[Some background can be found here: http://rotolo-media.blogspot.com/2009/01/michael-gaydosh-removed-from-position.html ... and here: ... http://rotolo-media.blogspot.com/2003/09/corruption-rife-at-calvary-press.html]
After nearly sixteen years of silence from Michael Gaydosh who victimized me so heinously he has contacted me by email.
Although, he has couched his email in language that insinuates a future process by which there can be a reconciliation sought to mend the rift that exists between us-- it comes in the form of a demand.
Now anyone that understands biblical reconciliation also understands that sincere and humble efforts to reconcile with an offended/offending brother does not begin nor is it helped by demanding something of the brother as a prerequisite to such a desire to be reconciled if it is true indeed.
Michael Gaydosh, however has made in his email entitled "INITIAL CONTACT" just that. I believe that for the sake of transparency and accountability that it best that I include that email for all to read and evaluate personally rather than my speaking to it without your knowledge of its content-- that being said I reproduce it faithfully, word for word, here:
________________________email begins_____________________________
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Jan 12 (2 days ago)
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Michael,
Rich Jensen has been reaching out to you over the past several months on my behalf. While I have appreciated the effort you initially made to remove the major piece of slander that was placed on your web site, there is still the following that is visible -
Rotolo Media: Michael Gaydosh Loses Position as Senior ...
------------------------------
Before we can step the first step towards biblical reconciliation this needs to be removed immediately.
There is no telling how many people have been misled by this posting over the past several years. Until the past several months I chose to ignore the postings but I cannot do so any longer.
Your personal opinion about how the church handled your discipline and your employment is a completely separate matter. This posting is simply false. Pastor Rich Jensen was involved with counseling me from the very beginning, nearly 15 years ago, and he has already informed you that this is not true.
Please remove this phrase "exposed as pedophile" so that we can begin to begin repairing the breach between us.
FYI from the day I first came to Alabama I have been under the pastoral ministry of men who have been fully aware of my past moral failures. In fact, when I first moved here Pastor Rich Jensen as well as John Herringer spoke at length with my new pastor explaining in detail what I had done and how they had handled me. As soon as we came to the church here my wife and I met several times with the pastor and I was accountable to him during the first couple years of transition. He was a faithful man to my soul and remained such until after four years he was called to another church.
The church of which we are now members (for the past 10 1/2 years) are all fully aware of my past. That includes not only the two elders and four deacons but the members of the church as well. There has been no hiding of the moral failure that caused me to be removed from the ministry in New York.
I recall reading in one of your updated posts that you described me as "an unrepentant man" and urged people to contact you for proof. It is remarkable that you can claim to know me when you have had no contact with me for 15+ years. My wife, my pastors, my deacons, my friends have known me, prayed with me and for me and encourage me each day in my walk with the Lord. It is patently obvious that they can better speak to my current condition than you can.
I have written more than I planned. The main burden of this initial contact is the removal of the statement about my being exposed as a pedophile. Until that is removed we cannot begin.
Awaiting your response,
Mike Gaydosh
___________________email ends _____________________
I'd like to explain a few things with respect to his allegation of slander:
When I found out about Michael Gaydosh's illicit relationship with a young woman of high school age I mistakenly described it as one of "pedophilia". My purpose in posting regarding this incident was frankly to warn people about Michael Gaydosh as I painfully related to this young victim. As I had been manipulated in many respects and bullied in others I both empathized with the young girl and recognized the same personality at work in her case as in mine.
Yes, my victimization was categorically different than hers, and I don't seek to directly compare them but nonetheless the betrayal, victimization, slander, and more that I received directly from the hands of Michael Gaydosh were just as real and just as effectively plunged me into almost a decade of depression.
Now after some sixteen years of silence Michael Gaydosh makes his "initial contact" and begins with his first word to set his conditions for any "biblical reconciliation" by ironically approaching the matter from an unbiblical position of seeking his own reputation to be protected as a prerequisite. Unfortunately I am not surprised.
