For the purpose of clarity we refer to the historical entity of ANTM/Lakeview/etc as Wellspring, its current name.

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First things first...why are we talking about theology at all? And how dare we?  

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To begin with, there is no other site that explores the particular theology (what they call doctrine) of Wellspring. In our view, a breakdown to the best of our ability is better than nothing.

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Theology is kind of a curious thing. First off, we get concerned when we see Christianity get too much more complicated than Micah 6:8 -- Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Simple right? Or when Jesus was pressed to crystallize "the whole of the law"--Love the Lord your God and each other. If we kept these things in mind, how would we go wrong? And yet we have hundreds if not thousands of different denominations just in Protestantism and of course the entire Catholic Church. It's up to every person to decide for themselves what that means and what it implies about practicing Christianity.

 

Perhaps it means the pursuit of Jesus is flexible enough to provide for thousands of different paths to Him, and within reason, they are all relatively valid. Perhaps it implies that the forces of deception and confusion are strong enough to knock the unwary or unwise off course, and that most, if not all of these folks are somehow a few or many degrees from a distinct and particular truth. It's the question of a lifetime to arrive at our own answers to these questions. 

 

Quite often, though, we can look at a dysfunctional or problematic Christian group and see their issues are rooted in the particulars of their theology. Informally, then, theology seems to explain "how did we get this far off base" as much as anything. There is so much to say about this, and we simply don't have the space or the expertise here to break down the particulars and nuance of what are often graduate degrees, and then lifetimes, worth of study. It's also a crucial question to determine whether behavior follows theology, or behavior informs theology. But please let us make a few points.

 

We cannot and will not speak for all ex-members of Wellspring, but for many of us, when we realized we were living too much in the differentiations of the ideas that made Wellspring special and exclusive, that we realized things were getting "off." For each of us, there was a thing we recognized or gradually realized was "off" in the behaviors and practices of Wellspring. Making sense of what we had seen led us to our own study of the particular beliefs of Wellspring and their historical context.

 

The review of the particular theology that we include here are both apart from, but we hope you'll see, crucially a part of the behavior that we believe makes Wellspring a problematic place of worship.