Church Votes to Dissolve "Look & Live, Inc."

Call me suspicious, but during the October business meeting on 10/28/08, A.C. Soud brought to the church a motion on behalf of the trustees of the church, to dissolve the "Look & Live, Inc." video production company of FBC Jacksonville. A.C. Soud explained that all assets and rights of FBC Jax broadcasts that resided in Look & Live, Inc. will be transferred to FBC Jacksonville when Look & Live is dissolved.

A.C. Soud explained that this was just a matter of organization, and that the purpose for which Look & Live, Inc. was formed 20+ years ago (isolation of FBC Jax from liability concerning its broadcasts) is no longer an issue, and thus a separation between FBC Jax and its broadcasting organization is no longer necessary.

Given the current state of our church, the change of bylaws last December granting Mac and the trustees more power over our church, I'm just a LITTLE BIT suspicioius of this move at this time.

Especially when I hear the word "ASSETS". Is this more power for Mac and the trustees? Who knows.

Just reporting. Fair and Balanced. I'll let you decide.

Imaginary Memo To Staff

Staff - with giving and attendance down, we've decided to play the "Huckabee" card tonight. With a tight budget and our facilities in need of urgent repairs, we need to make sure the huge fee we're paying Governor Huckabee to preach tonight really pays off big - I mean we need to get a huge ROI on this one. M.A. tells me that Huckabee is a favorite speaker of many of our target market, and we can draw people from all over our market area, especially in the area of our satellite church.

We need to make sure we accomplish the following:

1. We need Huck to really lay it on thick tonight about how great Mac is. We need him to use words like "cutting edge", "brave", "bold", "unashamed" etc. in his description of Mac. Mac's friendship with Huckabee really needs to be played up big. John Blount, make sure you let Huckabee know how tough I've had it, and that we have many backslidden recalcitrant members who are attacking me. He's a fellow pastor and he will know how to help me out. Oh yes, make sure that he mentions Debbie and what she is doing in the International Mission Board.

2. We will have many visitors here from other churches. We absolutely must get the message to them about our satellite site down in southern Duval. Many of the very wealthy republicans who support Huckabee live in the area of our new satellite, so with them here to here Huck they have to know we're starting a satellite.

3. We also need to let everyone know how "cutting edge" we are with our new Salvation Army Kettle drive coming up, so make sure we have this scrolling on the Imags.

This is huge, people. Let's make this go off without a hitch. If we can lure 3 "giving units" to our church from this one event, our ROI on this will be enormous and worth the huge fee we're paying Huck. This is our chance to really draw interest to our church to replace all of the "dead weight" that is finally leaving.

Thanks,

Mac

The Results of Selling Our Pulpit...

The visit of Mike Huckabee is a perfect example of why I have been warning the people of FBC Jax about the prostitution of our church under the leadership of Mac Brunson.

Of the many things I have been critical of Mac Brunson for, here are four of them that I consider to fall under the category of "prostitution of our pulpit" - selling our pulpit for financial gain.

1. Hosting a non-evangelistic event called "The Time to Stand For Israel" in November 2007, at the request of "influential deacons" who "had a financial stake" in Israel. This event was supposedly to raise funds for an Israeli hospital, which as I pointed out in my blog last year (here, here, here, here, and here), happens to perform abortions. Mac rationalized this by saying "Jesus was a Jew", and "the Old Testament is still in our Bible", and "we are not sponsoring the event, but we are hosting the event".

2. The airing of a "testimony" commercial of the Collins Builders company in the middle of Mac's sermon, giving the appearance of a "quid-pro-quo" favor in return for the $300,000 land gift given to Mac by the Collins' family.

3. The selling of promotional time at the 2008 and 2009 Pastor's Conference - including $750 fees for exhibit booth space, selling advertising space in the conference bulletin for $1000, selling advertising time in the dinner hall while attendees eat, and going so far as to selling "promotional packages" that include mentioning of the advertiser from the pulpit.