Gaydosh had no issues managing Calvary Press after he railroaded me out unlawfully in such a way as to purposefully destroy my reputation with any and all the many other publishers and book-buying outlets with which we had to do. While it is only proper (and legally advisable) to tell those inquiring after an employee that has "moved on" that "they are no longer with us"-- Gaydosh and Joseph Bianchi chose to maliciously malign me by lying to many in the small industry of Christian publishing.
Gaydosh had no issues managing Calvary Press after he railroaded me out unlawfully in such a way as to purposefully destroy my reputation with any and all the many other publishers and book-buying outlets with which we had to do. While it is only proper (and legally advisable) to tell those inquiring after an employee that has "moved on" that "they are no longer with us"-- Gaydosh and Joseph Bianchi chose to maliciously malign me by lying to many in the small industry of Christian publishing.
As I sought work from firms with which I had done business with for years while running Calvary Press-- I was met with cold shoulders. When I asked why the reluctance to consider me I was told that Michael Gaydosh and/or Joseph Bianchi had already gotten to them with their "story". Keep in mind that this was before a third-party arbitrator had arbitrated the dispute between myself (and my extended family to some extent as well) against Michael Gaydosh and his elder board (which consisted of Scott Syracuse and John Herringer) and had FOUND IN MY(OUR) FAVOR.
As for my incorrect use of the word "pedophile" I sincerely repent. I used it in a vernacular sense and not a technical sense (technically pedophilia refers to intimate relations with prepubescent children). When Pastor Rich Jensen contacted me to bring my attention to this and to ask on Michael Gaydosh's behalf to remove it I did so within a day or two. I revised my article and removed any mention of pedophilia. What I was unaware of was that the blogging platform retained the url (web address) that was automatically formed when I first posted the article (that blogging software automatically extracted from the article the words "exposed-as-a-pedophile").
This is what Michael Gaydosh is referring to in his email of Jan. 12th, 2015. I am in contact with Google (the blogging platform I use) to see how this can also be changed. And I am determined to honor Gaydosh's request. Apparently, one day and a half is not fast enough for Gaydosh as today (Jan 14th) I have received this email:
________________________email begins_____________________________
This is what Michael Gaydosh is referring to in his email of Jan. 12th, 2015. I am in contact with Google (the blogging platform I use) to see how this can also be changed. And I am determined to honor Gaydosh's request. Apparently, one day and a half is not fast enough for Gaydosh as today (Jan 14th) I have received this email:
________________________email begins_____________________________
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8:35 AM (3 hours ago)
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Michael,
The slander still remains. If it is not removed today I will be forced to take the matter to your pastor.
Mike Gaydosh
________________________email ends_____________________________
What is most ironic is that Michael Gaydosh showed no proper biblical respect for the prescriptions of Scripture (namely Matt. 18) when he was in a position to respond pastorally to a family (mine) that approached him formally after making every effort to pursue a Matthew 18 course. Then, after some eight months of an extended arbitration with an impartial third-party pastor of a church which had hitherto had no relationship with me or Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Michael Gaydosh IGNORED THE FINDINGS OF ARBITRATION which found that he (and the other elders of GRBC) had terminated my employment without proper grounds and without proper procedure-- and which prescribed a restitution to me which Gaydosh et al refused to obey despite both parties pledge to honor the Findings as a binding decision upon them.
Finally, I would like to respond and clarify Michael Gaydosh's objection to the characterization of his being "an unrepentant man". What Gaydosh is mistaking ( and I will clear up for all here) is that my characterization of him as unrepentant is and was made with respect to HIS SINS AGAINST ME and my family and not with respect to his sins against the young high-schooler.
He surprisingly felt the need to cite his pedigree-of-repentance as such in his first email to me as a way of persuading me that the charge of "unrepentance" is unfounded. Sadly, dare I say--pathetically, he contacts me whom he so abused pastorally with no expression of repentance, regret, remorse, etc. with respect to the horrendous professional, emotional, spiritual, damage he perpetrated upon me. That IS the very definition of "unrepentant".
