The "Shake-down" in SLO

[Eulaha L. Long]

For those of us from the SLO Assembly: when did the "shake-down" of the Assembly occur in your own hearts?  For example, I knew something weird was going on way back in 1996, after I lived with a prominent worker.  I tried to leave then, but was told to not "jump-ship" by JL.  We all have our own perspective of how things started going downhill for us individually, I'd like to hear some stories...

When CV announced that she was leaving the group, I was so jealous of her-she was getting away from the control!  I wound up leaving 7 months later.  Did any certain person who left the Assembly give you the courage to do so yourself?

[delila]

Eulaha,
If you are asking only about those in SLO, kindly ignore me.  I can't help myself.  This is a question that has amazed me for some time.  When I left, it was much like walking through a glass wall.  I knew there were people on the other side, the veil, as it were (death - I considered it then), but how was I to get there?  How was I to choose spiritual death?  But I did.  I called my sister to tell her I'd left.  That's all I said: I left, like you.  I'm out in the darkness now, something like that.  And I could hear her cry on the other end, tears of unbelief.  Seven years.  
Any time I saw saints on the train or from a distance I jumped in my skin, like I was seeing ghosts.  But then, when I considered it, I was the ghost, the dead one, dead to them at least.  Death sets you free though, in a funny way.  NOw that I can laugh about it, I do.  But then, like I said, it was like walking through glass.
d

[Eulaha L. Long]

Delila,  no problem.  Anyone who wants to respond, please do so.  My purpose in starting this thread is to show us how one's person's boldness in leaving the Assembly may have inspired us to leave ourselves.

[al Hartman]

     My apology, Eulaha, this isn't exactly an answer to your question.  Like Delila, I considered outside the assembly to be a place of death, but unlike her, I didn't consciously choose death, but had it forced upon me as a result of my actions & inactions.  I was, in essence, pushed out of the place of "life" to be buried alive in the place of death.  I virtually rotted there for a very long time.  Only Jesus and a few of His faithful ones could look at me and not think "by this time he stinketh."
     Thank God that, even though it took me ever so long to realize, the gift of Life in Jesus Christ is not conditional; not to be retracted from the recipient who is slow on the uptake.  So I find that the place I had thought of as death is a place of Life abundant, and it is not I who stink of the grave; it is the place I left behind.

al

[Joe Sperling]

Al----

Welcome back!!! I've missed your posts, and wondered where you were. Glad to see you on the board again!!!

sincerely, Joe

[Tanya]

    Hi Eulaha:
We had concerns at the very beginning, like everyone else...Aaron was braver than me & vocalized his questions & comments to the ldrshp. Of course, they were not open to hear criticism but that's to be expected. There was a certain attitude among all of us that we were involved in some special work of God. We were "to believe the best" about others, even when things were NOT adding up! One thing that was taught over & over was that we were mere sheep but the ldg bros. were the shepherds & we were to listen & obey--no matter what.
   As being affected by others leaving--yes, it mattered to  all of us. SLO assembly was like a family, dysfunctional as it was! When I saw singles/families leaving SLO in 2000, part of me was happy for them--like they were escaping a prison. BUT I was also concerned that they were  "missing out" or going to leave the Lord. (Those fears had been drilled into us & our concerns  were unfounded.) The people who left, by & large, were doing WAY better in their lives than they were when involved in the controlling & corrupt Geftakys ministry.  
  I don't think about this much anymore but we are grateful to the brothers & sisters in SLO, Fullerton & other assemblies who had the courage to leave. We were there for 10 yrs & saw MANY people come & go. Ashamedly, I often saw them around town & thought they had forfeited so much by leaving the "remnant."  Now, I look back & praise God for delivering them earlier than the rest of us.

[Eulaha L. Long]

Tanya,

Thanks for responding.  I was thinking that maybe no one was interested in the thread...

I remember a time in 1999,  that we had a Saturday BBQ and a Q&A time with Dan Nottie.  I remember asking him, "If the Lord speaks to me personally, then how can God tell the shepherds something totally different?"  I remember Jeff L. giving me a stern look, then totally explained away any answer Dan would have given.

[jackhutchinson]

Timeline Part 1

I’ve already written my own timeline that started in January of 2003 (under the thread, “One Year Ago Today”), but I’d like to expand mine to include the events that took place before that time.  I do so to show a consistent pattern, which I will discuss below.   If there are any facts in my timeline that need to be corrected, I would welcome any corrections.


