I want to be authentic.

1. There should be a “Howdy, Maria Peace” link in the upper right hand corner.

2. Hover your mouse over that and then click “Edit My Profile”.

3. Scroll down and upload a new picture.

It seems that some missionaries were NEVER trained (while wanting to train others!). They leave their homeland with an ambition to “conquer,” subdue and rule over, but NOT to humble themselves to learn and embrace a foreign culture. It is simply cultural imperialism and ethnic superiority, both of which have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with Jesus.

I remember I was invited to my first Bible study around 10-12 years ago by a Korean UBF “missionary”… When I stepped into the UBF center I realized I was early for my bible study so I sat and waited – I was met by 2 female Korean missionary (one was distressed that a non-Korean was in the center) and she rudely asked me what I thought I was doing inside her Korean church. The other so-called missionary asked if I was white (American) “sheep”.

The first lady then forcibly told me to leave because no one would do bible study with me.

Just then, the so-called missionary who I had originally scheduled my Bible study arrived. He immediately caught on – and quickly seated me in a room. He dismissed everything that was said as a test of “faithfulness” to see if I would stay and hear the Word of God.

Weird weird weird… but I feel I am worse or responsible since I withstood all of the UBF abuse and failed to realize that UBF is a very dangerous cult.

But over the last few years, with support from the recent comments, I would restate what the root of sin is: THE ROOT OF SIN IS THE NEED TO BE IN CONTROL.

Oh man… SO VERY MANY books needs to be written… We measured our binders by thickness and by quantity of binders, not by weight :)

So many more stories need to be exposed…

– checking shepherd’s underwear for skid marks
– getting perms to look more spiritual
– eyelid surgery for Koreans
– late night speaking in tongues sessions
– having bible study with stuffed animals
– taking out loans to make special offerings
– falsified PhD journal publishing

SL would deliberately create situations where members were in competition. Then he would rebuke them for being competitive.

That practice goes back to SL. If he saw two chapter directors talking to each other, acting like friends rather than coworkers, he would suspect that they might be plotting against him. Then he would send someone (often Little Sarah) to break up the conversation. He wanted all the relationships in UBF to be mediated by him.

And I’ve seen other leaders follow his example. I’ve gotten email messages from the director of Washington UBF ordering me not to contact anyone in his chapter (even people I’d known for 25 years); he demanded that all correspondence go through him.

In addition to being outrageous, that kind of behavior makes a (pseudo) community very weak. It guarantees that interpersonal relationships will be superficial.

As mentioned often by many on ubfriends, authoritarianism has reared its protrusive ugly head and has inadvertently squashed some organically developing relationships among members, usually among “sheep” and/or native leaders, and perhaps less so among missionaries, in my opinion.

Sadly, some older missionaries do not trust native leaders (or younger missionaries who are critical thinkers) for independent leadership or creative initiative. There are numerous reasons for this, among them Confucianism, authoritarianism, and so-called “spiritual order” with the (older) missionary invariably having the final say, etc, because in their mind they have “more experience” and tenure and seniority and the “highest” positions of leadership.

Until this is seriously addressed in HOT conversations and ongoing equitable dialogue and discussions, I do not think that authentic community will be forthcoming any time soon.

But then in 2010, much of that building was torn down and a new near-million dollar building was built. The point was to look so beautiful for the glory of God. JJ came and lectured us to fill this beautiful house! We were in awe of the beautiful snow we could falling during worship services, outside the high ceiling window.

But this rather grand building was just holy paint on a mound of stench. After declaring such a glorious, united work of God to build this building, half the leaders resigned.

Not really.

When UBF bought the church building on Artesian Ave. in Chicago, one of the first things that they did — on direct order from SL — was to take hammers and smash all the stained glass windows. SL wanted it to look like a “Bible center” not a church. People in the neighborhood were shocked and upset. (This is the kind of thing that the Taliban did.) OK, stained glass windows might not be your thing. But why not take them down carefully and preserve them in recognition of their beauty and to show respect for the hard work, sacrifice and faith those who built them?

That incident captures in a nutshell the attitude of SL and the UBF missionaries toward their Christian host community.

What I wanted was to be a missionary, I was told I was not good enough, but we could go sit by ourselves in the most dangerous city in America after 6 months of driving training.

I thought I had joined a Christian missionary-sending organization, what I got was a Buddhism-induced, hyper-aesthetic pseudo-fellowship which covered my identity with a cultic Shepherd X mask just so that their Korean children can take over the leadership of the group.

I concur with Joe. Authentic community is possible. It is however messy and awkward at first, but entirely possible and oh so good. Perfect community and utopian community and exclusive community is not possible to sustain, however and often only exists in our wishdream.

I experienced authentic community many times. We had authentic community numerous times in my first few years at ubf, especially just after I joined. But every time authentic community broke out, the missionaries would squash it, interfering until we conformed to UBFism. The three great enemies of UBFism (no not Ben/Joe/Brian :) are the Holy Spirit, the gospel, and friendship.

I also experience genuine community now in my family. We are learning to be together. When we were a house church, my wife and I lived as business partners with benefits. We lived as single college students. And we did not form a healthy community at home. We are trying now.