In fact Gaydosh has the audacity to describe the kangaroo-court procedure of "excommunication" that he exercised against my entire family (even so far as my sister-in-law who stood in solidarity with her husband my brother)-- as "discipline". The FACTS are this: Gaydosh (and his elder board) convened a meeting to "excommunicate" our family without giving us any prior notice of any charges against us and most disturbingly-- without ANY opportunity to address the church AT ANY TIME prior to or on that evening. We were not given ANY opportunity to hear charges against us, rebut or explain them or to give a defense of any kind in the presence of our accusers and before the brethren. The charges against us were presented unilaterally by Gaydosh, Syracuse and Herringer and were baseless and purely retaliatory for my family's efforts to hold him accountable for his many sins (which he has to this day remained unanswerable for and unaccountable) and to ban us from continuing to attend GRBC. I was even threatened by Scott Syracuse that if any of us were to attend after the "excommunication" it would constitute trespassing and the police would be called.
Our family pursued contact with Earl M. Blackburn (well before any "excommunication" and while members in good standing of GRBC) who presided over the newly formed ARBCA Association, (currently Senior Pastor at Heritage Baptist Church in Shreveport, LA) in order to plead for ARBCA's impartial help with the matters at GRBC and our charges against Michael Gaydosh which charges Gaydosh was ignoring and making efforts to hide, evade, and squash.
Earl M. Blackburn gave me his assurance that ARBCA would in fact begin an investigation and they did. Shortly after contacting Earl M. Blackburn, ARBCA directed the pastor of one of its other member churches in our area Pastor Rich Jensen (a former police detective) of Hope Reformed Baptist Church to begin investigating our claims. When Michael Gaydosh heard that the matter would be taken up by ARBCA he quickly made his way to meet personally with ARBCA officers and persuaded them to abandon their investigation. All further correspondence of appeal to Earl M. Blackburn after this were ignored. This was in all likehood the newly formed ARBCA's first official decision and they inaugurated their association not by wisdom and fidelity to Christ and His Word but by corruption.
Only recently (within a few months ago) some sixteen years later Pastor Rich Jensen reiterated to me again (as he did back then) that he is of the opinion that ARBCA WAS WRONG to abandon their investigation and that he only did so after expressing to them that they were making a mistake by doing so and refusing to hear my family's charges against Michael Gaydosh.
So, my characterization of Michael Gaydosh as being "an unrepentant man" is with respect to the myriad sins with which he was charged formally by myself and my entire extended family and for which many which were addressed by an almost eight-months long arbitration proceeding were corroborated by the third-party Arbitrator who found that Gaydosh was in fact culpable. I remind you that Michael Gaydosh's response to the Findings of Arbitration was to COMPLETELY IGNORE ALL PRESCRIPTIONS for repentance, reconciliation and restitution. For this reason he is rightly described as "unrepentant". He has the unmitigated nerve to also describe the body of gross and unrepented of sin that lies at the heart of our charges against him as "Your personal opinion..."
NO!-- Mike Gaydosh, we are WELL BEYOND any attempts on your part to describe your malfeasance as my "personal opinion". Your sins were charged to you not by myself alone but by six church members-- all in good-standing-- AND THEN corroborated by an eight-month long process of deposition and examination by an impartial third-party Arbitrator who was also an ordained minister of a Reformed church with 15 years in the pastorate. You were officially called to repentance and to make restitution for the financial, career and reputational losses I suffered at your hands-- but you instead IGNORED the ARBITRATOR and his Findings and instead began to discredit him.
Furthermore, after several months of entreaty by the church (Grace Gospel Church of Patchogue) that performed the Arbitration pleading with Gaydosh to honor the Findings of Arbitration and to make restitution to me, restore my reputation to whatever extent they damaged it, and to reverse the unbiblical declaration that my family members (and I) were "excommunicated", and to cease and desist from slanderous remarks being made about GGC and its pastor(s) (after Gaydosh was displeased with the Findings of Arbitration)-- the elder board of GGC sent a stern letter deeming that absent the repentance of Gaydosh and his fellow elders on all the above counts that GGC had no course of action but to disfellowship with GRBC in all kingdom matters pertaining to ministry on Long Island and any interaction between the two churches.
