Dangerous Church Doctrines, Mike Reid, Part 2

This is Apologetics Live.

To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are live, Apologetics.

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Glad that you are here with us.

For another edition of the Apologetics Live show.

Now, we're not live really.

Well, we're live doing this, but you're not able to join today again.

We're sorry.

The reason is is because we have another special guest coming on and we are going to be trying

to, well, we're unfortunately having to continue to deal with some dangerous doctrines.

And so before we get to that, we do wanna give some announcements and things like that.

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Ray Comfort here.

I wanna encourage you to attend Andrew Rappaport and Justin Peters' upcoming conference

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Both these men don't just talk about it, they do it.

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God bless you guys.

Your time wisely.

Well, Justin Peters and I got together and realized that our calendars were cleared because of

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Let me bring in Mr. Silvestro.

He is going to again do the show.

Now, you guys, I am just gonna warn you guys, I have no control.

When Anthony is on, he just, you know, he should be a pastor.

He just runs that mouth.

I'll tell you, you guys know that the last week was long.

We're gonna see whether this week is as long.

Now, just to start, Anthony, Ethan is asking what happened to my face.

I'm doing something your wife doesn't allow you to do.

Sorry, I had to throw that in because you gave that to me once.

I admit it.

You think she let me grow it here since I'm missing it here, but you know.

So, you know, this is funny because I see that you responded, obviously, because it says Andrew is trying to look cool.

So, that must be you responding.

It is.

I don't know why it's locked.

Somehow, I have the Striving Fraternity account, so.

Well, we both logged in with it, so that's why.

So, I'm just gonna call a bunch of people.

Now, no one knows which one of us is responding.

But what's really nice is that you misspelled your own name.

I like that.

I saw, I meant to let that go.

I think you brought me in quicker than I expected, so.

Yeah, so I wanna get right to this because I know this is probably gonna go long.

There's a lot of information here, but I do, before I hand you over for a monologue, and then before we bring in the

guest, I do have to give you a correction, okay?

Last week, you said something, and I got a correction that was given.

You've mentioned last week, in last week's episode, that Mike Reed uses people like,

you know, like little A once again on camera.

Every time, yes, we have.

He knows you're in it.

It's like, okay.

Okay.

Last week, you mentioned that Mike Reed uses men like Phil Johnson and others to give him credibility.

Well, I got a correction.

Let me give you exactly what Phil Johnson wrote so that it's crystal clear whether Phil

Johnson is endorsing Mike Reed.

It says, this is from Phil Johnson, whoever made the claim that, quote, Phil Johnson

has no problems with the close pastoring techniques, unquote, is being dishonest.

I have a major, that was in all caps, I have a major problem with Mike Reed's view on

eldership and counseling.

I have personally told him that.

Specifically, I think the idea, the ideas referred to here as, quote, close

pastoring techniques, unquote, are abusive, inappropriate, unnecessary,

invasive, and fraught with evil temptations.

That is particularly true of his one -on -one counseling sessions where he

asks intimate questions of other men's wives, replete with kisses.

If he is claiming he has my, and then he throws these

big words that I don't understand, impetutor, on any of

those things, he clearly knows better.

If it's true that he is using my name to ward off criticism

of these cultish practices, he is being deliberately dishonest.

If anyone has an email or any proof in writing where he has invoked my

name as a supporter of any of these things, please send it to me and I

will confront him again, unquote.

So I don't think Phil Johnson is agreeing with those things.

So I will hand this now over to you for your monologue, and then I'll be back before we introduce our guest to explain how

we met.

I had actually met him, but how the three of us met together.

Yeah, it's an interesting story, isn't it?

Well, thanks for the correction, Andrew, on that.

So good evening for everyone who is joining us live or will be seeing this afterwards as part of the

podcast or listening as part of the podcast.

Last week, just as a recap, we had

Kevin Yontan, who is a longtime member of GFC.

In fact, he and his wife were one of the planting families of that church.

So they were before even Pastor Mike Reed came there and became the pastor of that church

early on in the church's life.

And so Kevin also spent several years being a deacon at this church before,

and watched all this stuff happen before he decided, before the Lord opened his eyes, however you wanna put it, but

that he recognized the problems.

And he, according to Kevin, went to the elders, tried

to talk and try to work through what he perceived to be major issues,

and then ended up leaving the church.

And he, as well as many, many others have done this.

And so last week was the culmination of a lot of research that has been done over the last really

couple of months.

And it encompassed 50 to 60 hours at last guesstimate on just the research alone,

not me putting any notes together or anything like that.

That was all above and beyond.

But those were, make no mistake about it, those were people that I interviewed myself.

So in Kevin's second blog, these are people that I personally talked to and got

their eyewitness firsthand accounts from.

And so what happened last week is I had been asking Mike Reed.

So we've had some friendly dialogue.

I have no issues with the dialogue that I have had with Mike Reed over the last month.

Now it's been about five weeks in trying to get him onto the show, both last week, as well as this

week.

Obviously he is not our special guest tonight.

I hope he is our special guest in the future on the show.

But I have reached out, we've had conversations, and so far he and his elders have

declined to be on.

And so instead we did interview Kevin Yant last week, earlier than I was anticipating.

And we're gonna have Kevin and his wife on together in a future show.

And we're gonna have some other people that have been intimately involved in the situation on the show in the future.

This is the part I really wanna speak on for the next two minutes or so, and then we are going to bring our special guest on tonight,

is there are two issues that we are looking at.

And I wanna make sure that we all as listeners keep this really, really clear, because my job is to be as fair and

unbiased as possible throughout this entire process.

There is on one side of things, there is the doctrines, right?

So whether we call these unwise, unbiblical, dangerous,

weird, call it whatever you want, right?

But this is the doctrinal side of things.

And these are the things that we have really made the focus on to talk about and

to discuss, are these correct practices within any type of church?

Now, on the other side of things, and they're closely related, is that as a result of the doctrinal

stances, that turns into practices.

And so what are the practices that come out of those doctrines?

That's disputed, right?

And so in all fairness, the only people I have talked to have been,

that have been willing to talk to me, I should say, and willing to bring the stories forward are the

actual eyewitnesses that I've talked to.

And so Kevin and his wife and 10 other people on top of that, who were

either members of the church or had left the church after being there for a period of time.

And then there's even a few other people on top of that that I've talked to that are close to the situation, they're in Iowa.

So there's been a number of people that we've had these discussions with to find out what the practices are.

I have made it very, very well known that Mike is welcome on the show at any time

to come on and have a stab at answering not only the doctrinal positions

that he holds to, that at this point in time, we have Mike's own words that

are on the Beaverton YouTube page, his own words in the context of the rain.

We have those teachings.

And if he abides by those teachings still, then he should come on and say that.

If he doesn't abide by them, then he should come on and give a correction and say, I don't actually follow those teachings anymore.

Fine, amen, if that's the case.

He also has an ability to come on to the show and to answer the challenges regarding the

practices as a result of those doctrines.

I did offer, just so everybody knows here, I have offered, so far have not been allowed

or not been approved.

I have offered to take the phone number of every single person that is a member of Mike Reed's church, as well as

the other two elders.

I already have Mike's phone number.

And I will interview, I will take the time to interview every single one of them, if that's what it takes

to hear what they would call their side of it.

So far, that has not been made possible.

They don't want that to happen.

But the offer has been made because I am trying to be as transparent as possible throughout this entire process.

And so we covered the dangerous doctrines last week.

I purposely avoided the name of what I was calling the well -known evangelist.

This is a guy, this is a man who I've learned from and respected over the years greatly.

And I avoided his name because the show was not about him.

The show was about what would be perceived as the dangerous doctrines of Mike Reed.

And these were all established before Tony ever, and I'm giving the name, right?

That before Tony, the famous evangelist, right?

Ever moved out to Iowa in 2016.

And so the problem is, is that there's a connection that now that's made, because if Tony never

moved out to the church from leaving John MacArthur's church, which would be the

dream of I think a lot of people, but from moving there and going to this little church in Iowa, nobody would have

known about Iowa.

Nobody would have known about Grace Fellowship Church here, but they were made known and the church and its

doctrine and its practices were made public as a result of Tony going out there.

And this is the reality as we're getting ready to bring Chuck on right now, is our special

guest.

You're gonna slip that in?

Quiet.

So Chuck is our special guest tonight.

I'm sure everybody knew this.

Yeah, we'll have to give a last name later, but I don't know who the Chuck and the Tony are that we're talking about, but let

me just say this and explain how the three of us met.

Okay, now I've met Chuck.

Chuck O 'Neill is, we could bring him in now since we've already mentioned him by name.

Chuck, good evening.

Welcome.

Good evening, thank you.

Thank you for having me on.

And my thing that I'm gonna be doing, and then I'm gonna hand this over to Anthony like I did last time.

It's his show this time, which means it's probably gonna go long, but I'm

warning you guys.

I've been open -air preaching with him.

He doesn't know how to get it off a box.

He doesn't know how to stop preaching.

It's just, you know.

So Humble Clay says, if Mike Reed hasn't reached out to you after last week's show, even Phil Johnson has, then

the silence is deafening.

That actually, he has reached out to you.

Mike has reached out.

They're just unwilling to come on the show.

They're unwilling for me to go and interview anybody within their church.

On one hand, they say, well, you've not done your research within our church.

And I say, but I'm willing to do that research.

And I will call every single one of them.

And they say, well, no.

So that's where we're at right now.

Yeah, so let me give the backstory to how the three of us met.

The famous evangelist that Anthony is referring to is a man named Tony Miano, someone who I

used to be close with as well.

Chuck, not as close as you were with him.

But we had a falling out and he had said some things that were not true

and spreading things that were not true.

And I was trying to bring reconciliation, something that those of you in the audience who know

me, you know that that's something I teach.

It's something I practice.

These two men here have seen it firsthand and they could give their account if they want to.

But I was not getting return phone calls or emails or anything.

And so I've always said to people, you do all that's possible, humanly possible to bring

reconciliation if you can.

And there's a point where you just have to give up.

I decided, I reached out to Anthony and said, let's, you know, would you wanna go to Shepherd's Conference?

I had one purpose in going to Shepherd's Conference.

You think it's for the books?

No, that was a nice -.

Or to see your hero, John MacArthur.

I mean -.

Got to hear some great preaching,.

But that wasn't why I went.

I went for one purpose and Anthony knew this.

I was looking for Tony Miano so that I can talk to him face to face.

I did finally see him the third day.

I went, said, before a session, I said, hey, can we talk after this session?

And he said, sure.

And then at the end of the session, he walked over and he had said, you know, I'd like Chuck, he's my

accountability pastor, to be with us.

I said, fine, you know, I'd like Anthony, he's, you know, part of our ministry, to be with us as well, if that's okay.

Fine, we all went off.

We all missed hearing Paul Washer and we sat down and had a discussion.

Now, during the discussion, Tony was making some accusations.

Anthony was pretty quiet, which is hard to believe, but he was absolutely quiet for the whole time, pretty much.

And at one point, Anthony made the statement that Tony was judging my motives.

And I was telling him what my motives were and he was claiming he knew my motives better than I did.

And Chuck, at that point, had agreed and said, you know, Tony, he's right.

And at that point, Tony changed his argument.

And he started to make an argument because there is a woman who wrote songs.

She wrote a song.

