I recently wrote about an article that appeared in the Midwest Christian Outreach Journal entitled, “Who Will Be First In The Kingdom?” The article is an exposé on several of the unbiblical, extrabiblical and legalistic doctrines being pushed by Doug Phillips via The Vision Forum and Vision Forum Ministries.
The author, Don Veinot, gave me permission to quote from his article. However, I was not at liberty to post the entire article itself. Even if I had been given permission, I probably wouldn’t have done so. Instead, what I wanted to do was to encourage Christians to subscribe to the hardcopy edition of the MCOI Journal. This is a ministry that deserves the support of many Christians, and especially those who are concerned for how legalism and Phariseeism have infiltrated the church, thereby undermining the doctrines of grace.
For a number of years, Midwest Christian Outreach has been exposing cults, as well as harmful, legalistic Christian leaders, such as Bill Gothard. Don Veinot has also co-authored an outstanding book on Gothardism, A Matter Of Basic Principles. I’ve been reading this book myself and have been astounded to see just how similar so many of Doug Phillips’ teachings are to Bill Gothard’s. I’ve known for some time that Doug has been heavily influenced by Gothard, but Don Veinot’s book really makes it too apparent for me.
Don also recently posted an article on the Midwest Christian Outreach blog, entitled, Doug Phillips — New Paganism?
Don just contacted me to let me know how pleased he’s been by the response to his article on Doug Phillips, “Who Will Be First In The Kingdom?” In fact, he told me that it’s been the single most popular and most requested article that MCOI has ever published in the twelve years they’ve been publishing their journal. My hope is that this will serve to encourage MCOI to publish additional articles exposing the legalism of Doug Phillips.
Greetings Jennifer,
As you are aware, we had an MCOI first with this issue of the MCOI Journal. We do not put the current issue on line until the next issue is released. However, we have been contacted by a number of people, lay people, pastors and seminary professors who have read the article on Doug Phillips and Vision Forum or G12 and need to refer others to it right away. Since we are here to serve the Body of Christ the simplest and most efficient way seemed to be to put it on line which we did yesterday.
Blessings,
Don
Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc.
L.L. (Don) Veinot Jr., President
www.midwestoutreach.org
Here is another letter by Don Veinot to Cindy Kunsman:
Dear Cynthia,
I have not only been surprised at the responses on this latest Journal on the Doug Phillips/Vision Forum article but also from the recent blog I did on him. I am receiving emails and phone calls from pastors and seminary professors expressing their appreciation that we would take this on. It is all a bit humbling to me. I am also being swamped by Christians attending churches that are tied in to Phillips teachings. They are desperate for information as they watch their churches split apart by this.
I received a letter from Doug Phillips personal assistant answering the questions that we had sent to them a few times prior to publishing the article. They mailed it rather than responding to the email and said that it was just brought to their attention. It sounds like they are getting heat from their followers about the current Journal article on him.
I am really thankful for your support. It is especially critical at this point, due to the 25% shortfall in the fiscal year that just ended. I know that God is able to raise up the needed funds with special contributions and we are seeking that He will. Thank you for your prayers to that end.
Don Veinot
Jen's Gems -- Doug Phillips' Ecclesiastical Tyranny and Abuse 
August 7, 2007 at 9:32 am
CD Host:
I guess what I’m wondering is what is it that you would like to see happen? Essentially you argue for what is today the evangelical standard:
quotes Corrie:
Men and woman should treat their spouses with respect, look out for each other, and help one another. A marriage is a team and while people may have different responsibilities within a team it advances no one’s interest for the team to be hobbled.
Morgan:CD Host… I would have to disagree that what you are calling the evangelical standard IS the evangelical standard practiced in the majority of todays churches.
The more I see and experience the so called christian community the more abusiveness and deceit comes to light. There are those rare groups that afford its female members the freedom to be who they really are, but those groups are not the standard they are the exception.
The evangelical standard may be ‘understood’ but it is certainly not practiced on an evengelical level. what a shame.
August 7, 2007 at 9:43 am
“The more I see and experience the so called christian community the more abusiveness and deceit comes to light. There are those rare groups that afford its female members the freedom to be who they really are, but those groups are not the standard they are the exception. ”
You are right, Morgan. A wise old godly woman once told me, “Beware of any church that focuses too much on a secondary doctrine”.
How many people sitting in the pews have no intimate relationship with our Savior? Yet, so much time is spent preaching on gender roles and other secondary teaching. It makes me want to weep.
August 7, 2007 at 11:42 am
Morgan —
Its hard to argue against an impression. But I’d propose an experiment to you.
1) Take out the phonebook.
2) Open to the churches section.
3) Put an X next to every self proclaimed non Christian gathering ( mosque, synagogue, humanist encounter group …)
4) If you want put an X next to any church whose land is owned by a denomination with over a million members (Catholic churches, Anglican, PCUSA, Mormon…)
— Now put an N next to all the churches left where the pastor believes husband and wives should be nice and considerate of one another and work together each helping the other.
— Put an S next to all the churches which preach female submission and male headship.
— Put a C next to all the churches which preach anything else. I guess note what the other thing was.
Give us your totals. Now consider that on average the churches in group N are much larger than the churches in group S.
Now I’ll if you want to skew the results the other way throw in
5) Put an X next to any church that doesn’t preach separation.
IMHO its not the evangelical community but the fundamentalist community that is preaching an anti-woman’s doctrine. The root cause is the implementation of separation.
