The CE Interview: Erwin McManus, Senior Pastor, Mosaic Church, Los Angeles, CA
Volume 2008, Issue 10 - 10 2008
Erwin McManus, Senior Pastor, Mosaic Church
by: Ronald E. Keener
http://www.churchexecutive.com/article.asp?IndexID=1108
Dear Reader,
Throughout my posts here at Solid Foods, I have tried my best to point out and correct the many false impressions, incorrect facts and historical errors that Erwin McManus has repeated in his interviews and talks.
Now a new interview with Erwin McManus has appeared in the pages of Church Executive.
In addition to what many of you may recognize as now "standard story lines" from Erwin McManus ( * issues which I have already covered in my previous posts) this interview included some new statements that I feel demand a response.
This is my response to this interview.
Regarding the Church on Brady
A brief note to my readers: The hyperlink given in the CE interview for the "The First Southern Baptist Church of East Los Angeles" is incorrect and I have written to the editor to ask for a correction.
The link given is for The First Baptist Church of Los Angeles located at 760 South Westmoreland Avenue Los Angeles, California 90005.
The address for the original Church on Brady (officially named The First Southern Baptist Church of East Los Angeles) was 715 S. Brady Avenue, East Los Angeles, CA 90022.
Erwin insults the former members of the CoB by implying the church "didn't live up to it's values."
When CE asked about the changes he brought to the Church on Brady, this was Erwin's response:
The great challenge for our church was that we said all the right things: We wanted to evangelize, we wanted to reach people for Christ, but we didn’t really do the things that we said we were going to do. There was a great challenge to transition the church back to live up to its values.
This comment stands in stark contrast to the history put out by Erwin McManus’s own church, Mosaic, in the brochure written for the “Origins” conference. (See my previous post - "Update: A Revisionist HIstory of the Church on Brady", The Origins Experience - http://solidfoods.blogspot.com/2007/03/revisionist-history-of-church-on-brady_22.html)
Brother Tom led the church through a common mission to "become a spiritual reference point east of downtown Los Angeles and a sending base to the ends of the earth."
In his 25 years as Senior Pastor, the newly renamed Church on Brady saw the Lord take a handful of people and give birth to a vibrant community of 500 in average attendance. During those years, an extraordinary movement of God resulted in The Church on Brady starting churches both in Los Angeles and internationally.
George Hunter III, Church for the Unchurched, wrote that the Church on Brady was a "new American apostolic church, rather than a traditional one."
George Hunter III added to this claim in Reaching the Unreached (1997) that "after examining American apostolic churches (including Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback Church) he found The Church on Brady to be "...the most apostolic congregation in America."
The Church on Brady was also commended by the International Mission Board (IMB) for sending more international missionaries than any other church in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Based on these commendations, how can Erwin now claim that "Brady didn't live up to it's values?" As further proof of the ridiculous nature of this assertion I offer this bit of evidence from:
Future Church: Ministry in a Post-Seeker Age,
copyright 2002 by Jim L. Wilson,
Published by Serendipity House, 8100 SouthPark Way, Littleton, CO 80120
Portrait: “Moving with the Spirit” Mosaic, Los Angeles, CA
p. 19
http://www.gregwa.com/images/future.pdf
With a passion he learned serving the urban poor, McManus built on the mission spirit of the Church on Brady to lead the people into the future.
I would think it would have been hard for Erwin McManus to build on the” mission-spirit” of the Church on Brady if such a spirit didn’t already exist.
Erwin insults the former members of the Church on Brady by claiming they were "hostile" towards Hollywood, gays and people with Aids.
Erwin's response to CE:
It was a great church; it was kind of a blue collar family church but it was more known for what it was against — like the movie industry, it was hostile toward people with AIDS, it was hostile towards the gay community.
This is outrageous.
The Church on Brady was NEVER hostile towards Hollywood and his assertion that it was "hostile" to gays and aids victims is a misleading exaggeration.
Hollywood
I have no idea where Erwin came up with the idea that Brady was "hostile" towards Hollywood when so many of the people who attended Brady before the arrival of Erwin McManus had close ties to Hollywood. This statement by Erwin McManus makes absolutely no sense.
Gays
Bro. Tom, the former pastor of the Church on Brady, was a conservative, SBC pastor and like many other conservative SBC pastors, he would occasionally speak out against the sin of homosexuality. This is completely in line with the SBC statement of faith.