4. Mac Brunson using our church bulletin and web site to advertise for his own "Holy Land Trip" events that are not official church-sponsored activities.

If you asked any church member 10 years ago if any of these four events had a remote chance of ever happening in our church, 100% of the people would have said "NEVER - our church will never stoop so low". We never thought that these kinds of things would happen in our church, but they all have in the first 2 years of the Mac Brunson regime.

What does this have to do with the Huckster coming to our church?

Easy.

Mike Huckabee is a paid speaker. He gets paid for making these kinds of speeches.

So, if our current leadership is capable of SELLING promotional time in our church for money and favors thereby allowing marketing messages to be delivered to us in the guise of religious "testimonies"....then it stands to reason and is no stretch at all to consider that they would BUY promotional time from an influential speaker to speak on behalf of our pastor to deliver a "bought" message to us in the guise of religious speech or testimony. I'm not making the case that this is so with Mike Huckabee, but we as a church are now left to wonder if Mike Huckabee is coming to our church because he wants to deliver a message, or did Mac and Maurillio seek him out to help Mac's image? Or does it even matter at this point?

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"So, if our current leadership is capable of SELLING promotional time in our church for money and favors thereby allowing marketing messages to be delivered to us in the guise of religious "testimonies"....then it stands to reason and is no stretch at all to consider that they would BUY promotional time from an influential speaker to speak on behalf of our pastor to deliver a "bought" message to us in the guise of religious speech or testimony. "

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A wise pastor would realize this problem WAY BEFORE they held their first fund raiser at our church. A loving, discerning pastor would understand that using our church for raising funds is dangerous and opens up a Pandora's box that can never be closed - at least perhaps until new leadership is in place.

Therefore, we now are left to wonder as a congregation when a speaker comes or a testimony is given in our church: Is this a message from God via the Holy Spirit, or is the message man's doing and we're being marketed? We thought Jim Cavezal came last year to give a "testimony"...no, he came as part of a purchased "promotional package" to sell the tape series he was a part of, and so our preacher's son could receive glory for having "raised" money for the conference. Now Mike Huckabee comes...rest assured he will say nice things about our church, and our pastor...he will butter us up big time. And we will be left wondering: are those his real thoughts, or did our pastor buy a promo from Mike Huckabee?

P.S. Its interesting to note that the Huckabee supporters have found the Watchdog blog and one of them started a thread discussing my article about Huckabee coming here. You can go to this thread and read their discussion here. You will see that they are pooh-poohing the idea that a visit to our church with Mac on stage could be politically damaging to Huckabee at some point in the future. Some of them even calling this blog a "right wing nutjob" blog. Their posters do admit that this is just another one of Mike's paid speaking gigs, so there is no harm in him associating with Mac Brunson. I still maintain: Huckabee doesn't need the potential grief from the liberals in 3 years when he runs again...airing him hugging Mac, and them playing some of Mac's stupid statements like his detest of pants below the waist, how he hopes the federal government doesn't help Jacksonville if we're hit by a hurricane, and how God himself caused the most catastrophic moments in America over the last 10 years. You're welcome to come to our church Governor, and believe me, anytime we can avoid a sheep beating at the hands of our pastor we are relieved...but trust me, you don't need the potential problem your visit may pose in the future.

Huckabee Speaking at FBC Jax Nov 2

According to the FBC Jax Website, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will be speaking at FBC Jacksonville on the evening of Sunday November 2nd.

We welcome Governor Huckabee to our church and am happy to host him. He has a new show on the Fox News channel that airs on weekends and is getting rave reviews.

However, we hope his appearance at our church won't hurt him in the future. Its very likely that Mac Brunson will use this as an opportunity to advance his own brand - Mac will be on the platform with him no doubt, will introduce him, etc. A great attempt for Mac to bolster his own image. However, I can see in the future when Huckabee runs for president again they will pull out the video of Mac Brunson blaming 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, high gas prices, and the current economic downturn on God and ask Governor Huckabee: "Why did you go speak at a church and take the platform with someone who blames God for America's problems?"