She was trying to write these little picturettes of different people, a pastor, a

homemaker, either, I forget if it was a missionary or a martyr, but three different types of people

who don't care if anyone knows Christ's name.

I don't know what happened to Chuck there.

You may have to text them to see what happened.

But that they wanted to have this song that was about three different

people.

I'm gonna, I'll put you in the backstage so you could talk to him until he comes back in.

So the idea that we had was, you know, that this artist had was to do a,

basically have a pastor who said, and the idea of the song, okay,

there he is.

Okay.

I'm back.

He didn't like us saying anything positive about him.

So he dropped off.

I didn't hear it.

I didn't hear it.

Okay, let's get it straight.

He needed to go brush his hair.

He had to take care of his hair.

He was, he realized on camera it didn't look right.

So, so what.

Buffed my forehead.

Yeah.

So what ended up happening was, is that there was this artist who wrote a song.

She decided to write the picture of the pastor who doesn't want,

doesn't care if anyone doesn't know his name, just wants Christ's name to be known.

And that artist named that person Andrew and did it after me.

So she had me in mind when she wrote that part.

Now, Tony, it was everything you heard last week.

Tony was saying that that was sinful and that he actually said that I had to buy

all of the CDs that were available and pay for a remix of this without that song

because someone writing a song about me was somehow sinful.

Now, just keep that in mind as he was at that time planning to go to Iowa to a church

where people are gonna kiss his wife on the lips.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

Now, here's the thing.

I knew nothing about any of this until the following year.

This is one of the things that I gained a lot more respect for Chuck.

Now, Chuck and I had met previously at the NorCal events that we used to

do and we do some open air.

I met him there.

So I had met him, but didn't know him.

The next year, one of the first things when I saw Chuck is he walked up to me and

apologized.

And he said, I need to ask your forgiveness.

We sat in that meeting last year and all the things that Tony was saying.

And meanwhile, Tony is going to a church now where he's having people meet with his wife privately.

And I just could not believe.

It was unfathomable for me to believe that that could be happening.

Tony and I did a whole bunch of work with the Church of Wells in identifying cults.

There's no way he doesn't understand what a cult is.

It would blow my mind.

And so Chuck had written an article.

I read it.

I said, I just don't believe it.

And what convinced me that there was truth to it was actually Tony's article.

Now, this article is now taken down.

It's been edited out.

But Tony had put an article out talking about his experience going to this church the first time.

And he said that he had to encourage his wife to meet alone with Mike.

And I was like, Tony would never do that.

But there it is in his own words saying that he encouraged her and she was

uncomfortable with that.

And then later he ends up talking about how she wasn't saved until she spoke to Mike.

And now she's saved, that she was a false convert until now.

That was the thing that convinced me.

It wasn't what Chuck said.

No offense, Chuck.

But it was actually what Tony said.

Now, the fact that some of these articles have been taken down and changed, I think is very telling.

It's very disappointing.

And to be fair, right, as we're gonna welcome Chuck on here, as we've said this like five times now, but to be

fair, Mike has a reason for that, right?

The reason why they're taken down and I hope that he comes on and shares what

his reasoning is.

Of course, this is what my retort is.

If you, as he has now as a public ministry, because Tony Miano is there, if you put

something out publicly and then you just remove it and you don't

put anything up to say that, hey, I repent, I was wrong, something, right, to correct it, I think that's a

problem.

I don't think you should have this stuff up that you know that people are going to say, hey, wait a minute,

and then you just pull it without any explanation, right?

Because there are literally dozens of people that I have spoken to personally that will

say to the end of time that they remember reading those blogs with those words in them, but right now they are nowhere to be

found because they've all been deleted.

And let me just state for the record.

Before I hand it off to you guys, to date, Tony has never reconciled with me.

I've made multiple attempts.

I've seen him at G3 and I've tried to talk to him there.

He has made no attempt to reconcile with me ever.

And so to this day, we would be unreconciled because he has yet to admit to what he's

done wrong.

And so that's a problem.

I think it's a problem for, especially as you've mentioned that, and again,

I'm not, basically folks, so you know, what I know of this situation is in one blog article from

Chuck, some blog articles from Tony and some things that I heard Tony

and his pastor or Mike talk about on some Ask the Pastor podcast,

and basically last week's show.

So that's my knowledge.

Yeah, you really don't have much.

And I remember when you and I, we were at a speaking engagement somewhere.

And I remember we were sitting at the hotel in the evening and all of a sudden we're like, what is this from Chuck O 'Neill?

Like, because that was my only time ever meeting Chuck, of a first time meeting him, right?

And you know, it's, so I was floored by this, right?

Because the only memory I had was of Chuck, Tony, you and I sitting in that room

together at Grace Community Church, attempting reconciliation between you

and Tony.

And I did remember how Chuck was very loving during that entire

time.

He was loving towards you, loving towards Tony, loving towards the newbie in the

group.

And so, you know, I was very impressed by the way that that was all handled.

Chuck was very patient in how he listened as time went on.

And I was also very impressed with his humility when he, when literally the next time he

saw me was the following year at Shepherd's Conference and apologized for

what transpired and what didn't transpire and everything.

So, but you know, having said all that, we've had Chuck sitting here for a while.

He's got, we have a lot to say tonight.

You guys, but I just, I just want to say that I'm glad to have gotten to know Chuck O 'Neill.

Make sure that you give the church that you're at and where people can find you.

If you, actually, if one of you guys put it in the private chat, I'll put it up while Chuck's talking.

But I just, you know, this is the thing.

I mean, one of the things, Anthony, that has come out that people were saying is the fact that, I guess

people were, at Mike's church were saying that, you know, that you have to practice Matthew 18 and you

have to go through that.

Well, they have a man who's, I guess, in good standing in their church who doesn't follow

reconciliation.

And so that's something that I think we'll see if they take it serious.

But Chuck, I'm glad that you can come on.

I've really appreciated the relationship with you.

Anthony, I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you.

So, so Chuck, welcome on tonight.

So this is, this is -.

I think in the number of times we've talked in our lives, we're still on two hands, right?

Somewhere, we're in two hands.

But I've got, I have enjoyed getting to know you more as time has gone on.

So, you know, let's start at the beginning, right?

What's your brief testimony, Chuck?

Well, can I comment on the first time I met you before we get into that?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I just wanted to say that that was a tense meeting to start with, especially.

And I was blessed by how humble Andrew sat

beneath concerns and criticisms of his character that were really

no light issue, the way they were delivered.

And then, unfortunately, in the midst of that, and I think you'll recall, in the midst of that meeting, Tony got

very upset and actually just went completely silent and

wouldn't talk anymore at all.

And I didn't, I didn't understand it at the time.

And the meeting went okay.

Like Andrew said, it really wasn't reconciliation, but it went okay.

And we kind of shook hands at the end.

And that was that.

But it was later, just really a few months later, that I realized what had

gone on in Tony's mind there midstream as we were loving on

Andrew and bringing some concerns to him.

Tony realized, I believe, that he was compromised, that he was now supporting

much more serious issues with Mike Reed and his

meeting alone, systematically with the women and at least one teenage girl

of the church on a weekly basis for what he calls shepherding.

That is far more serious than what he was bringing to

Andrew.

And so he fell silent there.

And so as I thought through that, worked through that, and then saw you at the following year at the

Shepherd Conference once again, and yes, I was compelled to come and say, you know, things I think got a

little misconstrued and there's more to the story here.

Yeah.

And I appreciated that because it helped fill in some holes, you know, for us,

you know, and in what all had happened.

But yeah, so what's your brief testimony, Chuck?

You're a Marine, right?

Yes.

Marine for life.

Because I made the mistake of, you know, one of the guys I teach with, Mike Riddle, who's also a Marine, when I

said you were a Marine, oh boy, did I get corrected fast.

No, you're always a Marine.

Well, I was an atheist as a young man, raised in a United

Methodist Church and saw through that as being hypocritical.

They didn't represent the true God or the true gospel.

The pastor wore two pins on his lapels.

On one side, it was a pro -homosexual pin, on the other was a pro -abortion pin.

And so at 13 years of age, after going through the confirmation class of the United Methodist Church, I

went to the pastor and I just said, why?

Why would I be confirmed?

Why would I become a member of the church?

And he said, well, it would be a good thing to do.

It'd be pleasing to your parents too.

It would be, you know, it's good for society.

Religion is good for society.

And none of those answers satisfied my heart or mind.

And so at that point, I rejected it all, declared myself an atheist, wrote my own atheist

manifesto, gave it to my parents, stopped going to church and began to live

consistently with my atheistic or professed atheistic beliefs.

I am a reformed presuppositionalist at this point.

So my professed atheistic beliefs, and I can reflect back.

There were certain near -death experiences where I most definitely was not a true atheist

as there are no true atheists.

But that said, at 17, I joined the United States Marine Corps and it was their in -boot camp.

They gave me a Gideon New Testament.

And for the first time, all my normal sinful distractions were removed and I was blessed

to have nothing to read other than combat manuals or the Gideon New Testament.

And so the brief amount of time you have on a daily basis to do something

like read, I read the New Testament and it was some point during

boot camp in MCRD San Diego that the Lord granted me repentance and

faith in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

I was radically changed midstream in the middle of boot camp.

And I just remember the joy

of having the weight of my sin removed, the blackness of soul that I knew

removed from me.

And I wanted to serve Christ with all my heart, mind, and soul.

And I thought that, oh no, I've got the six -year contract for the Marine Corps.

What am I gonna do?

Now I'm torn.

And so I initially wanted out of the Marine Corps and took no action to that end, but soon realized that the

Lord had placed me exactly where He wanted me.

And then step -by -step, God's leading, continued to read the Word of God, was

deployed overseas.

No one was teaching the Word of God.

No one was holding a Bible study.

I was woefully unqualified, but if no one else is gonna teach the Bible and gather

Christians together, then here my Lord send me.

Began to teach the Bible on ship on the way to Somalia and then got

saved.

We started basically in a closet.

Then the chaplain gave us a larger room and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.

The chaplain eventually, seeing what he saw, he was, of all things, a United Methodist Navy chaplain, an

unsaved man, didn't believe the gospel, but he

believed in religious success.

So that's what he saw in his eyes.

So after months of this, he said, I was a corporal at the time, Corporal O 'Neill, would you like to preach on a Sunday?

And I said, no way.

I'm so unqualified.

But then the Lord convicted me that this man's not preaching the gospel.

You may be unqualified to be a pastor, but at least you know the gospel of Jesus

Christ.

And so I told the chaplain I would indeed preach.

And I studied and studied, and I preached this message in a closet on the ship

at least 10 times, full.

And the chaplain had said, 30 minutes, I want a 30 minute message.

And so it was 30 minutes exactly.

The fateful day came, and the chaplain comes up to me right before the service started, and he

says, 15 minutes.

And I said, sir, I can't do that.

He said, no, the fleet admiral has come in, and he likes a short sermon, 15 minutes.

And the truth was, I couldn't do it.

Now I can edit a little bit on the fly, but I preached a 30 minute sermon to the

second.

And it was no problem.

But that was my first sermon on the forward deck of the USS New Orleans with the fleet admiral there.

My colonel there, Colonel Outlaw, sitting there in front of me.

So that's my introduction.

My first open air message was actually when we got to Somalia.

