Moderator | Recovering Grace

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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.

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My Heart’s Guardian: Missing in Action

10 October 2013, 06:00

Moderator

My family joined the Advanced Training Institute (ATI) when I was about 9 years old. I was taught the traditional courtship by ATI and Bill Gothard. Keep my mind pure. If I fall in love with someone who is not my spouse I’ll have less love to give him. My future spouse will ask my […]

Anti-Law

7 October 2013, 06:00

Moderator

Grace 101 Over the past several Grace 101 posts I have focused on the parable of the sower from Matthew 13 to give us a structure for looking at enemies of grace. I started with the trampled or trodden path, the hard ground that would not let the seed take root. But other enemies take […]

What’s Wrong with Guarding your Heart?

30 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

I was raised in an ultra-Conservative Christian homeschool environment, during what I consider the heyday of the “guard your heart”/purity/courtship movement (90s and early 2000s). Needless to say, that teaching affected and continues to affect me deeply. What started out as a (presumably) well-intentioned effort by parents to prevent their children from experiencing pain, has […]

The Cave

26 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

Once upon a time, there was a cave, and in this cave, there were a group of people who were captives. They had been there since birth and knew no other life. Indeed, they did not even know they were captives. These captives were chained in such a way that they were always looking at […]

From Rules to Grace

23 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

In the past few years, since I have expressed many disagreements with the theology of Bill Gothard, ATI (Advanced Training Institute), and his parent ministry, IBLP (Institute in Basic Life Principles), I have invariably been asked how ATI had negatively impacted my life. Here is my story. My family joined ATI in the ‘90s. It […]

Does Jesus Love Me?

19 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

Jesus loves me. I need to know this. Like, not some kind of empty platitude I say or others say to me. I need to KNOW this. Not like something I sing on a Sunday morning after watching my parents rush around, getting us ready for church. Looking like a perfect child, putting on the […]

Too Good to be True

16 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

Grace 101 Let’s face it. If we are pointing out enemies of grace, particularly those areas where the path is hard from years of tradition and wrong thinking, we don’t have to go any farther than our own minds. I define the flesh as the system we developed to handle life. Perhaps we could broaden […]

We’re All on a Journey

12 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

Families can be hard. Families of people coming together in order to flesh out the abuses in their past, reconcile those experiences, figure out who they are outside their old religious-cult like identities, and setting about finding their way in the sunlight of a true understanding of Grace can be much harder. We often hear […]

Finding My “No”!

9 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

As a teen growing up in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), my parents would not have said I was compliant. But I was. My parents decided to homeschool me the summer before I entered seventh grade. Four years later, I ascertained it was most certainly not in my best interest to continue. I fussed, argued […]

There You Go Again—An Open Letter to Bill Gothard (1997)

5 September 2013, 06:00

Moderator

There You Go Again1 BILL GOTHARD AND “THE FACTS” An Open Letter by Ronald B. Allen, Th.D. 7 November 1997 An on-again/off-again interaction-through-intermediaries between Bill Gothard and me seems to be on-again. The newest provocation was the publication last month of the first in a series of four articles critical of the Gothard ministry. The article […]