The Grace Community Church, founded by John MacArthur, claims that it does not “respond to attacks, lies, misrepresentations, and anonymous accusations” regarding the way it deals with domestic violence and marital counselling problems.
The proclamation from the megachurch in California followed the publication of a lengthy article by Kate Shellnutt in Christianity Today on February 9.
Her discovery that the church is “playing Russian roulette” with counselling for at-risk women and children comes from speaking with former GCC elder Hohn Cho. The Roys Report’s March 2022 reporting is confirmed by Shellnutt.
According to eight additional women she spoke with, church officials advised them to tolerate their violent partners rather than calling the police. CT’s policy prohibits identifying abuse victims who request confidentiality.
In response to GCC’s criticism of her piece, Shellnutt tweeted, “I stand by my reporting, which wasn’t ‘lies,’ but was verified by documentation, court records, and [by] many sources beyond those referenced in the article.”
Former Elder: Counselling at Grace Community Church is “Grievous”
Cho, a lawyer Grace Community Church recruited to look into a case of abuse that occurred 20 years ago, claims that the church erred and should “do justice” for the victim Eileen Grey.
Her ex-husband David Grey, who used to work at GCC, is currently behind bars for crimes like aggravated child molestation and child abuse.
Eileen Grey asserts that MacArthur publicly rebuked her for continuing to live in unrepentant sin after she disregarded church authorities’ requests to discharge a restraining order against her husband.
Cho asserts that instead of apologising to Eileen Grey, the GCC leaders acted defensively, and that MacArthur told him to “forget it.”
“I cannot ‘un-know’ it, and I am accountable before God for this knowledge, and you are now accountable before God for it as well,” Cho said in a 20-page letter to church leaders in March 2022.
The elderly “voted with a child abuser who later proved to be a child molester over a woman desperately trying to protect her three innocent little children,” according to Cho. And that was, and still is, obviously false; it must be corrected.
He claimed that “many elders have stated in various private conversations that errors were made” and they would have chosen differently if they had known everything that was known at the time.
That is basically Christian, but those admissions indicate that you must make apologies to the person you have offended.
The Number of Victims Increases
God, according to Cho, “kept placing reminders in front of me after leaving GCC.” He was “horrified to discover the same awful patterns of counselling were still happening” at MacArthur’s congregation, to use his own words.
The former elder asserts that in the fall of last year, he was made aware of “another grievous GCC counselling case,” in which counsellors had suggested remarriage to a victim of domestic abuse.
A small number of GCC clergy members issued formal declarations in support of the accused husband.
Church leaders allegedly told the woman in that case not to anger her husband and said that getting a restraining order would be “un-Christian.”
To CT, she fess up, “I hit subzero spiritually.” I reasoned that I’d rather die if God was correct but we still had to follow church rules while this was going on.
“I cannot ‘un-know’ it, and I am accountable before God for this knowledge, and you are now accountable before God for it as well,” Cho said in a 20-page letter to church leaders in March 2022.