We hit the beach, got out of the helicopters.

My lieutenant was afraid his Marines were gonna die.

He said, Corporal O 'Neill, preach us the gospel.

And that same Gideon New Testament the Lord had used to save my soul is the Gideon New Testament I used to preach

the gospel in the open air just outside of Mogadishu.

That's my testimony.

So one step after another, here I am 20 years,

21 year, I think veteran pastor at Beaverton Grace Bible Church,.

Suburb of Portland, Oregon.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah, when Andrew tells me to get up on the box and I've got 15 minutes, I take an hour, hour and a

half as well before he can come up and follow me.

So.

I can't hear Andrew.

Yeah, just picked up his, said, I gotta go.

You guys, you know, can you get off the box now?

But listen, is anybody, yeah.

Is anyone in your house using internet or anything you could do?

The stream is a little bit breaking up.

If that continues, you may wanna turn off the video.

You could just hit stop cam at the bottom if you need to do that.

But if there's no one watching movies or something like that streaming something else, you may -.

Okay. I could turn my phone just off.

Maybe that would.

I don't know if that would affect it or if your phone's a hotspot and you get better internet

that way.

Just, we wanna make sure we can hear whatever you're gonna say clearly.

Okay.

And you were saying -.

Was that pretty jumbled?

No, no, we could hear you pretty well, but it was just starting to get crackly at some points.

Okay.

So if it continues, what I'll do is I'll put something in the private chat to say, hey, turn off your camera.

Yeah, and we'll just listen to you on a black screen.

Yeah.

Because, you know, your phone might scare people anyway.

Exactly.

Less preferred.

Yeah.

So how did the transition happen from Marines to your church,

which you've been there for a while, right?

Beaverton Grace Bible Church.

Yes, yes.

So when it came time to get out of the Marine Corps, I expected to go to the Moody Bible Institute, primarily

because that's the only Christian school I knew of, and it was free.

And Marines aren't well -paid.

We weren't wealthy.

We had two children.

And so I was planning to go to Moody.

But I got out of the Marine Corps, went back to Iowa, where my wife is from.

And that's part of the story, actually.

My wife is from Keokuk, Iowa, which is about an hour from Davenport, Iowa, where Mike Reed

and Grace Fellowship Church is, and where Tony now is.

So went back to Iowa, did a year of college there, just getting some of the first -year

requirements out of the way.

Applied at Moody, went to visit Moody, and the Lord just made it so very clear I was

not supposed to go to Moody Bible Institute.

The Lord just said no.

And I stubbornly said yes, and went back again.

Just providence led in so many ways against it.

And so then I just cried out to the Lord, here am I, send me, where would you have me, Lord?

And we came out to Portland, Oregon, to visit Multnomah Bible College at the time.

Now it's a university.

I don't recommend it.

They have since departed from the faith in many ways.

But came out here to go to school there and to pastor in the Portland area.

Portland is known as the most atheist city in America.

That's really its boast.

And so it's a tremendous place to preach and minister the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So as to how I became a pastor, or the pastor of this church, a

friend of mine was the interim pastor here, and he was going to be gone over

Christmas.

And so he invited me to come preach in his stead.

I came just after Christmas, and I thought it was a New Year's sermon.

I thought they'd already preached a Christmas sermon.

This is going to be a New Year's sermon.

A New Year's sermon is more of a revival sermon, not a sweet baby in a manger, but more of a revival

sermon.

So I preached this really strong New Year's revival sermon, and they're expecting Jesus in the manger

there, little sweet baby Jesus, the incarnation of God.

But they were gracious and kind, and they took us to lunch and invited us back again.

I had noticed they had no Wednesday night Bible study, and I said, I'd love to teach.

Obviously, you've heard me preach.

Your interim pastor knows me well.

They said, please come and teach.

I began to teach six months later.

Folks were encouraging me.

My friend wasn't going to apply for the pastor at full time.

Folks encouraged me to apply.

I applied and have been here for over 20 years now, preaching the word.

You really don't look like you're that old to have preached at the same church for 20 years.

It's amazing.

Well, if you shave off all your gray, that's.

Yeah.

Maybe I ought to try that, shave the rest of my hair off.

So, you know, one of the things I really admire about you as a church is you

don't just speak about evangelism.

I mean, look, it's hard enough to find a church in America that will preach about

evangelism, that you have to do, and they'll teach it from the pulpit.

Not only do you do that, but I mean, you have a very evangelistic church.

I mean, it's really amazing.

How did you build that culture within the church?

Well, it started at the beginning, actually.

When I was interviewing for the pastorate, several meetings were held and all

sorts of questions were asked to this pastoral candidate.

But one of them was, what is your plan for the local church?

To which I answered clearly, I have no plan for the local church.

It's Jesus' church.

It's his plan.

And the plan is this, in a nutshell, Matthew 28, 18.

All authority has been given unto me in heaven and earth.

Go, therefore, make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.

Teach them to observe all things that I've commanded.

Lo, I'll be with you even to the end of the age.

I said, that's Christ's plan for the church.

And so that's what we will engage in if the Lord is pleased to call me as pastor here.

And so we did that from the beginning, from day one, we went door to door with the gospel,

leading teams out, training men one on one.

Sometimes I'd take two or three with me, but we'd only approach the door with two men.

But just knock on the door.

Hello, my name's Chuck.

This is my friend.

We're here to talk to you about Jesus Christ.

Or one of my favorite questions, if you were to die today, would you go to heaven?

People like to talk about themselves.

So yeah, I would go to heaven and here's why.

And so it's a great starting point.

And that's where we started with the gospel.

And then we began to go to the Jehovah's Witnesses Conference.

It's hard to share the gospel with Jehovah's Witnesses.

It's hard to find folks in the community and identify them as Jehovah's Witnesses.

Obviously, they go out two by two or three.

But when they have these regional conferences, they gather thousands here in Portland.

And so we would go there and speak with them and try to get the literature.

Of course, they won't receive the literature.

So the need to open air was obvious.

And so began to preach there at those conferences and to preach downtown in

Portland and the city square.

And then in God's timing and leading, later on as Tony

and I become friends and really what is pretty commonly seen as a

gospel abortion ministry now in abortion clinics was then just brand new,

just starting.

Tony was at the ground level on that.

And he came to Portland and we stepped out to the Lovejoy Synergy Center.

And we've been there ever since.

I think it's seven, eight years now.

Most Saturdays down there ministering at the Lovejoy Surgery Center, the most murderous abortion mill

in Portland, probably in the Pacific Northwest, excuse me.

But we also go to the local Planned Parenthoods and such.

And so we preach the parades.

We witness and end out tracks and talk to folks and carry the gospel forth.

But just the steady pastoral example and gathering men and dear sisters

as well, not to preach, but to of course, witness and talk with folks.

The whole body is blessed to be involved.

One simple way right here at the local church is to have a car wash.

We've done it for years where we have an absolutely free car wash, no donations accepted.

And people just can't believe you're not gonna take a donation.

They pull in, you wash their car.

And even though we've got signs that say no donations accepted, they insist on giving me donations, but we won't take them.

And that's our step into the gospel.

And we would invite them out of the car and we have chips for them and treats and soda and whatnot, all free.

We wanna share the gospel with them.

But the free car wash is an illustration of the grace of God that through

repentance and faith, no work in our part, but Christ finished working the cross, our sins are washed away

through the blood of the lamb.

And so various ways, getting the body of Christ involved,

entry level ways like the car wash right here in the church property where you can wash tires and listen to

those who are evangelizing.

You can handle the hose and listen and watch evangelism take place.

And before you know it, people realize, hey, I can speak to that.

I can talk to law centers about their precious souls and they step up and they get involved.

Wow, that's a great idea.

I might be stealing that one and bringing it to my house.

Well, that's -.

It really, it gets the whole body involved.

Yeah, which is the trick, right?

I mean, that's a hard thing to do to get people comfortable.

I mean, Andrew and I have made a career, so to speak so far in ministry, coming into churches

to help the pastor and how to teach people to be motivated in evangelism.

You know, to believe what God's word says, that this is your duty to go out and do this.

So -.

Well, you hit on a key there to help the pastor.

Paul writing to Timothy said, do the work of the evangelist.

And when the apostle Paul said to Timothy, do the work of the evangelist, he doesn't mean, oh, by the way, in the middle of your sermon,

now and again, make sure you mention the gospel.

No, to do the work of the evangelist, like Paul did it.

Follow me as I follow Christ, emulate Paul and the other apostles going there for,

finding lost people and bringing the gospel to them.

When the pastor and the elders are leading out and they can say like Paul before them, follow me as I follow Christ,

there's just a natural training there.

And where the sheep of the Lord's fold are led, they will follow and they'll get equipped.

And then they'll not be just sharing the gospel at those ministry times, but having been equipped, they'll be sharing the

gospel all throughout their lives.

Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful.

I think we might, I mean, obviously we have a different purpose for the show today.

And so we might have to have you back on for to learn more about this.

Cause I think this would be a wonderful topic to really walk through one day for the pastors who listen to this show, as

well as the lay folk who watch this show.

So, okay.

The reason why you're on, right?

As everybody now knows is this,

you were the person who I think was the initial questioner

of the courting of one of your closest friends in Tony Miano, right?

And I think courting is probably a wonderful word for it.

Cause that would be the perception that a lot of people have.

And certainly that is exactly what you thought, right?

That he was being courted by Pastor Mike Reed of Grace Fellowship Church in Davenport, Iowa.

I mean, Mike is at a good, solid church.

He has pastors who love him, care for him, has a body of believers around him that

care for him, love him, support him.

And like, it seems like that would be a dream situation for anybody to be in.

Not just any church.

And not just any church, right?

You're talking about Tony before Mike came, right?

What's that?

You're talking about Tony, where Tony was before Mike came.

Where Tony was, right, yeah.

Yeah, Tony was probably the finest church on the planet to my estimation, with

the finest preaching on the planet.

I mean, he was at Grace Community Church under Pastor John MacArthur and directly under the elder

that shepherded Tony directly was Phil Johnson.

And so, yes, Tony was in a wonderful place.

He and his family and his ministry, a place to be rooted, a place to grow, a place to

have his faith watered with the word of God.

Wonderful place.

And so hard to believe that Tony would exchange that

environment and that shepherding and those shepherds for

Grace Fellowship Church in Iowa and Mike Reed.

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, I'm convinced that if anything would happen to my pastor, that my wife would

sell everything before I knew what was going on and she'd be moving us out to there.

She'd be wise.

Yeah, she loves MacArthur.

She's been, she wants me to seminary.

She's like, you gotta go to master, you know, gotta go to masters.

And so, yeah, no, I think it would be a wonderful thing to be under that pastorate.

Of course, I love my own pastor and we love our church, you know, so I would not leave our church for that reason.

So, okay.

So Andrew, can you, I want you to put up a blog post for me because this blog post

is a really important one to understand.

And I hope that Andrew is there and not, yeah, there he is.

So Andrew, can you put up the blog post?

The one with the picture or not?

The one with the picture.

Thank you, yep.

So I'm gonna read this for those who can't see this, but Andrew's gonna be putting it up here

for us.

And yeah, this is it here.

So here's a blog post written by Tony Miano sometime before his move to Iowa.

I don't, based on the screenshot, I don't know what year this was, but obviously you guys are in a, you guys are

smiling.

