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User:TheLocalChurch

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Introduction

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Thank you for visiting my Wikipedia User page! My purpose is to present information on Witness Lee and his churches. Please be warned that I am posting this particular page from my interpretation of a strongly Evangelical Christian perspective. For a more NPOV, please visit another website.

What is meant by "local church"?

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The term 'local church' is typically used in Evangelical circles to refer to bodies of Christian believers organized near each other, or at the "local" level. Typically the term is used loosely within the church growth movement or in opposition to large ecclesiastical structures.

However, the term "Local Church" is often used to refer to the movement begun by Witness Lee, which migrated in the United States. Within the movement, it is known generally as "The Lord's Recovery," despite Witness Lee's insistence that the movement never name itself.

As Witness Lee never claimed the name "Local Church" for his own movement, and since the name was applied by those outside the movement, the term "local church" cannot be considered a trademark or trade name of any organization and remains in the public domain. This was decided in The Church in Houston v. Jim Moran, Light of Truth Ministries, in which "the Panel concludes that Complainant has not met its burden of establishing that it has rights in the mark "The Local Church." The mark is not registered, and therefore enjoys no presumption of validity under United States law."

Given the controversy surrounding the movement, and the nature of Wikipedia, it is highly recommended that readers research for themselves, and critically understand the issues involved, before finally coming to conclusions. A careful consideration of all sides of the dispute is necessary for a solid conclusion to be reached.

What is NPOV with respect to the Local Church?

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NPOV is difficult to achieve in this case, because much common ground between various positions has been lost. It is my hope that in the pages of Wikipedia, this middle ground can be regained by the site's philosophy of NPOV. As I see it, there are two major POV's involved, without much in the middle or on the fringes:

  • Local Church POV, which I also refer to as the "insider's POV" or "supportive"
  • Evangelical POV, which I also refer to as "critical"

The goal is to forge a NPOV that considers both sides of the controversy, that, as DJ Clayworth puts it in Talk:Local churches, does not canonize or demonize the movement. This is difficult to achieve, and I believe much of the problem stems from a victim mentality on the part of Local church members.

Article Contributions

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The following are articles I initially contributed to:

Other related pages of interest:

Why are you Posting Anonymously?

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Wikipedia was designed from the beginning with Open Source values in mind. Early on, the decision was made to allow anonymous authors to edit and update Wikipedia as they saw fit. This can be done even without registering a User ID, or one can register a User ID and remain anonymous. Because this is a fundamental design in the way Wikipedia is supported, it is not a valid criteria for critiquing articles.

Unfortunately, the Local Church Movement has a very controversial history, including many schisms, public criticism, and litigation with Christians. This has made it very difficult to critique the movement without fear of reprisal from Living Stream Ministries by way of legal action. This use of civil courts is specifically taught against by Paul in I Corinthians 6; however, the Local Church Movement disregards these teachings in matters of public criticism, justifying the legal actions with a questionable and weak scriptural argument. As such, for my own protection, it is necessary to use the anonymity of Wikipedia - for better or worse.

The use of the moniker "TheLocalChurch" was a decision based upon Jim Moran's use of "thelocalchurch.org". The user name was available for anyone to register, and the term is not trademarked. Those who were familiar with Jim's use of domain and the difficulties he ran into will appreciate this. The details of the WIPO decision can be found online here:

What are your credentials?

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It should be clear that if I retain anonymity, credentials are useless as they cannot be verified. It is strange that members of the Local Church Movement request research credentials, when it is clear that neither Watchman Nee or Witness Lee have either college or seminary training themselves. That said, it is sufficient that I am an Evangelical Christian researcher, with some seminary-level training.

At a research level, I have access to a number of source materials published by Living Stream Ministries as authored by Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, or others. I have had a few years of contact with current and former members of the Local Church Movement, and cherish the friendships I have been granted to make in this time.

