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Articles about how Bill Gothard mishandles the Bible to support his legalistic viewpoint.

Personal testimonies of finding true freedom through God's matchless grace.

Living and thriving through the grace of God.

Stories and accounts of the destruction caused by the teachings of Bill Gothard.

Tag Archives: grace

Dandelions

14 September 2011, 06:30

Moderator

29

LIVING HOLY. Why? Toward what end? By what motivation? For what purpose? My boys are still at that age where they eagerly “pick flowers for mommy” whenever they come across a patch of dandelions. Like many men stuck in the practicality of things, to my husband, they are clearly weeds. =) But to countless mommies […]

Taking the Bait

12 September 2011, 06:00

RickH

11

Hooked on Principles  My story is unique in that I first heard about Bill Gothard when I was an adult. As a college student, I joined a small church in a community in north Austin, Texas. I’d thought about going to seminary much over the previous year but I wasn’t certain that I wanted to […]

My Journey: Legalism, Atheism, and Finally Freedom

5 September 2011, 06:00

Moderator

22

As a teenager in the 1960s, living near Atlanta, Georgia, I often wondered about God and heaven and hoped I had been good enough to get in. Being a normal male who enjoyed life, I wasn’t so sure. My grandparents took me to church, but that stopped when I was 13. During my junior year […]

Grace and Culture

27 August 2011, 06:00

Beth C

18

I have recently made a number of new friends who, like me, grew up in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI). The discussions that have ensued have given me much to think about and shown me glaring truths about my past that I had never before been able to see. The logical fallacies quite apparent in […]

God’s Best: The “Commitments” Payoff

25 August 2011, 06:00

RyanR

47

Anyone who has attended a Basic Seminar and has paid attention can tell you that Mr. Gothard is a man who likes checklists. Throughout the seminar he provides five steps to this, or three reasons for that. In many respects, a step-by-step process can be a helpful aid when trying to work through the various […]

Prisoner of the Glass House

15 August 2011, 06:00

MicahK

12

My childhood and the home I was blessed to live it out in, was shaped from my infancy by teachings from Bill Gothard’s seminars (I was born just months before my parents attended their first of many of his seminars). I can still recall, however, in my youngest years a deep sense of idyllic peace […]

The Unfair Bonus

12 August 2011, 06:00

MatthewS

13

Jesus must have enjoyed short stories. He used parables frequently. One of those stories appears in Matthew 20:1-16. It arrested my attention recently and I wondered how someone would tell the story in today’s world. Perhaps something like this: The strangest bonus Jim ever received was for a large project he worked on for six […]

Breaking Free

10 August 2011, 07:00

Moderator

31

They were raised in a normal America. They had children and then, in reaction to the symptoms of societal misdeeds, they were drawn to an organization (the Institute in Basic Life Principles) that held a checklist of answers to life’s every question. (clothing, hair style, vocabulary, music, activities, toys, pets,education, culture, friendships, dating, marriage, raising children, […]

Discovering the Heart of the Father

8 August 2011, 11:00

KylarD

6

  I don’t remember too many of the details of when I got saved at three years old. My guess is that my mom had been explaining to me about God and Jesus dying that He wanted to live in my heart. I do remember mom and dad being there, that I had received a […]

When the Gospel Becomes No Gospel At All

5 August 2011, 06:00

Beverly

52

The word “gospel” means “good news.” But at some point, the Apostle Paul says, this good news can be turned on its head to become worthless, bad news. When Paul wrote to the church of Galatia, he was angered by the fact that some false teachers (often referred to by biblical scholars as “Judaizers”[1]) were […]