Tullian and TGC

TGC response by Tim Keller and DA Carson:

In Tullian’s case, it was obvious to observers that for some time there has been an increasingly strident debate going on around the issue of sanctification. The differences were doctrinal and probably even more matters of pastoral practice and wisdom. Recently it became clear that the dispute was becoming increasingly sharp and divisive rather than moving toward greater unity. Earlier in the year our executive director spent two days with Tullian in Florida. Coming out of that meeting, it was decided that Tullian would move his blog. Finally the Council at its meeting last week decided that Tullian should move his blog immediately, and we communicated this conclusion to Tullian….

As the years go by, we may face other situations in which similar hard decisions will have to be made. We commit ourselves to not recount the parting of the ways in such a fashion that it makes us look good and the departing persons look bad. That is one reason to keep a statement like this brief. We feel it is especially important to do so in this case, since, after all, the doctrine of sanctification is only a means to an end. It is supposed to produce in us the humility and kindness (yet courage) that enables us to speak the truth in love and builds up our brothers even as we give reasons for stepping away.

Christian Post:

Tullian Tchividjian is slamming Sovereign Grace Ministries for its handling of a sex abuse scandal, while announcing this week that his participation with The Gospel Coalition will unexpectedly end on Thursday.

Tchividjian, whose brother, Boz, is the founder of Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment, a group that investigates sexual abuse in churches and ministries, spoke out against TGC’s actions in light of the Sovereign Grace Ministries sexual abuse scandal.

C. J. Mahaney, who founded the SGM, along with other ministry leaders, was hit with a civil lawsuit last year alleging that they conspired to “permit sexual deviants to have unfettered access to children for purposes of predation and to obstruct justice by covering up ongoing past predation.”

While the lawsuit was thrown out due to statute of limitations, Tchividjian said that unlike many of those connected to TGC who considered Mahaney a friend and claimed that he had “been the object of libel and even a Javert-like obsession by some,” he saw the situation differently. In his eyes, given that Mahaney’s brother-in-law and fellow former pastor at Covenant Life Church had confessed to knowing about sex abuse claims and withholding that information from police last week, the SGM pastor was guilty.

“Give me a break. These people, they’re family. Of course he knew,” Tchividjian told The Christian Post. “C. J. was, for many years, the micro-managing head of the organization and nothing happened under the umbrella of Sovereign Grace that he wasn’t made aware of, so for anyone to say, ‘Well he didn’t know,’ that’s totally naive.”

Tchividjian added that he was “pretty disturbed” when Don Carson, Kevin DeYoung, and Justin Taylor published astatement on TGC website in May 2013 which defended Mahaney, saying that it looked “like the good-old boys club covering their own.”

“I thought it was premature. I thought it was insensitive. I communicated with the guys who wrote this statement that I was disappointed, that I thought it was unwise and premature and that they needed to clarify that their statement was not a statement from The Gospel Coalition, per se, but was their own personal statement,” Tchividjian explained.

“There were some of us on the coalition, or who were associated with it, who didn’t want to be associated with their defense of C. J.,” he continued. “I’ve just been sort of disgusted by the whole thing.”