To this day, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Merrick has refused to respond in any constructive and godly manner to this letter pleading for their repentance (as a corporate entity) and any efforts to meet even with newer pastors who had "no dog in the fight" (namely Mark Grimaldi) have been refused. Most recently, contact with Mark Grimaldi resulted in his inaccurate assertion that my family had never been the subjects of a sinful kangaroo-court-style "excommunication" proceeding in which we were all deemed "excommunicated" per GRBC. I say "inaccurate assertion" as the most charitable way of characterizing such a blatant denial of the truth. In fact, a former member of GRBC that was a member at the time of this event and who went on sometime later to pursue a higher education at seminary used this event as the basis for a thesis (or thesis-like) paper detailing ecclesiastical abuse and the impropriety of such unbiblical tactics as this baseless "excommunication" examples.
In conclusion, my prayer is that God may be gracious to provide a forum, procedure or means by which both parties can be held accountable. That the Findings of Arbitration will be finally acknowledged as imputing Michael Gaydosh with certain extremely horrendous pastoral and professional failures and that Gaydosh himself will honor those Findings and its prescriptions.
As I have sought always to avoid courts and to pursue these matters in good-faith and always by godly and ecclesiastical means and have been waiting on the Lord these some odd sixteen years for final vindication, restoration and recompense-- I remain available to anyone that has an interest in this matter.
Since of late I have been contacted by people that have expressed reticence and concern with respect to Gaydosh resuming any official capacity in Christ's church where he currently resides-- I believe these still open matters are of significant issue and sadly still speak to his unfitness for office.
How can a man seek to administer the Lord's Table when he steadfastly refuses to obey Christ's commands?
"Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Matthew 5:23-24
He surprisingly felt the need to cite his pedigree-of-repentance as such in his first email to me as a way of persuading me that the charge of "unrepentance" is unfounded. Sadly, dare I say--pathetically, he contacts me whom he so abused pastorally with no expression of repentance, regret, remorse, etc. with respect to the horrendous professional, emotional, spiritual, damage he perpetrated upon me. That IS the very definition of "unrepentant".
In fact Gaydosh has the audacity to describe the kangaroo-court procedure of "excommunication" that he exercised against my entire family (even so far as my sister-in-law who stood in solidarity with her husband my brother)-- as "discipline". The FACTS are this: Gaydosh (and his elder board) convened a meeting to "excommunicate" our family without giving us any prior notice of any charges against us and most disturbingly-- without ANY opportunity to address the church AT ANY TIME prior to or on that evening. We were not given ANY opportunity to hear charges against us, rebut or explain them or to give a defense of any kind in the presence of our accusers and before the brethren. The charges against us were presented unilaterally by Gaydosh, Syracuse and Herringer and were baseless and purely retaliatory for my family's efforts to hold him accountable for his many sins (which he has to this day remained unanswerable for and unaccountable) and to ban us from continuing to attend GRBC. I was even threatened by Scott Syracuse that if any of us were to attend after the "excommunication" it would constitute trespassing and the police would be called.
Our family pursued contact with Earl M. Blackburn (well before any "excommunication" and while members in good standing of GRBC) who presided over the newly formed ARBCA Association, (currently Senior Pastor at Heritage Baptist Church in Shreveport, LA) in order to plead for ARBCA's impartial help with the matters at GRBC and our charges against Michael Gaydosh which charges Gaydosh was ignoring and making efforts to hide, evade, and squash.
Earl M. Blackburn gave me his assurance that ARBCA would in fact begin an investigation and they did. Shortly after contacting Earl M. Blackburn, ARBCA directed the pastor of one of its other member churches in our area Pastor Rich Jensen (a former police detective) of Hope Reformed Baptist Church to begin investigating our claims. When Michael Gaydosh heard that the matter would be taken up by ARBCA he quickly made his way to meet personally with ARBCA officers and persuaded them to abandon their investigation. All further correspondence of appeal to Earl M. Blackburn after this were ignored. This was in all likehood the newly formed ARBCA's first official decision and they inaugurated their association not by wisdom and fidelity to Christ and His Word but by corruption.
Only recently (within a few months ago) some sixteen years later Pastor Rich Jensen reiterated to me again (as he did back then) that he is of the opinion that ARBCA WAS WRONG to abandon their investigation and that he only did so after expressing to them that they were making a mistake by doing so and refusing to hear my family's charges against Michael Gaydosh.
