You can't make this stuff up
I haven’t been on Twitter much lately, but this morning I decided to log on and respond to a friend of mine who had left me a DM while I was on vacation. When I scrolled through my feed, I noticed that the Twitter-verse was ablaze with the recent release of Mancow Muller’s ‘nuclear option’ revelation regarding the former pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, James MacDonald. Julie Roys, who has been covering the debacle at Harvest Bible Chapel, detailed these revelations on her blog. If you are not familiar with the situation that has taken place at Harvest Bible Chapel, I would suggest spending some time on her blog, because she pretty much documents everything there.
James MacDonald has made a name for himself, not only as a pastor, radio personality (Walk in the Word) and church planter, but most recently, a fallen figure in Christianity. He is the high-profile epitome of what happens when big-ego meets evangelical mega-church culture. While I was not personally a fan of his, I was familiar with his name and radio program. He is well known in evangelical Christianity and would be considered a power-player, if you will. It appears that his thirst for power, money & fame was his ultimate downfall. But that’s not all.
MacDonald befriended a Chicago radio shock-jock personality named Mancow Muller. I’ve never heard of the man, but he became a solid fan of James MacDonald and attended HBC. (He’s hilarious, BTW) They became close friends, or as they say, Mancow entered the ‘inner circle’ of MacDonald’s close associates and confidants. As one who has experienced this on a much smaller scale, it feels like a tremendous privilege. I know exactly how Muller felt, to be in that close circle of friends. It’s intoxicating.
When everything blew up at HBC last year, Muller had no choice but to accept the fact that his friend and mentor was a crook and a charlatan. He took his disillusionment and anger to the airwaves and little by little, gave us all a little peek of who the REAL James MacDonald was. Muller knew more, however, and he didn’t want to tell all, because it was bad, really bad. He claimed he wanted to give MacDonald a chance to come clean on his finances and repent for his actions before releasing the worst of the worst information. We didn’t know if it was just part of his rhetoric to keep the listeners listening or if he really had something ‘nuclear’ on ol’ James MacDonald. He did have the goods…oh yes he did – and today we found out what it was. James MacDonald had asked Mancow Muller about having someone murdered, and Muller wasn’t the first person that he had propositioned about arranging for a murder. Julie Roys reveals all of the details on her blog here.
Why this hits home
So how can a so-called man of God go from standing in front of thousands of people every week to trying to arrange at least two murders (that we know of)? Was MacDonald ever a saved man to begin with?
I was abused by a pastor that I believe has the same murderous tendencies at James MacDonald. For the 10 years that my family sat under his preaching, I can not count the number of times that he said, from the pulpit, with a straight face,
“If I hadn’t gotten saved, I would be a hit man for the mob. I wouldn’t have any problem killing people.’
Every time he would say it, the congregation would laugh or the thought would be, ‘wow, look what God has done in his life!’. No, that is not the message this pastor was sending. The message he was sending was that he was dangerous and that you had better not mess with him. Oh, and I thought I might mention that he was also from the south side of Chicago…coincidence?
When the situation concerning the abuse was brought to light, as in most cases, the story was spun in the pastor’s favor and he was allowed to continue pastoring the church. My husband and I entered into therapy and went into hiding, literally. We lost our entire church community, friends, everything. I told our therapist about the mob comment and he immediately recognized it as a veiled threat, a very manipulative way that the pastor used to control people. He suggested that we try not to ‘plead our case’, partly because we would lose in the court of public opinion, but mostly because he felt this pastor was a dangerous man and could either harm us personally or order others to harm us. We wholeheartedly believed what he said and heeded his advice.
9 years later and I'm still afraid
The pastor who abused me is retired from ministry (last time I heard) and has heart problems. He has lost some credibility in the community because he screwed over a lot of people from the church he was pastoring when we left, but I believe this man will be dangerous until he’s six feet under. He has some magical ability to charm people, to get them to do whatever he wants. I know this because I used to be one of those people. He’s like a godfather, sort of like the mob. He gets people to do his dirty work. It doesn’t matter how old or sick he gets, he’s still running the show. That’s why I’m still afraid.
I’ll never call him out publicly until he’s dead.
Unfortunately that’s probably how a lot of people feel about James MacDonald. They have so much dirt on this guy, but they are afraid of him, afraid for their lives, they dare not out him publicly.
It’s a real fear, folks. What is sad, is that there are those of us living in that fear of so-called CHRISTIANS – PASTORS – who are really just wolves in sheeps clothing.
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”
Matthew 7:15