You're in an embrace.

And so I think that means good things.

And so this is what's written by Tony.

Chuck O 'Neill of Beaverton Grace Bible Church is one of my best friends.

We are a lot alike, but I like him anyways.

And he's got a smiley face emoji there.

Pastor Chuck is an exceptional preacher, both in the pulpit and on the streets.

So before I read the last half of this, obviously Chuck, you guys had a great friendship.

And from what I can gather, a lot of mutual respect.

I mean, this picture, all the times you've invited him to your church for conferences,

you were the person of all the people he could have chosen at Grace Community Church.

You were the one he chose to come into that meeting for reconciliation between he and Andrew.

I, yeah, I mean, can you speak a little bit to that friendship?

How'd you guys meet and things like that?

Absolutely.

Let me say, I love Tony Miano.

Not loved, love Tony Miano.

Love him dearly.

He was one of my best friends and certainly one of my closest ministry partners and

what a joy it was to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ here in my own city and

Southern California and Philadelphia and many other cities, Seattle with my

dear brother, heralding forth the glories of Christ for the redemption of sinners.

What a joy, what a blessing.

No one has filled my pulpit more in my stead than Tony.

No one has been called uncle by my children other than

Tony.

Tony at one point started a blog for a stuffed animal

that his daughter gave him and one of my daughter's stuffed animals because the stuffed animals were

friends.

This man was and is dear to me.

What has transpired is shocking.

What has happened is heartbreaking and it is my

great hope and my continual prayer that my dear friend will yet

return to his former theological and moral senses and that he will

one day again, call me friend and brother and cease to call me Judas

and the other things he's referred to me as.

So that is my hope and my joy because I love him dearly.

There are some people who think I'm just some guy.

They may read a blog I wrote about this issue or the three blogs I wrote about this issue and they think I'm some guy on the

internet reviling Tony Miano and Mike Reed.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am Tony's friend and I'm fighting for him,

not against him because I love him and I love his wife and I love his family and more than that, of

course, because I love Christ and the church at large, but I am his dear friend.

And I brought one of Tony's books, his last book, Should She Preach?

And you'll see there, I don't know if you can see that.

Oh yeah, Forward by Pastor Chuck O 'Neill.

Tony put there above his name, he put my name and

that I wrote the Forward and that book is available on Amazon right now and the Forward is up there on Amazon.

Anyone can go read it.

And in that Forward, I talk about -.

You may not be up there by tomorrow now.

Well, I was up there, but I talk about my love for Tony and our

friendship and our unity in Christ and in sound doctrine and where I met

Tony.

In that Forward, I speak at length to where I met him.

I met him years ago at the Shepherd's Conference.

I've been going to the Shepherd's Conference for 20 years.

When I met Tony, he was a sheriff's deputy, that's all.

A sheriff's deputy that loved Jesus sitting in the back of Grace Community Church at the Shepherd's Conference.

We met every year, we talked every year, we shook hands, we got to know each other.

Then Tony became a chaplain in the sheriff department and I thought, oh, praise God, the Lord's raising him

up as a minister of the gospel.

And the years keep unfolding.

Then Tony retires from the sheriff's department and he's now on staff with Ray Comfort.

And I see him at the Shepherd's Conference, I go visit him there at Living Waters and

praise God, the Lord's continued to raise up my friend and brother who I met at Shepherd's

Conference.

And our friendship just grew over the years until he was coming to Portland regularly and in my

pulpit and part of our evangelism conferences on an annual basis.

Yeah, and you know, this is what I find fascinating because in the same blog post, right, that talks about

the love that he, I can sense the love he has for you in that blog

post, right?

But here's the second part of his blog post.

And this is the part that really shocked me when I first saw this in light of everything that's

gone on.

So the second part of his blog post, for those who can't read it on the screen, he, meaning you, Pastor Chuck O 'Neill,

is a diligent student of the word of God, has an amazing recall of scripture and is

utterly fearless when it comes to confronting anything or anyone

who would try to rob Christ of his glory or harm the bride of Christ or mislead

the lost with false teaching.

Those are strong words on that blog post.

And this is exactly why we are having you on today because this is a huge compliment that Tony gave you

in the blog.

And obviously, the reason why you're here tonight, the reason why you wrote those

blogs four plus years ago is because you

saw false teaching.

And so what I would like you to do is like,

this may sound like a hard question to ask, but in terms of, I mean, there's a

lot of Christians that go about everyday life and they just, they read, praise God, they read their Bibles every day and they

apply them to their lives.

But sometimes there's a disconnect in taking that word and being able to say,

that doesn't sound right over there, right?

I mean, we see this at the abortion mill where Christians are confused over Catholicism.

We see this with Abby Johnson in her movie, a Catholic who has no clue what the gospel is and Christians have rallied around

her without talking about any type of separation between what we believe and the false

gospel that they believe.

So, I mean, how did the Lord open this avenue up for you and really

being able to discern the false teaching that Tony talks about here in his blog?

So, if I understand your question correctly,

how did I begin to discover Mike Reed's false teaching?

I would say false teaching in general.

Like what happened that allowed you to really start to see those things?

There was a point in my life that things were opened and like you just see it all

clearly, right?

Right, okay.

What you just said there is actually one of my prevailing convictions from the moment that I was

saved.

Everything was fuzzy and gray and it suddenly came into focus and was clear.

Everything made sense.

Suddenly there was truth.

There's a God of truth.

There's a word of truth.

There is truth in this universe.

And without God, there is no truth.

There's only speculation.

There's only feeling.

There's only emotion.

There's only opinion, individual or consensus.

And so suddenly there was truth.

And by the grace of God, I grabbed onto that truth and studied that

truth.

And that truth burns in my heart and mind.

And when I look at issues, I tend to see black and white.

I see truth and air.

I'm not looking for the middle ground.

I'm not looking for the gray.

I'm not looking for nuance.

I'm looking for the say of the Lord and how does it apply?

And that's just how the Lord has wired me.

And so that's how I go about ministry.

Yeah, that's really cool.

I mean, for me, I got saved in a weak church and it took a few years.

And what ended up happening is I was started reading my Bible really intently.

I was exposed to Voddie Bauckham and John MacArthur.

And so I'm reading my Bible.

It matches up with what Voddie and John are saying.

And then I'm listening to our pastor of their old mega church.

One of these ain't like the other and it's him.

And that is what really opened my eyes and just has, God's done amazing

wonders through some of those men and the teaching early on and just has opened my eyes to all this stuff.

So let me speak to that.

Like you early on, I'm reading the word.

I'm grabbing ahold of this truth and certain truths come more quickly.

The centrality of the gospel became very clear.

But then I'm listening to K -Wave in Southern California.

I mean, I'm a Marine.

I'm in Southern California for six years.

I'm listening to K -Wave radio.

Can I say that real good?

Okay.

And I'm listening to a lot of different preachers like

Chuck Smith and Raul Reese and various individuals, even Chuck

Swindoll.

And then there was this other guy, John MacArthur on K -Wave.

And as time went on, I began just through the spirit of God to discern

this wasn't really biblical or wasn't as biblical.

This wasn't meaty.

It wasn't feeding my soul.

That was questionable, but over and over again, consistently, I found that

Pastor MacArthur's work, ministry, his preaching was just giving you the meat of the word, just setting it up on the

table there, prepared for you, diced up a little bit, no extra

preservatives or spices, giving you the word of God consistently.

And as time went on, I gravitated away from certain preachers and ministries and

gravitated toward that solid ministry of the word.

And so from conception, spiritually speaking there, the Lord used the radio

ministry of Pastor John MacArthur to begin to build in that discernment.

Yeah, amen to that.

So many people that he has affected for the greater good.

It's amazing.

So as we get into some of our harder questions tonight, what are your goals?

I mean, look, Tony, as you said, love is not a past tense thing for Tony.

What is your goal for being on tonight for both Tony, number one, and then number two,

the elders of Grace

Fellowship Church in Davenport, Iowa?

Right, right.

And so some years ago we had a phone call with Mike,

Tony, excuse me, and Bobby McCurry.

And at the outset of that phone call, I gave my goals for that phone call.

So I'll just restate those.

I'm addressing these issues as Tony's friend and brother.

I'm addressing these issues as a member of Tony's Cross Encounters Advisory Board.

Now I'm a defunct member.

I've been ousted, but the whole advisory board has been ousted.

Mike Reed is now the advisor over Tony's ministry.

I'm addressing these issues as a pastor for the protection of the sheep of the Lord's fold here in Beaverton,

in Davenport, Iowa, and at large.

And I really truly mean that.

And so that's why I'm on here on a personal level, on a pastoral level.

And then beyond that, the specific goals, my hope truly, without pulling

any punches or any ambiguity, my

hope is that Grace Fellowship Church will be dissolved, that

it will no longer exist because I don't believe it is a church.

I believe it is a cult.

I believe it is dangerous.

I believe the men at the helm are wolves and sheep's clothing.

And the evidence to that end abounds.

It's not a question.

It's not a he said, she said, or he said, he said situation.

The evidence abounds.

And so the dissolution of the so -called church in Davenport, Iowa is

the goal.

That Mike Reed, Nick Roland, and Tyler Bolkema will

step down and very likely need to repent and actually truly confess Christ as Lord and be saved

and go sit in a back pew someplace of a true church, that the members of

the church, the attenders of the church will be unbeguiled, that their eyes will be open to

what they're caught up in.

It is not biblical Christianity.

And the men that are over them are not biblical pastors.

They're abusers of the sheep of the Lord's fold.

They twist the word of God.

I have termed their ministry, and I believe the term is correct.

I know for some it'll be inflammatory.

I don't mean it to be inflammatory.

I mean it to be clear.

It is a predatory perversion of pastoral ministry and the Christian church.

Let me say that again.

Mike Reed's ministry and the Grace Fellowship

Church in Davenport, Iowa is a predatory perversion of pastoral

ministry and the Christian church.

It must come to an end.

And so my goal is that God will open the eyes of those caught up beneath this, set them

free, that they will flee to true churches and find healing there, find

hope there, find joy there, and truly glorify Christ there, advancing the

kingdom of Christ in the earth and not the kingdom of Mike in the earth.

As far as Tony, now he would be part of that as far as the congregation, but my goal is that my dear

brother would be set free from this, that he would return to his former sound morality and

theology.

I mean, my brother, my friend once had an email tagline.

Every single email he sent out had this at the bottom.

It said that this email is subject to the purview and reading of my wife so as to

avoid any undue expectation of privacy and impropriety

to be above reproach, every single email.

And so this man, this dear brother, who once had this biblical high standard of

purity where he wouldn't even let an email be perceived as a private communication with a

woman now condones and supports his pastor, which I don't

even want to call him that, he's not a pastor, condones this wolf in sheep's

clothing, meeting systematically alone with the women of the church on a weekly basis to

give them counsel on their marriage, to give them counsel on their sex life, to give them

explicit sexual stories from his own life to help encourage them to speak about

their sex life.

He talks to them about frequency of sex and satisfaction in sex, and he gives them

ideas on how to increase their satisfaction.

This is so far outside of anything acceptable.

It's appalling, it's egregious, it's terrifying that he has gotten away with this for this

long.

It must come to an end.