Disagreements

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Understandably, disagreements about the materials presented in various Wikipedia entries on the Local Church Movement have come to the surface from time to time. I encourage individuals to discuss these issues with me directly at my own talk page:

There is a belief among members of the Local Church Movement that criticism of the movement is the result of jealousy, ulterior motives, hatred and persecution of the true Christians, or that criticism stems only from the materials of a handful of individuals written in the 1970s who allegedly had a "chip on their shoulder". Personally, I see this as victim mentality on the part of members of the movement, who in turn have developed a persecution complex and feel that any writings critical of them must necessarily stem from something other than legitimate criticism. The tendency is to draw extreme conclusions, along the lines of what one would find on the extremely POV website Contending for the Faith.

Resources Online

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Some of the resources available online are listed here. By no means is this meant to be an exhaustive listing of resources for any particular POV.

Local Church Perspectives

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  • The Lord's Recovery - A History of the Lord's Recovery, as written by those inside the movement. Of particular interest is The Present Recovery which covers the recent history from an insider POV. The information here, despite the POV problems, can be used to determine the veracity of my work on the article Local Church Movement.
  • Contending for the Faith - Responses to critiques, information regarding cases involving the The God-Men and The Mindbenders, and current litigation involving Harvest House Publishers. Specifically, one should note the arguments for the alleged scriptural basis for the current litigation.

Evangelical Perspectives

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Some Evangelical Christian websites which are critical of the movement can be found online here:

Information Regarding Lee v. Duddy

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  • Lee v. Duddy - A thorough POV treatment, with a copy of the statement of the decision. There is significant speculation on the motives of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project on a number of issues, etc. which are particularly POV and in my opinion not germane to the issue at hand.

Information Regarding The Mindbenders

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  • The Mindbenders by Jack Sparks - A POV treatment of the controversy surrounding The Mindbenders and its eventual retraction by Thomas Nelson Publishers. In 1980, four separate lawsuits were filed against Thomas Nelson in Anaheim, Dallas, Atlanta, and Cleveland, for a total of $37 million. When Thomas Nelson's liability insurance was near exhaustion, Thomas Nelson opted to settle out of court and issued a retraction as part of the settlement, which appeared in several newspapers. This retraction does not comment on alleged errors in the book; neither does it apologize for its content. Further, the retraction was issued by Thomas Nelson, whereas Jack Sparks did not issue any retraction.

Information Regarding the Current Case with Harvest House Publishers

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Content Concerns

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By design, Wikipedia invites anonymous users to edit, maintain, and modify pages. To this end, I have worked to contribute a few small articles to Wikipedia - however those articles have been seen as controversial, despite a lack of evidence that my articles were not actually NPOV. Most of the changes and updates have only been limited to minor updates and corrections (see the history of the Local Church Movement article for an example).

This said, there have been concerns about the factual content of my submissions, which I would like to address here.

History of Local Church Movement Article

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In late June of 2003, I submitted my initial posts and edits of the Local Church Movement. Shortly after this, a number of interesting events transpired, prompting me to hold off on personally editing or updating the article in any way until the issues were resolved. Since my original posting, I have thus made no updates to the Local Church Movement article. The first events included multiple blankings of the material presented, which were faithfully reverted by Wikipedia users. On September 11, 2003, one of Wikipedia's users posted this notice at the head of the article (spelling and grammar errors left as written):

Dear readers,
Note: The information on this page is biased. For more accurate information, please do some research yourself since much of the information below are based on writings of Jim Moran's opinion(therefore it is not experienced personally by one of the Wiki's contributors).
Pro: www.lsm.org, www.christianwebsites.org
Against: Sites by Jim Moran, Daniel Azuma, etc
Please do not remove this announcement!

It is interesting that the same individual who blanked the article also posted this accusation of bias. Can someone both blank an article and be considered to be writing a NPOV? It is interesting to observe that the "Pro" website URLs are listed, while the "Against" are not. Similarly, the phrase "is not experienced personally by one of the Wiki's contributors" was pure speculation at the time this was written. How would he know if I had personally been involved with the movement? What difference would it make to the veracity of the article?

At this point in time, the article was titled Local Church, but has been renamed several times by various Wikipedia users to Local Church Movement and the current Local churches. A number of edits occur, many of which in my opinion are simply bizarre :) Some useful information was contributed, however, when an update was made with respect to issues surrounding the cases of Lee v. Duddy and the publication of The Mindbenders.

