Why the True Jesus Church is Wrong About YM Yang

This is a post written to the members of the True Jesus Church. If you're not a member of the church, you can move on, as a lot of what I write here probably won't make too much sense to you. But if you are a member of this church, I just wanted to share some reflections on a recent event in the church.

The great pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said something that all Christians should have imprinted on their heart.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

It took me a very long time to write this post but in light of recent events I couldn't stay silent anymore. I'll start off by saying this post is my opinion and mine alone. Please don't bother my family or my friends. If you have something to say, say it to me. 

I write today to talk about a brother in Christ, Preacher Yuh-Ming Yang. 

I think 98% of the English speaking members of the church probably don't know who Preacher Yang is. He's a full-time minister based in Paris, France. He had been to the US a handful of times but I doubt that most members here have ever met him. And so if you've seen recent edicts coming down from the IA "warning" you of a rogue preacher whom you need to stay away from, you probably just shrugged your shoulders and went on with life.

As for me, I did get to know Preacher Yang and his family over the years. As a child, I got the opportunity to hear his father preach a few times. His older brother was the resident minister in the church I grew up in in New Jersey and had a profound positive impact on my life growing up. And over the years I got to know him personally. I first met him when he visited our church a few times to give Bible seminars and when I went to Paris as a college student. And later when I worked for the church I got to know him a little more. Sadly, the language barrier between us never allowed us to communicate more than a few sentences at a time, but still I felt a bond. I found myself moved by his sermons, touched by his overseas ministry and charity work, and just enjoying his conversation and humor.

Some of you might have seen the announcements from the IA that Preacher Yang has been excommunicated from the church.

This news must have perplexed a lot of people, but in truth I was not perplexed at all. And it's because I've known something for many years. Our church is sick. She's been sick for a very long time and it's getting worse.

I'll preface by saying that I'm not talking about our church members. Not at all. I believe with all my heart--because I've seen and experienced it for myself--that this church is blessed to have members who have received the promised Holy Spirit, and many brothers and sisters do live by the Spirit. Through my life, I have been blessed to know many, many brothers and sisters truly living as reflections of Christ. At the grassroots level you can still see love and joy and simple faith.

But the "higher up" you go in the church organization, the more you see the signs of the disease.

My first taste of it was when I was elected to the church board in Elizabeth. I was part of the NCC that voted to allow ministers to serve as "permanent" members of the church board. In my idealistic youth I thought to myself, ministers are filled with the Holy Spirit, so wouldn't it make sense for them to serve as permanent members of the church board? So did the majority of delegates to the NCC who voted for this.

But once that rule was instituted, I instantly saw a change. It seemed that during almost every board meeting, some of the ministers who were "permanent members" would dominate the meeting and at times would even get into contentious arguments with one another. I started to realize that these were humans, with human pride, human egos, and human agendas. And the most dangerous part of it is, they didn't even realize it--all the time they were exhibiting behavior that was anything but Christ-like, they felt that they were speaking and acting on behalf of the Lord Himself. And they were there for life. 

But I really got to experience it after I got laid off from my job in August 2001. There was a job opening in the USGA and the IA for someone to manage the church's Web site. I'd been working on Web sites literally since the Web was invented and had gotten pretty good at it. I had a heart to serve God, and everything just seemed to make sense that this was to be the next stage of my life.

Again, I should preface by saying that I had some really, really positive experiences in my years working for the church. The National Youth Literary Seminars that I helped run during those years gave me memories and experiences I'll cherish my whole life. And being able to travel with the IA to meet our loving brothers and sisters in South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan was the experience of a lifetime that I wouldn't trade for anything.

But despite the positive experiences during my employment with the GA and IA, one verse kept popping into my head over and over.

And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.

