RyanR | Recovering Grace

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

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

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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Reflections on Healing After Surgery

21 October 2013, 06:00

RyanR

Within the Recovering Grace community, many often are confronted by well-meaning friends or family who believe that the spiritually wounded should just get over it. The refrains vary from, “You’re being bitter,” to “You just need to leave it at the cross,” to “You WANT to hang on to this.” I recently underwent lumbar spinal […]

I Kid You Not!

20 August 2012, 06:00

RyanR

Shortly after I joined the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) staff in 1992, I went on a two-week ministry trip to Moscow, Russia, that was preceded by a very long car ride from Oak Brook, Illinois, to JFK airport. Somewhere between this car trip and returning from Russia, I learned a very important rule […]

Clear as Mud

11 January 2012, 06:00

RyanR

Several years after I ended my formal association with IBLP (the Institute in Basic Life Principles), I did something wrong. What it was isn’t the point of this article. At first I didn’t think much about it, but later that evening, I began to feel guilty. Very guilty. As I had been trained to think […]

Quiverfull or “Full of It?'”

9 November 2011, 06:00

RyanR

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These days, the Duggars are the most well known family to have participated in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI). For those not familiar with ATI or the Quiverfull movement, the prospect of a family having 19 (going on 20) children is just mind boggling. Yet for those of us who grew up in ATI, having […]

Missing the Beat

3 November 2011, 06:04

RyanR

One day several years ago while doing some spring-cleaning, my wife and I stumbled across the personal journals we’d each kept while on staff at the Indianapolis Training Center. For the uninitiated, journal keeping is touted as a very important discipline within ATI/IBLP (Advanced Training Institute and Institute in Basic Life Principles) ranks, right after […]

Disney vs. IBLP

1 October 2011, 01:00

RyanR

Growing up in Southern California while most of my extended family lived in the Midwest resulted in my family making a number of trips to Disneyland. Plus, my mother liked Disneyland quite a bit; we made plenty of trips without extended family too. There were also the Disney movies Snow White, Cinderella, Lady and the […]

When Analogies and Anecdotes Dictated the Music Standard

21 September 2011, 06:30

RyanR

Anyone who has spent significant time under Bill Gothard’s teachings can tell you that he likes to use analogies to illustrate his points. While there is nothing wrong with analogies per se, they are a terrible basis upon which to build doctrine. Why? What happens when you come across two analogies that advocate opposite conclusions? […]

The Prayer Closet: An Introduction

6 September 2011, 06:15

RyanR

Prayer closet. Few words from my time in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI) cause me to shudder the way those do. I was on staff at the Indianapolis Training Center (ITC) in 1994 when the prayer closet was instituted. For the uninitiated, ITC was housed in an old 13-story hotel, just north of downtown Indianapolis. […]

God’s Best: The “Commitments” Payoff

25 August 2011, 06:00

RyanR

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 […]

Giving up on the Apprenticeship Life

24 August 2011, 06:30

RyanR

First, I wanted to acknowledge that any article that critiques an experience, by nature, opens the door for those who feel differently to claim that the author is bitter and/or just needs to move past the experience he or she writes about. My intention in writing this article is not to vilify ATI or Bill […]