So, my characterization of Michael Gaydosh as being "an unrepentant man" is with respect to the myriad sins with which he was charged formally by myself and my entire extended family and for which many which were addressed by an almost eight-months long arbitration proceeding were corroborated by the third-party Arbitrator who found that Gaydosh was in fact culpable. I remind you that Michael Gaydosh's response to the Findings of Arbitration was to COMPLETELY IGNORE ALL PRESCRIPTIONS for repentance, reconciliation and restitution. For this reason he is rightly described as "unrepentant". He has the unmitigated nerve to also describe the body of gross and unrepented of sin that lies at the heart of our charges against him as "Your personal opinion..."
NO!-- Mike Gaydosh, we are WELL BEYOND any attempts on your part to describe your malfeasance as my "personal opinion". Your sins were charged to you not by myself alone but by six church members-- all in good-standing-- AND THEN corroborated by an eight-month long process of deposition and examination by an impartial third-party Arbitrator who was also an ordained minister of a Reformed church with 15 years in the pastorate. You were officially called to repentance and to make restitution for the financial, career and reputational losses I suffered at your hands-- but you instead IGNORED the ARBITRATOR and his Findings and instead began to discredit him.
Furthermore, after several months of entreaty by the church (Grace Gospel Church of Patchogue) that performed the Arbitration pleading with Gaydosh to honor the Findings of Arbitration and to make restitution to me, restore my reputation to whatever extent they damaged it, and to reverse the unbiblical declaration that my family members (and I) were "excommunicated", and to cease and desist from slanderous remarks being made about GGC and its pastor(s) (after Gaydosh was displeased with the Findings of Arbitration)-- the elder board of GGC sent a stern letter deeming that absent the repentance of Gaydosh and his fellow elders on all the above counts that GGC had no course of action but to disfellowship with GRBC in all kingdom matters pertaining to ministry on Long Island and any interaction between the two churches.
To this day, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Merrick has refused to respond in any constructive and godly manner to this letter pleading for their repentance (as a corporate entity) and any efforts to meet even with newer pastors who had "no dog in the fight" (namely Mark Grimaldi) have been refused. Most recently, contact with Mark Grimaldi resulted in his inaccurate assertion that my family had never been the subjects of a sinful kangaroo-court-style "excommunication" proceeding in which we were all deemed "excommunicated" per GRBC. I say "inaccurate assertion" as the most charitable way of characterizing such a blatant denial of the truth. In fact, a former member of GRBC that was a member at the time of this event and who went on sometime later to pursue a higher education at seminary used this event as the basis for a thesis (or thesis-like) paper detailing ecclesiastical abuse and the impropriety of such unbiblical tactics as this baseless "excommunication" examples.
In conclusion, my prayer is that God may be gracious to provide a forum, procedure or means by which both parties can be held accountable. That the Findings of Arbitration will be finally acknowledged as imputing Michael Gaydosh with certain extremely horrendous pastoral and professional failures and that Gaydosh himself will honor those Findings and its prescriptions.
As I have sought always to avoid courts and to pursue these matters in good-faith and always by godly and ecclesiastical means and have been waiting on the Lord these some odd sixteen years for final vindication, restoration and recompense-- I remain available to anyone that has an interest in this matter.
Since of late I have been contacted by people that have expressed reticence and concern with respect to Gaydosh resuming any official capacity in Christ's church where he currently resides-- I believe these still open matters are of significant issue and sadly still speak to his unfitness for office.
How can a man seek to administer the Lord's Table when he steadfastly refuses to obey Christ's commands?
"Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Matthew 5:23-24
Wow. I am flabbergasted. I stumbled upon this after reading Todd Wilhelm’s blog post where he shows court docs indicate he had Mike Gaydosh listed as a possible witness for his defense in his recent assault and molestation case.
ReplyDeleteThe whole just keeps getting deeper. We were abused by our pastor and subsequently left our church. Since leaving we have learned the depths of ARBCA’s corruption and it has helped us to fit together the pieces of the puzzle as to why our pastor turned on us the way he did and it explains some of the things that have happened over the last 15 years in our former church.
A seedy crime novel could be written about this outfit!