Church Under Seige Update

Back in March I posted about The Church Under Seige here ( March 18 and March 20--for some reason I can't get blogger to give separate url's on these posts right now).

This week I got the latest news from this church. Since the Administrative Commission has been dissolved and the session of the church restored, I no longer received news regularly about the congregation. The mother of one of the members of our church is also a member of TCUS. Our member told me that the man who was the instigator of all the controversy and division in the church has departed--along with his wife and their videographer. Security guards are no longer called to protect worship and session meetings. The congregation is healing and has a new interim pastor. The session is able to work together and a Pastor Nominating Committee elected to seek a permanent pastor.

Praise God! It took two years of lawsuits, threats and fear at that church to accomplish this result. Our presbytery became well-known to the PCUSA legal staff in Louisville and across the country as the threats and false accusations of this man were faxed across the country. Our commission stayed together, prayed together and encouraged each other in our determination not to give in to this man's relentless bullying. No appeasement and no negotiations. We refused to deal with him except on our terms--which we prayed were Biblical terms.

He did not go "quietly into that good night" of course. His website is still up and he vows to continue his bogus lawsuit--but our faithful counsel will make short work of that. More troubling are reports that he is stalking the first interim pastor, who has moved from our area, by making false accusations about him to his current employer (he is a tent-maker).

So we'll keep our prayer chain going on behalf of E.S. and ask God to protect him against this viscious and evil man.

Now that I think about it, I'm sure this post was subconsciously prompted by the news from London today.