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The Truth About God’s Justice

21 April 2015, 06:00

Moderator

100

I grew up afraid of God’s justice. Though my parents were well-balanced in meting out mercy and discipline (very well-balanced considering we went to a Gothardite church), I always imagined God coming down from heaven with a sword of justice in hand, ready to punish all of us for our sins. He had just enough […]

The Shame of Beauty

16 April 2015, 06:00

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142

Before I was born my parents started following the teaching of Bill Gothard and IBLP, and when I was 5, they joined ATI (Advanced Training Institute), the homeschool program that Gothard developed for the families of his Basic and Advanced Seminars. Gothard emphasized “principles” which simply meant there were many different rules that dictated specific activities in my […]

Belonging

9 April 2015, 06:00

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In groups like the Advanced Training Institute, we have an identity and a community. We might not always like it, but it gives us a level of security. We are surrounded by people who think like us. We speak a different language from other people around us, using words like “courtship,” “motivational gift,” “rhema” and […]

In Search of Peace

2 April 2015, 06:00

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One of my earliest memories was walking down the hall from my Sunday school class to the sanctuary, pondering in perfect happiness the most important thing I knew: Jesus loved me, and his Father, God, loved me. They loved me even more than my Mommy and Daddy loved me. And that’s how much I loved […]

Sorry, Mom and Dad. We DO Have Regrets

22 January 2015, 06:00

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237

Growing up in ATI, our parents often told us, “Because of the way we’re raising you, you won’t have any regrets.” Their regrets included broken relationships, sexual sins, temptations, “wasted” years and the like. All of which we would to avoid because of our sheltered, carefully controlled upbringing. We don’t know if our parents honestly […]

IBYC Scandal in the News — 1980-1982

10 December 2014, 08:00

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1. Brief news clip in Eternity regarding IBYC resignations (July-August 1980) 2. The Bill Gothard Tragedy (Plains Baptist Challenger, August 1980) 3. ‘Sexual misconduct’ rocks Chicago-based ministry (The Dallas Morning News, 8/2/80) 4. Bill Gothard Steps Down During Institute Shakeup (Christianity Today, 8/8/80) 5. Evangelicals Feel Strain as Churches Adjust to Marriage Failures (Los […]

The Difference Between Horizontal and Vertical: Fifty Years of Yielding Rights and Not Taking Up Offenses

18 November 2014, 09:00

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Rebecca Davis of Here’s the Joy has written about the IBLP Basic Seminar’s teachings on “taking up an offense” and “yielding rights,” the way these concepts have permeated both her own experience and broader American Evangelical culture, and the teachings’ practical effects in culture. Links to and excerpts from Davis’s posts follow below. Taking Up […]

Confident Statements Do Not a Solid Argument Make

6 November 2014, 09:00

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330

A former Advanced Training Institute (ATI) student and Life Focus veteran has tackled both the form and the substance of the IBLP booklet What the Bible Has to Say About “Contemporary Christian” Music: Ten Scriptural Reasons Why the “Rock Beat” is Evil in Any Form at his blog, Throwing Out The Bath Water. “Is there a […]

The Principle of Self-Doubt

20 October 2014, 06:24

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I have been reading articles on Recovering Grace for a couple of years now, and the testimonies of others have been powerful tools for personal healing and for re-evaluating the way I think about life. One of the more common themes that I have seen in the comments on Recovering Grace articles is that people […]

Living by Principles

26 September 2014, 06:00

Ileata

137

If you died with the Messiah to the elemental forces of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? All these regulations refer to what is destroyed by being used up; they are commands and doctrines of […]