And so let me say at the outset, for the brothers and sisters, the genuine sheep of the Lord's fold that are

caught up beneath Mike right now, hear me, brothers and sisters, that is not ministry,

that is perversion.

It's Mike Reed manifesting his perverse heart and abusing the

pastorate.

Flee from it, flee from it.

Don't sit beneath it anymore.

So obviously, Chuck, you made a lot of really strong claims in there.

Very strong claims, and obviously I have to hold you to those now, right?

And so as we go through the show, we're going to go through what you would call

evidence that is first person type evidence that you're gonna go through

here.

And so I'm gonna hold you to that now because these are strong allegations.

So as we get started into this, this is something that I wanna read here that comes from your blog

post.

And so keep in mind that this blog, your first one was written in

August of 2016, August 19th, 2016.

And this is, I believe, before Tony made his final move because he moved sometime, I think a couple of

months after this.

And so in the first paragraph, you wrote this, all that follows is written as a friend, a

brother, a cross -encounters advisory board member, and a pastor.

It is written out of love for Christ, his gospel, his church, and our brother, Tony Miano.

My church and family have prayerfully and financially supported Tony for over four years.

Beaverton Grace Bible Church has welcomed Tony to stand behind the pulpit many times.

This would have been Tony's fourth year as our keynote speaker at the Biblical Church Evangelism Conference.

I've been blessed to spend hundreds of hours proclaiming Christ with Tony on the streets of Portland, Seattle, Los

Angeles, Burbank, Hollywood, and Philadelphia.

I've served on Tony's advisory board for several years, and this is my final act in that capacity.

I am greatly pained by the necessity of writing this article, but Tony's excellent and often given

counsel regarding friendship evangelism has application outside of evangelism.

I must love my friend more than I love our friendship.

Sounds like very loving words.

I would say, as anybody reading this, and the first thing that I thought when this came across

Facebook, and I read it for the first time years ago.

And so following that, you said, Tony addresses his recent loss of friends

who decided to disassociate with him over hearsay and secondary theological issues when he didn't measure up to

their sinful expectations.

So in order to give our listeners a proper context as to what happened, I wanna establish a

bit of a timeline for people, something we did not do last week.

So I wanna make sure that we do this this week very well.

So Tony wrote a blog article in December, 2016, after his move to Iowa was completed.

So let me ask this question.

When did Tony first, or when are you aware of Tony first coming into contact with Pastor Mike Reed?

I believe it was at the Shepherds Conference in 2015.

And as Kevin Jant shared, both in his blog and

in the interview last week, that Kevin Jant was part of that team

that came for the express purpose of recruiting Tony and getting it into Iowa.

It was not a casual thing.

It was not something that just happened.

It was deliberate.

It was planned.

And they carried it out.

And I was there with Tony as a close friend and brother at the conference

when he met them that first time.

So you're saying that he actually met Mike Reed for the first time.

Was there any type of contact between Tony and Mike before that?

Was Mike a supporting church?

I believe a few months ahead of Shepherds Conference, they had contacted him from Iowa via

email, maybe a phone call even had preceded it.

And they were interested in supporting him.

And so those first few times they met at the Shepherds Conference, they were talking to him about supporting him.

And I was privy to some of that.

Okay, so you had a little more inside knowledge on some of that stuff going on.

Yes, Kevin and I were both there at the beginning on opposite sides, so to speak.

And now he's joined the other team.

Yes, praise God.

Kind of like we'd be in World War I or World War II.

Praise God.

And that's actually what gives me much hope.

And I want other folks to realize that as well.

Kevin was steeped in this.

Kevin was on board 100%.

Kevin was fully, and I don't say this to judge him, but to be clear, beguiled by Mike.

He was a defender of Mike's practices and doctrines, regardless of how dangerous they are.

But God in his grace opened Mike's eyes, opened Jen John's eyes as well, and

set them free from that.

And now they're completely on the other side trying to rescue others out from that as well and

prevent anyone else from getting caught up and trapped in it.

And so he was there on that side helping recruit Tony.

I was on the other side.

I also wanna say that in meeting Mike at the Shepherds Conference 2015 for the first time,

that's when he first taught me his doctrine of holy kissing by

shaking my hand, pulling me in, and kissing me without warning or permission.

And I was shocked, but ultimately I've heard there are those who

practice that.

And so I pressed on, but Mike kisses men and women

without warning and without permission.

And it ought not be, it ought not be.

Mike knows that this is not a common doctrine or position, especially the kissing of women.

You don't go around kissing other men's wives or daughters for that matter.

Yeah, and we're gonna get into that in a moment.

I don't care, Andrew, don't put it on the record.

If anyone tries to kiss my wife or me, they'll wake up from the ground unconscious from

being choked out.

I'm just saying, don't try it, Chuck.

Another fear.

He's really timely with those.

He doesn't last too long.

I know what it is, actually.

With COVID -19, all the jujitsu gyms are closed.

And so Andrew hasn't gotten to choke anyone for some time, which I'm also a jujitsu practitioner,

Andrew.

We'll have to get together on that, on that mat, on that issue sometime.

Yeah, that'd be fun.

We'll do a fundraiser out of that or something.

Yes.

So, okay.

So Mike started supporting Tony a few months before Shepherd's Conference, comes out in Shepherd's Conference, which you believe,

whether at the time or sometime shortly thereafter, that it was for a recruiting trip and you were privy to some of

that information.

When is it that Tony went out and visited?

Because from what I could gather, it was November, 2015.

Was that the first time he went out to go visit Pastor Mike Reed?

Or were there earlier times that you're aware of?

How did all this come about?

And what, yeah.

So Shepherd's Conference is in March.

I believe, yes, it was that following November that they invited him with Maria, his wife, to come for the

first time to visit Grace Fellowship Church in Iowa.

And while he was there, he stayed with Mike in his home.

And he, you've already referenced it, but no, it was Andrew who referenced it.

But when he came back, he wrote this blog article.

And in that blog article, he outlined his experience there

in brief and just that it seemed to be a deeper level of holiness that he had never seen.

And yet Maria felt that perhaps it was legalism.

In that blog article, he went on to say that because of the experience there, that

Maria had a crisis of faith and he wasn't certain she was saved

anymore.

And everyone who knew Tony who read that article, including Phil Johnson, myself, and others,

were alarmed by this.

One, it was kind of a tell -all in a very personal way about his wife.

And the appropriateness of that was questionable.

But two, Maria was a lifelong Christian at the time.

Maria was a member of Grace Community Church under John MacArthur at the time.

Maria had been married to Tony Miano, a minister of the gospel, for many, many years

at that time.

So for her to suddenly, after visiting this church in Iowa, to have this

crisis of faith and be announced as very likely unsaved was very problematic, very troubling

to many.

Yeah, I mean, and his blog actually said this, because, okay, most of these blogs have been removed.

And this one I think may have been removed as well, but there's screenshots of this one.

It says, Tony explained a newsletter blog that at first he and his wife didn't know if what they

were experiencing under Mike Reed's shepherding in Iowa was legalism or a deeper level of holiness.

Tony quickly came to believe it was a pursuit of holiness to a level that they'd never experienced.

He then went on to say that his wife was not as quick to come to that conclusion and had significant crisis of faith as a result of her time under

Mike Reed's pastoral care.

So this is what you had written, but based off of that blog that he had

written that has disappeared now.

But I know that that's where concerns jumped up.

So again, with a timeline, it's March, 2015, that Shepherds Conference

happens.

The same Shepherds Conference that us four actually met is the same Shepherds Conference that Mike Reed and

several people from his church were also at and doing some recruiting of Tony.

In the meantime, Mike is supporting, or GFC is supporting Tony in some way financially.

And Tony now comes out there in 2015.

So this is a, November, 2015 is a full year before Tony actually makes the move, which means

that there were alarm bells that were going off by you, by Phil Johnson.

What other people had some alarm bells going off?

Were there any others at that point?

Um, there were other men that were concerned about that blog and

the effect that Mike's church and Mike himself had on Tony and his

wife.

But our concern wasn't, it wasn't fully developed because our understanding, our knowledge

of what took place there was far from complete.

I asked Tony very specific questions about what took place in Iowa.

And I remember having a discussion with my wife about the situation and she too was very concerned.

I remember Tony has stayed in my home many times and my wife loves him, I love him, my kids love him.

So we were alarmed by what we're hearing.

And we discussed it and we said, Tony has traveled the world.

He's traveled back and forth over the United States.

He's been to many, many churches and he is seeing all that's out there under the sun in the

realm of evangelical Christianity.

And so what happened in Iowa?

What is this deeper level of holiness that has gotten a grip on him?

So I asked him, I thought surely Tony's not following for, falling for some Midwestern King James

only, you know, skirt only, him

only, piano only kind of deal.

And no, it's not that.

So I kept asking him and he really couldn't articulate what it was.

And now in retrospect, years later, of course, I really believe he didn't want to articulate what it was

because if he had told me what was going on at that church, I would have been appalled and all the more alarmed

at the outset.

But Mike's hooks were already getting into Tony.

The beguiling had already begun and Tony had already moved past wondering whether this was a

deeper level of holiness or legalism and determined it's a deeper level of holiness and I

want it.

And I wanna warn folks beyond this particular issue that that is a danger.

It's a danger.

And there've been many movements in the history of Christ Church of deeper holiness or deeper

Christian life or deeper spirituality or some like

explanation, but it never pans out that way.

It's not a deeper holiness.

It's not a richer Christian life.

It's always enslavement.

It's always legalism.

And sometimes it ends up being really a very dangerous circumstance,

a very controlling circumstance where you give up more and more of your life

and your freedom and you come further and further, a very powerful

individual in his teaching.

And that's exactly what's going on there in Iowa.

Hey, Anthony, I'm butting in just to correct one thing that you had mentioned.

You mentioned there were some people upset with this at the time of Shepherd's Conference.

You included Phil Johnson in that.

So Phil had called me today about this stuff just so we're clear.

Phil did not know anything about Mike Reed at the time?

No, I didn't say Shepherd's Conference.

This would have been after Tony's visit in November of 2015.

Okay, even after that, though, I think what Phil told me was that Tony came to him and said, hey, he wanted to go to this

church.

Can he go?

It was just a blanket, like he didn't, Phil said he knew nothing about the church, didn't know Mike Reed at

all at that time.

He just was like, well, we don't restrict people from being able to leave the church.

It wasn't until after he was out at the church that he learned about some things about Mike Reed.

And so I think that he may not have been in that category early on, that's all.

Yeah, but I think what Chuck was saying was in regards to the blog post, right?

Not about Mike Reed in person.

Again, we're all frail human beings.

And so as best as I can reflect, Phil was one of those who had immediately

contacted Tony and said, hey, this blog post is not appropriate.

It was, yeah, the blog post that you wrote is what got him.

If I misheard, then I'm sorry.

Not Chuck's blog post, the one that Tony wrote earlier regarding the first visit to Iowa where

Maria was struggling with her assurance and they were deciding whether this was deep level of holiness.

So, and that's okay if we don't, I'm trying to figure out what this timeline is in general.

So we're not trying to really, yeah.

So thank you for the correction, Andrew.

We're just trying to draw some of this stuff back out because it's really easy to just, hey, what's the timeline?

And yet it's really difficult to have to go back years and all these things back together.

So, okay.

So the best of your recollection then is when did you,

when did you just start to do some research into Pastor Mike Reed?

