Saturday, August 1, 2009

Jealous leaders, fearful of losing their power, are generally incompetent. They often realize the danger of having their people build lateral support, because they have difficulty controlling it. A common method of destroying lateral support is to teach people that they chould not listen to "critics." Surprisingly, words like "critic, critics, criticize," etc., do not appear anywhere in the King James Version, and therefor, there is no Biblical definition of these words. Therefor, I'll give my own definition of a critic: "a person who criticizes frequently, whose first response to any situation is to criticize without hearing all the facts."If you have lateral support, and these people are helping you, and suddenly they all start urging you to get out of a certain organization, they are not critics. The Bible does warn against "scorners," and a person who goes around ridiculing others should not be part of your lateral support. But a person who goes around helping people, who believes that you are in an abusive situation, is not a critic.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Building Lateral Support

How do you built lateral support?

1) It really helps if your spouse and you can agree that your family is more important than your church. People who won't tolerate seeing their family members being abused are less likey to get abused.
2) Cultivate friendships with Christians at work or in your neighborhood who don't go to your church. If those friendships become strong enough, you'll have lateral support.
3) Keep in touch with friends from previous churches.
4) In your own church, attend social functions, such as church dinners. Cultivate friendships that can exist outside the church walls.
5) Get onto Christian forums, where you can explain your situation to sympathetic listeners anonymously.
6) Seek out fruitful Christians. The Bible talks about the fruit of good works, the fruit of giving, and the fruit of converts.
7) Be supportive of other Christians, because some day you might need to reap what you sow.