I am sorry to mention something else Joshua. But, I also thought it bold of him to refer to your frequent sinus trouble as a sin problem. Couldn’t it be more related to frequent fatigue and over work?

I’m not amazed that ubf teaches this; I’m amazed I believed it :)

When I was newly married, I mentioned once to my shepherd that I was struggling with fatigue. I was still an undergraduate, working on my fourth and most demanding year in my engineering degree, plus the typical UBF schedule of activities. His solution? “Meet your wife physically no more than once per week, then you’ll have enough energy.” I was very embarrassed!

That assumes that parents are nearby. As GC knows, there are many families whose parents and relatives are not nearby to help. Considering that in many families in UBF, one spouse is an immigrant or lives far from the university city, that really complicates things. The easy solution is to travel home periodically. But we were strongly discouraged (i.e. prevented) from traveling for longer than a few days so as to not miss a Friday meeting and absolutely not a Sunday service. Our parents visited us periodically, but as much as that helped, it also added additional responsibilities and stress. The result is that both the couple, the kids, and the grandparents get cheated out of satisfying relationships.

As I’ve said in several previous posts, its the non-UBF parents and relatives who get shafted the most in UBF. I see lots of pictures on facebook of proud senior missionaries and shepherds with their grandchildren. But local shepherds don’t get the same freedoms for visiting family. For these kinds of things, I really had a hard time not resenting the 2nd-gens whose parents were in UBF. It seemed like they avoided so much heartache in these sorts of matters.

Perhaps it depends on the type of family and type of job one has. If someone has a standard 9-5 job, I’m sure that it leaves them enough time to be a good parent and still spare time to serve campus ministry effectively. But many people in UBF have more challenging or less formally-scheduled jobs, like nursing, or are graduate students or academics. I have three young children while doing my PhD. 50-60 hrs per week is really the minimum time necessary to keep up with the expectations of my research. There are lots of shepherds like this. In this kind of environment, it was very challenging to meet the expectations of UBF of 5-10 Bible studies per week plus multiple meetings. Something had to give, and it invariably was time with my kids and wife.

Why are you amazed about this, Brian? This is the essence of what UBF teaches. Of course, if you grow older in UBF you slowly learn that the more “honorable” you become, the less you need to sacrifice. Instead, maybe you can become a chapter leader and take from the sacrifice of others (e.g. by not having a real job but living from offering money), and instead of offering your children, sending them to elite universities. Actually, I think their main point is not even that you do all these things, but that members always feel guilty because there is still one more thing you could sacrifice. They want to force people to obey them, fear them, be thankful for them, and continuing their heritage. The only leverage they have to achieve that is creating feelings of guilt and indebtedness in people. That’s what UBF has done for 50 years and they are very good in it. UBF (primarily SL) has developed effective means supporting this goal, like weekly sogam sharing.

Also, it’s amazing how much they can brag about offering. For instance, the former UBF president was honored and famous in UBF because he allegedly once donated some blood offered the money he good to UBF. But they make sure that everybody knows such a story, and that way they can even become president, because offering your own blood sounds so good and can be used to set an example for others to follow. Peter Chang in Germany always bragged how he “offered” his Ph.D. in pharmacy for the sake of UBF (by not working as a pharmacist) but he always made sure that everybody knew he had a Ph.D. and called him “Dr. Peter Chang”. There are many examples like that. Sacrifice can be a good means to inflate your own honor and make others feel guilty.

In UBF when are you ready to have kids?

My parents encouraged me to wait at least a year in order to properly get to know my wife before the stress of pregnancy and children was added. I couldn’t emphasize how important that advice was. Especially considering that we had physically met all of four time before marriage.

I’ll answer more questions in the coming days.

When we moved away from HQ, our children were 8, 6 and 18 months. Suddenly, I became a full time mother. By God’s grace, I got to know my kids so much more and be their primary care giver. Today, I am so thankful that this happened. I still feel pangs of regret that I was not present enough when my older kids were young (between birth – 5 years.)

One thing I will also mention from our UBF experience is how families are often separated on Sunday. For the sake of campus mission, children were not included in the Sunday worship service, instead we paid a baby sitter during the time that we went to church. Classes and worship were held for children on Saturday. However, after we moved and began attending a local church, I came to appreciate that we worship all together as a family –all ages. There are nurseries for young babies, and classes for younger kids, but everyone comes to church as a family and we go home all together as a family. It is so encouraging and edifying for me now. Today, I could not imagine taking my kids to a baby sitter across town, while my husband and I went to church…not even for the sake of mission.

“2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

If that is what you focus on, then you think that you must sacrifice anything and everything you like, love and cherish in order to obey God.

God’s point was to reveal the love and grace and mercy and justice of God. God’s point was to cause us to think about Christ! God’s point was to challenge the evil religions of the time which did actually sacrifice their children. God says don’t do it.

