Utterly Shameless: Egotism of Local Pastors Far More Important Than People’s Lives
Regardless of the outrageous behavior of Clearcreek Chapel located in Springboro, Ohio, local pastors continue to associate with the Chapel elders and participate in its “ministry.” The well documented creepiness of the leadership aside, first and foremost is the concern regarding reports that this ministry still receives from people who have entered the “biblical” counseling program at CCC. The Chapel elders, particularly its director Greg Cook, continue to snuff out marriages that arrive there as smoldering wicks. And apparently, Cook is still living up to his reputation for verbally abusing counselees. Cook’s penchant for rubbing his eyes while aping a baby crying as a way to mock husbands continues to be a report that we hear of since circa 2007.
At issue is their view of church authority: they clearly believe they have authority over families who have been referred to them. Imagine a pastor counseling a wife alone and telling her that her husband’s theology is “180 degrees” from the truth. No pastor, I repeat, no pastor has the right to diminish a woman’s view of her husband in any way, shape, or form. Any counselor worth their salt knows that spouses need little help in that area, and it is not beneficial to any marriage in any way.
The pattern over eight years has become abundantly clear: the CCC elders first ascertain which spouse is going to submit to their authority, and then work to separate the “foolish” spouse from the other. Sadly, some go there seeking to merely make their marriage better, and end up on the verge of divorce six months later. The errant spouse who would dare question the CCC anointed, usually the husband, is then slandered in various and malicious ways to gain assumptions from the congregations that are involved.
One of their favorite tactics is to ask flock groups for a love offering on behalf of the poor abused wife when no such financial need exists. Obviously, it sends the message that said husband is not supporting his family. Existing side by side financial documentation supports this accusation, and I assume CCC continues to use this ploy. This was employed by Greg Cook in 2008 against a counselee while he himself was indebted to the IRS for, according to one source, 180,000 dollars. Another favorite tactic is to exaggerate family problems and suggest that a family member live with a parishioner for awhile. Particularly when it is a daughter, the assumptions that result are evident. And of course, no repertoire of sanctified slander would be complete without the public “unspoken prayer request” for the spouse chained to another who does not appreciate the superior mantle placed on Reformed elders by the Almighty.
In short, the CCC elders have a long and documented history of character assassination that would have made Adolf Hitler blush. At least in two cases, husbands took their families and fled the state of Ohio while two other attempts by others failed. In these attempts to get one’s family away from CCC, the CCC elders counter by claiming abandonment. These are wicked tyrants who should be avoided at all cost.
The CCC elders enjoyed evangelical fame as a counseling center for many years after the departure of the founding pastor, Dr. John Street who built the ministry on Jay Adams so-called first generation biblical counseling. After Street’s departure, Russ Kennedy (CCC pastor of “spiritual vision”) and company quickly moved to totally gut and reconstruct the counseling program. A group of families who had come to CCC to covertly take it over quickly moved into leadership. This group was led by the creepy New Covenant Theology guru and cultist Chad Bresson. This group, behind the scenes, despised John Street and were waiting to pounce upon his departure. The covert persecution of those whom they perceived as a threat was relentless. This is a leadership that has amassed numerous unresolved conflicts with many, many professing Christians, and the lending of credibility to them by other pastors is unconscionable.
In addition, and in true CCC form, they still allow counselees who come there to believe that they hold to Jay Adams first generation counseling when in reality, they despise Adams. As one who had breakfast with Greg Cook every Monday morning for the better part of a year, you can trust me on that one.
So then, following is a list of local pastors who insist on supporting CCC and their continued destruction of families. I deem it my duty to warn others about them because birds of the feather flock together. These pastors are endeared to CCC for one reason or another. More than likely, they are just feeding their egos on what is left of CCC’s status in biblical counseling circles, but at any rate, their associations with CCC make them a concern to the well being of hurting families.
Tim Pasma, pastor at LaRue Baptist Church, LaRue, Ohio. Continues to support CCC’s bogus counseling program.
Jim Koerber, pastor at New Covenant Life Church, Blanchester, Ohio. Continues to support the counseling program at CCC.
Danny Wright, Greenville Grace, Clayton, Ohio. Will speak at a conference hosted by CCC in March of 2016.
Joe Godwin, pastor at Patterson Park Church, Dayton, Ohio. Will speak at a conference hosted by CCC in March of 2016.
Greg Birdwell, pastor at Providence Bible Fellowship, West Chester, Ohio. Will speak at a conference hosted by CCC in March of 2016. Greg Birdwell is well aware of the numerous controversies surrounding CCC and their unreconciled status with many Christian families. Yet, he unabashedly fellowships with them and supports them. Lest these men would pass on any opportunity to mock God, the theme of the conference hosted by CCC is, “Cultivating Companionship.”