There were certain little instances I remember. My then-boss in the GA was one of the kindest, gentlest men I have known. But there was one meeting I recall clearly. A deacon of the church stood up in front of everyone and wagged his finger at him and started berating him harshly to the point where he, a grown man in his 50's, literally started to cry openly. My heart broke when I saw this, but what made it break even more was when I looked around the room and saw every other person in the room filled with ministers and elders and other "men of God" looking down in silence and saying nothing while this injustice was happening.

Inside my heart, I remember looking at the downturned heads one by one and asking myself, "why isn't anyone saying anything?" Perhaps more than any incident during my years with the IA, this is the one that left the biggest impression on me. 

I remember another incident, and this one was among my peer group. I was in charge of building a new Web site for the church, and I had a small team of people reporting to me. There was a dear friend I'd known since childhood who is one of the most brilliant people I know, and we both grew up in the church together. He had stopped attending church regularly, but I knew that he still had a heart to serve God. And so I called him and asked if he could help, and he enthusiastically said yes. At great personal expense and sacrifice, he donated his time, his energy, and even the time of his own employees' time to single-handedly put together a UX and strategy for the site, something he'd done for some of the world's biggest companies.

I don't know if it was out of jealousy or ignorance or both, but one of the members of my own team actually came up to me and said...uh, Steve, you know that he doesn't come to church, right? And I got similar "warnings" from others in the GA against working with him.  I was speechless. Here, we have a young brother who loves Christ, who had a heart to serve God, who was literally one of the most talented people in the world, who was freely donating the talents that God gave him. And yet, here was a group of people who just sat in judgement and condemnation of him, refusing to allow him to use his talents for the church simply because he didn't fall into the mold of what everyone in church felt "good church brother" should be.

The final straw for me came a year or two later when I was let go from the job. I'd pretty much been deemed a failure. Now before I sound like a martyr here, I'll just say that objectively speaking I probably could have done a much better job and they were probably right to let me go. But the way it was done was completely spitting in my eye.  I manage people today, and I know the right thing to do when I see an employee underperforming is to first sit down with them, try to understand the issues they're going through, tell them constructively how they can improve, and provide them the resources, encouragement, and guidance they need to succeed. After all that if they still don't perform, that's when you let them go gently.

How did it happen with me? Months went by with no one saying anything to me. Then suddenly they informed me that my job was given to someone else. Making matters worse, I heard later how it went down. It was like Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. Behind my back they approached another brother and told him they wanted him to take my job. To this brother's credit, he refused. Then, they went to another brother, who at the time happened to be a dear friend of mine. And this brother took my job, without him or anyone else even talking with me about it. Me? I saw it as an utter betrayal. And our relationship has never been the same since. I've worked in lots of cutthroat, backstabbing corporations before then and since, and yet this still takes the cake for the most unprofessional thing I've ever witnessed.

I don't recount these stories so you can throw a pity party for me. And to be honest, none of these trivial incidents really represent any kind of "smoking gun" pointing to some kind of endemic corruption in the church. But I do recount them to make a point. The IA and the GA are flawed. They are fallible. They can be wrong.

The irony is, I can't point to any individual minister in the IA or GA and say that they're "evil". Quite to the contrary, I know most of them personally and they have never been anything but kind and gentle and loving. But for some reason, when they get into a group, something goes horribly wrong.

And the most recent and most egregious case of something going horribly wrong was the IA's recent actions towards YM Yang.

As I said it was during my work at the IA, and my accompanying the ministers on some of their travels, that I got to know Preacher YM Yang.

The first time I heard Preacher Yang speak it was like a breath of fresh air. Mind you, he doesn't speak English, living in Paris he only speaks French and Chinese. And yet from the 50-70% of his Chinese I could understand and the 10-20% of his French I can understand I found his sermons to be phenomenal. They did one thing that no other sermon did. They made me think.

I'll be the first to say it. 95% of the sermons given in our church are absolutely painful to sit through. There are only a handful of sermons in the last 30 years I have not fallen sound asleep during. I used to think the reason was that the sermons are in Chinese and translated into English so they're hard to follow in the first place. But I've come to realize that the bigger part of it is that many sermons just have no life in them. Many seem to regurgitate the same things over and over again. Sadly, this has continued for years but as long as these sermons continue to repeat the prevailing orthodoxy, they're deemed "good"--despite how few people they really reach.

