{"id":47869,"date":"2021-08-31T21:38:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T03:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rolltodisbelieve\/?p=47869"},"modified":"2021-08-31T22:39:15","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T04:39:15","slug":"grace-chapel-megachurch-a-mutiny-of-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rolltodisbelieve\/2021\/08\/31\/grace-chapel-megachurch-a-mutiny-of-their-own\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Chapel Megachurch: A Mutiny of Their Own"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Hi and welcome back! The other day<\/span><\/a>, we checked out a megachurch facing a mutiny. Not to be outdone, another<\/em> megachurch has decided to air out its own extremely-dirty laundry. During Sunday services<\/span><\/a> a couple of days ago, Sarah Berger, the wife of Grace Chapel\u2019s former high priest<\/del> lead pastor, Steve Berger, grabbed the mic to rant at length about how her husband had been hard-done-by in the change in leadership. In her rant, though, Sarah Berger said something that really caught my eye. Today, let me show you how an authoritarian leader pulls rank to force compliance from followers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"bad<\/a>
(Jimmy Jim Jim Shabadoo<\/a>, CC-SA<\/a>.) Watch out. Cheesecake ingredients charge when wounded. And they can smell fear.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Grace Chapel: A Spirit of Disorder.<\/h2>\n

This was a mess, and we may never really understand exactly what kind of disgusting hypocrisy Grace Chapel is caught up in.\u00a0Friendly Atheist<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>put together some extremely unsettling information about one of the dramas they\u2019re trying to keep quiet. I definitely recommend checking it out if you want more info. (I\u2019ve no time here, but it is\u00a0whoa.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Even without that situation to consider, this is some serious drama.<\/p>\n

Behold:<\/p>\n

Grace Chapel<\/span><\/a>, a Tennessee megachurch, has long been known for its conservative posturing. Its founder, Steve Berger, ruled that roost with his wife Sarah. Heck, even the governor of the state attended that church! Double heck, Steve Berger even delivered the invocation of that governor!<\/p>\n

You can see Berger in all his squinched-up, preacher-eyebrowed glory rahhht cheer<\/em><\/span><\/a>. And you can enjoy a look at his crybullying false-victim-mentality here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the church itself, Grace Chapel is huge<\/em>, with the usual multiple locations and slick website we expect. As we saw with the megachurch from last time, it\u2019s not easy to drill down to exactly what they believe, but eventually we discover<\/span><\/a> they\u2019re the usual culture-warrior bigots we expect. According to this news site\u2019s writeup<\/span><\/a>, they\u2019re a member of the Calvary Churches denomination. But they say they\u2019re non-denominational.<\/p>\n

(Sure, Jan.)<\/em><\/p>\n

How Steve Berger Lost Grace Chapel.<\/h2>\n

About six months ago, Steve Berger got into some\u00a0serious\u00a0<\/em>trouble. He\u2019d gotten himself tangled up with the insurrectionists who tried to destroy our government on January 6th. He claims<\/span><\/a> he had nothing to do with the attempted overthrow. However, he did share rumors that antifa forces were responsible. (In reality, the Capitol attack was largely the doing of QAnon-addled white evangelicals<\/span><\/a>. When evangelicals realized the coup had failed, many of the cowards turned tail to try to claim it wasn\u2019t them at all<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

His church seems to have been quite divided over how to deal with their pastor getting caught up in this lunacy. I even caught wind of a Change.org petition<\/span><\/a> demanding his firing. As of now, it\u2019s sitting at 1594 signatures. The creator of the petition, Sofia Noel, references a \u201c25 minute long video posted on January 6th\u201d in which Berger apologizes, but, she says, refuses to take responsibility for his behavior. (It\u2019s referenced here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

