Welcome to the site.  Glad you’ve joined us. 

That was such an encouraging comment!  I, too, hope you stick around!

Love the name, love the message.

I hope you hang around…

You know, the Chesapeake thing wouldn’t be happening if the leadership there hadn’t been held to account.  They did not come forward to make changes on their own.  It reminds me of Bill Clinton, who only confessed to wrong-doing AFTER it was proven.  If one of my kids behaved like that (hiding the truth til someone caught them), they were disciplined for LYING.

The fact that SGM is crawling out of the bubble to do ALPHA is very interesting to me.

The weird thing about their first foray into the world of the rest of us believers is that they picked a very very vanilla ‘course’ to offer, instead of a more mature evangelical/reformed introduction to the Gospel type thing.

I do not say that SGM is bad–I’d never say that.  It is filled with my fellow believers in Jesus, with whom I will spend eternity.
I do think your Church leadership’s polity is based on a Catholic model, which is controlled by a Pope, instead of a biblical  model, which emasculates many of your men, who will never be given any true responsibility for their own church. 

I think holding up a handful of men and women as the models for lives pleasing to God is dangerous, breaks the hearts of the sheeple who actually believe that their unique talents and giftings are therefore not important, and ignores the work of the Holy Spirit. 

I think teaching that every woman has to be under the covering of a male is anti-biblical and silly.  Please show me chapter and verse in the Bible, not from your pastors, this, and I will certainly reconsider.  I know older single women living with families because they are not to live on their own.  Are they going to turn into lap-dancers at the Kitty Kat Klub if they don’t have a male to keep them in line?  Why don’t you guys ever read Prov. 31? 

I think the emphasis on dumbing down your SGM kids is ludicrous and an affront to the God who gave them brains.  Many many many of them spend an hour or two on homework, go to substandard community colleges and on to substandard local colleges.  Trust me, I know more about this one than you.  It breaks my heart and makes me cry to foresee the complete lack of standing they will have in the world one day, if they are ever allowed out.  No lawyers.  (well, maybe that is a good thing ).  Doctors?  Teachers?  University Professors?  Writers?  Artists?  There are no dreams among your children of anything else but courting one day, and that is their main topic of conversation, besides college sports.  (So sad that most of them could never attend those colleges they watch so avidly on the tube each weekend.)

I think the Gospel many of your pastors teach is legalism–courtship/homeschooling/modesty is not the Gospel.  Not taking the good news to the world as COMMANDED by Jesus is not the Gospel.  Judging the rest of the brethren who worship outside SGM as lesser than  you is an outrageous affront to the ManGod who died a scandalous death for his people.  Listening to SGM sermons (and I have) that declare that SGM knows better than all the other churches in town ‘how to do worship’ and that the other churches in town ‘teach a watered down gospel’ is about the most juvenile and fantastical thing I have heard. 

Teaching your children not to sit next to a person of the opposite sex, but never having them learn the truths of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, never teaching them the stories of David and Samson and Elisha and Deborah, Rahab and Elijah and Job and Jonah, never reading Proverbs, never learning the history of Israel….good night–what the heck are you guys doing?

My brother, my sister, come out.  If you choose to stay in, open your eyes and pray for change and freedom.
So, SGM bad?  No.  You are the blood bought Bride of Christ.

All SGM pastors bad?

Good heavens, no.  There are, I suspect, many who grow up in the pastorate, but are staying and loving their flock and showing them the path. 
Your national leadership completely whacked out?
Absolutely.

You said:

“Question: are your friends who are still at SGCC “blind, asleep, deceived,”

Yes they are. 

It amazes me that SGM is involved with ALPHA–it is used in all sorts of absolutely horrendous churches that simply don’t know how to worship AT ALL and teach all sorts of horrible doctrines and support foreign missionaries and use creeds and elect elders (even women ones) and have liturgy even and ordain women , like Methodists and Episcopals and Lutherans and PCUSA and even <gasp!> Catholics.

(tongue firmley planted in cheek, for newer posters.  I am a diehard conservative PCA gal, but I know the Bride of Christ is scattered everywhere for his glory and his joy.)

I find this a good thing!  Is perhaps the SGM moving out from its tiny bubble and joining the rest of us in the large world of the Body of Christ?  What a blessing!

Over 13 million people worldwide have now attended an Alpha course, an opportunity to explore the meaning of life, running in tens of thousands of churches of all denominations, and at universities, in prisons and on military bases across the world.

Is it just me, or am I missing something.  All the seminaries, Greek scholars, conferences, seminaries, Sunday School classes, Alpha classes, and so on, and then I read something like  Acts 17:6 and wonder—WHAT is going on?  All the money and time we spend—where is the LIFE, the POWER??? 
 

Acts

17:6
When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too

http://www.alphausa.org/Group/.....1000024493

A lot of churches doing Alpha.

That won’t be helpful, so please refrain from striking blows with God’s word.

Question: are your friends who are still at SGCC “blind, asleep, deceived,” or anything else that would be demeaning towards those whom God has called to that congregation?

(Family meetings at SGCC have always disclosed the finances)

Tsk, Tsk!