The truly bizarre part about this particular attack by Erwin McManus is that when it comes to citing an actual "statement of faith," for Erwin's Mosaic, the official Mosaic.org website refers people to the Baptist Faith and Message.
Why does Erwin criticize Brady for adhering to the same statement of faith that his own church cites as it doctrinal position on homosexuality? Would Erwin classify himself and his church as being "hostile" towards gays?
How does Mosaic treat members of the GLBT community?
"The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was eating me inside." Jose Arroyo
The Mosaic of Pain website presents an interview with Jose Arroyo, a former member of Mosaic. In this interview, Jose outlines his experiences as an openly gay man who not only became a member of its "volunteer staff" but was also given a great deal of leadership responsibilities based on his artistic and computer job skills. Jose's story about how he was treated at Mosaic is quite compelling.
To read this interview, please go to the Mosaic of Pain comments page 12 at http://mosaicofpaincontinues.blogspot.com/2008/08/mop-comments-page-xx.html
Victims of Aids
In regards to Aids, when the Aids epidemic first broke out there was a lot of public fear because even the medical experts at that time were not sure how the disease was transmitted. It took a very long time for scientists to even isolate the virus and confirm that it was primarily a sexually transmitted disease and that you couldn’t “catch it” just by being in the same room with an infected person.
The tragic shadow of the Aids epidemic fell over the Church on Brady when one of our church children contracted the virus via a tainted blood transfusion.
The entire church rallied around that stricken little girl and she became a catalyst for change in people’s attitudes towards ALL Aids victims. Upon the suggestion of the health care workers in our congregation, the Church on Brady even installed a special bathroom facility designed to accommodate the health needs of people with Aids.
When the sad announcement was made that this child had succumbed to her illness, there wasn’t a dry eye in the church. Before she died, this little girl had written a collection of poetry and her book was sold for many years in the church bookstore.
This all happened before the arrival of Erwin McManus and I know that book of poetry was still being reprinted and sold at Mosaic after he took over.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: (posted Feb. 27, 2009)
From Erwin McManus' own book, "An Unstoppable Force", p.154:
Here is Erwin's version of the story:
"Stephanie had severe factor 7 hemophilia, and she had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. It was 1983, and the word AIDS was just becoming a
part of our vernacular. We were uncertain if AIDS was airborne, which created a
tremendous fear of contamination. The Los Angeles congregation that I later came
to pastor had decisions to make. They had to decide whether to follow the
pattern of many churches across America and ask those who were infected with AIDS to leave the church for the safety of the congregation or to choose to invite the Sakumas to stay at the risk of the congregation's own lives.
Under the leadership of the former pastor and the elders, the congregation decided that they would either live together or die together. Since that time, Stephanie Sakuma has died and gone to be with the Lord. She was a tremendous poet with a deep spiritual insight and love for God. Her life inspired a published work that has sold both in the United States and
Japan."
Erwin insults the former members of the Church on Brady by claiming the church property was sold at an "undervalued price."
This is what McManus told CE:
You don’t have a main campus?
We sold everything we had; we sold the property we owned at an undervalued price to a Spanish-speaking congregation so they could have a building because the area was Spanish-speaking. Then we just became homeless and have traveled around the city for the last 10 years.
The truth is that the building was sold at a profit that paid off the congregation’s existing debt with plenty left over to put in the bank as “seed money” for a larger facility.
At that time, the congregation of the Church on Brady had every intention of purchasing a larger facility in the near future and in fact, at least one of the properties under consideration, the Chicago Title building, was a personal favorite of Erwin McManus but the price tag proved to be far too high.
What people outside of Mosaic don’t know is that between 1997 and 2006 the church leadership entered into serious negotiations to purchase the following properties:
1. Rosemead School of Counseling located in Walnut.
2. Chicago Title Building, Rosemead. The several million asking price was far beyond what the congregation could afford.
3. A space in the soon to be built Artist and Loft center in downtown Los Angeles.
4. The Carlson Building.
5. Bimbo’s Bakery, Los Feliz. Negotiations ended in 2004; did not survive through the escrow process.
6. New Hope church property, Los Feliz (2005)
“Crash”, a fundraising campaign to raise additional money towards the purchase of New Hope, was announced to the congregation but was never implemented when the property owners failed to respond to further inquiries. An informal inquiry was made to the owners of the Soho nightclub in downtown Los Angeles, but there were no formal negotiations to purchase it. In 2006, informal inquiries were made regarding an abandoned school property in Silverlake.
