Spring Seminar 2000
While
G. Geftakys was in Africa on his 1999 Fall Journey he wrote a series of
essays entitled "The Silent Conversation." He emailed them to "
Kristin", who was supposed
to reply immediately with a critique. "Kristin" described the
correspondence as, "...giving us an opportunity to correspond by email
through his regular traveling companion, an elder from a large Midwest
assembly."
She says further:
"We would write back and forth nearly every day. This manuscript was
supposed to be about the relationship between the Lord and His Bride, but it
was a convenient way to write thinly veiled love letters back and forth. GG
would refer to the Bride as 'the friend', for instance, and make references
to the letter that I wrote to him [addressing him as 'my friend'].
"I remember thinking that if this were sin, the Lord wouldn’t bless
GG there in Africa, but when I started hearing the reports of people
getting saved and the way the Lord was moving, I continued to
justify myself in my behavior. I also thought that perhaps the elder
who was transmitting the messages would say something if this were
inappropriate, but he voiced no concern to me.....
"When GG got back to Fullerton that winter, he asked his wife’s
assistant to email me, in lieu of the Midwest elder, who had
returned home. GG’s wife’s assistant, after two exchanges, told GG
she wouldn’t do it anymore and took a letter to show to his wife.
This was because at the same time that GG was addressing me as his
'beloved-other' in those exchanges, the assistant was also typing up
his sermons for the upcoming seminar he would give, entitled,
'School of the Bride III'; the seminar was about the 'One' (Jesus)
and His 'Beloved-Other' (the Bride)."
So this wasn't a case of a pastor having an affair in secret, and continuing to preach as if nothing were going on. George was consciously entwining his love affair in his ministry. The assistant caught the entwining in Kristin's replies, but thought mistakenly that it was Kristin who was mingling the two, not GG.
Was the man cynically taking the saints for a ride when he gave this seminar, laughing up his sleeve that they wouldn't have any idea what he was really referring to? Or was he deeply deluded, believing that his love affair was actually spiritual? Given the man's long history of sexual predation, it is difficult to believe the second hypothesis.