Acts20.com NEW Acts-Celerate

I agree.The other pages don’t live up to the original – at all.It’s sad________________

Definitely agree with this. Try as we might to remain open minded, the opposite happens as we age. Still, I don’t know why a person has to get offended just because someone has a different understanding of a particular doctrine or such. Case in point, I have always believed in the post Tribulation coming of the Lord. That viewpoint rubs the pre Tribulation camp the wrong way for some reason. I don’t get offended at those whose beliefs differ from mine, and we can all learn something from one another. It’s when emotions take over that the learning generally stops. IMHO of course________________“Hell will be filled with people that didn’t cuss, didn’t drink, and may even have been baptized. Why? Because none of those things makes someone a Christian.”

Being offended was part and parcel of Acts. On Facebook sites, everyone is afraid to challenge an overseer or prominent pastor. Not so on Acts. Anyone could be challenged – and as long as it wasn’t a personal attack, the layman and pastor and overseer defended what they had said on equal footing. It just don’t see it happen at the other sites – except on a few subjects.I just feel like I learned so much more here than there because all of us can benefit defending what we believe from time to time. Even Aaron Scott’s clown show had a place here. NBF killed about every living thing on Actscelerate.

There are very few places in which you can speak truth of power and question the status quo or challenge denominational/ministry self narratives. I was drawn to Actscelerate for those reasons, as well as to better understand the culture of the COG. Often I say I learned to knife-fight (with words of course) on Actscelerate, sometimes getting cut and sometimes cutting. No matter the depth of the wounds the credo of living to fight another day was true, unless you got banned that is. I have learned a great deal about the COG here, perhaps to the chagrin of those who would present a different version of truth. Mat

Speaking of the past. I always enjoyed Brad Freeman and many others of course, who did you think was the most interesting character of the past here on ACTS.?PS We have an example above, the love fest between (the wrestler and the Pastor) NBF & Brother Aaron! ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/

It allowed you to say things that you DARED not say under your real name. NOT because you were trying to to sneak something, but because there were some on this site that would digitally tar and feather you for saying something they disagreed with.And if people knew your real name, you got tarred and feathered in real life, too.So it was a joy to be able to speak freely without holding back to protect yourself. HOWEVER, some used their anonymity to say hateful things about others. And those using their real names would, when an argument got heated or started going against them, claim that the anonymous poster was hiding behind their pen name.There was an attempt, it seems, to attach courage and integrity to using your real name…and cowardice to those using a pen name. But this was not true at all. Why? Because those who used their real names often never said anything that seemed very critical of the Church of God. In other words, it seemed that they were playing for attention from Cleveland. (I don’t know if that is true, but is sure SEEMED like that was the case.)None of us can afford to lose our positions because we ask some pointed questions, etc.The other issue was to INDEFINITE BANNING of users. There was no sentence length attached to a crime, it was indefinite. In time, some of our most popular and provocative posters began to back away. I proposed a general amnesty, but it didn’t seem to gain any traction. It was Doyle’s board, and if anyone deserved to make the decisions, it was him. He put a massive amount of work in creating a non-official voice for the Church of God, allowing valid critique, etc.

This is close, but not quite what the aim of the Signature Series forum was. When Doyle and I discussed creating this forum, the idea was that there was often more weight when something was said by a person using their real name. It gave an opportunity for posters to say something with that added weight. When that forum was opened, we gave users the one-time option to change their username to their real name or to create a new, separate account that was their real name. Some chose one, others chose the other, while still others chose to remain only anonymous. There’s nothing that prevented anyone from using both. The only restriction was that those posting in the Signature Series forum had to use their real name to do so. Any user name could be used in the Acts-celerate forum.

You said a lot there my friend, It is amazing how split this country has become because no one wants to allow another opinion… ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/