One of the signers, Gracen Hill, claims Berger was once her pastor \u2014 but that she left Grace Chapel after Berger\u2019s preaching shifted to \u201chell fire reigning down.\u201d Another signer, Christine Fekete, notes that her friends \u201chave suffered emotional and spiritual abuse by this man\u2019s \u2018teaching\u2019.\u201d She warns ominously, \u201cHe is a clear and present danger to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somewhere in all of that, Grace Chapel hired a new pastor, Rob Rogers. <\/strong>(Rogers, incidentally, claims to be an ex-heroin addict cured magically by Jesus. Too bad Jesus doesn\u2019t give a sloppy wet slap about the other 50k-ish overdoses<\/span><\/a> every year.) <\/strong><\/p>\n

I can see why Grace Chapel thought they needed this second-hand boost in Jesus Power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace Chapel and the Awful No Good Terrible Transition of Power.<\/h2>\n

In the news writeup of his leaving<\/span><\/a>, Steve Berger declared on January 20 for realsies that he totally wasn\u2019t \u201cquitting, retiring, leaving, abandoning, we\u2019re not running the other direction because of recent conflict.\u201d Really! No, it was the\u00a0opposite!<\/em><\/p>\n

Afterward, Berger loped off to Washington, DC. There, he started some kind of coaching business<\/span><\/a> aimed at brainwashing<\/del> training future Congresscritters to be TRUE CHRISTIAN\u2122 culture warriors. Considering he\u2019s accused of being in cahoots with out-and-out treasonous domestic terrorists, it\u2019s a striking new gig. Their webpage writeup is creeptastic and smarmy as all get-out too.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s doing very well, though, because apparently Berger still<\/em> can\u2019t keep his paws off Grace Chapel. The news writeup indicated that he planned to run services there once a month and \u201cadvise the church\u2019s leadership team.\u201d It also sounds strongly like the former ruling couple intended to meddle in the church\u2019s social business after handing the reins to the new guy.<\/p>\n

What I describe here is always really bad news for authoritarian groups.\u00a0<\/em>Authoritarian groups can have only one master. They fall apart in infighting and backbiting when two people try to run things as equals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why the Grace Chapel Transition Stumbled.<\/h2>\n

New authoritarian leaders tend to resent being told how to run things, and the former ones always bristle when someone changes anything they used to do. I\u2019ve been there myself, I\u2019m afraid, though at the time I didn\u2019t realize my group was authoritarian.<\/p>\n

(I also trip on stuff in plain sight. Dad nicknamed me \u201cFlutterbudget\u201d for a reason. It\u2019s beyond comical how bad my real-world perception can be when I\u2019m not paying attention. So, I try to be gentle on myself for not realizing I kept getting into groups that leaned authoritarian cuz that\u2019s what was most comfortable for me back then. You do the same if you\u2019re there with me, okay?)<\/p>\n

Religion News<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>tells us that indeed, the Grace Chapel transition was not going well. The two pastors found themselves at loggerheads as the weeks crawled past. Rob Rogers says he \u201cpushed too hard and fast,\u201d causing Berger to become offended and skeptical of the new guy. And Berger\u2019s reactions, in turn, sound like they were anything but meek and humble, loving and peacemaking.<\/p>\n

Their conflict got so bad that both Rob Rogers and the church\u2019s executive pastor, Mark Bright, offered to just resign<\/em>. And remember, this was months after Berger officially faffed off to DC to run his (ahem) ministry<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And then, this happened:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Grace Chapel Showdown.<\/h2>\n

Holy cow, this was amazing.<\/p>\n

Okay. So on August 29, Grace Chapel was having its usual Sunday morning services. Blah, blah, blah. Big performance, singing, lights, etc. They were also livestreaming.<\/p>\n

At some point, Rob Rogers took the mic to apologize to the church because of his ongoing fight with Steve Berger. The restive congregation got a little rowdy, with one person demanding prayers of repentance (it\u2019s not clear who they thought needed to do this).<\/p>\n

Right after that demand, Berger\u2019s wife, Sarah, grabbed a mic, got on the stage herself, and began yelling at Rogers. She claimed he needed to repent \u201cfor sinning against my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, Sarah Berger ranted about how hard-done-by she thought her husband was in the transition and said she and her husband now planned to leave Grace Chapel for good, look what you made me do!<\/em><\/p>\n