With Preacher Yang's sermons, I felt life. There were some things he said that made my spirit within me jump with joy. There were some things he said that I didn't necessarily agree with, but even when that happened, it forced me to think and to explore more on my own. And something else I respected from him--when he would say something that was his own opinion, he would preface it by saying exactly that. "This is my own opinion, and I encourage you to come to your own conclusion".

More and more I sense that a lot of people in the church, and especially those in the leadership positions of the church, are scared to death of this notion that church members can think for themselves. No, they should be told what to think and how to think.

As one small example of this, in church we have "Bible Studies" where a group of people sit around in a circle, often with long, awkward periods of silence. Then, someone will pipe up "I once heard a pastor explain it this way in a sermon...". Then, more silence. Then someone else will pipe up "I heard another pastor explain it this way".

Members, it seems, have been conditioned over the years not to speak their own opinions, but rather to parrot a view that has been "approved". And if someone new dares raise an opinion that doesn't mesh with that view that person won't be openly condemned, but the glances and whispers will be enough to shut that person up from speaking again. What's insidious is that no one realizes what's happening. After the hour is up, the Bible Study leader breathes a sigh of relief that it's over and the whole charade continues the next week. And as long as it keeps going week after week, year after year, the church deems it as a success.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that our church has, for quite some time now, been going down the path of the Catholic church, which ascribes "infallibility" to the Pope and ecumenical councils. Church ministers are expected to toe the company line and not express opinions if it falls outside of that line.

There is literally something called a "Truth Research Committee" where a small band of ministers get together, talk about tough questions that are raised by the churches, take a democratic vote, and that vote is deemed to be God's infallible truth. There have been several decisions from this "Truth Research Committee" that I've found literally laughable. One "ruling", I kid you not, was that according to the Bible, any time you say the word "Jesus", it must always be preceded by the word "Lord".  When I first saw this edict come down, I wondered to myself, does that mean we need to change the words of hymns to "Lord Jesus loves me this I know..." and "Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, sweetest name I know"?

In fairness, dumb things like this are really an exception, and there have been a lot of insights from our church leadership that I have found reasonable and helpful. But again, this is just a note to say that too often "precepts of men" creep in and are preached as doctrine.

And here's the problem I have with the conceit that only a small group of old men are qualified to decide "what is truth". In John 16:13, Jesus said "when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth". He didn't add "if you're a full-time minister" or "if you're a duly elected member of a small group of old men". He directed this to every single man, woman, and child who has received the promised Holy Spirit. And if our church is one that believes we have the promised Holy Spirit, why is it that the church is so petrified of letting people share different opinions and letting the members discern for themselves? Such fear exposes one of two things--doubt that the members truly have the Spirit of truth in them, or utter faithlessness in the Spirit himself.

We often wonder why church membership is declining. For 40 years I've heard the same explanations. "It's not God's time yet for them". "They are just not willing to accept The Truth, but maybe their hearts will be softened". "All we can do is keep doing God's work." Notice something about all of these sentiments? All of them point the finger out, and not in. There is no introspection. Nobody inside the church is asking what we're doing wrong and could be doing better. Very few sermon leaders seem to be truly trying to figure out what the real needs of the people they're preaching to are, whether in terms of style or substance. And of those that do ask, very few seem to be able to go beyond preaching the same didactic repetitive platitudes.

For a church that speaks about "the truth", it's so rare to hear a sermon that go beyond the theoretical into something that meets practical needs. Heck, nobody even dares to suggest that maybe a 45 minute sermon is too danged long. If anyone dares say the sermons are boring, the finger is always pointed back at them. If only you were a little more "spiritual", you'd get a lot out of the sermons. If you fall asleep, well, there has to be something within you that's flawed. Repent and maybe you can appreciate next week's sermon.

