An Acts 15 Approach to Controversy

Dear WCIU colleagues,

Blessings

As I did with the Christianity Today article recently, I am linking an article here by a local business Magazine. I am doing this with some of the pieces that get released from time to time. I don't have the bandwidth to comment every time, but I want to explain more about my approach. 

First I take an Acts 15 approach to controversy in the Body whenever I can. Acts 15 models a way to try to allow multiple voices in an open setting to get expressed and heard. In the end the leadership made a decision.  It did not please everyone and it did not even give final closure. If it had, two things would be evident in the rest of the NT: Paul would not have had to keep addressing the same issues in letter after letter. He did, though. And second, he would probably have cited the decision of James more directly to explain his own approach.

For me, in our context, one way to do Acts 15 is to pass on articles by outside observers who have no "side"  and who seek to present multiple sides. 

When I do so,  in most cases I will not try to defend this or that position, but will focus on trying to correct major factual errors or inadvertent mis-statements of a position. I don't fault the authors for such errors or impressions. This is a complicated thing to get right factually, and for the most part they try their best I think.

In this case. I think the article does a good job trying to present the two major viewpoints. There are of course multiple variants of those positions all along the spectrum. That is expected and healthy.

But there are two details I would have wished he got more clear.

One is that he clearly did not understand the fact that there are two organizations and two property decisions. So it is confusing sometimes, which organization decided what.

To clarify, our two boards have made two different decisions: FV has decided not to sell HTH. The FV board could revisit that, but that is their decision. 

WCIU has been willing to consider a variety of configurations. In so doing we have told potential buyers to discuss with us whatever they want to ask us to consider. So for only one has asked to discuss everything and we did not pursue that.

This touches on the second inaccuracy: the article says the entire property is up for sale. That does not reflect what I said to him, and I have tried to correct that above.

I will continue to clarify what I can, and I continue to invite your questions. I will answer as clearly as possible.

Praying

Kevin

Here is the Link:

https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2018/02/13/christian-group-puts-15-acre-campus-147-homes-throughout-pasadena-on-the-market/

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