1993 or 1994

David preached at a Bible Study with a black eye.  He quoted a verse that says that some people’s sins will arrive in heaven before them and some people’s sins will go with them.  I assumed at that time that if David had done something wrong that the other leaders would deal with it.

Around the same time my roommate (I was not living with the Geftakys family) told me that Judy had left David for a couple of days and that the mother of my other roommate had encouraged her to do so.  I do not know at this time whether she actually did leave or whether she was simply threatening to do so.  Physical abuse was not mentioned in this situation.


December of 1998

Judy told me that she didn’t believe David appreciated her.  Avoiding any reference to physical abuse, she told me how cold and dysfunctional the Geftakys family was.  Alarmed that a preacher’s wife would divulge this sort of information to a single man, the next morning I told Kirk about the conversation.  Kirk told me that she was going through menopause.


September 11th, 1999

While videotaping the preparations for Rachel’s wedding I heard Judy mention the fact that she (Judy) had a black eye.  I saw that she had attempted to cover it with makeup.  I did not ask about it, since I assumed the leaders would take care of the situation (whatever it was).


October 2000

Upon returning from a 3-week vacation I was informed by my roommate that Judy had left David for good.


Late 2000 or early 2001

At a prayer meeting the leaders announced that David would no longer be a leader and that we should pray for his repentance.  Jeff admitted publicly in a letter that he and the other leaders had been guilty of ‘cowardice’ in their handling of David’s behavior (the word ‘abuse’ was never used).  Jeff told us that if we wanted to know the details we could ask privately.  Jeff told me privately that David was avoiding all contact with people in the ministry.  I did not ask him to give me a timeline of instances of abuse as I did not suspect that David had been physically abusive.


Late 2001

At a prayer meeting Kirk Cesaretti read a letter of resignation.  In it he explained (without going into detail) that the reason for his resignation from leadership was due to the way the SLO leadership was handling David’s situation.  He said he was not going to leave the assembly, but he soon stopped coming to the meetings.


April 2002

The Cesarettis invited many SLO assembly members to attend a birthday party and to a shower at their home.  They had invited the Tr0ckmans as well for both occasions.  The SLO leaders asked the Cesarettis to refrain from inviting people from the assembly as long as the Tr0ckmans would be present.

Later that month George told me during a private meeting that “All the negativity in San Luis Obispo started from Kirk Cesaretti.  I knew that Kirk would leave because he didn’t get what he wanted, and I was right.”  I immediately thought that George was guilty of being blind to his own son’s faults, though I did not think that he was consciously trying to cover up for him.

During that same conversation George insisted that I visit his son David.  George said, “David has some personality quirks, but he’s really lonely.  You should visit him.”  I knew at that time that that statement was an understatement.  I always thought David was a bit of a jerk.

Soon after that meeting the SLO leaders read a letter warning us to avoid the Tr0ckmans and anyone else that ‘stood with them’.  Before the letter was read the leader said, “This is not a letter of excommunication.”  When I asked him afterward why he made that distinction he said they didn’t want to give Brent another reason to think he was being ‘martyred’ by the leadership.


Between April and October 2002

After my visit with David he asked me to keep meeting with me on a weekly basis because he wanted to pray.  We ended up meeting every other week on the average for the next 6 months.  During those meetings David repeatedly said things such as “There’s deception in the camp.” and “Just because bad things happen to a person doesn’t mean that they did something bad.”  Given the context and repetition of these comments, I saw them as veiled denials of guilt.  I spoke with Jeff several times about these meetings because I got the distinct feeling from listening to David that he was lying.  Jeff told me, “While I understand why you might feel that way given David’s personality, we don’t have any credible evidence that proves that he’s guilty of what some people say he’s done.  We want to be careful not to jump to conclusions.” (paraphrased)


October 12th, 2002

David told me that he had preached the previous Sunday morning in SLO.


October 31st, 2002

Kirk Cesaretti personally handed me his 5-page letter in which he explained in detail why he left the Assembly.  Simultaneously curious about its contents and yet afraid of ‘defiling myself’ with ‘gossip’ I quickly skimmed the first and last paragraphs and threw it in the trash.


