Josh Turansky Speaks on the CCA/CCGN Split
The former media director of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa has spoken out on accusations against him by some CCA supporters and how Don McClure does business.
Here’s the bottom line…I’ve said from Day 1 that the problem was Don McClure…this is just some supporting evidence.
Everything written by Turansky has been affirmed to me by other sources…
In other CC news….
George Bryson says on his website that he is releasing a book that will include communications between himself and the late Chuck Smith.
Don’t write George off on this one…
“You may find yourself tempted to read Christian gossip web sites (also known as Online Discernment Ministries,” and so he ends his article by slandering Online Discernment Ministries, and from his article it seems that he equates questioning or protesting Brian to be tantamount to committing sin, if the Christians of Luther’s hadn’t questioned and protested the Catholic Church we wouldn’t have had the reformation!
What the ODM’s have done to Brodersen is shameful and disgusting.
Questioning is one thing…false accusations are another.
well I glad that I got a glimpse of some very important people.
The tactic of going silent when you don’t want to answer is classic CC.
It’s also the coward’s tactic.
It should be called Cowardly Chapel.
So Michael, I’m kind of curious about something. Is Don leading the split or Joe? For some reason, I thought that it was a joint effort but now it looks more like it’s Don who is leading the charge.
This is all bound up in standard CC theology (I know, some will come out and say ‘I don’t teach that’) but just the whole cloak and dagger stuff is run by bad theology..
My MP3 player is broken this week so I must listen to the radio during the commute (this will be remedied this weekend) – but CC theology is built on guilt and in this case (CCA / CCGN) both sides are trying to guilt each other and their followers into submission.
On the radio coming home Raul Ries a pure 30 min of law – putting his people under his thumb – not trying to show others their sin so that he can then show them their savior, but to bring them into his submission.
The next morning going to work, Jon Courson (who I really think is one of the good guys) talking about gossip – and not just general gossip (did you hear what Sally did to Jane stuff) but talking/gossiping about the bad stuff going on in the church – finished up by saying that unbelieving people are going to hell because we gossiped about what was happening in the church.
I think this would all end if CC pastors would change their message directed to the believers in the pew to “Christ died for you.” (which is currently proclaimed only to the visitor / unbeliever in the audience) – I also think I would faint if I heard it. Easter is right around the corner – perhaps a miracle will happen in some CC pulpits, but I am not holding my breath. 😉
About the “gossip” —
MLD hits a nerve in that CC lay people are continually browbeaten from the pulpit that any talk about the things happening in church leadership is SIN. A false narrative driven by the need to control and manipulate.
I could barf.
covered,
Don is leading, Joe is financing…
MLD, you have moments of great wisdom! Even if they are brief at times… 🙂
What kills me about all of this is how different it is for McClure and the boys from Philly. For years they preached servanthood but in practice it is far different. For years I heard how we were to submit to our leaders, not question, get in line, accept mistreatment as part of God’s plan and call it good cause Moses was leading us to the promised land. And yet this whole thing has shed a light on their own motivations. What it illuminates is that they suffer from the same problem of ego, hunger for power, and need to wield authority over those who are weaker and positionally less powerful because that is where the money is found. This legacy chasing to save Chuck’s dream never had to have the ugliness it now has as it hides under missives about Brodersen’s inabilities to follow Chuck’s Distinctives. This is payback because the boys from Philly never wanted the DNA married to Brian to have her inheritance over THEIR rightfully earned place as spiritual sons of Chuck. It’s a family squabble. And Chuck is ultimately to blame. He could have fixed this: ended it before it began. But he didn’t. He played both ends against the middle.
And now Kay is sequestered in a facility far away, Jan spends the family money, and Don fights for the right to have the positional dominance long overdue to him, and he will of course share it among the CCA boys who have all colluded together to fix the problem, which is Brodersen. Bryson is a fly in the ointment of their salve with his useless and painful endeavors to create a name for himself by speaking ill of half of Christendom in slamming Calvanism (I find this incomprehensible and nauseating).
