There was a rumour.

 

It came after the shambolic handling of the Spiers situation and her departure with many of her cronies as a result. After the emerging financial mess resulted in the closure of the cake shops. After Jennifer Jack and Grace Gault stepped down from leadership of the Struthers charity but not their churches.

 

If they were sorry perhaps they weren’t that sorry. Their decades of leadership decisions were not to be questioned because, as they frequently used their pulpits to explain, they only ever acted as God directed and to question that would bring punishments from God. Yet, interestingly, now that things resulting from their decisions were falling apart it was time for new people on the executive to have the job of fixing them.

 

And yet there was still a rumour. That there had been an apology. An apology for the suffering and hardship caused to the congregations by the failures of the leaders to resolve the Spiers problem without a schism. Perhaps even an admission of where the failures had occurred and what had been learnt. Perhaps some show of understanding of where divine guidance had been misunderstood by these leaders resulting in these damaging mistakes.

 

So we were directed to the New Year Conference 2024 recordings online to see what we could see.

 

 

In one New Year sermon the former Struthers overall leader spoke and used the careful phrasing:

 

“we never meant this to happen”.

 

Not  “we are incapable of holding together the leadership team we have so often claimed was deeply united in God.”

 

Not  “we have failed to skill and train ourselves sufficiently to resolve this peaceably”

 

Not  “we should never have handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds of congregational donations for gospel work in your towns to a vanity project at the bloated centre of this organisation.”

 

None of that searing honesty: Just: “We never meant it to happen”.

 

Hmmm….Is that an apology?

Not really and we have heard this before.

 

A large and growing number of people have testified to being relatively happy young people in a Struthers branch until a day, often at a group gathering, when an alleged “word of knowledge” picks them out of the crowd for public censure and humiliation.

 

They are accused of being in sin and demon possessed.

 

They are hustled in front of everyone into a room and roughly handled and shouted at and encouraged to scream until demons come out.

 

By this time they are guaranteed to be quite confused and upset.

 

Then after the ministry team get tired and want some tea and a cake their victim is left abandoned and alone in a room with no information on what has just occurred in their lives.

 

They are however in no doubt that when they go out the door no friend or person in the whole church will ever see them the same again.

 

Public humiliation performed by the Struthers leadership in God’s name.

 

Then when - sometimes years later – this broken person plucks up courage to confront those who invoked this treatment and wrecked their Christian lives, their relationships and their mental health and speaks of their suffering at the callous hands of a Struthers leader they are met with a shocked and surprised look and told: “we never meant this to happen!”

 

 

So we ask now Struthers leader : What exactly did you expect to happen?

 

In this and similar cases?

 

Because what we have described here is what happens again and again and again.

 

So why pretend to be shocked? How about pretending to be honest instead?

 

What exactly did you expect to happen?

 

 

And in the Spiers situation? Did you think because she had preached that certain leaders “had to be obeyed because they only moved on the express instruction of the Lord God of Hosts” that she would accept discipline and direction from you? Were you really shocked that she didn’t? Nobody else was.

 

Apparently that word she preached didn’t apply to her - only to the plebs perhaps? Only to the easily manipulated? Or only to people like her as long as they were getting what they wanted from the church riches as long as the taps were open?

 

Are people who are benefitting from church spending the only ones who manage to pretend to be obedient to you? The ones you rewarded for apparent loyalty with leadership attention, salaried jobs and platform time? This is called a system of patronage.

 

You close your eyes to so much nonsense from the people around you that you fail to see what is screamingly obvious to so many of us. It is high time for you to wake up and recognise and deal with your own folly.

 

Where is the discernment?

 

It is quite possible that the dwindling members of the few remaining Struthers churches could be forgiven for thinking this fee paying school and these cake shops were all the West of Scotland cabal leading the church for the last 2 decades really cared about. Perhaps back in January there should have been an attempt to understand reality and acknowledge foolish mistakes many warned you about over many years. Perhaps that would have helped to avoid the (now arrived at) disastrous outcomes ending both these church ministries.

 

Yet these projects were so initially lauded as the way God was leading. The “not to be questioned” Struthers leadership said this was the way to go. This was the road to success in God’s kingdom. These ministries were claimed to be so clearly of Him that people had to be corralled and personally bullied into accepting this massive and fundamental redirection of the vision of the church.

 

Members were forced to agree that the leaders had perfect knowledge of God’s will.

Submit or leave.

 

Lucky for some they did. And in many cases their money, support and time have since gone to parts of the work of God which have stood the test of time.

 

 

Proverbs 23: 9 Do not speak to fools, for they will scorn your prudent words.