Paul Dohse
TANC Ministries
12/10/2016
Advice to Clearcreek Chapel Members Being Held Against Their Will: Don’t Slip John Street a Note
Regardless of unresolved conflict with many Christians and documented outrageous behavior by the leadership of Clearcreek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio, the Professor and Chair of the graduate program in biblical counseling at The Master’s College and Seminary, John Street, will conduct the Chapel’s annual “Family Enrichment Weekend” (1/23, 24/2015).
I would equate that to chickens having a celebration of life conference at a KFC processing plant. The Clearcreek Chapel leadership has devastated many families, and the idea of a “family enrichment conference” hosted by them is an absurd mockery. Regardless, the biblical counseling community insists on sending troubled people to their counseling center and endorsing them overall.
Clearcreek Chapel, referred to by many in the area as “Cloudy Creek Chapel” and “Clearcreek Cult,” has a storied past of bazaar teachings from the pulpit and outright creepy behavior by the elders. They also hold a suffocating control over parishioners and their instances of church discipline matches that of churches several times their size. The Chapel has brought people up on discipline for insufficient tithing, nonattendance, and asking too many questions. Congregants have also been disciplined for vacating membership without the approval of Chapel elders. Members can also be disciplined for visiting websites that are unapproved by the elders; e.g., it was announced that visiting any website authored by moi is “sin.”
Devon Berry, one of the present elders, preached a sermon that propagated the following idea: spiritual growth can only come from the word of God if heard coming from an elder. In another sermon, Berry promised the congregation that Jesus would keep the Chapel by-laws for them. He also stated that the Chapel membership covenant has equal authority to the Bible.
A former elder who recently left the Chapel for undisclosed reasons used to lead a yearly pilgrimage to the gravesite of Geerhardus Vos, a Reformed mystic who died in 1949. In the last known Pilgrimage, said elder read from one of Vos’ books graveside while weeping. You can’t make this stuff up.
However, the hallmark of Chapel leadership is holding people hostage there under some kind of threat; usually, loss of reputation through church discipline. In fact, counseling, formal or informal, is considered the first step of church discipline by default. The counselees are rarely aware of this. The Chapel then uses information gathered in counseling to control people. Though Street is clearly aware of all of this along with the counseling organizations that support the Chapel, they continue to robustly endorse the Chapel with no hesitation. Basically, they are referring hurting people to a classic cult.
I am not sure when these types of endorsements became closure for me, but they are. The topic Street will be delivering is an example of this: The Gospel-Centered Marriage. So, John Street is going to the Chapel with New Calvinism’s Christocentric calling card. He is officially New Calvinist. In regard to no one in the Reformed camp that I was a part of for 20 years holding the Chapel accountable, I am totally ok with it because none of them were ever my friends. I was never a New Calvinist, but apparently, all of my “friends” were.
Nevertheless, I can give some advice to those being held hostage there by some means. I know what you are thinking: when Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown, some of the members slipped him a note asking for help. I strongly advise against that when Street arrives. He is one of them, and he won’t help you.
In addition, neither can his Christocentric progressive justification help you. Gee, sorry you have to go, but I am sure it is required since you are under “heavy counseling.”
paul
Mark Driscoll Did NOT Resign Because He Abused Parishioners
Mark Driscoll
Sigh. Does anybody have any idea how many “Lessons Learned from Mark Driscoll’s Resignation” posts have been written? How do you write a post on that when the fundamental premise is dead wrong?
Mark Driscoll did not have to step down because he abused people. That was the excuse to get rid of him, but not the reason. We will probably never know what he really did to turn the other institutional church power brokers against him, but it had absolutely NOTHING to do with abusing people.
Abuse in the institutional church is rampant and completely condoned. James MacDonald, a friend of Driscoll’s, is guilty of the EXACT same behavior, actually worse; so, why is he still around? Because he plays well with the power brokers—that’s why. I am incredulous that anyone would believe that he was forced out of ministry for mistreating parishioners. That’s a laugher.
Let’s take Clearcreek Chapel of Springboro, Ohio for instance. The elder board there has a long history of abuse. Former members have fled the state of Ohio to get as far away from that church as possible, literally east coast and west coast, while others have sought psychiatric care after tangling with said elder board. This is an elder board that has a very long list of unresolved conflict with many, many Christians including myself.
Nevertheless, they have the full endorsement of the Reformed counseling community along with their own training center for counselors endorsed by the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. The director of John MacArthur’s counseling program at Master’s Seminary, Dr. John Street, will be speaking there in January 2015. And of course, few need to be brought up to speed on the continued endorsement of CJ Mahaney despite overt criminal behavior.
