NASA spots a perfectly sideways galaxy
Galaxy NGC 5866 lies 44 million light-years from Earth and has a diameter of roughly 60,000 light-years — a little more than half the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy. From our viewpoint, NGC 5866 is oriented almost exactly edge-on, yielding most of its structural features invisible.
“Paul was like a musician who gives no thought to audience approval if he can only catch a look of approval from his Conductor” Oswald Chambers
My mom is still not doing well and her care has taken up most of my time. In the midst of this, my daughter and boyfriend announced they are planning on getting married next summer.That brought us much joy. I read this post by Anna or No Eden Elsewhere in October and asked her if I could repost. Frankly, I find the account both disturbing and informative. I am surprised that anyone would find this behavior by a church to be uplifting. As on Wednesday, I will post the first part of it here and send you over to Anna’s blog to complete the story. Please show this post to anyone contemplating joining Watermark. They appear more controlling than 9 Marks and that’s saying a lot.
Thank you, Anna. You are doing an awesome job!!!
Begin Post
Similar to previous stories that I have written about Watermark Community Church, the one I’m about to tell involves a person who requested that they not be identified.
Why is that?
Because Watermark Community Church will try to silence their critics. If they discover that someone is bad-mouthing them or giving ‘bad press’, they will go to extreme lengths to harass that person. Just ask Erika Estrada.
Erika contacted me a few months ago after reading my posts. She never attended Watermark Community Church, but came into their crosshairs when she expressed her concern over the church’s involvement in her children’s elementary school, White Rock Elementary. For those of you who are not familiar with the history of Watermark, they started out meeting in Lake Highlands High School, which is in the Lake Highlands area of Dallas, TX, where White Rock Elementary is located. It would be considered an upper-middle class neighborhood, where the competition for where your child attends school is fairly high. A lot of Watermark Community Church members live in this area (including influential local politicians & community leaders). Long story short – Erika and some ‘Watermark-moms’ locked horns over these issues, as well as Erika expressing her concern over Todd Wagner’s presence in the school. Erika, a Catholic, felt her children were being left out and and singled out for not participating in the after-school activities that Watermark was doing at the school. This all culminated in a stand off with the parents of one child (the father showed up at Erika’s front door), and another ‘Watermark Mom’ calling Erika’s job to inform them of ‘the type of person they had working for them.’
You can read more about Erika’s experience in these two articles:
After these articles were published, Erika was vilified on community Facebook groups and online forums. She is planning to tell more of her story at a later date. You’ll want to stay tuned.
WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
*Wendy contacted me for the same reason most people do – they find my blog online and figure out they aren’t alone in what they have dealt with in their experience with Watermark Community Church. They finally feel validated.
*Wendy was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, and when she became an adult, she decided that she no longer wanted to remain in that religion. She related to me that as a child growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, she participated in the usual activities such as door-to-door evangelizing and frequent church attendance. She was very well educated in the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. Unfortunately she suffered ridicule from her peers, particularly those who attended local evangelical churches. I was grieved to hear that a lot of these children were apparently taught to be cruel to Jehovah’s Witnesses, because many times *Wendy was told by her classmates that she was going to hell. (parents please don’t teach your children to do this)
*Wendy met her boyfriend, who was a member of Watermark Community Church, and began attending church with him. She wanted to explore the Christian faith more, and considered herself an evangelical Christian at that point, believing in the basic tenets of mainline Christianity. After dating for a while and attending church with him, she decided she wanted to pursue membership at Watermark Community Church. She wanted to become more involved, and this required that she become a member. She knew this was an important step in her developing faith.
JANUARY 2019
*Wendy began attending membership classes in early 2019. After 3 classes, she was asked to fill out this questionnaire, to find out where she was in regards to her relationship with Christ.
As someone who was still growing in her faith, and not wanting to appear proud, she answered ‘7’ on the scale.
Apparently that was a no-no.
REJECTED
*Wendy learned shortly thereafter that her membership request had been REJECTED. When she asked why, she was told that it was because she marked a ‘7’ on the Spiritual Growth Continuum chart, and not a ’10’. She explained to the membership volunteer why she answered that way – that she didn’t want to appear proud AND that she still had a lot to learn in order to grow – but the membership volunteer said there were others who answered the same way and they were rejected as well. She added that *Wendy’s denial of membership did have a lot to do with her having grown up as a Jehovah’s Witness.
This lead to more discussion with the membership volunteer, who admitted that she had no idea what Jehovah’s Witnesses believed, in which case *Wendy educated the volunteer.
