[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Dave

It might be a little naive to believe bylaws would have addressed the issues...

Exactly, and I bet that's what Mark Driscoll was counting on! You see, this last situation was not the first crisis of leadership at Mars Hill. The last time Driscoll carefully and craftily demonized his detractors, then when the time was just right, he fired them. Then he quickly "changed the rules" and consolidated power by promoting a group of men who were personally loyal to him, and him alone. DOES ALL THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

Luckily for the folks at Mars Hill, Driscoll was not able to destroy all the vestiges of ecumenical democracy built into the Mars Hills bylaws. I'm sure if he had to do it all again Diriscoll would have made himself an indispensable Pope from the very beginning, just like Witness Lee did.

The person who brought me into the LC, Karl Hammond, said he had heard things about what WL did in Taiwan and he went with others to Taiwan to find out the truth. When he met with the brothers there they explained the situation to his satisfaction. Karl wasn't easily fooled but on the other hand he might have wanted to drink the kool-aid and maybe didn't dig deep enough. Apparently that trip with several brothers sealed the deal for the US.

Actually Karl was never going to find out the truth because by the time he visited Taiwan Witness Lee had already "eliminated the competition" so to speak. By the time Karl "met with the brothers there" Lee had already done a lot of firing and hiring of local elders and had already absconded with a number of the meeting halls. For all intents and purposes there was already two Local Churches - One was The Local Church of Witness Lee, the other was everybody else. If Karl would have looked real hard he probably would have found out about "everybody else", but I'm sure Lee worked his infamous magic to make sure that didn't happen.

An interesting side note here - John Ingalls has stated that at least one Chinese brother who was in Taiwan in those days has related to him that a number of brothers wanted to "spill the beans" to the gullible American brothers who were visiting in those days, but of course they were totally intimidated by Witness Lee and just bit their lips.