In regard to Driscoll, the institutional church power brokers took the opportunity to appear principled, but in reality Driscoll crossed some sort of inner circle code of conduct. Sometimes we can know the real reason, but in Driscoll’s case it is doubtful.
Rob Bell is a case where we can know. The inner circle kicked him to the curb for writing the book Love Wins. In the book, Bell proffered universal salvation. Ouch. You can do many, many naughty things as a New Calvinist celebrity, but you may never, never, never remove the fear factor from being a Protestant. Bell messed with the control/fear factor—that’s a no, no. That’s messing with the mutton bigtime.
However, Francis Chan did the same thing in a book he wrote that was supposedly an answer to Bell’s book, and got away with it though he was much more ambiguous about it. How? Chan has way more star power than Bell had, and only implied that we can’t know for certain what God means by the term “hell,” but it’s probably a bummer. At any rate, Chan’s book was far from a literal, grammatical statement on hell.
It’s all about politics and the power brokers of what many well respected Christian journalists call the “evangelical industrial complex” (or google “John Calvin’s Geneva Theocracy”). We live in America where the institutional church is not backed by the government; the only thing that the institutional church has to fall back on is salvation by institution, and that has been sold masterfully to God’s people and was a staple of the Reformation. The Protestant institutional church is clearly a corporate man-following popery.
No? With the demise of Driscoll, the Mars Hill empire with multiple campuses nationwide completely collapsed overnight. It’s completely gone. The ministry stood on the feet of the corporate pope and nothing else. This is exactly why James MacDonald is able to extort outrageous salary increases from his own campus empire. If he goes, the whole enchilada goes and everyone knows it. That’s also why MacDonald was able to excommunicate one of the campuses because the elders of that particular campus dared question him. Think about it, he declared every member of that campus unbelieving and condemned just because their elders had questions. MacDonald has also expressed the desire to have the authority to execute parishioners who disagree with him. Again, Driscoll could not even begin to hold a candle to MacDonald’s despotism.
There is one other possibility: Driscoll might have done something really stupid that will come out later, and the rats are jumping ship, but again, we will probably never know the real reason.
Perhaps everyone wants to believe that Driscoll was thrown under the bus because the first pope of New Calvinism, John Piper and the other power brokers really care about the spiritually abused, but it’s not reality by any stretch of the imagination.
paul
PsychoHeresy Unawareness: Dr. John Street Shot the Sheriff, but He Didn’t Shoot the Deputy
Originally posted September 30, 2012
No doubt, PAM reveals many problems with the biblical counseling movement that one may expect when it is based on a false gospel. But John Street’s real sin is his participation in a mass propagation of a false gospel.
Dr. John Street, founder of Clearcreek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio has finally made it big in the biblical counseling movement. This is evident from the fact that he has become a target of PAM (PsychoHeresy Awarness Ministries). PAM is directed by Martin and Deidre Bobgan who, without a doubt, are the most formidable critics of the “biblical” counseling movement.
John Street is an elder at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in California, and the Chair of the graduate program for biblical counseling at the seminary associated with MacArthur’s church. Also, last time I checked, Street is the president of the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC).
In the most recent PAM newsletters, (http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/street_tmc&s.html and http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/street_tmc&s_2.html) Street is barbecued for practicing counseling methods that the Bobgans deem unbiblical. PAM primarily decries the biblical counseling movement’s “problem-centered counseling” verses “Christ-centered Ministry” (http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/e-books/CCMpcc-ebk.pdf ).
I am not sure what PAM means by “Christ-centered ministry,” but it seems to be a passive approach regarding the disciple’s role in sanctification:
This is why we say that those who minister to one another need to get in the way and out of the way. They need to be available, but they need to let God work rather than push their own agenda.
The idea of pushing our own agenda could mean “let go and let God” instead of pushing an agenda that just so happens to be God’s agenda. The wording is unsettling. Elsewhere the Bobgans write the following:
Christ-centered ministry encourages spiritual growth and depends on the Lord to do the work in each individual through His Word and Spirit. Therefore, one can confidently assure believers that this ministry is more effective, long-lasting, and spiritually rewarding than problem-centered counseling for those who are willing to go this way.
Depend on the Lord to do the work? At the very least, the Bobgans need to clarify their position more thoroughly because by and large, gospel contemplationism is the primary thrust of NANC counseling. One wonders if PAM is accusing NANC of what they are guilty of: an overly passive approach to sanctification.
And, NANC, when they were (past tense) helping many people, encouraged an aggressive role in sanctification by the counselee. Christians are called to “study to show thyself approved,” and then aggressively apply that truth to their lives in order to have a life built on a rock (Matthew 7:24).