Which brings me back to Preacher Yang.

Aside from being inspired by his sermons, I got to know him personally. I remember one incident in particular very clearly. It was an extremely trivial incident, and I doubt even he remembers it. But in a lot of ways it sums up exactly the kind of person he is.

In most parts of the world, our members kneel down when they pray. But in South Korea, for whatever reason the members remain seated on the pews to pray. I noticed this, and instinctively sat to pray. I noticed when it came time to pray, all the ministers and preachers in the IA knelt down at the front of the room. Some I sensed did so very deliberately.

After the prayer, Preacher Yang came up to me and smiled. "I noticed you were sitting in the pew to pray". I smiled back and responded in my broken Chinese, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". He smiled back and patted me on the back. I could see right away that he "got it", even though he didn't say a word. He understood that I tried to show respect and love to my fellow Korean brothers and sisters by adapting to their custom rather than forcing my own upon them.  That I tried to avoid in my actions even the hint of "my way is the right way and your way is the wrong way".

He was the only one who noticed. I didn't get a chance to observe him while he was praying, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did the same thing. He seemed to be someone who could distinguish between "doctrine" and "precepts of men". Someone who didn't strain out gnats and swallow camels.

Over the years we haven't seen each other a lot, but when I do see him and his wonderful wife and son it's like seeing family. Even in our brief encounters over the years, I can always feel the love of Christ through him.

I've heard stories of how Preacher Yang regularly visits French-speaking churches in Africa and churches in communist China to minister to the members there who are in such desperate need and frankly have no one else who cares about them so deeply or can communicate to them on such a personal level. There are many, many stories I don't hear...about how he participates in prison ministry, about the countless souls he has helped bring to Christ.

So the news hit me like a freight train one day when I heard. The IA had excommunicated Preacher YM Yang from the True Jesus Church.

When I first heard this I was a little puzzled at how this could even happen. I thought that local churches had the authority to excommunicate members, not the IA. After all, the IA is, or at least should be, simply an organization that provides coordination to support and serve local churches, but it's the local church who ultimately decides who is and isn't a member of their church. Somehow it seems that the dynamic has flipped over the years. Suddenly, it seems that the IA sees themselves as the centralized "seat of power" that the local churches serve. Something is really wrong with that. It should be the IA serving the GA serving the local church serving Jesus Christ. Instead, it's the local church serving the GA serving the IA serving...well, you fill in the rest.

The IA and GA see themselves as the modern-day equivalents of the "apostles and elders" of the first century A.D. But I sometimes wonder if their behavior isn't more like the "popes and bishops" of the fourth century.

In the apostolic days, even when there were disagreements among the ministers, whether it was the split between Paul and Barnabas, the disagreements between Paul and Peter, or even the attacks on Paul by the "super-apostles", not once was there an attempt to banish a fellow worker for God. To the contrary, such action was usually left in God's hands. Gamaliel, a Pharisee, said "for if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” When Jesus' disciples tried to get people to stop casting out demons in his name, he didn't rebuke those who were doing work in his name, he rebuked those who couldn't see past their own envy and ignorance to see that these people were working for the glory of God, whether or not they were in his inner circle."For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us."

Something else that puzzled me is that excommunication rarely happens and is usually reserved for those who publicly and openly renounce Christ through egregious behavior--I'm talking things like unrepentant murder or adultery.

I tried to put the pieces together and came to the conclusion that there is something rotten going on.

The "official" reason that the IA gave for their action was that Preacher Yang "preaches heresy". That's a pretty serious charge, and so I dug into what understanding exactly what this "heresy" was.

It turns out that years ago, the IA itself had asked Preacher Yang to do some research on a question that has been a theological puzzle for millennia--what was the origin of Satan? Frankly, I'm perplexed at why the church is wasting its time asking unanswerable questions like this when there are people out there suffering and dying who need the basic gospel of love preached to them, there are Christians around the world who are being executed for their beliefs, and our own religious freedoms are also under assault here at home. Shouldn't the church be praying for guidance on how to address those things rather than studying the theological equivalent of "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin"? But whatever.