Like when, like what started it off?

Was it this blog post that did it or was there more that happened?

Because again, this is almost a two year period from that first Shepherds Conference to the time he moves.

There's a lot that goes on in two years there.

Right, definitely.

And so let me elaborate further.

I addressed earlier the idea that some people have that I'm just some guy attacking

Tony on the internet.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

I was one of Tony's closest friends and I still love the man dearly and I'm

fighting for him, not against him.

But second to that, another misconception out there that's been put forth by some is I'm just some guy attacking

Mike Reed.

Mike Reed was a friend also, not like Tony by any means.

But in Mike Reed's attempts to reach Tony and recruit Tony,

I happened, I'm close to Tony there at the Shepherds Conference.

And so I met Mike Reed as well.

And like I said, Mike planted his kiss on me and I got to know Mike and I got to know

Nick Roland and I got to know Kevin Yont there at the Shepherds Conference.

And in their desire to get close to Tony, they also got close to me.

So much so that at our annual evangelism conference, the following year, Mike Reed

sent out a large contingency from Iowa.

So this is from Iowa to Oregon.

They sent, I don't know, 10 people, 12 people, 2 ,000 miles to attend an evangelism

conference in Portland, Oregon.

And what was the date of that, Chuck?

When did that happen?

I'm not sure on the date.

I'm asking some really doozies, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That was either, well, so we met at the Shepherds Conference in March.

That might've been that immediate evangelism conference that next summer in like September of

2015.

If it wasn't, it probably was actually, it was probably that September, 2015.

But they came out, they rented a house, and they invited, they're very loving.

They invited anyone who was coming from out -of -state to come and stay with them,

which I thought was very kind at the time.

And so some folks coming from out -of -state did stay with them.

They came into the church, and there were some things that I noted, but as Christians, we try to be

gracious.

We're not all the same.

People have different convictions and different proclivities.

But now again, in retrospect, I see clearly, they didn't just attend the evangelism conference.

They came to our evangelism conference, and they were evangelizing my church, people in my church.

They were sharing the gospel with attenders and members of my church.

They were sharing the gospel with attenders of the evangelism conference.

They were so aggressive in their evangelistic zeal.

They were sharing the gospel with my adult son.

Hi, this is Pastor Chuck's son, and they're

engaging him with the gospel.

And someone might say, well, that sounds wonderful.

Well, no, in retrospect, that's what they do.

They attempt to strip Christians of their salvation and bring them beneath

Mike's definition of Christianity and salvation.

And then Mike gets them saved again.

And that's a pattern of Mike's ministry.

And he has a series of questions that he asks people, and pretty much anyone, any Christian,

pretty much under Mike's scrutiny and under his questions will come out the other side of it, having a crisis of faith

as Maria had when Tony and she visited Iowa.

So they came to our church.

They were part of the conference.

Some odd things happened, but not so much so that we were shocked and appalled.

You just note it, you tuck it away.

The following Shepherds Conference, they're there again.

We're there, we're ministering the gospel at UCLA on the campus there.

I noted some strange things there, but again, not wanting to be judgmental, just

kind of tucked it away.

But one of the strange things I noted there was one of Mike's favorite evangelism questions

is this.

Do you masturbate?

That's one of Mike's evangelism questions.

So you heard him say that, right?

Yes.

Several times, okay.

So he asks college students this question, way too intrusive,

entirely unnecessary.

We can address the sin nature.

We can address specific sexual immorality, of course, but we don't need to go around asking

people these explicit pointed questions, really inappropriate.

But tucked it away, and it's in the context of a busy day.

I'm preaching, I'm evangelizing, I'm handing out tracts, thousands of people.

And so it doesn't catch in your mind in the way that it

should until it all starts to come together.

So let me just make sure we have this clear.

March, 2015 is the first time you met Mike and

Tony met Mike in person.

Then we fast forward to later that summer, early fall, you have an evangelism conference to which

many people from his church come out to attend the evangelism conference.

Yes.

Then Tony goes and visits Mike a couple months later, because that's November, 2015.

And then we come back around now to the next Shepherds Conference, which would be March -ish, 2016,

and you're beginning in March, 2016, to which you are referencing now.

Were there any other visits that Tony had with Mike in that time, or is it just this one?

Yes, no, I believe two more times he flew alone to Iowa.

And one of those times was very pivotal.

Mike had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery while Tony was there.

And Tony stepped into a lot of ministry, and that really helped yoke him, unfortunately, to

Mike and the ministry there.

It was shortly thereafter that he made the decision to move there.

And when he made that decision, I was the first one he called.

Being close friend and ministry partner, he wanted, before he announced it public or told anyone else, he

called me.

I was with my wife shopping, actually, and stepped away and took the phone call.

And I actually said, well, that's wonderful, you know?

Because I, again, these things have been noted but kind of shelled, and Mike comes off

as a solid Reformed pastor.

He's good at what he does.

I said earlier, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing.

I fully believe that.

No apology for it.

But the issue with wolves in sheep's clothing is they, in order to be effective, have to have good sheep's clothing.

Mike has exceptional sheep's clothing.

His church website is Exceptional Sheep's Clothing.

When you meet him, he can talk the talk.

He can walk the walk.

You begin to see these aberrant things over time, but he

is a smooth operator.

And so I said, well, that's wonderful, Tony.

But I did say this.

I said, you know, let me, since you're talking now a whole nother level of commitment and involvement with Mike, as

your friend, as your brother, and as a member of your advisory board, let me do some due diligence.

And let me get on Sermon Audio, listen to his sermons, get on his website.

Just before you fully commit, let me do this out of love for you and your

family and your ministry.

So that's when I really began to look into Mike Reed, not with some nefarious goal,

but just wanting to be responsible as a brother and as an advisory board member.

So what period of time was that in?

So it was after Shepherd's Conference 2016.

When did he finally tell you that he was planning on moving to Iowa?

Yeah.

You know, my wife is great with details and dates.

But yeah, with some research, I'm sure I could figure it out or maybe you'll find my old phone and look at the records

on it.

But I mean, obviously.

Yeah, there's a short time period because I think it was in August, 2016, according to

the, you have a phone call that occurred, which we're gonna get into a little bit later, all recorded,

anybody can listen to this, but it's between you, Bobby McCreery, Tony

Miano, and Mike Reed.

And I believe that that happened in August of 2016,

which is where Tony, I mean, at the end of the phone call, anybody can listen to this, like I am going, essentially,

there's nothing you can do about it.

So somewhere between Shepherd's Conference in March 2016 and August is where he told

you this.

Almost certainly late April or May.

Okay, and so at that point, were you the first person he told or were there others that he had told too?

According to him, I was the first person that he told.

And you decided to then start researching?

Because, I mean, look, somebody comes to you as an advisor.

Like when Andrew has ideas, I'm a board member, when he has ideas, he comes to me and usually I'm the

first one he talks to on the board.

And I say, yeah, yeah, you know, we should talk about some more.

Maybe we'll get the other guys.

Andrew, that's bad, like, don't do that, right?

And so we have that type of relationship.

And so I would assume that that's, it sounds like that's what you and Tony had, right?

He comes to you first to say, Chuck, you know, I'm gonna do this.

And you, in your loving kindness, who he appointed as an advisor, why?

Because, I have to go back to this, Pastor Chuck O 'Neill, in Tony's own words, is a

diligent student of the word of God, has an amazing recall of scripture, and is utterly fearless when it comes to confronting

anything or anyone who would try to rob Christ of his glory or harm the bride of Christ or mislead the lost

with false teaching, right?

And so that blog post summarizes part of who he thinks

you are as somebody who knows how to do this.

And so you took it upon yourself at that point as his good friend, a man whom you've loved, who's been in your home,

who's your kid's called uncle, right?

I mean, the list goes on and you start to do research.

Correct.

So what did you first discover?

I mean, tell us about how your research went in, because obviously, the first we all

hear about it is we read a blog that you write, which I think also came out

August 2016, your first one before he moved.

So yeah, what happened?

How'd you find this out?

So just sermon audio, YouTube, just looking at his teachings.

He had a series of Ask the Pastor teachings that have all been deleted at this point.

But the Ask the Pastors, I believe were both on YouTube and video form and on sermon audio and audio form.

They're all gone now.

And his regular sermon audio sermons, as well as a bunch of their kind of

outbreaks and odd things.

And that needs some explanation.

And so what I found out right away is that Mike does some things that none of the rest of us do.

He doesn't just put his sermons in sermon audio.

He puts up, and now most of these have been taken down as well.

They've been deleted.

He puts up these after -sermon discussions that he has over the sermon with the

congregation, where they give a mic to the congregation and different congregants come up, men and

women, and they ask questions or make points, see what they got out of the sermon.

And so you hear more teaching as they apply what was preached in those after

-sermon deals.

But then there's also confessions of sin.

Mike records congregants confessing their sins, sometimes of

a sexual nature.

And he put those up on sermon audio as well.

I remember in particular, there was this testimony of a man.

His name, I don't remember.

I wouldn't tell it if I did.

But one of the congregants had gone overseas.

I believe it was China on business and went to a massage parlor that wasn't just a massage

parlor for massage, and then got to thinking about what he was doing as a married man and that he

needed to flee from this.

And he did before anything wicked happened, he fled for it.

But then he came back and confessed his sin to Mike, and Mike had him stand before the church and tell his sin in all its detail, even

going to the point of talking about how he thought about laying there without any clothes on, using explicit terms, and the

women putting their hands on his body.

And I thought, wow, way too much information.

I cannot imagine having a congregant stand before the church and confess that before his wife,

before other women and children.

That's just not gonna be healthy for the body of Christ and not appropriate in any way.

And then to put it up on sermon audio, I thought, my goodness, what are we doing here?

And so those kind of things stood out along with many

unusual doctrines, aberrant doctrines, and appalling

and predatory doctrines and practices.

And so we're gonna get into a number of those, but let me address the first allegation here, right?

So that there is confession of sin publicly.

Now, I know that there is a wide variety of views on how confession of sin should be done.

There's some churches that the pastor tells you to do it.

There's some churches, one that I fill in on Sundays for a dear friend of mine in

the area here in Cleveland, several times a year at least.

And he has a confession of sin, but that public confession of sin is

he gives some type of a 30 second talk about sin and its grievous nature to

God.

And he then had people bow their heads and they confess privately to God themselves,

right?

And 30 seconds of silence is up and then he continues on the service.

A very tasteful way of doing it.

Now, there are, now Mike would say, he's told me this, that

there is nothing sinful about people confessing their sin

out loud.

Now, I would ask you this, Chuck.

Now, look, this is me who's not a pastor, right?

I'm an apologist, like to think that I have some wisdom in terms of the counsel of God.

I don't think it's wise.

I don't think it's wise to, whether it's sinful or not, we can discuss that.

But I mean, first and foremost, it's just not wise to speak of sin, especially of

sexual nature.

Cause you've heard these things, right?

You've heard them on Sermon Audio yourself.

It's the only way I could know about them.

Right, yeah.

And men like Kevin Jaunt have confirmed that, yes, that happened.

How could I know about it?

Except that he had loaded it on Sermon Audio for the world to hear.

Yeah, and I had several people confirm that to me too, that public confession of sin had made it to Sermon Audio in places.

