To all the pastors of the Fellowship
Pretoria, 5 March 2003
Hereby I am sending you a copy of the Pastors contract that Pastor Mitchell wanted me to sign, and if I would have refused to sign it, he would have stopped the support of our church. I not only had to sign it, but I also had to go to the notary public and let them sign it too. So the worlds court system and money domination is being used as a threat to keep Pastors in line. This form sooner or later every Pastor will have to sign. This is the direction Pastor Mitchell is taking the fellowship. It is not a fellowship anymore—it is an organisation. Something we never wanted to become. A business organisation.
It is very very crucial for all of you to remember how we started. We started as a fellowship of friends. Support was a gift of love. The vision of our fellowship is that all over the world indigenous autonomous and self-supporting fellowships would arise with their own conference. Anyone that would plant 25 churches could start their own conference agreed upon in the Phoenix leadership. Some conferences started out of need of location. The vision of multiplication is that all over the world men were going to function as a powerful copy of Pastor Mitchell’s leadership. The vision is to train men and to train them so well that they fully can and will function totally separate from you, and a new fellowship is formed. And over that new fellowship the first Pastor has totally NO AUTHORITY, otherwise multiplication is impossible.
Through that multiplication of disciples and churches and leaders totally released in the world, the world is going to be reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the risk Jesus Christ took, that is the risk we will have to take. If we do not want to take that risk, than we need to start looking for another job. 2 Tim. 2:2 // on this text our fellowship is based.
Pastor Mitchell appointed an eldership over the entire fellowship, which is a violation of our vision. Elders are Pastors. So to appoint 7 Pastors over our whole fellowship creates a headquarters in Prescott—something we all, including Pastor Mitchell, never wanted. If you want to appoint an eldership (actually not necessary) you will have to use your own men as leaders over your own fellowship. That’s why the new eldership appointment of the 7 according to our vision should have been Pastor Mitchell’s own disciples over his own fellowship. And in Harold’s fellowship Harold’s men. And in Joe Campbell’s fellowship, Joe Campbell’s men. And in Mike Mastins, Hank Houghtons, Bill Coolidge, Tommy Alvarez, Dale Reece, Greg Johnson’ fellowships, their own men. And in Rudy van Diermen fellowship, Rudy van Diermen’s men etc. etc.
Pastor Mitchell is violating our vision of discipleship and multiplication. In an old sermon of Pastor Mitchell I found the following quote: “A movement will start with a man, that man is given a message, that movement starts developing methods, than that movement starts to develop into an organisation. Than unavoidably it degenerates into a grave tomb or mausoleum or museum. This is the course of history in which it always goes…”
Read the contract for yourself.
Pastor Rudy van Diermen
Pretoria.