If there is any place to start to bring about actual healthy change at ubf, it would be to stop the arranged marriages and allow authentic community at home. In essence, let people be family-centered!

* They wanted to understand the gospel… and were told to go and preach the gospel.

* They wanted to understand why their relationships were so bad and getting worse… and were told to go back to the Bible.

* They wanted to understand why the atmosphere felt so dead… and were told to invite more people to double the ministry.

* They wanted to actually think about the meaning Scripture… and were told to put aside their own ideas and just believe.

* They wanted leaders to just be honest and admit that lots of abusive things have happened and do happen in UBF… and were met with silence.

* They wanted friends… and got coworkers.

* They wanted to stop the insanity of doing the same thing over again at every conference year after year… and the result was more of the same.

* They brought serious problems to the attention of leaders in a gentle and respectful manner… and were told “your tone is not right and “you have overstepped your authority.”

* They wanted community.. .and got judgment.

* They wanted to affect the life of the church.. .and got bureaucracy.

* They wanted conversation.. .and got doctrine.

* They wanted meaningful engagement with the world… and got moral prescription.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/08/25/re-engaging-the-de-churched-four-strategies/

One shepherdess who was married and divorced in UBF because she wanted to leave UBF described it a bit harsher, but I guess it’s the same point: “There is no love in UBF.”

While inside, you think (or you want to think) that there is love in UBF, even more love than outside, but deep down you already feel that all the love is conditional and not real, and once you start to disobey or even criticize openly, the veneer drops and you see that there was never love and real friendship in the first place – it was all delusion, all contrived and fake, only used as a means to serve the one goal of spreading UBFism.

I remember another shepherdess who married a UBF member against the will of the leader. Before, she was the favorite and poster child of our chapter because she had many sheep, but after that, she fell out of favor. Nobody of her former “friends” from UBF except me and my wife attended her wedding, even though she had invited everybody. I remember it so well because we made her wedding cake.

http://atlc.org/members/resources/four_stages_community.html

Along with Brian, I was confused by this line:

“Basically I have to toe the party line and keep the status quo. This is not a necessarily bad thing, it’s a part of being in a community. – See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2015/08/22/they-want-christ-not-christians/#comment-19066

If you continually have to toe the party line and keep silent about many issues that you care about, then this indicates that you are not in a true community.

Sociologists have a term for this. They call it pseudo-community.

(The term was popularized by M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled.)

Pseudo-community is a primitive stage where a group identifies itself by a narrow set of shared beliefs and values and cannot accept individual differences. Conflicts feel so threatening to the group that everyone must continually censor themselves to avoid arguments. At a superficial level, members of a pseudo-community may seem happy and peaceful. But that harmony is a mask. Behind the mask lies fear, suspicion, anxiety and judgmentalism that prevents people from connecting and loving one another as they really are.

To transition from pseudo-community to authentic community, a group will have to go through periods of conflict and chaos. Because this is so frightening, many groups get stuck in that primitive stage.

Here is a great quote from Jean Vanier about this:

“Scott Peck talks of pseudo-communities. These are where people pretend to live community. Everybody is polite and obeys the rules and regulations. They speak in platitudes and generalities. But underlying it all is an immense fear of conflict, a fear of letting out the monsters. If people start truly to listen to each other and to get involved, speaking from their guts, their anger and fears may rise up and they might start hitting each other over the head with frying pans. There are so many pent-up emotions contained in their hearts that if these were to start surfacing, God knows what might happen! It would be chaos. But from that chaos, healing could come. . . They discover that they have all been living in a state of falsehood. And it is then that the miracle of community can happen!”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth

“Basically I have to toe the party line and keep the status quo. This is not a necessarily bad thing, it’s a part of being in a community. In the church the “we” is bigger than the “me.” This means that I have to be extra careful in the way I dress, speak, write, blog, etc.”

> Unless you are divergent :) Divergents are not the problem, we are the solution!

“People see Christians and think Christianity is hogwash that creates judgmental bigots and two-faced hypocrites.”

> If Christianity produces judgmental bigots and hypocrites, it is hogwash, and in deep need of reform. Such hypocrisy is the one thing that got Jesus’ goat. It is unacceptable and must be called out. It is a false gospel that says “I’m a hypocrite but Jesus loves me anyway and allows me to be a hypocrite.” Sure it is true that we all have a certain amount of hypocrisy. But I will not subscribe to any faith that tolerates hypocrisy.

One the other hand, I have a gay friend who actually went through the entire program and graduated at one of the most conservative evangelical schools in the US. Evangelicalism has deeply rooted problems to address. But unlike UBFism, evangelicalism does have the Christian gospel at its core. So evangelicalism can be reformed, but UBFism should be rejected.

“Did you know that early on in his life, Ghandhi tried going to church? He was a young man, practicing law in South Africa, and had been reading the New Testament. Ghandi found Jesus captivating and was drawn to the Gospel, so he decided to go to a church. But the church stopped him at the door. They pointed out that he was a Kaffir, and told him that there was no room for Kaffirs in this church, and that if he didn’t leave that he would be escorted out.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/08/19/gandhi-the-church-and-the-kingdom-by-jonathan-storment/