The “Believing the Impossible” campaign
(Several former members have nicknamed this the “Believe or Leave” campaign.)
Erwin McManus never mentions the two capital fundraising campaigns that were held to raise money towards the purchase of a larger, permanent facility to replace the original Church on Brady property
When the purchase of the Chicago Title building was being considered, Erwin and the church leader made an arrangement with the building’s owners to allow the congregation to tour the building and hold one Sunday gathering inside the facility. This was done to give the congregation a chance to “catch” the vision for purchasing the building.
The price tag for the Chicago Title building was in the millions so a fundraising dinner was arranged.
The “Believing the Impossible” capital fundraising banquet was held at Los Angeles’ Union Station on June 27, 1997. It was at this event that Erwin McManus asked the congregation to “give sacrificially” and he urged everyone to defer making any large, personal or household purchases and instead donate that money to the church for the fundraising campaign.
(One person donated the money he had intended to spend on a new car and a married couple donated the money they had been saving for the down payment on a home..)
The promotional brochure for the campaign specifically stated that the search for a new facility would be conducted “within the Los Angeles area.”
Approximately $700,000 was raised towards the purchase of a new building but instead of purchasing a new facility “within the Los Angeles area” these designated funds were redirected (without following the correct protocols for such a measure) towards paying off the mortgage on a daughter congregation located 50 miles away from Los Angeles in Chino, California.
When a source inside Mosaic warned me this dispersal of funds was about to happen, I tried to get the word out to former members of the Church on Brady in case any of them wanted a refund on their donation. I was contacted by one of these former members who did manage to get his last minute request in and he did receive a refund check from Mosaic.
When I asked Mosaic’s executive pastor, Eric Bryant, about this transfer of designated funds for another project, he just told me “the money has been spent.”
Erwin's assertion that the Brady property was sold at "undervalued price to a Spanish-speaking congregation so they could have a building because the area was Spanish-speaking," is just the latest in a line of "alternative realities" given for the decision to move from the East Los Angeles location.
Erwin has given the following explanations for why the Church on Brady was sold:
"As a witness to New Testament values"
The Presbyterian Outlook
“Leader of Mosaic says he almost tore his church apart to make it successful!”
By Leslie Scanlon
Friday, 10 October 2003
“He (Erwin) talked about selling the church property as a witness to New Testament values.”
“We weren’t reaching enough people in that venue.”
Church Solutions
Swimming Upstream
Erwin Raphael McManus’ Postmodern Ministry Goes Against the Current — and Gets Results
Posted on: 02/23/2007
By Rae Ann Slaybaugh
CB: You sold the property you owned and opted instead to meet in four locations across LA, including a night club and a high school, often vacating a space with one day’s notice. For many pastors, that sounds chaotic — but there you are with a congregation of 3,000.
McManus: Yeah, and what’s really fascinating is who those 3,000 are and what they’re like. Even though we did move quite a few times, often it was because we felt like we weren’t reaching enough people in that venue.
"Nomads for the gospel"
Mosaic Brochure for "The Origin's Experience"
In 2003 Mosaic sold it's property in east Los Angeles and became entirely mobile, operating as nomads for the gospel throughout one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world. Still growing, we are ever more convinced through our experience that the church is people, not a building.
“Erwin doesn’t want people to think the church is a building.”
Tu Cuidad Magazine,
December/January 2007.
Cover story: “Got Jesus Dude? Born in El Salvador, born again in the U.S., Erwin McManus now leads the hippest ministry in L.A.”,
By Yvette Doss
By his fifth year at the Church on Brady, McManus had persuaded members to sell their building and expand into rented spaces throughout the city. They would become a roving, nomadic congregation made up, as McManus says, of the people, the community. “We did that because we didn’t want people to think the church was a building.”
The REAL reason for the sale of the Church on Brady
Over-crowding due to phenomenal growth that had begun BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF ERWIN MCMANUS was the real reason for why the Church on Brady was sold!
Why does Erwin McManus continue to repeat his inaccurate version of events regarding the Church on Brady?
Perphaps the question that should be asked is:
"What's wrong with telling the truth about
the Church on Brady?"
To be continued . . . Regarding Mosaic
Yvonne W.
* In this interview with CE, Erwin McManus once again repeats an inaccurate version of events regarding the history of the Church on Brady. For more on these, please read my posts "A Revisionist History of the Church on Brady?" and "Revisiting Erwin McManus' Revisionist History" parts 1 and 2.
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