But even if it didn't go to Sermon Audio, the fact that these are being confessed to the church,

I would see that to be quite dangerous.

I mean, let's say a female, a pretty female gets up there and talks about any type of sexual sin,

what's the first thing the teenage boys in the church are going to be thinking?

Exactly.

Right, I mean, like this is, what's the first thing a lot of adult men are gonna be thinking, right?

Pictures just automatically come into mind.

So I can see how this could be really problematic.

So as a pastor, Chuck, how do you view this public confession of sin?

I view it as totally inappropriate.

I view it as harmful to the body of Christ as a whole, harmful to the individual families,

potentially harmful to the children.

I believe, as you were talking about, kind of theoretically of a young lady getting up and

confessing some kind of sexual sin, that that could make her a target, but we don't have to speak theoretically.

Mike did have a teenage girl stand before the congregation and confess

masturbation at night in her room, in front of the congregation, had her confess

using porn and masturbation.

And again, the incredible

audacity of doing that, and I'm gonna use the word a lot in our conversation,

but there's something perverse in not

recognizing how inappropriate that is.

Something is perverse in you as a pastor.

Every pastor's right mind would be appalled.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop.

If that was just happening, if he didn't know it was going to happen, if he didn't encourage it to happen, any pastor's right mind

would be standing, saying, no, stop, that's not appropriate.

That's too much information.

These children don't need to hear that.

These men don't need to hear that.

Maybe some accountability, lady partners, but we don't need to be taking this before the church.

And then for Mike to put that up on sermon audio just takes it to a whole

nother level.

And he did it with her name.

So she stood before the congregation with a mic in hand, confessed this with her name,

and they put it up on sermon audio.

Yeah.

Now I have read a testimony from this person who says that

she was not coerced to do this or anything, but you already answered the question I was gonna ask, which is,

let's say that she was not coerced.

She did this of her own free will, she wanted to do this.

I mean, should a pastor say, no, don't do that?

Or if she's in the middle of doing it already, stop, right?

I mean, so you already answered that question, which I think is the wise thing to do.

Certainly.

In a situation like that.

Right, let's walk through this in our mind just a little bit.

So if a teenage girl stood before the men and women, boys and girls of the church, and confessed to

reading romance novels, watching porn and masturbating in her bedroom at night,

would that not hit the radar of the leadership of the church?

Whoa, something happened here that we don't want to happen again.

It would, unless things are going on in this church and ministry that are of a perverse nature

regularly.

So this should have hit the radar.

Whoa, that shouldn't have happened.

It didn't hit the radar.

And I believe because it's Mike's pattern of ministry that it was planned, they planned for it to happen.

They put the mic in her hand and they all said, this is God glorifying, this is good, yes and amen.

And then they put it up on Sermon Audio.

Now Mike now says it was an accident.

I didn't mean to put it on Sermon Audio.

Again, if he didn't plan for this testimony to happen in front of the church, it should have hit the radar in such

a way that you would never accidentally put it up on the worldwide web with her name for the entire world

to hear.

That didn't happen.

And then in the defense that Mike had her right, which I'm not gonna contend with her.

I'm not gonna be part of Mike's abuse of this young lady.

I'm not gonna contend with her directly.

But he had her defend it as a God glorifying act and that she's happy to have her name

out there and put this on the worldwide web.

And so he had her put her name again on their church website

and what he calls his response to slander and say how edifying this was, how God

glorifying it was.

Yeah, I'm thankful for anyone repenting of sin.

I'm thankful for anyone turning to Christ and following him more fully and letting the

blood of the lamb wash over their sin and the word of God sanctify and renew their minds and set them free.

That is praiseworthy and does glorify God.

But these kinds of sins should not be shared publicly and should not be

shared on the worldwide web for the world to hear and to think about.

And you're right, you should never have a woman.

And if this was good for this young lady, take it to the next step, then it's good for the married women as well.

If they have some sexual sin, they should stand before the church and tell about their sexual sin.

It's good if there happened to be some older women, some grandmothers who have sexual sin, it'd be good to have grandma stand up in front of the

church and confess her sexual sin.

That is absolute madness, but that's the kind of madness that Mike's predatory perversion of pastoral

ministry produces.

Yeah, and let's be clear, right?

I mean, I started the show saying this, like there's doctrines and then there's the practices that come

from those doctrines.

And so even if we give Mike the benefit of the doubt, right, because my goal is to have been unbiased,

to be unbiased this whole time.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt in all of this, right?

So all the things that you mentioned, let's give him the benefit of the doubt in everything.

We can still go back to the original practice, original doctrine of, or whatever

you call it, having people give a public confession of sin.

That itself just is not wise to do because things like this can happen

among many other types of situations.

And so that's what I hope listeners are gathering on this is that there's one hand, there's the practice, which is a

problem, but then the outflow of that, which is really a problem.

Right, right.

And again, I didn't listen to every confession on Mike's sermon audio page.

I didn't listen to all of the after -sermon conversations.

These are things that were low -lying fruit, so to speak.

And so in only listening to part of what was on there, there were two instances at least where

inappropriate sexual sins were confessed in inappropriate detail before the church in a way that would be harmful

to the body of Christ as a whole and to the individuals and their families.

And so, and again, it's unheard of.

No pastor does this sort of thing because it's not healthy.

It's not appropriate.

Yeah, so going back to Tony and his move, like when he came to you as his probable

top advisor, but certainly a very close friend, did he say, Chuck, what do you think about me moving?

Or did he say, Chuck, I'm moving?

Like which -.

No, it was.

I'm moving.

Yeah, it wasn't what do you think at that point.

So, yeah.

I mean, so yeah, which paints a little bit different of a picture here in terms of what was going

on throughout this.

Because again, you're an advisor.

He's got an entire advisory board that's supposed to be advising him.

And when you make a major move as a guy in ministry who has an

advisory board, like that's what they're for is to make those decisions for you, right?

So, and so I know last week we touched on this is that,

yeah, Kevin and I did anyway, about Mike Reed and his church, one of four ways to leave a church.

It's, you know, biblically, it's either death, being sent, mutual agreement or excommunication.

Were you aware of those ideas at the time?

Because, you know, I've talked to Mike about this and I'm just not seeing where Tony

left MacArthur's church.

Right.

Where any one of these fit correctly.

I mean, even in Phil Johnson's own words, when he, as what he told Andrew

personally within the last couple of days, is that this was,

he wasn't even, it's not like Tony was sent.

There wasn't necessarily this mutual agreement.

I mean, it was kind of like, well, if that's what you want to do, which would then beg the question,

why would Mike Reed accept him into their church when it wasn't one of

the biblical reasons that they established for people leaving their own church?

I would love for Mike Reed to come on and answer that and a whole lot more.

Yeah, I think it'd be fair for people to hear that.

Because Tony wasn't dead and he wasn't being sent.

I mean, Phil Johnson didn't lord it over him like Mike does.

Phil Johnson did allow him to go

and it certainly wasn't excommunication.

So maybe number three is what Mike would say was mutual agreement, simply that he talked to Phil and Phil said,

okay.

So maybe that's what he would say.

But that same interview you're talking about where Mike gives those four reasons,

biblically justified reasons to leave a church, I would like to point out that Mike

likens himself and all pastors to plantation owners, slave

plantation owners, slave masters, and the congregants to the slaves on the

plantation.

And so that's the Remnant Radio podcast and it's titled Church Membership

and Church Discipline with Mike Reed.

Again, the Remnant Radio podcast, Church Membership and Church Discipline with Mike Reed, where he gives those

four biblical reasons for leaving a church.

But he does so in the context of liking himself to a slave master and congregants as slaves.

Let me say again to those at Grace Fellowship Church, run, take your

wife by the hand and run.

Mike is not a slave master and you're not his slave.

There's a biblical word called doulos that is slave.

We are Christ's slaves, but under -shepherds are under -shepherds saying, follow me as I

follow Christ.

They're not slave masters on a plantation.

Again, Mike, I've never heard that kind of an illustration from a pastor, but

that's kind of par for the course for Mike Reed.

And that's, and to be fair, that is in, I didn't say to be fair, but people can listen to that themselves,

right?

Oh, yes.

That's in that, and maybe we can get that link and put it up later, because that is still an

available, not sermon, but a Q and A to be able to listen to.

Anybody can listen to that.

Okay, so Chuck, you were the setting off the warning bells.

What other people were setting off warning bells?

Other friends of his, other advisors?

Yes, lifelong, close personal friends were looking into this

and warning Tony as well.

Other ministry partners and friends were speaking to Tony

and having pointed conversations with him about these concerns as they came up.

And there's just a whole gamut of things.

And I think we'll touch on them a bit later.

They need to be touched on and considered, but there's just, it's

not one thing, a few things, and it's not a few differences that we can just lavish some grace on.

There's just, there's a whole pile of errant doctrine,

false doctrine, wild doctrine, and just really

nightmarish doctrine.

So, you know, so let's start with the phone call, right?

So again, this happened around August, 2016, before Tony's move.

This was a phone call that is you, Mike Reed, Bobby McCreery, and Tony Miano.

And so this phone call was literally you against everybody is what it turned out to be, right?

It was supposed to be Bobby being an impartial party from what I understand.

And then obviously Tony really wanted you to be convinced why he should move and

Mike was there to listen in as well.

But so the private conversations you and Mike had, I'm sorry,

that you and Tony had led to a phone call with you and the other three.

And so you, all parties agreed to record this phone call and

establish what Mike really teaches and practices.

And this phone call in its entirety is on your YouTube page.

Like anybody can listen to it.

That's right.

One of the things that you have been accused of is you have taken bits and pieces of a bunch of phone

calls and sermons and jammed together.

And I wasn't confused.

I mean, just maybe other people have been, I don't know, but I was not confused.

When I listened to the short cut, you know, the short ones and pasted, I listened to what it

said.

And then I also went back and I did this multiple times, listened to every one of these

recordings to hear them all in the correct context.

I feel like they were in the correct context.

I think it's a little bit more, it's a little more in your face when you read them, kind of

listen to it all together rather than being spaced out.

But in having said that, I listened to this phone call multiple times through and through.

In the first minute of the call, it was made clear that Tony, Bobby and you are all recording.

Obviously everyone wanted a recording of what was said.

In the second minute of the call, you made very clear that your pastoral reason for being on the call was to love and provide

solid counsel to Tony Miano as his friend and as a member of his advisory board and for the protection of the church

you pastor in Oregon, for the protection of the church in Davenport, Iowa, and for the protection of the church at large.

Right.

So, which is exactly the reason why I am doing these shows is for the church

at large.

Yes.

Mike's dangerous doctrines and practices were established and confirmed point for point as you asked him a series of questions.

Among other things, Mike confirmed that he systematically meets alone with the women of the church for private counsel, that he

believes that he cannot fall in adultery because his boast is Christ and much more.

So what are some of the highlights or important things that came out during this phone call?

And what was the most shocking point of that phone call for you?

And again, listeners, all of you can go and listen to this.

If you need the links, private message me, message the show, whatever you need to do, and I'll send you the links, you can listen to it

yourself, or you can just go to Beaverton's YouTube page and you can listen for yourself, it's there.

So, okay, so back to my question is, what are some of the highlights or important things that came out during this phone call?

Right.

Again, we'll get to some of the lesser issues, I think a little bit later that are in the phone

call and that have been in many conversations and were and

some still are up on his sermon audio page.

