[스크랩] UBF의 핵심문제

www.ubf-info.de

 

The Basic Problems of the UBF

An attempt at a summary of the most basic problems of the UBF and their causes, compiled in June 2004 by the webservant of these pages after many talks and with the input and help of former members.

Presently you can find a vast number of reports and complaints about UBF on the Internet. The question arises, where can the real causes and fundamental problems of UBF be found? How can such serious spiritual abuse exist in a group that seemingly comes across as so biblical and friendly?

Many former UBF members agree that nearly all problems basically stem from a disastrous mixture of three dangerous, unbiblical elements:

1. an authoritarianism extremely domineering over the members,
2. Confucianism of the Korean members that has not been overcome,
3. and the leadership and influence of a power monger leader.

These three core problems, which are connected with each other, are described more precisely in the following, without giving extensive Biblical substantiations, since these have been already sufficiently explained elsewhere (see the further articles, links and book references on the UBF info pages). In conclusion, some of the bitter fruits are specified which basically stem from these core problems.

1. Authoritarianism and paternalism

UBF is marked by hierarchical, authoritarian structures and behavior patterns which can be found in several layers. The first layer is the church leadership, if you want to call the individual UBF groups existing in university cities “churches” (even UBF calls them “chapters,” not “churches”). These groups are always led by one single “chapter leader” who makes all decisions and under whom everybody has to be subordinate. Some chapters have a kind of “council of elders,” but they have no meaning in practice. Some UBF chapters have small subchapters trying to “pioneer” the universities near a main chapter. Such subchapters often consist only of one married couple. This is a so-called “house church” in UBF. Of course the subchapters are subordinate to the main chapter in the hierarchy. The chapter leaders of the main chapter are subordinated to the national director who in turn is subordinate to the “general director” of the UBF, where all roads converge. Since the foundation of the UBF in the year 1962 until his death in the year 2002, Samuel Lee played this role of the highest authority; after him, this role was taken over by the co-founder of the UBF, Sarah Barry. In Europe, there exists an additional level of the “European director” above the national director, currently occupied by Kaleb Hong in Heidelberg.

In addition to this pyramid-shaped system of UBF chapters and their leaders, there is a second layer of authoritarian structure, resulting from the “shepherd-sheep” relations peculiar to UBF. These shepherd-sheep relations make up a major source of problems at UBF. The goal of UBF’s so-called campus mission and evangelization is actually making the students into members of the UBF. Every invited student gets a personal “shepherd” assigned to him, usually the one by whom the “sheep” was invited. Then begins the official shepherd-sheep relationship. The student is required to take part in “one-to-one Bible study” sessions every week without any lapses. In the beginning, the relationship is nice and kind, but then it becomes controlling and demanding. The sheep is effectively programmed to look up to the shepherd as an authority, and to obey him more and more. Only the older, completely loyal members and “missionaries” are allowed to take part in group Bible studies instead of the one-to-one Bible studies. All other members are obliged to take part in the weekly one-to-one Bible studies, and they must do so with their official shepherds. The roles of shepherd and sheep are steadfastly observed during the Bible studies. In this way, the sheep finally are led to permanent “absolute obedience” towards their shepherd and made dependent in a permanently one-sided one-to-one relationship. This unhealthy and dangerous system wasn’t invented by UBF. The so called “shepherding “ or “discipling” movement was somewhat popular in the USA during the foundation phase of UBF. Samuel Lee probably learned about this system of “disciple training” through copying aspects of the “Navigators,” and then implemented it in an even more extreme form in Korea.

This shepherding/discipling movement in the USA was very successful, measured in terms of number and dedication of the newly raised “disciples,” but there were harmful consequences of these unhealthy authoritarian one-to-one relationships, making the recruits into dependent people, and usually resulting in “spiritual abuse.” This became apparent very soon. In the long run, no disciples of Jesus were raised who served God voluntarily. What resulted were disciples of charismatic leaders and disciples of authoritarian systems, serving a system under compulsion. The other result was numerous little tyrants, who lorded it over these disciples as power mongers. When this became more and more apparent everywhere, most churches and even the originators of the shepherding movement dissociated themselves from it again and issued a statement of regret. Because of this, most of the hierarchical systems collapsed like a house of cards. In the end, the whole teaching and practice of the shepherding movement has been rejected almost everywhere, and only UBF and few other cult-like groups such as the “ICoC” are still practicing it.

But UBF was clinging to its shepherding system even after starting with trying to expand to an international movement under the name of “world mission.” One might believe that the reason for the UBF clinging to this problematic system could be that no such negative consequences emerged in Korea as the shepherding movement in the USA experienced. But this was not the case. The same and even worse abuse emerged in Korea, too. Interestingly, at the same time when the founders of the shepherding movement in the USA dissociated themselves again and apologized for this, the problems in the UBF had increased so badly that the second level of UBF chapter leaders in Korea, despite of their extreme reverence for loyalty that is hard to understand for westerners, had written an open letter to Samuel Lee in which they expressed their despair about all these grievances and the abuses by Samuel Lee. However, unlike the originators of the shepherding movement in the USA who showed themselves reasonable at the end, Samuel Lee continued to insist on his authoritarian system, calling this first criticism of UBF (or actually himself) in the 1970s a “rebellion” and incited the younger members against the critics, so that they had to leave UBF and found their own student mission named “Evangelical Students Fellowship” (ESF).

 

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