As I drive along lately I find myself cringing as I see more and more signs springing up in the front of churches proclaiming -- "Counselors here to help you" -- counseling is a business, and a fast growing one. Peacemaker is a business, they need to find conflict to survive and make money. Combine that with a church and leadership that has gone a bit off and you are courting a disaster.
We have a friend who 20 years ago was caught in a web of the same sort of thing, it was a program taken from a book called Antagonists in the Church. They came to his peaceful church and in implementing the program started to find troubled people in that said church. All of a sudden, what was a peaceful church with members who loved one another became a church of people looking for "antagonists." It became one of fear and one of not joy but despair. His once peaceful church came apart. He looks at what happened to my son, and to my family and others at our old church, and he stated how what happened to him in the program at his former church has now seemed to become more refined and more dangerous through this new and emerging Peacemaker business.
A well known restaurant had to put a warning label on their coffee after one woman did what most would know not to do, she put a hot cup of coffee between her legs and it spilt and burnt her. What she did is unthinkable to most with any common sense, and yet a giant corporation then had to start warning people not to stick hot coffee between their legs. Now, think about what one church is doing in the name of peacemaking (and there are others) by putting in place the Peacemaker Ministries programs to control their congregations into a form of peaceful submission or control. A warning needs to be declared by Peacemaker that while they fully endorse their ideas and programs, just like that famous restaurant endorsed it's coffee, that the peacemaking program can be used to cause harm if in the wrong hands.
A woman knowingly sticks a scaldingly hot cup of coffee between her legs and suffers a spill and burns and the corporation ends up issuing warnings against sticking their coffee between people's legs - yet a church that is becoming immersed in a program to promote "peace and brotherhood" that can legally make you bound to them, tells you to do as they say because they are the "Spiritual Authority." No warnings can be seen. You do what they want, only to be put behind closed doors to be talked into what they want.
Now to be fair I have to tell you that Peacemaker's program states that if someone is uncomfortable, that a person is under no obligation to continue the process; great, wonderful but it doesn't work. The "Spiritual Authority" doesn't want you to do anything other than what they have deemed you should do, i.e. mediation, and so they become angry and your life becomes one not of peace, but one of turmoil in a church that once was your heart's home if you try to stop and say no more. This is more of a danger than that coffee and yet no one is stopping it or in the least issuing a warning. Rather than a burn on the skin such as with the spilt coffee, it is a real possibility that they will put an emotional burn in your head and heart. Look at people who have been through abuse; eventually you get beyond it, but you always carry it and it can and does come to the forefront easily.
That is why I am here, that is why I am speaking. We all have spiritual gifts, perhaps a voice of warning is my gift, not only for myself but for anyone who is about to step into this thing with only a pastor's assurance to "trust him." I am not telling people not to do this program, although I do not agree with it, what I am saying is to judge for yourself after reading all of their materials, and all of the contracts that come with this program and knowing what happens to a church and the people who agree to follow the program's rules, especially the one about informed consent. Under this program a congregant is giving the leadership of that church the legal authority to put you or those you love into mediation should you/they do something that the authorities don't agree with. It is there in the rules Peacemaker Ministries suggests churches should adopt. If only people will just read them.
A danger in our society is to want someone else to "fix" something for us and we want it fast. We want fast food, fast service and, it seems, if we say yes to these peacemaking teams, we must want these teams to fix our hearts fast and as they think that they should be. Do we really want this kind of ministry, one that has other people telling a person what they see as a problem? Do we really want them to "fix" one of our loved one's hearts? Again I ask, isn't this overlooking the peacemaking team's logs in their own eyes to find a speck in someone else's? The peacemaker in our former church who decided to "fix" my son told me that he saw something in my son that he once had trouble with, so he knew it needed to be fixed. This coming from someone who knew my son only by hello's in the halls of that church; most of what he "knew" about my son was from what the pastor had told him, the same pastor who wanted the mediation to begin with. The same pastor whom my son caught in questionable activities in the church office. This also coming from a peacemaker who has been in mediation not once but multiple times to "correct" his thoughts when he had questions as to what was happening. When even he had questions about if what they were doing was right. How do I know this? It came out one day last summer as this peacemaker was telling me the reasoning behind how great mediation is.
Speaking of fast food, and fast service, the mediation service that is also connected to my former church specializes in intense multi-hour sessions that promise to fix things quick. Is this counseling or mind beating? The first mediation meeting that they wanted my son to attend was to be, in one day, at least eight hours long and maybe more. They also stated that it would in all probability take many days. Doesn't this sound a bit odd to you? I'm not sure how many churches that go through the Peacemaker program actually have a progression of first the peacemaking team tries to fix someone and then they turn them over to the mediation/counseling company connected with the church. But it is something to watch for.
This morning, as the news chattered away on the radio, I listened to the reports coming out of Iran about how the Iranian government would not let the people who had concerns speak at a rally; only those who agreed were allowed there. In our not too distant past there was a man who wanted to create a perfect society or, to be more precise, what he envisioned as the perfect society. A society in which he would be rid of those of whom he felt were not meant to be. Is that what is coming to a church near you?
When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."
-Adolf Hitler, November 1933
