April 14, 2015 – Diaspora Responds to Warren Throckmorton

Warren,

Our group has discussed this and I will try to summarize for you:

As you gathered from the letter, we are all followers of Jesus Christ and we seek His glory and to obey Him above all. Last June, we began a process of formally raising our concerns about five key things we believe are sin being practiced at GFA to their leaders and board. We also received counsel from a number of pastors, to see that we approached this as biblically and carefully as possible. We wanted to give the leadership ample time to work with us and respond, and to clarify misunderstandings we may have had.

Initially they responded, flatly denying all of our claims and accusing us of libel. We then prepared a second letter to their board, this time with 75 signatures, three additional testimonies, and two pieces of evidence. But despite numerous and repeated attempts to meet as a group with GFA, they refused to work with us or even communicate with us reliably.

In the fall they said their board would conduct a full investigation of our claims. We never heard a report until March, and that report denied the legitimacy of all of our claims, and told us that they considered it their final communication and the matter closed. They never interviewed or contacted any of us during their supposed investigation, apart from two ex-staff from Canada who they asked for their stories but didn’t interview them either.

Due to GFA’s unwillingness to work with us, we felt it was time to email every staff member we knew, giving them access to a private website we set up to share all of our testimonies and other relevant info including the history of communications between us and GFA leaders, most of which were documented.

Shortly after this (just a couple weeks ago,) we heard from many of the current staff that the leaders were continuing to deny any wrongdoing and were also continuing to lie to the staff. The trust level in leadership is at an all-time low among staff as a result of this.

Knowing this, we also felt it was time to begin notifying our pastors and former supporters, as well as personal friends who also support GFA.

Even now we feel we are at the beginning stages of notifying all of them and spreading the word by relationship. We felt that sharing it by relationship instead of through the press would be much more convincing and effective. So far this seems to be working and the reports are generally well-received with some exceptions.

One desire we have is to not spread this matter further than it needs to go. At the same time we recognize a moral obligation to see that donors are able to find this information.

We are uncertain about if or how we would ever go public with this info, but if you and others are going to publish it anyway, ideally we’d like at least a few more weeks for word to spread among the churches before you do, so that the closest donors and pastors aren’t surprised by the news and the fact that their own connections haven’t contacted them about this yet.

We realize you are not under our control and you are free to do as you wish with the info you have received. But we would like to work together with you on this in order to guide and direct the content to see that it’s as accurate as possible when you do write it. We think this will result in a better outcome.

A God-honoring effort, and doing all of this above reproach, is what we’re interested in. We don’t want to see information shared simply for news views, but rather only for the edification of the Body of Christ.

Also can you send me a copy of the version of the letter you have? We have made a version without signature names and testimonies for wider distribution to churches and supporters, and we’d like any public release to use this version as many of us do not wish our names to be released in a public manner in connection with this.

We’d also appreciate knowing how you found out about us, if you are at liberty to divulge that info.

Regards,
JD, for the Diaspora