(Please note that self identification is all that is being used here)
August 7, 2007 at 11:52 am
CD intersting experimental proposition HOWEVER given the fact that one could only identify by title the group any impression would be invalid not having first hand experience.
Ahhhh you make a difference between evangelical and fundamentalist. So if I tell you that I believe that the Bible is Gods Holy Word and contains NO error do I get lumped in with the fundies or the evangelicals?
See my point? Both group identities have been hijacked by the wackos that seek to implement separation of the sexes.
I am admitted to table in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, there are other groups in the OPC I would run from and I pretty well run from anything PCA. It is the indvidual groups that matter most.
August 7, 2007 at 11:53 am
The evangelical standard is whatever the groups leadership defines it to be. Different groups have different evangelical standards.
August 7, 2007 at 3:38 pm
CD intersting experimental proposition HOWEVER given the fact that one could only identify by title the group any impression would be invalid not having first hand experience.
I was assuming you live somewhere smallish. If not pick a smaller phone book. Take the 20 churches closest to your house.
August 7, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Ahhhh you make a difference between evangelical and fundamentalist. So if I tell you that I believe that the Bible is Gods Holy Word and contains NO error do I get lumped in with the fundies or the evangelicals?
No error isn’t enough to get you unlumped from some liberals christians, muslims and mormons yet. Now if you say “the KJV is without error” then you are a fundamentalist (not that all fundamentalists are KJVers but the implication does run the other way). If you say “the original greek and hebrew are without error, however we have only existent partial reconstructions” then you aren’t a fundamentalist since you don’t believe the bible you actual posses is inerrant.
In any case OPC is generally fundamentalist so yes if you are an OPCer I would consider you fundamentalist. This weekend go to an EPC or CRCNA church locally. That’s much closer to mainstream evangelical.
Finally in terms of numbers…
about 1/3rd of PCUSA churches are evangelical. That third is larger than the PCA and OPC put together twice over. The CRCNA is roughtly the size of the PCA and the EPC is about 2.5x the size of the OPC. So that’s 3x over.
Seriously you don’t have to put up with this anti-woman stuff.
August 7, 2007 at 5:04 pm
EPC…CRCNA???? You must be kidding. I have my doctrinal standards thank you very much….. 😉 Westminster Standards.
So now do you classify me as a fundie wacko or just a wacko fundie? I can assure you that I am nowhere NEAR fundie Doug Phillips or League fo the South fundie wacko.
I am just trying to make my point that you cannot classify christian insanity these days. Not even with a phone book experiment. Sorry don’t have the time. This will be my last post until Wednesday sometime…I have work to do after I get home from work…(kids are grown with families of their own before you decide I have abandoned my motherly calling…)
Our OPC group notice the words our group, has a female gene pool of engineers, teachers, homeschoolers, techies (like me), accountants, media types, degreed, non degreed and we all have the freedom to be who we really are. We even have a family where the wife works as an aeronautical engineer and her husband stays home, homeschools and runs his rare book business. He lost his engineering job due to a downsizing…so they made the best of it. OH and he is a deacon as well. Darn that role playing model!!!! It does NOT work in our group I am happy to say. I/WE don’t have to put up with anti woman stuff because there is none.
My point is: ALL GROUPS ARE DIFFERENT. Even within denominations.
Cheerio !!
Its a wonderful mix appreciated by the leadership.
August 7, 2007 at 8:28 pm
EPC…CRCNA???? You must be kidding. I have my doctrinal standards thank you very much….. Westminster Standards.
Morgan. So don’t be offended when you are called a fundamentalist. The core distinction between fundamentalists and evangelicals is a willingness to “working cooperatively with other Christians of differing doctrinal views” , that is separatism. To be slightly more combative Evangelicals look to build bridges, and they are aim to be careful about who they exclude.
Now I’m going to just point out the different:
The EPC and the CRCNA are both evangelical churches.
The EPC requires ministers to affirm the Westminster confessions specifically and the EPC specifically affirms them as the source for the “essentials of the Christian faith”.
The Christian Reformed Church subscribes to the “Three Forms of Unity”:
The Belgic Confession
The Canons of Dort
The Heidelberg Catechism
Ecumenical Creeds* (The Apostles’ Creed, The Athanasian Creed, The Nicene Creed)
Heidelberg is the Dutch predecessor to the Westminster (The English and Scottish Divines) even copied the format in the Westminster shorter catechism). So unless you are basically arguing for some kind of “England is cool and Denmark sucks” Christian doctrine I’d say your single listed point of dispute is inaccurate on both counts. The Belgic incidentally was approved specifically by Calvin himself.
The fact that you are wrong is not the key point. The fact that you would just assume they were not faithful, that is that you assumed the negative; is however the key distinction between fundamentalism and evangelicals.
Finally, you are shifting ground your original statement was: The more I see and experience the so called christian community the more abusiveness and deceit comes to light. There are those rare groups that afford its female members the freedom to be who they really are, but those groups are not the standard they are the exception.
The evangelical standard may be ‘understood’ but it is certainly not practiced on an evengelical level. what a shame.
August 8, 2007 at 7:40 am
CD thank you for pointing out that I am just plain wrong wrong wrong!!!! and more wrong!!! Everyone should have someone like you in their lives.
My point is:
THE INDIVIDUAL GROUP MATTERS…….
there are groups within denominations that are abusive and cultic. Some denominations lend themselves to these tendencies. Creeds do not define a group…actual practices do.
having been victimized myself I am naturally afraid and unwilling to stray far from my comfort zone. But then you probably would not know anything about that…
Ces’t finis.