Meanwhile, our world is dissolving under a post Christian world view that is infecting every area of our life. And all the while as Rome burns, Calvary continues to misunderstand it’s feeble influence, thinking that somehow they actually still matter and ignoring how embarrassing they really are to the body of Christ. I just want to scream at them to stop it, get your act together, act like grown ups, fix the problem, stop sleeping with your secretaries, quit spending money on your television spots and personal shoppers and booking agents, get your hand out of the tithing plate and quit giving your kids the donated cars to drive, and maybe- just maybe- be available to marry the people you serve and then bury them and everything in between and while you do it get to know them by name.
That’s all I ever wanted. Someone to know me and hear me and understand my pain.
THLofT,
Good description of the numerous problems that I have known for years and finally decided enough is enough.
Thank you, Brian, for being faithful to what you believe God has led you to do, including giving me a place to land.
Mr. Turansky,
Well said, and thank you for your courage and confirming yet again… what many of us already knew.
If I may add one piece of advice, don’t tell the rank and file who sit in the pews not to think and just “trust their pastor”, else you turn around one day and have some young guy accuse you of the same things that you currently have legitimate concerns over. That type of advice counters what Paul told the churches to test all things and hold fast to that which is good (Thes. 5:21).
I find it hilarious that Josh Turansky in his first link immediately directs the non-leader CC parishioner to another article just for them at their grade level. Seriously, how many non leader parishioners are going to be stopped in reading the leadership article where all the juicy stuff is?
whoops, meant to say Josh’s second link not first link.
Hey MLD @6
“On the radio coming home Raul Ries a pure 30 min of law – putting his people under his thumb – not trying to show others their sin so that he can then show them their savior, but to bring them into his submission.”
You would be correct about Raul. Many is the time I had to turn him off on the radio because of his legalistic vernacular. Some of my friends have told me that it is a cultral thing with him.
But it is a well known fact that when he gives an “alter call” (Even after having verbally beaten up the sheep) people get saved as if my old friend Greg Laurie was extending the invitation. He is anointed in evangelism for sure.
In my own personal contact with Raul, I can honestly say he is a very humble loving man of God. He spent time talking to me, an unknown to him, for as long as he could. Then he got up in front of a crowd at the Pacific Amphitheater to minister at the mic.
The reason I say this is at that time I did not know who I was talking with until he told me he had to go and I asked him his name.
I recall saying to him, “Why are you going the service is about to start?”
He replied, “ya I know, I am speaking?”
It was only then that I asked him who he was.
He of course told me, “Raul Ries.”
That is when I gave him 5 stars in my own thoughts.
He was so humble and so loving to me who was a perfect stranger to him as we sat in the audience waiting for the service to begin.
BUT over the years he has always beaten the sheep up, telling them what is wrong with them and how they ought to be etc..or at least every time I hear him on KWVE. And I have heard him on KWVE for years.
And yet the sheep continue to come through the doors of his church year after year.
I believe it is because of what kind of a man he is in reality, a very loving human being!
@Surfer51
I got saved listening to Raul Ries on TV. Actually it was double CC hit, lol. And at the time I had no idea what CC was. I had been watching Ries on TV for a few months and then a guy at work witnessed to me and gave me a Greg Laurie tract. A while later I told that guy that I wanted to find a church I could plug into. He told me he liked the Calvary Chapels…then it dawned on me the guy I had been watching on TV was from a Calvary Chapel. I did end up in a CC for 18 years… as a young Christian I also listened to a lot of Ries tapes…
“And yet the sheep continue to come through the doors of his church year after year.”
LOL 🙂 They can’t live without their weekly beating.
LOL!
Surfer51 @14: Just a note to say that you are not the only one that has had to turn him off. I’m a perpetual optimist and for like 10 years now I keep trying every few months when I catch him on, but it always ends the same – me changing the station. Never been to his church and I appreciate you sharing your personal story of him. But I’ve never cared for his style. And when he made me downright mad years ago when right after my dad went to Jesus, my mom and I were in the car and he gave a message that anyone that did “x” sin was going to hell and “x” was something that my dad had struggled with. And even though my dad was a definite believer in Jesus and there is NO DOUBT he went to Jesus, it caused my mom to start doubting her husband’s salvation and ask me what I thought. That’s serious stuff and it made me mad because it put doubt into my mother’s heart. I have long been pretty much convinced that Ries doesn’t really understand the grace part of the Gospel. But I could be wrong.
Then throw in on top of all of this they have the new ‘Calvary Bible Institute’ (which there are already several of outside the Calvary movement). It is interesting because they are very out front on the website about their affiliation with CCA, there is a huge logo at the bottom of the page. It is sad to see this all still getting worse.
