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Latest GCC Statement |
The following was received via email from Phil Johson on June 17, 1998:
Latest GCC Statement
Concerning Gary Ezzo
The following was received via email from
Phil Johson on June 17, 1998:
We are formally requesting that those who have posted that October 1997 statement on the Web now remove it. As I'm sure all of you are aware, the elders issued a revised, abbreviated statement several months ago, summarizing our major complaints about the GFI curriculum under four or five heads. Along with that revised statement, I published the following personal comments: ____________________________________________________________ A note from Phil Johnson In October 1997 the elders of Grace Church issued a longer statement regarding Gary Ezzo and Growing Families International (GFI). The statement was our response to many inquiries. Part of our intention was to quell a brewing controversy rather than to provoke a greater one. Unfortunately, the controversy grew rather than diminishing after our statement was issued, partly because of public discussion that has taken place on the Internet. It was certainly not our intention to wage an open dispute via the Internet. The elders declined to publish the October statement on Grace Church's Web site, but we granted permission for the statement to be posted in a couple of Internet forums on Christian parenting where these issues were already under discussion. The mass of e- mail generated by the statement and its posting on the Internet has far exceeded anything we anticipated. In the process, our statement has been dissected and critiqued in meticulous detail. Some, including Gary Ezzo, have challenged the accuracy of the way we represented GFI's teaching. For example, our statement included this charge: "GFI curriculum also teaches . . . that moms should never sleep next to their babies." Few would deny that GFI's teaching is strongly opposed to mother-infant co-sleeping. However, Gary Ezzo has pointed out a place in the GFI curriculum where he does state that moms may occasionally nap next to their babies. So our statement as it stands is inaccurate on that point. Some readers also questioned whether all our quotations came from the latest editions of GFI curriculum. Upon checking, we learned that in some cases there were later editions where some of the quotations we cited had been revised or removed. So in the interest of speaking the truth, we want to recognize these errors in our earlier statement, and we acknowledge that these had the effect of portraying GFI teaching in a worse light than if our statement had been free from such inaccuracies. As the person who drafted the original statement, I take full responsibility for all its deficiencies, and I am eager to correct them. Since one of my complaints was that Gary Ezzo has made exaggerated claims against his critics, I think it only right to acknowledge my own failure in this regard. _________________________________________________________ Some further points need to be made: 1. Some of my disagreements with Gary Ezzo have to do with factual matters regarding timelines and who said what to whom. I frankly don't trust my own memory well enough to insist that my account is always completely correct and Gary's is always the version that's wrong. In personal conversations over the past three months, Gary and I have sought to resolve these questions as much as possible, but where no documentation exists, we have agreed it would be a breach of charity for either of us to insist that the other is lying, when it is entirely possible that one or both of us simply has an inaccurate memory of what occurred. And so we have mutually agreed not to permit further public controversy over such differences. Gary removed his Web page chronicling events as he recalls them, and I have withdrawn the list of common Q&As that recounted my own recollection of those events. 2. Too many of the Internet discussions in this controversy have focused on matters that grow out of these "yes-I-did/no-you- didn't" kinds of arguments. The vast majority of e-mails and phone calls I have received about GFI over the past year have been from people seeking further personal details and confidential information, rather than people truly seeking to understand the doctrinal and philosophical concerns we have raised. 3. Gary and I have agreed to continue pursuing private resolution of as many of our differences as possible. While that process is underway, it is not helpful to keep fuelling the public controversy over these matters. I for one deeply regret not having pressed more earnestly for private attempts to resolve some of these matters before controversy about them became public. 4. That leaves the matters of doctrine and philosophy summarized in the elders' revised statement. On these issues, the elders of Grace Church strongly differ with GFI's teaching; Gary and GFI acknowledge the differences, and these are matters that may be discussed publicly without posing an imminent threat to our pursuit of unity on other, more personal, matters. 5. As long as that earlier statement remains posted, both GFI and Grace Church will continue to be besieged with requests for confidential information and rebuttals, and the public controversy will continue to be a distraction to all of us. This was the very thing the elders' revised statement was aiming to correct, but because of public and private speculation about what the documents "really" mean, and because of the original statement's continuing high profile on the Web, we are still getting far more questions about the original statement than we do about the revised version. Therefore I am asking that those who have posted the elders' initial statement, as well as those who have distributed copies of the Q&As or other comments from me, withdraw all of that material from circulation. If you like, you may post a notice saying that I have requested removal of those documents. I will continue to answer questions directly related to the concerns outlined in the elders' revised statement, but I will no longer reply to inquiries about issues raised in the October 97 statement. Finally, for your reference, here is a copy of the revised statement: ___________________________________________________________ A Statement Regarding Gary Ezzo and Growing Families International Grace Community Church is no longer affiliated in any way with Growing Families International (GFI). For several years we have had growing concerns about GFI's undue stress on non-biblical matters. For example, we see no biblical basis for the stance GFI takes on infant feeding methods. A corresponding effect of the stress on non-biblical issues is that important biblical issues, particularly the doctrine of depravity and the child's need for regeneration, do not, in our opinion, receive sufficient emphasis. When the doctrine of human depravity is dealt with, it is sometimes handled in a confusing fashion. We are also troubled about a divisive tendency we have seen associated with GFI, beginning with parents who isolate their children from others not trained in GFI principles. That can lead to an elitist attitude, which has proved to be a threat to unity in several churches--including our own. We have shared these and other concerns with Gary Ezzo, and do not believe it would be helpful for us to make any further public statements about these matters.
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