Continue reading at this link to the post at No Eden Elsewhere.
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Yup, another group exhibiting Christlike behavior.. ( I am being sarcastic)
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Numero dos?
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Why would they (Watermark) reject any potential tithing unit?
It doesn’t make a whole lotta’ sense.
Those kinds of ‘churches’ need beaucoup bucks rolling in in order to operate.
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You mean cult not church right?
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Some might be doing decently enough on the $$ front door that it allows latitude to be more concerned about anyone asking (or appearing to ask) hard questions and with people rocking the boat rather than being quiet and pliant.
Also, if what was suggested is accurate about the concerns about stealing boyfriends from a potential pool and having to have certain disclosures on one’s personal life, they might not be too keen about certain profiles and demographics. How many times have we heard single people and specifically single women talk here about feelings of getting the outsider treatment — either actively or by default — from complexes that emphasize a focus on the married with kids?
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I have heard from several sources that Grace Community Church also “grades” potential members. They have to have the perfect written testimony to join, and Grace will make people redo it (and give it publicly) until they think it’s acceptable (and very few people make it on the first go round). And the implication is similar, that you basically have to be a “perfect” Christian to get in.
I suspect, in answer to Muff’s question, that you have to disclose how much you tithe at both of these churches, and you’re probably more likely to get in the higher you commit. I do know Grace holds people to that number and church discipline will happen with an elder if you don’t tithe at least 10%.
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This also reminds me of the IMB pre-takeover. I had always planned to go with a different agency, but I got told many times that you had to basically flat-out lie about your life to get accepted as an IMB missionary. Some people didn’t even seem to see what was wrong about that. One professor at LU said that IMB’s board was made of celebrity pastors who got their members in ahead of others, so I might want to consider switching my home church to FBC Woodstock.
Now I know that most of those pastors are some of the most corrupt people in evangelicalism. So much for moral integrity…
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As painful as it is in the moment, I think that the people who are denied membership in high-control groups like this are, in the long run, more fortunate than those who are admitted and who willingly drink the spiritual Kool-Aid.
The wise foresee danger and seek refuge elsewhere.
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I was amused by this:
“considered herself an evangelical Christian at that point, believing in the basic tenets of mainline Christianity”
That word mainline… apparently word of the schism has not arrived. Want to be pastor of an evangelical church? A seminary degree won’t matter nearly as much as your ability to play four chords on a guitar.
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A cult, pure and simple. Scoring ’10’ on the Spiritual Growth Continuum chart obviously does not ensure immunity against stupidity for Watermark members. Wendy should count her blessings that she was denied membership! Such rejection was a gift from God.
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I will be curious to learn more about Erika Estrada’s story. I’m curious if it’s more about the church or about the specific group of parents that happened to be at the school who were from the church. After having worked In schools for a few decades, it’s not difficult for a well resource dad organized group of parents to cause problems. As an aside, the organization that runs Bible clubs at public schools in my area doesn’t allow teachers to participate in the clubs. They wan to be perceived as separate and as a part of the surrounding community. Volunteers from the club do things for the school on volunteer days (gardening, major cleaning, providing supplies), and the principal is the main point of contact. It keeps the club away from meddlesome parents and out of school politics.
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“If You’re Not Doing Somebody, YOU’RE A NOBODY!”
The drumbeat of “Get Laid, Get Laid, Get Laid”, just in Christianese getting laid comes with a ring and a date. Such “marriages of continence” entered into entirely to legalize the sex do not have a good (or long) track record.
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But it DOES Certify your Bragging Rights as More Spiritual Than Thou, which is what’s REALLY Impotant.
“I THANK THEE, LOOOOOOOOOOOOORD, THAT I AM SO MUCH MORE SPIRITUAL THAN THOSE FILTHY…”
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AKA The wise don’t stick their schmekel in a pickle slicer.
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And that God hates all the rest of us with such a Perfect Hatred…
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I mean, it’s so silly. Either you have to lie or be delusional to get in. That’s what kind of people they really have. And the Messiah already came, so I don’t think there will be another perfect human being.
I dunno, maybe it’s a secret test to get the most delusional and desperate people in the church. Cults look for people like that because they are more easily manipulated.
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Interesting article from a man I read about before here: https://julieroys.com/why-sex-abuse-rampant/
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As in HBO’s “The Vow”.
OTOH…
Trust the Top?
Think not.
Defund.
There’s a time & place to fund …
And a time & place to defund … and run, the other direction, fast.
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… with money, of course. Then you proceed to manipulate, intimidate, and dominate them to meet your every need. Welcome to Cult Church, the weird corner of the Christian Industrial Complex.