I was going to mention the Calvary Bible Institute. CCA is digging in deeper, not to mention throwing the name Calvary Chapel around. At some point, I don’t know what it will take, but something will happen and CCCM will reel in the usage of the name Calvary Chapel, which I think is a hill CCA will die on.
The question of the name is probably going to be the biggest source of confusion moving forward. There is a significant difference between the two (or more) camps using the same name, therefore they are not the same thing, therefore they should be called different things beyond CGN and CCA. When Wimber left it was easy to say, “Pick a new name.” In this case, the dispute is who left who?
From my point of view, CCA, from its misfounding, represents a departure from the practical principles of what Calvary Chapel is/was/should be; independent fellowships with shared theology and a freedom of contextualization in their culture. While CCA still has the same theology (which a dispute on emphasis), they want all CCs to function the same, or at least not function in certain ways. That is the departure for me. In a very real sense, Chuck threw off tradition and was used to build something new and relatively unique. Once those things got codified and institutionalized, it was the beginning of the end.
I’m glad Josh has written what he has written and owned his mistake. At the same time it very clealry and rightly takes the focus of off Brian as making unilateral decisions, being the bad guy and causing the split. As I see it, Brian we repsponding/reacting to what Don and CCA were wrongly doing. I probably would have done the same. Cut my loses and get back to ministry.
Rick Warren on KWVE? I’ll bet that ruffles the feathers of the Tribal Leaders.
So glad that this is not my problem.
It should be noted that Josh is the “former” media director because he has been sent out to plant a church in SE Baltimore. I don’t know the specifics of Baltimore, but I know it is not exactly Maui.
This is no surprise if one is familiar with Brian’s ministry. He loves to raise up guys and send them out. May God bless them all.
Josh has reported accurately. Because he has nothing to lose he therefore can speak with precision and honesty.
Don’s actions, fueled by entitlement and his need to self-identify as a leader, embedded in the hierarchy of those I supposedly, “appointed” to run CCA, have been an embarrassment, and don’t genuinely represent the original spirit/heart of Calvary Chapel…
Don has reported with half-truths and in some cases, outright deception, and because he has much to lose (title/position/status/identity among the CCA “appointed”) he therefore is a slave to his self-deceived bias.
I grieve from the grave…and hope my sons in the faith will rediscover the freedom/joy they once clung to in Jesus when they first were saved, which has sadly/gradually been lost through many years of building their empire, rather than His Kingdom.
Wow, that takes some 100# stones to show up and dare to post in the name of Chuck Smith.
What a disgusting human but then, we live in an era of disgusting humans.
Have you no shame?
@24
Terrible post. I’m not a dyed in the wool fan on anything Calvary. I know more than most people think I do and I am someone who tells it like it is. And that was just a bad move on a lot of levels. It is biased and in poor taste at minimum and I can go on, but the stupidity of it isn’t worth my time.
I’ve known Josh in the past and think highly of him as a person. But cmon if you put a statement on the internet don’t imagine for a second that the adults in your “movement” who have to shepherd their families and make significant real decisions would fall for reading his first letter and ignoring his real message. The truth is important we all know pastors are sinners like the rest of us. If you gotta defend yourself just do it the note to parishoners is silly and condescending.
In time these guys will realise that world has moved on. Hopefully they learn some of that humility and servant leadership stuff they’ve been preaching about for 30+ years. The “movement” won’t last very long if every important voice is over 50 and they can’t play nice with people that for the most part agree with them.
Fast forward to 2018 all the changes Brian & Cheryl Brodersen implemented since Chuck’s passing. Sunday morning used to be 4 services Now 2 on Sunday no evening study, half the attendance that there used to be. In my opinion Brian should of started his own church instead of trying to cool with the young crowd, you have to have a balance. Praying for the Church Brian’s a great teacher who needs to get back to basics teaching the word verse by verse chapter by chapter.
Regarding Apr 1 2017 post
Josh Turansky Speaks on the CCA/CCgn split
Just wanted to let you that my Avast anti virus software pops up a threat detection window on Josh Turansky links and joshturansky.com.
Here’s the Avast message:
“We’ve safely aborted connection to http://www.joshturansky.com because it was infected with UR:Mal”