Below is the video once again. Notice that Mac is not just saying that God could use these unfortunate events; not that God can work through these events...no, you will see Mac speaking on behalf of God in the first person, saying that God was actively working to bring all these things about in order to wake up the His people, that God tried to do it with blessings, but is now trying to get our attention through "buffeting" via 9/11, Katrina, gas prices, and economic calamity. Mac traces our current problems back to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and our failure to respond appropriately to that, and then God decided to bring 9/11 and the rest.

So when you take the platform with Mac Brunson, Governor Huckabee, keep in mind that the footage of you and Mac will be aired right after the clip below of Mac blaming death, disaster, and calamity directly on God punishing Americans.

Unfortunately, Governor Huckabee, Sunday night might be your "Jeremiah Wright" moment.

Mac and Deb's Little White Lie About Sheri Klouda - Can you Apologize?

After seeing the folks at SBC Today once again telling untruths about Sheri Klouda, and their unwillingness to answer my sincere question and going so far as to deleting my posts about their statements concerning Sheri Klouda, I am going to again call on Mac Brunson to apologize to Sheri Klouda and to apologize to his congregation for using his power and his pulpit to spread a malicious lie about Sheri Klouda on July 13, 2008.

Mac Brunson is abusing our church in many ways. As I've said, abusers will often get emboldened when they get away with their abuse, and we see this here. Mac felt emboldened to the point of perpetuating a carefully crafted lie by completely mischaracterizing Sheri Klouda's testimony concerning the scriptural validity of her lawsuit against Mac's buddy Paige Patterson and the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary. Sheri Klouda responsed to this lie on my blog here.

When you listen to the audio clip below you will hear Mac coldly refer to Sheri as "that person" and he says that Sheri Klouda admitted on the stand that her lawsuit violated 1 Corinthians 6. This is no small matter to Sheri. This must be very hurtful to Sheri as she is a seminary professor and takes great pride in living her life in accordance with the scripture that she teaches. To have Mac from one of the most prominent pulpits in the SBC delcare that Sheri admitted to have violated scripture in her lawsuit is to call her a hypocrite. It was a shameless attempt by Mac to rub salt in Sheri's wounds, and to show off to the SBC that he's not afraid to stick up for Paige Patterson. Too bad that the SBC Today faithful can't see this has nothing to do with one's opinion on Klouda's lawsuit - it has to do with lying about and ignoring Sheri's own testimony concerning the validity of her lawsuit.

I can only wonder...where is Debbie Brunson in all of this? As a woman serving in the SBC as an IMB trustee and as a prominent staff member (dare we say "co pastor"?) at FBC Jax, wouldn't she be incensed to hear her husband slander from the pulpit another woman serving in the ministry? Unlike Debbie Brunson, Sheri Klouda isn't riding the coattails of her husband to land a cush job at a mega church and a spot on the IMB board...unlike Deb Brunson, Sheri Klouda must support her family due to her husband's chronic health issues. Can't Debbie Brunson show a little heart and get her man to come clean and apologize to Sheri and to FBC Jacksonville? Or is she as cold-hearted as Mac? Its the least Debbie Brunson can do, given that she couldn't offer any support to Sheri while the whole mess unfolded at SWBTS even though Sheri was a member at FBC Dallas.

So listen below as Mac delivers his cowardly encoded lie. He isn't even man enough to use Sheri's name, and isn't even man enough to acknowledge that he is talking about a woman...only "that person". Coward. And he certainly isn't man enough to admit that "that person" is actually a former church member whom he pastored at Dallas and never offered one helping hand to her while her world collapsed. The people at FBC Jax should DEMAND that Mac apologize. But they won't. They don't care.

Come on, Mac. Humble yourself and apologize. Deb, perhaps you can help him.