DJ Clayworth made this observation in Talk:Local churches: "It should be possible to write a sensible article about this movement without either canonising or demonising it." (sic) Indeed, I don't believe that the article as originally posted was demonizing, but apparently a simple article can be interpreted in some very different ways. Clearly, achieving NPOV is difficult due to the tendency, in DJ Clayworth's words, to canonize the movement. Thus, the reason for the observation made on this page about the difficulty of achieving NPOV.

Finally, on March 7, 2004, Wikipedia Sysop Bryan Derksen removed the notices regarding POV dispute. I felt now that I could comfortably post to Talk:Local churches my concerns, and thus I did.

This, however, did not end the controversy around the article. Nathan Cheng began a number of updates and rewrites on March 28, 2004 which implied that the article was "spun". I'm not sure how it could be considered spun at this point seeing as how it had been picked over so much, but perhaps the comments in the article history will shed some light on what was happening:

  • 08:35, 28 Mar 2004 . . Nathan w cheng (wrong person!) - Nathan objected to Witness Lee being named as the founder of the movement rather than Watchman Nee. This is clearly a POV update. This is not unlike the claims that the the history of the Lord's Recovery includes a large number of historical movements. This would be like Baptists arguing that Anabaptists did not begin the denomination.
  • 08:37, 28 Mar 2004 . . Nathan w cheng (those within EMPHATICALLY use lowercase, implying the fact that we EMPHATICALLY believe that the recovery began with the Apostle John in the first century, and was majorly advanced by Luther) (sic) - The update is not particularly POV, but the edit comment clearly is.
  • 08:39, 28 Mar 2004 . . Nathan w cheng (we use lowercase) - A strictly POV comment, but one I can understand.
  • 10:31, 28 Mar 2004 . . Nathan w cheng (this page spun hard by someone who doesn't like the local churches; i've done my best to unspin; especially bad was the implication that single men and women live together)
Firstly, I don't believe that the normal thinking human would read the article and get the impression that single men and woman live together, but perhaps a rewording would be in order :) Many others have edited the page before now and apparently Nathan is the first to take objection to this statement.
Who is this someone who doesn't like the Local churches? If he means me, how does he know something he can't really know? This is pure speculation. Another concern, to say "this page spun hard by someone who doesn't like the local churches" begs the question, in what way is the page "spun hard"? I think this is confusing the Critical POV with NPOV, and Nathan is substituting his own POV.
For instance, consider the update: "With thousands of Christians beginning to leave denominations to meet as the local churches in their respective cities, some denominational leaders became concerned." Christians leaving? Denominational leaders? These are POV statements that insiders make about people who are critical of the movement. It implies that "denominational leaders" were primarily involved, implying an ecclesiastical concern, rather than concern from the average lay person. Also implied is the often mistaken belief that criticism of the Local churches arose because people saw their flocks leaving their churches and their income sources drying up. Could it instead be that Evangelicals were concerned because the theological teachings of the Local churches were sufficiently off the mark as to warrant speaking their concern about the movement?

At this point, I think the fear that NPOV would be lost in the article has been realized. Perhaps this can change in the future. Wikipedia is certainly nothing if not dynamic!

Nathan Cheng's Objections

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Nathan Cheng misinterpreted the statement on my user page "whenever possible, corrections can be made in a manner that best reflects the views of all parties" to be an invitation to edit this page. In light of this, I have rephrased the Introduction to be more clear. The edits Nathan made were reverted by RickK as per Wikipedia guidelines. Nathan followed up by acknowledging the Wikipedia policy and by making some suggestions in My User Talk page as well as updates to Talk:Local_churches. Based upon his editing pattern, he had some valid concerns that I'd like to address here.