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Defund.
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The ‘only’ way to stop personality cults, mega-mania, New Calvinism and other weirdness in the Christian Industrial Complex is to starve out their leaders. These aberrations of faith would not exist without a gullible pew supporting them with their pocketbooks.
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Excellent article, thank you. Appalling but sadly not at all surprising. The “mow your lawn” analogy resonated for a couple of reasons: 1) am I the only one who originally suspected the lawn to be manicured was not necessarily in the front yard? (at first I genuinely thought this was what had offended the author. I’m still not sure it wasn’t part of it. Not that that would make it any more offensive, IMO. Who was the bad-boy pastor that excused another’s infidelity because his wife had “let herself go?”) 2) As neurotically obsessed with maintaining order and appearances as so many evangelicals seem to be, I’ve noticed they’ve especially got it in for weeds. Yes, the Bible is full of verses/imagery about thorns and tares, tending the vineyard vs letting fallen nature run amuck, but I’m not entirely convinced this should translate into “thy holiness is directly proportional to the amount of roundup thou use, nevermind that that it poisons the water supply.”
It also brings up something I was thinking about the last post, on the swinging pastors. Coming from a complementarian background, the fact that the wives went along with it for so long seemed, sadly, the least surprising thing about the whole mess. Female submissiveness is really a big part of the culture.
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That was potty-mouth Mark Driscoll. New Calvinism is cluttered with Driscollites who think and act just like Pastor Mark. Christendom needs to let them go.
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AKA “Deep Throat Driscoll” because of his sexual obsession with both ends of the alimentary canal.
A ManaGAWD whose only definition of masculinity was “I CAN BEAT YOU UP! I CAN BEAT YOU UP!”
And who went down in a book-juicing scandal when everyone figured it’d be a sex scandal.
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Where would God put Watermark on a scale of 1-10? What score would they achieve for rejecting folks from their church because they didn’t do well on the entrance exam? Would Watermark pass His test; would they make the cut in His Kingdom?
“You have been weighed; you have been measured; and you have been found wanting.” (Daniel 5:27)
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Normally I try not to judge a person’s character based on their appearance, but… isn’t that kinda like the pot calling the kettle black in this situation?
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Given the level of idiocy in present-day American Culture, there are those who’d stick it in anyway, and then try to sue the manufacturer of said slicer.
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Wild Honey,
Driscoll has cleaned his act up a bit … he’s wearing a suit now! More appealing to his new market segment in Phoenix, I suppose. He’s also been hanging out with pentecostals since he launched his unrepentant comeback – they are generally more “holy” looking than the old Driscoll.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Cor 13:11) … except in Driscoll’s case!
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How about ZERO?
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Max,
well, his face is pulled up nice and tight.
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elastigirl,
at some point, these aging preacher boys need to give up trying to look hip
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Good grief! I just read this post and the last one about these churches. Are there any safe churches in Dallas? My sweet daughter is a senior in college and will be working as a nurse in Dallas. She was considering attending one of these churches. Its a dangerous time to be a believer. If you can recommend any, please do!
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Angie,
I don’t live anywhere near Dallas, and don’t know your daughter’s preferences. My general guidance would be to take her time and look for a small church in a building that looks like a church. Stay away from anyplace that makes people sign a membership document. Personally, I would avoid places where every pastor is a married man with children. That hiring model omits an awful lot of gifted servants of God.
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I remember reading this post on No Eden Elsewhere earlier. In my experience with evangelical churches this is a first. Normally, anyone coming out of churches that were considered “cults” (e.g. JW, Mormons), the Catholic Church, or any of the mainline denominations (e.g. Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican) would be welcomed without a second thought.
The only thing that I can possibly think of as to why Watermark would reject her is because the last person they need in their cult is someone that came out of a group they would also consider a cult, and would easily discover that she was in another one.
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Mark R,
Lutheran, Methodist, and Anglican all have offshoots that are very deliberately not mainline. They kept the worship forms but split over arguments.
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Friend,
Great advice, thanks!
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Not disagreeing that there are not. But in the world where I grew up, if you said you were a member of any Protestant denomination that was historically considered mainline (even if you were part of an offshoot), we were to consider you likely to not be saved. Same with any branch of Catholicism (Roman or Orthodox). The only ones who would get a pass are other Baptists, some non-denominational types, and the charismatics, and not even always then.
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Like Liberace after his third or fourth facelift?
(Liberace at least had a legitimate argument – an entertainer’s looks and appearance are a vital asset to their career.)