ONE WORD: Do NOT lay a hand on the boy! (Genesis 22:12)

The root of family neglect in my observation is that ubf shepherds and missionaries teach the bible incorrectly. Specifically, Genesis 22:1-24. How many of us have heard that we must “find our Isaac” and then “sacrifice your Isaac”. That is hogwash! Such teaching comes from a Confucian mind, not the mind of Christ.

Look at what the key verse of Genesis 22 OUGHT to be:

Genesis 22:11-13 “But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.”

ONE WORD: Abraham sacrificed a lamb INSTEAD OF HIS SON.

Thus, I’ve heard this very unfortunate and extremely tragic guilt-tripping statement that some ubf leaders have made to mothers to compel them to sacrifice more for mission: “You are family centered.”

#obeyworldmission

Of course live tweeting and blogging would not be sanctioned by ubf (they probably would turn off the campus wireless). But this does not prevent anyone brave enough to do so. Anyone with a Verizon or ATT or other phone/data connection can live blog the event. No one can stop this.

And yes, as you mentioned earlier, people at the ISBC will not be “forced” to write a sogam (now called reflection writing). But there will be 1,000 pounds of guilt pressure if you don’t, and much more pressure after the conference to “review one thing you learned”. [Note to all ISBC attendants: That “one thing” you learn had better be “So love the world” and it darn well better reveal your loyalty to ubf heritage.

* we’re not that big or diverse,
* our conferences tend to be the same and quite predictable, and
* older UBFers generally fear technology because of the fear of private information becoming public, which results in a fear and general dislike of emails, social networking, facebook, twitter and “the dreaded ubfriends.”

Maybe someone could blog or tweet what happens and what they see during the ISBC? Share your feelings and your thoughts and questions on your phone or iPad?

Yes that is true in my family’s case. We left for numerous reasons, but it started with my wife noticing how we had neglected our children. Also, we left because not only did we receive unsatisfactroy answer to numerous questions, we received MADDENING SILENCE to most questions.

Thanks for sharing this. I did not want to polish this into some sort of academic paper (I don’t have that ability anyway :) because this rough outline gives us several good talking points, without dictating a specific opinion. I find your rough thoughts to be a good example of critical thinking.

I expect ubf people to go silent now, as the ISBC is this week. And of course, they will be pumped up, pro-ubf afterward due to the cheerleader style ISBC program (until PCD and PCG set in :(

I have much to share on your topics. I’ll do so later on. First however I’d like to share a quote from “Your Church is Too Small”. I believe this quote begins to explain one reason why ubf people refuse to discuss or even admit there are any issues with the topics you raise.

“True Christian faith is not found in personal religious feelings but in the historical and incarnational reality of a confessing church. Therefore, if we refuse to come to grips with our past, our future will not be distinctively Christain.”

ubf people are trapped by “personal religous feelings” and so they do not come to grips with their past. How can ubf go forward then, and avoid the cult/heresy/sect label? Can ubf really be considered Christian if they continue to avoid dealing with their past even after all that has happened the past 2 years?

Karl Barth’s words speak volumes to this point: “No one dare do contemporary theology until they have mastered classical Christian thought.”

Joshua, I didn’t raise the issue for maturing children because my inspiration was for a new born baby and family in general. It is very important however I agree.

Over the many years for me in UBF I have observed many things. At times I, along with others, was caught looking in at the mess that many families face after they have their first child. I would say that extreme stress re-appears maybe by the third or fourth. Anyway, everyone is different.

I will say quickly that I did see a very sad example over miscarriages where the woman was not properly supported. I have known many couples where the woman had miscarried and I urge UBF to do more than just “pray.”

I do hope that this can develop beyond the immediate discussion.

Another issue that you didn’t specifically raise in your article relates to the spiritual education of children. Most traditional churches are involved in educating children through Sunday school and other related activities and by integrating children into the activities of the church. There is thus a synergy between the education done by parents at home and done by the church body and typically resources or at least encouragement is provided to parents to help them educate their children in the things of God. However, how does this occur in UBF? How should it occur? What role should the chapter director or other coworkers have in the spiritual education of children? What if the parents differ on what this role should be? Should children be integrated into main activities of a chapter, or should their involvement be diminished and considered as a side-job? What resources or encouragement should parents expect from their church? If they do not receive sufficient support, to what extent should they be permitted to seek it elsewhere?

I’d wager that among married couples who leave UBF, 95% of them do so because of the unsatisfactory answers given to them by UBF to the above questions.

Sadly, some leaders in ubf have artificially created a false and unnecessary dichotomy between the family and mission. As many have already shared, this has created countless conflicts and painful wounding (usually from the chapter director), which stemmed primarily from a poor and horribly wrong understanding of the trinitarian God and the Bible.