The story goes that Preacher Yang accepted this assignment and did his research. His conclusions were controversial, and frankly I don't know if I even agree with them. One thing I do know is--I don't give a crap where Satan came from. That has nothing to do with my salvation or the salvation of anyone. It's a freaking trivia question.

And yet somehow, the fact that Preacher Yang came up with the conclusions he did was used as a stick to beat him down. He was told to renounce his opinion publicly. He did not, and I'm guessing the reason wasn't so much the conviction of his beliefs as it was his own distaste and reaction to how authoritarian and autocratic the IA had become. Ironically, as a result the IA (again, in a move that is questionable from a procedural perspective) threw him out of the church.

I have my own theories of what really started all of this, but I'll keep quiet on that. Suffice it to say, I believe two things. First, that many of the people who made this decision really do believe in their heart of hearts that they were doing a service for God. And second, that they are blinded to the fact that that this verse which they have read and preached about hundreds of times is really speaking about them:

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

Since Preacher Yang's ouster, I've heard rumors (mind you, never anything official in writing) of other charges leveled against Pr. Yang. Every last one I heard sounds like a trumped up charge. Our church believes, for example, based on the book of Acts that speaking in tongues is the evidence of receiving the promised Holy Spirit.

I'm not sure exactly what Pr. Yang said, but perhaps he said something to the effect that everyone who speaks in tongues does not necessarily have the promised Holy Spirit, or that some who do not speak in tongues may still have the Holy Spirit working through them. If that's the case, these are statements I agree with 100%. And not just me, but the Word of God does as well. And yet this was used as another "proof" that Preacher Yang is a heretic. Hearing people bring these "charges" against Pr. Yang for some reason reminded me of the false witnesses who spoke against Stephen. "This man incessantly speaks against this holy place and the Law". 

I was talking to someone who had attended a sermon once where the speaker was clearly "warning" the congregation about Preacher Yang, even though he was never mentioned by name. She said that she remembered one line in particular that the speaker said: "Don't be led astray by someone just because he practices love".

My jaw dropped when I heard this. This one line summarizes the depths to which some in this church have sunk. And this is the reason the church is in crisis. Because we're taught to tithe mint and cumin and neglect the weightier matters of the law.

We are taught to baptize with our heads bowed down, but in our lives we don't live with the sacrificial humility of Christ when his head bowed down in death. We pray in exuberant tongues but our sermons are devoid of even five words of true instruction. We are taught that foot washing is essential to salvation, and yet we cannot try to work to understand brothers we disagree nor treat them with love. We stress that we must partake of one bread during Holy Communion, and yet we cast away those in the body of Christ who don't conform to our liking. And we adhere to the Sabbath on the seventh day, but end up getting feeling exhausted physically, mentally, and spiritually at the end of every Saturday.

Am I denigrating the importance of the church's doctrines? Not at all. But as the Lord himself said, we should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. The early workers in our church did, but something has since gone very wrong.

And because of this the church is in a crisis. Members are leaving in droves. The fastest way the church has grown in the last 20 years has been by having more babies. And and yet the church is not introspective. The finger is always pointed outward.

In my "day job" today I still build Web sites. In fact, thank God, despite by being branded a failure by the church, the Lord has blessed me to the point where today some of the largest companies in the world trust me to help them with their Web sites. As part of my job, companies come to me and ask me to help them figure out why their Web sites don't work. And I ask them a few questions. First, do you understand precisely what your users needs are? Second, does your company offer unique value that meets those needs better than any other out there? And third, can you articulate how your product or service addresses those needs in a way that users find relevant, approachable, and engaging? 

Why isn't the church asking those same questions? Of the people in your local community, why would they want to come to a church? Are there people who are lost and desperately looking for answers? Are there people who are stressed, or depressed, or angry, or sad, or sick, or without direction? Are there people dealing with addictions, or losses, or problems for whom the solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ?