November 2nd, 2002

After speaking with a friend from SLO who had read Kirk’s letter I timidly removed Kirk’s letter from the trash and read it.  I called Jeff and for about 2 hours asked questions brought up by the letter.  Jeff had not told me previously about the restraining order that Kirk mentioned in his letter.  The restraining order had been granted in 1996.  He told me, “Jack, I was in the courtroom with David.  Kirk is not telling the whole story behind the restraining order.  What he isn’t telling you is that Rachel was doing something despicable that triggered that incident.” (paraphrased)  He did not tell me what she had done.  His stated purpose for not giving me the details of Rachel’s behavior was that he didn’t think it was his place to tell others.  At the end of the conversation I thanked him for answering my questions and I told him that I was satisfied with his responses.


Later in November

During a visit with David I asked him about Kirk’s letter.  David admitted to having hit Judy 3 times, the last time being in 1993.  He said that he knew it was sin and that he had repented.  When I asked him how Judy got the black eye at Rachel’s wedding in September of 1999, his response was, “Black eye?  Judy had a black eye?”  At the time I attributed his memory lapse to his diabetes.  He told me that he didn’t think that Judy left him because of anything he had done.  He said he thought that Brent caused Judy to leave him.  Though I wasn’t quite sure about the beatings, I assumed at the time that Judy’s departure must have had something to do with something David did.

I met with Jeff again and asked more questions about Kirk’s letter.  Referring to Kirk’s public disclosure of the details of David’s behavior, Jeff told me that he didn’t think it was right for Kirk to ‘dump all this stuff in people’s laps.’  He specifically told me that when Kirk handed him his copy of the letter he said to Kirk, “Kirk, this letter is darkness.”  During this meeting I told Jeff that while I was willing to pray with David to help him I had no interest in hearing him preach.  Jeff assured me that he and the other leaders were taking people’s concerns seriously and were praying about the issue.  He assured me that they were not ‘trying to put David on the fast-track back into leadership’.

There was a meeting in November during which the leaders allowed David to speak to explain himself.  David spoke about how he believed God raised up the ‘testimony’ in SLO and repeated many of the main themes he had addressed in his preaching over the years.  At the end of his long discourse he broke down in tears and said, “I’m so sorry you have to deal with all this!”  Jeff told me privately afterward that he was disappointed by the fact that David missed his chance to make a public apology.  I told Jeff that all I expected of David was for him to admit that he had been a bad example of a husband, father and a leader.  Jeff said that he didn’t think David needed to be that specific.

To be continued....

[jackhutchinson]

Timeline Part 2


December 7th, 2002

According to Jeff this was the date that Rachel’s story first appeared on the net and was emailed to him.  It was also the date that (according to Jeff) three people from within the ministry approached Jeff with credible evidence of David’s abuse.


December 9th, 2002

David called me and told me (as he had many times before) that there was ‘deception in the camp’.  This so irritated me that I made the decision to confront David should he do it again.


December 10th, 2002

During the prayer meeting I prayed that God would ‘open David’s eyes so he would see his sin’.  After the meeting Jeff asked me why I prayed that way.  I told him that I was sick of David’s repeated vague denials of guilt.  Without mentioning any names Jeff told me, “Someone around here is going to have to start answering for their behavior.” (paraphrased)


December 16th, 2002

David called me and told me that because of a letter that Rachel had written the leaders would not let him partake in the Lord’s Supper or to preach.  At first I did not confront David as I knew that doing so would cut off our communication.  After thinking about this for a few minutes I called David back and asked him how Judy got the black eye that I had seen at Rachel’s wedding in September of 1999.  Since he gave a detailed answer that was not the same as the one he had given during our visit in November (and another answer he had given others) I knew he was lying.  I spent a few minutes angrily telling David that I resented his willingness to lie to me and to take advantage of my goodwill toward him.


December 17th, 2002

A special meeting was held during which the leaders announced that David had been lying about his behavior.  There was a period of questions and answers, during which I asked if Rachel’s letter was the catalyst for this meeting.  Jeff said, “No.  There were only one or two things in Rachel’s letter that corresponded with what Mike Zach has said.  Other than that, we know David lied because people within the ministry have come forward with evidence of his past abuse.”

The leaders admited that they were guilty of ‘favoritism’ and ‘walking before men’ with regard to how they handled the situation with David.  They repeatedly told us that it was all done in goodwill.  They told us that they had asked George to come to SLO to ‘make things right’.  At the time I was impressed with what appeared to be their honesty.  I also wondered why they had to ask George to come.  I figured that anyone in George’s position would not need someone to ask them to make things right.


