While we feel our Website’s prefaced statement of purpose is quite detailed about our motives for our efforts to provide information, we would like to offer a rationale from a scriptural and historical basis for those who question our use of the Internet as a platform for these concerns in the first place. The following explanation will most likely not resolve the dilema of consensus, but perhaps it will provoke healthy inquiry and consideration.
Matt. 18: 15-17
If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
This website, as we understand it, is by-product of a working out of this process above. From February to May 1999, a group of German KSB leaders as well as other members approached the Kwasizabantu leadership in hopes of resolving what they saw as serious greivances and unChristian practices and policies on the part of the top KSB leadership. Before this, different individuals approached the appropriate leaders, but to no avail. These individuals, in time, discovered each other and formed a group(s) of witnesses, attempting over and over to bring peace and resolution to the crisis, only to find their attempts caused them to suffer unjust retaliation, persecution and mistreatment by the KSB leadership.
After a couple of preliminary meetings the month before, in April 1999, during a formal meeting with Erlo Stegen, after hours of fruitless dialogue, the group explained to Stegen that if he continued to evade the issues, suppress information, and falsely accuse the group, they would be forced to inform their congregations and fellow KSB members of their concerns and of the process so far.
This eventually occurred in May 1999, and, tragically led to a series of exoduses of people out of KSB Germany.
From May through December 1999, people continued to leave the Kwasizabantu organization in Germany, and then in Holland. During this time many watched as families were torn apart by the KSB leadership’s campaign of shunning and false accusation towards those who were leaving. The situation seemed to become worse and worse. Many had contact with friends and family in South Africa where it was discovered that others had been and were still going through similar unjust suffering on account of Kwasizabantu.
Eventually, in January 1999, the European former KSB members were informed of media coverage of serious wrongdoing at Kwasizabantu South Africa. Some concluded that the time for Kwasizabantu’s attempt to monopolize and control information had passed and that those seeking information regarding what was going on needed a place to conveniently access it. Thus a website was created, which in some ways has been a fufilment of the final step of the Matthew 18 process.
KSB’s opinion about this website is officially on record as:
“some people who had previously been associated with Kwasizabantu had set up these sites to make scandalous allegations against the mission…”
General feedback from KSB has revealed that some KSB leaders see that the purpose of the website is to spread gossip. Some suggest that because the internet is accessible to the secular public, it is therefore not the Church, and so our efforts are “worldly.” Some suggest that we are damaging the Body of Christ by making sensitive information, letters, and testimonies available to the non-Christian public. The conclusion drawn from these opinions is that the truth and relevancy of the information provided is nullified.
We regard accusations of slander and gossip to be essentially hollow and shallow rebuttals to the information on the part of KSB. We also feel that as we have gathered data and featured it on a website, transference to this website does not alter the truth or factuality of our sources, they can’t automatically become false. And saying that, we would encourage people hence, to not dismiss the information on these grounds.
But as to the affect this website has on the Body of Christ, we can try to offer an explanation.
In 1 Corinthians 6:1 we read :
“If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgement instead of before the saints?… Therefore if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church. I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead one brother goes to law against another- and this in front of unbelievers.!”
In light of the history above of the process in 1999 leading us to create this website, we affirm that church matters were held sacred and kept in reverence throughout our following Matthew 18:15-17. We did not take our concerns beyond the appropriate confines of the church, as we see is proper in 1 Cor. 6. The dispute was not resolved, and we no longer felt it was our duty to contain the information of what was going on because the process was complete.
We do not use the internet medium as an intermediary, an advocate, or a judge, as we see it a neutral medium. As for the fact that non-Christians have access to the information and witness the conflict between KSB and those who are concerned about problems there, we feel it is within the interest of nonChristians as well as Christians if they seek the truth to have access to it.
We feel that it can actually be a testimony to non-Christians that Christians are not afraid to be transparent and are prepared to pay the price to do what is necessary to point out inconsistencies in our own “ranks.” We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ is not pleased with the shocking events and situations identified in Kwasizabantu. Our prayer for all non-Christians is that these examples of abuse are not in harmony with the truth and with Jesus Christ, and we separate ourselves from these wrong things at KSB, and we pray that all will experience the love of the true Saviour.
It is painful that people see how Christians can fail. Perhaps we can say that it is interesting that Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to use secular judges to arbitrate disputes between Christians, but in the chapter preceding he spells out in quite shocking detail the immorality of members of the Corinthian congregation… and, this report is available to whomever wishes to read it in God’s word (the manuscript which boasts the most copies in the history of literature, and most probably available at your nearest secular bookstore). Christian or non-Christian, believer or sceptic, friend or enemy of Christ has access to this.