To detail some of Nathan's objections regarding this page:

  • Nathan felt that more history was necessary in the Introduction of my page. I do not believe this is necessary as this would only be redundant information in Wikipedia, unless of course it was necessary to explain particular POV concerns in the interest of achieving NPOV.
  • The use of language "Given the controversy" in relation to the movement, Nathan suggested "Given the history of libel against". I do not believe this is a valid NPOV rephrase:
Critical Wording
"Given the litigious nature of". Clearly a POV rendering, and one I opted to avoid, except in cases where specifically relating my own personal concerns.
Supportive Wording
"Given the history of libel against". I believe this is also a POV rendering of the statement. Implies everyone who is critical of the movement is guilty of libel, which is simply not the case.
NPOV Wording
"Given the controversy". A more neutral wording, because there has certainly been controversy: Evangelical Christians are concerned, and members of the movement believe they are being libeled. If this isn't a neutral use of the term "controversy", I'm not sure what is.
  • Another suggestion was that my comments regarding the phrase 'local church' not being a registered trademark be removed. I can understand his concern, however a quick Google search on the term 'local church' will reveal that it has significant use beyond that of Witness Lee or Living Stream Ministry. Aside from this, the World Intellectual Property Organization already ruled that the term 'local church' is not trademarked:
The Church in Houston v. Jim Moran, Light of Truth Ministries
To quote: "Here, the Panel concludes that Complainant has not met its burden of establishing that it has rights in the mark "The Local Church." The mark is not registered, and therefore enjoys no presumption of validity under United States law."
  • Nathan felt I did not include enough direct links to the specifics of the litigation in Lee v. Duddy and the subsequent retraction and apology, the retraction put forth by Thomas Nelson Publishers, the current litigation involving Harvest House Publishers, and the arguments for the alleged scriptural basis for the use of the court system in these matters. This is a legitimate concern, however the website Contending for the Faith is linked on this page already for those who are willing to dig deeper into this issue. Seeing as how the website has been through a significant number of updates recently, it is better to refer people to the front webpage rather than "deep link" the site.
Is this a NPOV update? I would argue no, because this presents arguments from one particular side of the matter, neglecting other perspectives. For instance, it neglects the observations of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project in the wake of the court decisions. There is no consideration of public statements made by Harvest House in regard to its current suit. It makes little comment about the issues surrounding the retraction of The Mindbenders. How can an article present one side of a dispute and be considered NPOV? It cannot.
This said, I have reworked the organization of the Resources Online (see above) because I do believe that it would be helpful to put the perspectives side by side for the benefit of readers.
  • Nathan objected to my comment that I have access to publications of Living Stream Ministry by pointing out a website in which many of Witness Lee's books can be read online. To this, I can only say thanks! :) My page here is limited and does not contain an exhaustive list of all the websites and publications of Living Stream Ministry - certainly this would be a full time job in itself! Nathan is both free and encouraged to include such links on the current pages relating to the Local Church Movement.

Following this, Nathan Cheng discussed his concerns further on Talk:Local_churches. Several points to be discussed:

  • Nathan disputes my NPOV. He is certainly welcome to do so! :) This page discusses my concerns about what a NPOV is in regard to the Local Church Movement, and anyone may interact with the material I present here.
Specifically, Nathan states "it is clear from the user's own statements that his/her position is not neutral on this matter and that he/she is not capable of separating personal grievances from objective description." Whether or not I am personally neutral on the topic is irrelevant: Many Wikipedia articles are written by individuals who are not neutral, but themselves write the article in NPOV. This is one of the strengths of Wikipedia, because individuals who take a particular interest in certain articles tend to write them, and others can make fair updates to those articles as needed. As far as "personal grievances" are concerned, what personal grievances would those be? This is pure speculation :) I think Nathan believes I have hidden motives other than those stated on this page, and I also believe he is entitled to his opinion.
Is Nathan himself portraying NPOV in his arguments? I do not believe so. Nathan's website presents his workplace contributions with Living Stream Ministry from 1992 through 1999, and his work with Recovery Version Bible Distributors from 1999 to present. His POV is strongly from an insider perspective, and his suggested NPOV updates reflect this.
  • Nathan states that there have been "only three legal actions in their entire existence". Is this actually the case? I will give Nathan the benefit of the doubt in making this error. In addition to Lee v. Duddy, the suits regarding The Mindbenders, and the current litigation with Harvest House Publishers, let me suggest two more specific cases:
Moody Press, Moody Bible Institute, and George Sweeting
As a result of a brief critique in the July/August 1979 issue of Moody Monthly, the church filed a $4.8 million lawsuit in Orange County, California against Moody Press, Moody Bible Institute, and the Moody Monthly editor-in-chief George Sweeting. The suit was filed in the Orange County California Superior Court, #33-63-92, on June 13, 1980, to be settled later out of court with no retraction by Moody Monthly, though Moody Monthly did remove references to Witness Lee in future reprints of the article.
The Church in Houston v. Jim Moran, Light of Truth Ministries
The Church in Houston, represented by Thompson & Knight, disputed Jim Moran's ownership of the domain "thelocalchurch.org", claiming that the phrase 'The Local Church' was in some way a trademark of The Church in Houston or Living Stream Ministry. The details can be found online at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website under Case No. D2001-0683.
But this aside, does the number of cases make a difference as to the actual history? Three is still three too many. A small $50k suit in the case of either SCP or Harvest House would have been more than sufficient to accomplish the purpose of merely halting publication of the works. A symbolic victory is more important than the amount of money involved. Is the page and a quarter in the 730+ page ECNR made almost exclusively of quotations really worth the Living Stream Ministry and 97 congregations filing suit, for a total to the tune of $136 million dollars? Is such legal overkill really necessary? Is it really Christian?
I submit then that despite Nathan's claim to the contrary, Living Stream Ministry does engage in litigious excess, and that this fact should be openly and honestly discussed.
  • Nathan informally disputes the use of my moniker "TheLocalChurch". Since he brings up some legitimate concerns, I have expanded my discussion of my use of the name (see above) to include information about Jim Moran's use of "thelocalchurch.org" and the subsequent WIPO decision. Those familiar with Jim's old website and the issues he faced will appreciate this. I do not believe that the use of this moniker is some form of "subtle slander" of the movement. If I used a different moniker with the same justification for remaining anonymous, would he not make the same claim?
  • Nathan speculates about my motives and my identity. Is this really germane to the discussion? :) The reasons for my anonymity are made clear on this web page, and Wikipedia made the decision, from the beginning, to support such anonymity on its site - for better or worse. However, the section titled "Why are you hiding behind Anonymity?" might be construed as an invitation to speculate about my identity, so I have rephrased it to read "Why are you Posting Anonymously?". What of my motives? My motives are likewise made clear in the introduction. Are there "hidden motives" for my posting this material? Again, Nathan can only speculate. I must ask, then, what is so hard about interacting with the data I actually post?
Likewise, comparisons with "TheMethodist" are irrelevant to the questions regarding the factual content of Wikipedia articles. Have I been "re-editing" pages to conform them to another POV? Hardly :) A simple review of the article histories will demonstrate this claim to be false. For several months during the time in which the article was under dispute, User:TheLocalChurch made no revisions or comments at all in Wikipedia, waiting to see what the user community's analysis of the dispute would be. Even when the article's POV notices were removed by Wikipedia Sysop Bryan Derksen, I did not make any updates to the article. Indeed, other than the initial edits, I have not edited the article at all. Instead, we have seen user after user using fine toothed combs until the article was bald or was no longer purely NPOV. I think this tells Wikipedia users something about the people who are supposedly NPOV'ing the article! :)

Finally, Nathan felt that the article Living Stream Ministries was incorrectly titled, and thus needed to be redirected to Living Stream Ministry. Additionally, he felt the statement "Living Stream Ministries is the publishing arm and ministry station headquarters of the Local Church" needed to be removed, as well as references to the publication of the Recovery Version of the Bible. The edit comment he left was "factual information only, please", but in what way was any of the information in the article not factual? Additionally, Nathan added reference to Living Stream Ministry's membership in the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which indeed it is, albeit not without concern. Mere membership in ECPA is not the same as a blanket Evangelical endorsement.

All of this said, I hold no personal animosity toward Nathan Cheng and applaud his willingness to work within the guidelines of Wikipedia and interact with the materials presented here. The simple fact is that the wounds that exist between the Local Church and the Evangelical community need to be healed, and this can only happen when there is honest and open dialogue on issues that exist between us. A mere brushing aside of these issues, or a white-washing of the problems, will never replace the need for mutual understanding. I wish him well in his endeavors :)

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