December 20th, 2002

I met with Jeff and told him about what George had said to me in April regarding Kirk being the source of the negativity in SLO.  I asked him whether it was appropriate to publicly ask George about his private statement.  Jeff said to me, “Jack, if you don’t bring it up I will.”  He also told me, “There is no doubt in my mind that George is guilty of favoritism, even to the point of indulgence.”


December 21st, 2002

George held his ‘repentance’ meeting in SLO.  I arrived late.  The leaders had instructed the doorkeepers to keep us away from the building while there was a group of ex-members at the door.  After a while the doorkeepers let us in the room through a side door, away from those whom they had locked out.

During the meeting I asked George about 3 separate incidents of David’s violent behavior toward his family and assembly members dating back to the early 90’s.  George said he had not heard of any of those incidents.  I wondered why the SLO leaders didn’t tell him about these very important incidents.


December 24th, 2002

After the prayer meeting I called Jeff and told him I was not impressed with George’s meeting.  Jeff told me that he had written a ‘scathing’ letter to George demanding ‘radical’ changes in the ministry.


December 27th, 2002

While staying with a family in West LA for the seminar I discussed George’s ‘repentance’ meeting with a brother.  He said that George had done a similar thing the night before in So Cal and that he was not impressed with George’s ‘repentance’ either.


January 14th, 2003

During the prayer meeting one of the leaders read a letter from the Fullerton leadership that stated that George needed to repent of, among other things, pride.  The letter informed us that George’s ministry had been dissolved on 1/11/03 and that the leaders in Fullerton would withhold the Lord’s Supper from George if he didn’t repent.


It should be apparent from my timeline that the leaders in SLO only acknowledged facts AFTER someone from the outside made that information public.  For example, it was only AFTER Kirk’s letter informed everyone of its existance that Jeff told me about the restraining order (and David was given the opportunity to apologize).  The leaders only specifically acknowledged that David had abused anyone AFTER Rachel’s detailed letter appeared on the website.  People from within the ministry did come forward, yet I wonder if they did so after reading Rachel’s story.  If so, I’ll bet they were thinking, “My God!  They told me that this was taken care of years ago!”  Jeff would later tell me that three of those people approached him at a wedding in Fullerton on 12/7/02 (the same day that he claims Rachel's story first appeared).  They gave information about abuse that had happened long ago.

I am certain that many leaders did attempt PRIVATELY to address many issues in George’s and/or in David’s life throughout the years (and that was appropriate early on).  It is apparent to me now that those efforts proved to be in vain, as neither men changed their attitudes or behavior.  Some of those leaders came to the conclusion that meaningful change was not going to take place and then made the choice to leave and/or make the issues PUBLIC.  In my opinion the line can be drawn between those who went public and those who didn’t.  It disturbs me that leaders who claimed to be acting with good will refused to acknowledge the obvious relevance of the victims’ detailed accounts.

All this being said, I don’t think that the scandals surrounding George and David (as bad as they were) were the worst aspects of the assembly.  Few people left over the years because of the adultery and the physical abuse.  Many more people left each assembly because of the arrogant, controlling, deceptive and demeaning leadership style created by George.  The oppressive nature of the leadership (expressed in varying degrees in different assemblies) was far more subtle and pervasive than the physical abuse.

It is my contention that George began his first assembly in 1970 while he was in a state of rebellion and long-standing corruption.  Therefore, I don’t believe that George’s minstry was initiated by God or built on the word of God.  I believe it was designed as a spiritual safe-house for George and was built on the sand of his own devices and desires.  The scandals brought on the storms of truth, against which the counterfeit foundation could not hold, bringing the house down with a great crash.   How sad it is that there are those who choose to live among its ruins.

[mithrandir]

Jack,

I just read your timeline.  Comparing it with the timeline that's on the ga.com website, I still don't think Steve Irons is being entirely accurate.  Does anyone still have the original articles from Kirk Caesaretti?

Clarence Thompson

[soul dreamer]

I hope I successfully attached the text of Kirks letters below.  Kirk is to be commended for his pastoral care, spiritual insights, and for his courage to earnestly appeal to David and to George to repent.

Rick

[sfortescue]

I put blank lines between the paragraphs to make it easier to read.

[soul dreamer]

I have the much cleaner and easier to read Word file that I can email to anyone who wants it.  

Grace and peace,
Rick