The irony is that we all know that faith in Jesus Christ is the solution. Many of us have experienced the love, the forgiveness, the healing, the joy of following Jesus. How different this world would be if more people did? But sadly, as churches we end up scaring people away from the truth by layering on puffed-up knowledge, mores, and precepts. As quickly as our increasingly secular progressive society is trying to drive people away from Jesus Christ, our church leadership seems to do it even faster and more expeditiously.

To all church leaders, especially if your church purports to have "the truth", ask yourself this. Why is it that people don't come to your services and feel that those needs have been met? Why aren't they beating down your doors to get in because they can find things in your church that they can't find anywhere else, things like love, and kindness, and the deep, spiritual answers to their problems, and everything that is supposed to accompany the Holy Spirit?

Don't give me bull like "it's not their time" or "God has hardened their hearts so they can't see the truth". Look at your own churches from the eyes of a newcomer. When they walk into your doors, do they feel the love of Jesus Christ? Or do they see a whitewashed tomb of a church which outwardly looks fine--it opens its doors on time every week, it goes through the motions of having a sermon, hymn singing, and prayers every week, it has a nice building that's well maintained--but inside has no life?

If you're a member of the True Jesus Church and still don't know whom to believe about Pr. Yang, the rantings of the fool who wrote this blog post or the "Announce and Post" you see posted on your church's bulletin board, then I beg you to get on your knees right now and ask the Lord to lead you into the truth. Heck, maybe I am misguided. If so, this blog post like all my others will fade into obscurity.

But if something about this whole situation strikes you as not right, especially if you are in any kind of leadership position in the church, I will reiterate the words of Dietrich Boenhoffer. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. If the Holy Spirit is compelling you, as he has me, to perceive that a great injustice has been made, stand up and say something. Do it in a constructive, loving, and gentle way. But you must speak, regardless of what happens next. You may be scolded. You may be insulted. You may be shunned or even kicked out yourself. But God will not hold you guiltless if you fail to speak.

I know that we belong to a church that at least at one point in its history was pleasing to God. I know because I've experienced for myself what it's like to enjoy heaven on earth in loving fellowship with brothers and sisters who live in unity. I've seen, heard and experienced miracles in my own life. At age 10 I experienced the greatest miracle of all that many of you have--experiencing what it's like to receive the promised Holy Spirit just as they did on the day of Pentecost.

But with recent events, I cannot see how God is pleased anymore. Not only because of what they did by excommunicating Preacher Yang, but more importantly how this action epitomizes what the church is becoming. I think of these statements and I fear too many of them touch too close to home.

• You have taken away the key to knowledge.
• You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
• You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
• You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
• You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
• You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.

We like to preach that the three signs of the true church are the presence of the Holy Spirit, the complete gospel, and signs and miracles. That's become a mantra every church believer has memorized since childhood.

I know for a fact that the True Jesus Church had these three things in abundance in the early 20th century. I've heard enough accounts about the early church to know this. They preached the "five basic doctrines" but also lived their lives as reflections of what those doctrines stood for. They were filled with the power of the Spirit, not just in terms of how fluent they spoke in tongues but how the gifts of the Spirit were so clear in their lives. And signs and miracles were commonplace, not just an occasional story you hear from afar that everyone gloms onto as "proof" that God is still with us.

Fast forward to the True Jesus Church today. Does this describe us? I'll let you decide. And if you believe the answer to be no, then get on your knees and ask the Lord to show you what you can do to get her back on the straight and narrow path. I'll do the same. Because the body of Christ is not an organizational unit. It's not a building. It's not even the collection of only those people who go to church every week. It's all of us, everyone who has accepted Christ and has been baptized in His blood.

And if you're someone reading this who's felt disenfranchised, ostracized, disparaged, or condemned by the church organization then pray extra hard and ask God what part he wants you to play. Because you're that ignoble vessel that the good Lord just may just want to use.