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Dear author,

Thank you for replying.

(I just figured out the dialogue moves down, not up, so this post is a little out of order. Sorry. I was the guy with the PhD pastor/father. Currently my last post is at the top of the page.)

To be honest, I wasn't sure if you checked out this site anymore, so I didn't know if I could engage you in a dialogue. Although you used your real nameI don't know where to look to find itI don't know you personally. I don't think so, anyway. I'm relatively young, so chances are I just don't know you. 

It is not my intent to present a point by point rebuttal to your articleespecially because most of what you have written needs no rebuttal; it is true. 

Actually, my pastor told me that someone called him to discuss the content of the article and the responses tacked on to it, and he deduced that I may have been the author of one of the entries. I checked my entry just to make sure I didn't sound too hereticalsince I confessed to not being entirely supportive of everything the organization has ever done in its 100 years of history. I was excited to see that you had responded to my previous entry.

In regards to a couple of points you make, I think your facts might be offparticularly when you say the church does not trust formal educators. My father, a pastor, is also a full-time college professor, and heads college departments from time to time. He is without a doubt a formal educator. And I know of at least one formal educator sitting on the church board, who has his seminary degree from some place (Fuller? I dunno. It starts with an F, I think.) that is fully accredited.

And, in regards to divorce and remarriage, while some might adamantly agree with your interpretation of the doctrine of our church, there are allowances in certain situationsbut I'll agree, not much. 

You're absolutely right when you say that our branch churches pay tithes to our headquarters church, and that the church headquartered in Portland holds annual, international campmeetings; but I'm not sure that the campmeetings are held primarily so that our organization can command consistencythough this is assuredly a consideration in an organization with hundreds of congregations and ministers in Africa, Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe (maybe elsewhere, too. I'm not sure). With so many cultures and backgrounds influencing our individual and corporate outlooks, it seems to me that a little consistency between continents is a good thing. 

While some of our older standards or traditions may feel burdensome to many of us Americans, we as a church have to consider our worldwide culture, especially in the African countries where our church is so pervasive to the culture that we are a considerable economic factor. While we American Apostolics mightand that's a big mightbe able to change flexibly to meet the demands of our own culture, doing so will always affect thousands and thousands around the globe. As silly as it sounds, dropping a standard as (seemingly) trivial as wedding-rings could cause a major international split in the church, which in turn might cause no small amount of political and economic upheaval in an already unstable Nigeria. It is an unlikely scenario, I imagine, but those are the kinds of things we must consider, and our annual campmeetings help us become more aware of those issues, and enable us to deal with them more effectivelyamong other things. In situations like this, it is that consistency you mentioned that leads us to retain traditions and standards our own culture might find dusty, antique, or outdated. 

But when you say that our organization tries to make every branch the same, I have to disagree. Maybe your aware of history that I am notbut that is history. Our current overseer (superintendant general) immediately took most of the direct power out of his hands as his first act of officehe created a separate office to head our overseas work, and then he created regional supervisors who could better manage the needs of specific areas. If anything, the evidence points to an allowance of cultural expression and identityeven encouragement and appreciation of those differences. It seems like we are growing into a church that appreciates the different applications of identical teachings.

But what interests me most is what you refer to as unethical treatment of you and your family. Honestly, I have no idea what you've gone through, but I thoroughly believe it hurt you and your family deeply, and I wish it had never happened. Truly, I do not know who you are, and while a public post on a website is a terrible place for personal discussions, I wish there was some way I could hear more about what you had to go through. But even then, there isn't a thing I or anyone else could do to erase the dif