Pastor Wood

Pastor Tom Schaller, GGWO PO Box 18715 Baltimore, MD 21206 Pastor Schaller, I originally had and still have a seven page rebuttal of the letter that you sent out to all the affiliate pastors. I decided that I would not send it, knowing that you would probably not read it anyway. I will therefore briefly summarize the major points from that rebuttal with the logical and dogmatic conclusion to which they have brought me. I suggest you read this brief statement in its entirety because there are some concluding statements that will have a very direct impact on the ministry in Baltimore and on your ability to continue as it’s leader. My points of contention are as follows: 1. You do not agree with the consensus arrived at by the affiliates at the Sandy Cove meetings with respect to the role that the Baltimore church is to play in the future. 2. You are errant to the point of bordering on apostasy in your insistence on transferring Old Testament truth concerning the offices of priest, prophet, and king to the New Testament office of pastor, rather than rightly concluding that those offices are typical of the offices of Christ. This includes your errant position on “the anointing”, which was also clarified at Sandy Cove and with which you were in disagreement. 3. You insist that we all are in agreement or should be on major points of doctrine as long as our agreement lines up with your erroneous interpretation. 4. You are suffering from delusions of grandeur in that you believe you will inherit a double portion of Pastor Stevens’ ministry. From where I sit, that can only mean a multiplication of error. 5. You insist on making truth hinge on such subjectivity as “a Biblical culture, experience, and heritage that is so sacred to us, intrinsically woven into the fabric of our souls” and not on the objective truth of the rightly divided scriptures. 6. You have confused loyalty to a man (Pastor Stevens) with loyalty to Jesus Christ. 7. You equate affiliation with centralization of control, Baltimore and yourself being at the helm. 8. You are responsible without remorse for undermining the action and decision of the board of elders in electing Pastor Roger Stenger to the position that you now wrongfully occupy. GGWO has never taught that a pastor is elected by the congregation. 9. You deny all responsibility for any wrong doing in the recent happenings in Baltimore, including the blatant violation of the pact that you signed stating there would be no further maligning of other men of God. 10. You are living in a misconception about your gifts and administrative abilities based on an invalid conclusion that the churches that you have planted are doing well under your leadership, when in fact there are several of them that are in serious trouble if they don’t get a true pastor in the pulpit. In conclusion, I can no longer in good conscience receive financial support from the Baltimore church. I will immediately be communicating with those individuals who have supported me and will be making other arrangements to receive their contributions, should they wish to continue to support me. I trust that in the mean time, any monies that arrive specifically for me will in fact arrive in my account. I will also tell you that if you, any member of your administration, or any member of the MBCS administration in any way interferes with or influences .........decision to return to Argentina upon graduation in May, that I will without hesitation inform the IMF that you are encouraging students to violate the stipulations of their student visas. I strongly urge you or any others who have offered him a paid position to immediately withdraw that offer. Since your original letter was posted to all of the affiliated ministries, and in light of past treatment of those who have in obedience to God declared their position, I will simultaneously send this letter to all affiliated ministries for the purpose of their knowing first hand where I stand and why I have severed affiliation. I bare you no personal malice and sincerely pray for you to consider the overwhelming number of affiliated pastors who have expressed their similar concerns to you. You cannot easily ignore when long-standing servants of God stand united in protest. I would hope that we could at some future date once again serve God together, however as it currently stands, that would demand a repentance and change of heart on your part. I wish you the best of luck in steering what remains of the ministry. You’ll need it because I don’t see much in the way of God’s blessing in the future for GGWO. Sincerely and securely in Christ, Pastor RW Wood