Let me provide a little more background in that I spent at least two

months writing Tony, Mike, the

entire advisory board, calling Tony, calling Mike,

calling Bobby, talking with him together, talking with him individually, point for point on

all of these issues.

And so that went on for two months until it finally led up to this phone call, because in my view,

there'd been mitigation, there'd been nuance, there'd been coverup.

Well known, I didn't say that, I didn't mean that.

And so I wanted as a culmination, I wanted a culmination of

all the conversations and I wanted to be able to establish it as a final record.

Mike, this is what you teach, this is what you practice.

Let's bring it to the light of day and let's record it so there's no more ambiguity and no more

opportunity for misunderstanding.

And that's why I was recording and they also wanted it recorded for that purpose.

And so we were all on board with that.

And I made clear my intention was beyond just recording.

So I personally would have a knowledge of what was said, but for the protection of Christ Church

at large, for the protection of the church in Davenport, my own church.

So what came out that was shocking?

The most shocking thing, of course, in all of this is Mike's predatory perversion of the

pastoral ministry and that he meets systematically alone.

This is his design.

Mike, we're not talking about Mike meeting with a woman or a few women who need

counsel for a particular issue.

It's Mike's shepherding design to meet with each woman and young woman, single,

married, teenage, alone for individual private

shepherding on a regular weekly basis.

That is unheard of.

I know of no other pastor who has even considered doing such a thing or would consider doing such a thing.

And then on top of that, of course, what is discussed in those meetings.

It's not just chapter and verse.

It's not just Mike giving a private exposition of a text.

It's Mike digging into their marriages, digging into their lives, digging into their finances, digging

into their life choices.

Again, in a totally inappropriate, a controlling level.

And then one step further, it's Mike digging into their sex life, digging into their marital bed,

digging into their sexual satisfaction, the frequency.

It's a common known fact and a statement made to many

or by many to me from those who have attended and been members of Mike's church

that Mike knows how many times a week every couple is having marital relations.

And he knows much more than that.

He knows what kind of marital relations.

We're talking position technique.

There's nothing off the table with Mike Reed.

That is perverse.

It's disgusting.

It's sickening.

It should never happen.

And the men and women that have been subject to it need to stand up and flee.

So these are, and some of these are people you've talked to, right?

That they've given you accounts of these actually happening within the counseling sessions.

Because of course people are gonna say, well, who's Chuck O 'Neill?

He wasn't at the church, right?

Right.

And okay, so is there anything else in this phone call?

Because I think there was something there, this idea of meeting with

women alone, you press this issue a little bit, right?

Yes, we need to go into that.

Yeah, so why did you press the issue for the audience?

What concerns you?

Well, what concerns me is the safety of the women, the impropriety.

I mean, 99%, it's a rough estimate, of moral failures

amongst pastors, infidelity starts in counseling sessions.

Now there's a reason pastors don't meet alone with women as a rule.

And 100%, you have a 100 cure

to falling sexually with congregants if you're never alone with a woman.

That's an easy standard to keep.

If you're never alone with a female congregant, you're never gonna be tempted.

You're not gonna create that relationship with a heart and not gonna act upon it in the flesh.

Once you begin to meet alone, you've taken off that safeguard, you've

disregarded the scriptures that tell you to flee from sexual immorality, to make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill

the desires therein.

And that's where so many men have failed.

And so Mike's systematic flagrant disregard of that basic

standard of not meeting alone with women sounds an alarm.

But on top of that, what became clear to me, again, from listening to Mike's own sermons, that's how I found

out about this.

He said it repeatedly in his sermons and sermon audio, that Mike has a history of adultery, a three and a half

year history of multiple adulterous affairs.

And so when we have a pastor with a history, and he defends that by saying it was pre

-salvation, but it doesn't make any difference at all.

When you have a pastor with a history of multiple adulterous affairs, who meets

alone with the women of the church as a systematic design for

his shepherding and talks to them about things of a sexual nature that is completely

out of bounds and what it proves is that there is a lack of repentance, which is a

large portion of what really upset them in the phone call, is that I dealt with 2 Corinthians

7, 11 and God's definition of repentance.

And it's clear and powerful and undeniable.

And when applied to this practice, it just becomes real clear in a hurry

that repentance does not exist.

2 Corinthians 7, verse nine says, "'Now I rejoice, not

that you were made sorry, "'but that your sorrow led to repentance, "'for you were made sorry in a godly manner, "'not that you might suffer loss

from us, "'or so that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.

"'For godly sorrow produces repentance "'leading to salvation, not to be regretted, "'but the sorrow of the world produces

death.

"'For observe this very thing, "'that you sorrowed in a godly manner, "'what diligence it

produced in you, "'what clearing of yourselves.'".

We can stop right there, what diligence?

If a man's been involved in adultery, he's gonna be diligent to be far, far away from

anything that would lead to or open the door to adultery.

"'What clearing of yourselves.'".

You're gonna be completely clear of anything that would be inappropriate sexually.

You would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever design your ministry to systematically meet

alone with all the women of the church.

On top of that, you would never counsel them about their sex lives and give them sex

tips and tell them sexual stories from your own relationship with your wife.

And so, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation?

You hate that sin, you hate it, and so you don't wanna be anywhere near it.

What fear?

You fear it, you fear the weakness of your own flesh.

You fear the blasphemy of God's holy name that falling in that sin would cause again.

You fear involving anyone else in that sin.

You fear it, you don't take a pompous disposition where you say, I cannot fall,

where I cannot commit adultery, and that's my exposition.

And so, and that's kinda what I wanna land on for a few minutes here because, I mean,

here's the big thing.

Like, you know, I will take somebody who says that, you know, somebody who gives a testimony,

somebody who says that I am redeemed by the blood of Christ, right?

And they give, they can give the gospel.

I'm gonna take them at their word first, right?

And so, I'm gonna take Mike Reed at his word that he is a Christian, right?

I'm gonna take him at his word, I'm gonna take him at his word that he is redeemed now and he was not redeemed during that

past because we all have pasts, whatever they may be.

And so, assuming those things that Mike is a saved, I have no reason to doubt it

from his own words.

I'm not adding my opinion into this, right?

I'm just saying this, but I think you hit on some really important concepts here is because if

he is repentant over those adulterous affairs years ago, he is washed in the

blood of Christ.

They're gone as far as Jesus from the West, he's forgiven completely from them.

Correct.

And so, those are not helpful for us to constantly bring about except for the fact that

when you put yourself in a position that seems to contradict what you are quoting from scripture right

there.

And that's where I think your big concern is, is that, sure, Mike, you say that this is pre

-conversion, you say that you have repented over this and that would be a wonderful,

wonderful thing to repent over that.

Amen.

Right, amen, praise God, hallelujah for that.

But why would you put yourself into a position that your flesh

is already prone to, however you wanna state it, why would you put yourself in that position?

And so, yeah, and I guess that really is the point of this, right?

You were supposed to be fearing these types of things that we could fall back into, but

Mike's position, as you stated there at the end, is that he doesn't believe according to his own words

that he can fall back into this particular type of sin.

That's right.

Yeah, he has a doctrine, I would say, of moral infallibility, not that he cannot sin in any way,

shape, or form, but that he cannot fall into grievous sins, the kind of 1

Corinthians 6, 9 -11, or 9 -10 sins.

And he uses that text, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 -10, to defend that doctrine.

Now, he has backed off of that doctrine since he's come under scrutiny for this.

He nuances it a bit, but he said quite boldly and repeatedly, both in

emails directly to me and verbally, and he says it in that phone call that he cannot

fall in adultery.

And he says, my boast is not in me, my boast is in Christ, that because of Christ, he

cannot fall in adultery.

And so he is justified in meeting alone with the women.

It's completely safe because he is unable to fall into adultery.

When I brought up King David, a man after God's own heart, falling in adultery with

Bathsheba, and then subsequently murdering Uriah to cover it up, he said,

David wasn't saved.

In fact, he took me to issue for having the audacity to say that David was saved,

and he fell in adultery and murdered Uriah.

And so he was consistent in that position.

And that's quite alarming.

He goes against 2 ,000 years of church understanding as far as David's

salvation, and as far as a doctrine of moral infallibility, the church has rejected all such

doctrines, whatever form they might come in.

And I would even say a Jewish understanding, interpretation of scripture in David's

life would say David was a believer who, in his repentance, said, take

not thy Holy Spirit from me, didn't say, Lord, grant me salvation and fill me with your Holy Spirit, but take it not,

don't take it away.

And restore unto me the joy of your salvation, not, Lord, grant me salvation for the first time.

And so Mike was alarmingly theologically consistent, and that's a false doctrine, an alarming

false doctrine to justify his alarming and dangerous practice.

Yeah, I mean, I gotta be honest, that was the first time I have ever heard that King David wasn't saved.

Me too.

I've never read the Bible and thought that on my own.

I've never heard that.

So I was surprised by that, certainly.

But there was one other thing that came out of this, right, when it was pushed to its logical

conclusion.

The most shocking thing.

So I had thought about this circumstance.

Now, mind you, Mike and I had had these very conversations privately, just he and I before the phone call that was recorded.

And so I knew where he was gonna go if he kept up, and sure enough, he went there.

And so I thought of one step further, the logical extension of his doctrine and practice.

And I thought that when I asked this question, Mike would pull back.

I thought that would be a step too far, that he would see where his doctrine and practice leads, and that he would not

go there.

He would not extend it to this level, but would rather than reconsider his own thinking, his own

doctrine, his own practice.

And here's the next logical step.

If a serial adulterer, a man with multiple adulterous affairs in his life, can repent,

confess Christ as Lord, be saved, and become a pastor in a very short period of time, or any time at

all, and then meet alone with women systematically for private shepherding

meetings, in which Mike does all these things, then it makes sense that

a child molester can repent, confess Christ as Lord, and meet alone

with children for private shepherding.

If one is safe and morally sound, then the other should be safe and morally sound.

Now, don't misunderstand me.

Neither are safe and neither are morally sound.

The idea of either one of those is completely inappropriate and should never

be embraced.

But I posed the question twice in that phone call.

And I have the minute markers, both at the 728 minute mark and the 1244

minute mark, I posed those questions.

And I have the actual question.

I said this, Mike, if a man has repented of being a child molester, and yet he

today is having a shepherding ministry alone with children, is that reflecting

repentance?

And Mike Reed answered, my answer is yes.

A pastor could be with children, yes, to answer your question.

Now, I was shocked and the conversation moved on, but then I thought,

I'm gonna give him another chance.

I'm gonna ask again, surely he's not gonna double down on this.

Surely he's going to have thought about this and be ready to say, no, I wouldn't go that far.

I asked him again at the 12 minute and 44 second minute mark question.

You cannot condone a man with pedophilia in his background, having a

shepherding ministry where he meets alone with children, but you just did.

And so it's more of a statement than a question the second time.

But Mike answered it like a question again.

He said, if he's a pastor, he has a congregation, and it's an elder led church,

and he has men in his life that know him, and the fathers of those children request and desire that they meet

together, then yes, quote unquote.

That's Mike Reed's answer to a man with pedophilia in his background, having a shepherding ministry

where he meets alone with children, if he's a pastor.

First mistake, a pedophile is never a pastor.

A pedophile will never be above reproach.