This was NANC’s approach in the past, and it did result in massive professions of faith, and real lasting change. I know; I was there; I am a firsthand witness. This was before David Powlison via CCEF and company infiltrated NANC with the gangrene of progressive justification. Unbelievably, in broad daylight, Powlison admitted (during a lecture at John Piper’s church while Piper was on sabbatical searching for different “species of idols” in his heart) that NANC’s “first generation” counseling was in contention with “second generation counseling” over the very definition of the gospel!
And this is my point: PAM is focused on the supposed evil of “problem-centered” counseling (is the gospel itself not problem-centered? The gospel did not come to solve a problem?) while the real issue is that NANC and CCEF both propagate a blatant false gospel. The counseling is based on the fusion of justification and sanctification with gospel contemplationism as its practical application.
CCEF’s counseling is based on Sonship theology. Dr. Jay E. Adams nailed that doctrine specifically as the fusion of justification and sanctification in his book, “Biblical Sonship” published in 1999. Adams, in the book, decried Sonship’s position that regeneration is powered by the finished work of justification. CCEF then effectively infiltrated NANC and took it over with the same doctrine. I use over 200 pages to document all of this in “The Truth About New Calvinism” (thetruthaboutnewcalvinism.com).
Hence, we must assume that NANC counseling yields many ill results, and I will say this: PAM points them out though they are missing the much larger issue. Case in point:
The truth is that counselors and especially counselors with an agenda (their particular approach) too often take credit for successes and attribute failures to the counselees. The trumping truth is that success is primarily in the hands of the counselees….
And worse yet, the counselee’s “failure” ends up in church discipline!
Also:
Problem-centered counseling is typically a one-to-one relationship. Sometimes couples and families are involved, but the relationship is generally artificial and restrictive. The counseling relationship itself usually does not extend outside the counseling room. The relationship lasts as long as counseling is being provided and normally does not extend to other involvement, even in most biblical counseling centers. Problem-centered counselors commonly do not involve themselves with counselees outside the counseling room. That is why both psychological and biblical counselors sometimes use intake forms requesting a great deal of personal information. Because this relationship is generally isolated, the counselor and counselee can be selective as to what they want to reveal about themselves. In fact, as we mentioned earlier, research shows that counselees often lie to their counselors and protect themselves by concealing important information.
The great advantage of Christ-centered ministry is that it is not limited to an artificial one-to-one relationship where one has the problem and the other supposedly has the solution. In the Body of Christ all are growing together. there are many opportunities to know one another and to interact in genuine relationships. When a believer is experiencing problems, more than one person may be involved in ministering to that individual. One may be teaching. One may be reminding. Another may simply be extending support and fellowship. Another may be helping in practical ways. Another may be exhorting. Another may be admonishing. And, in a few cases, some may be exercising the responsibility of disciplining a fellow believer for the sake of restoration. But, all can be praying and encouraging the individual in the direction of the Lord. And, through all this, all are growing together and the relationships may deepen with one another as well as with the Lord.
No doubt, PAM reveals many problems with the biblical counseling movement that one may expect when it is based on a false gospel. But John Street’s real sin is his participation in a mass propagation of a false gospel. It reminds me of Eric Clapton’s ode to one who objects to being accused of shooting a deputy when he really shot the sheriff.
paul
Betrayal Never Had a Bigger Smile
On January 23, 2015, Dr. John Street will make the statement loud and clear on behalf of John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors that clergy has the right to do whatever they want to the laity in general, and counselees specifically. John Street, the founding pastor of Clearcreek Chapel, is the featured speaker there for the Chapel’s 2015 “Family Enrichment Conference.” Right.
The title of Street’s message for the affair makes it apparent that he has bought into the progressive justification false gospel that has swept the institutional church: “The Gospel-Centered Marriage: Unique Challenges and Hope.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but what is disturbing is the absence of common decency that is part and parcel with this doctrine. Earlier today, I sent this letter to the executive director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors suggesting that the biblical counseling movement recommend itself with some measure of common decency. Not holding my breath.
God’s people should not be deceived; there is no real disagreement among the tyrants that rule over the institutional church and make merchandise of God’s people. They all fuse justification and sanctification together resulting in some form of salvation via institution.
As one who served as an elder with John Street for five years and even considered him a mentor, this is indeed the deep pains of betrayal. However, it has now come into full focus why my pleadings for intervention were ignored. They all believe the same thing, and always have.
But this is clear: anyone participating in the institutional church is totally on their own. This is spiritual caste on steroids. Think about SGM, ABWE, etc.; there is a reason why the victims are summarily dismissed. There is a reason for all of the silence.
I look forward to the new possibilities ahead now that I see things clearly for what they are: I was naive; there was never any real love in the institutional church. It is void of the common decency that does unto others as you would want others to do to you.
John and I are now separated by differing gospels, and differing fruit for I never passed on an opportunity to defend him. Let it be so, everyone must choose their own path.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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