Grace City Church Leader Recaps First Week of Garden City Academy
And neighbors of the new school on Orchard Avenue share video, photos that show traffic problems and pickups in areas GCC leaders said there wouldn't be
Grace City Church Executive Pastor Josh McPherson postponed the kickoff of a new sermon series called “Church and State” he was planning to launch Sunday, Sept. 9 to give a recap of the first week of Garden City Academy, the organization’s new private Christian school on Orchard Avenue in Wenatchee.
During the presentation McPherson said how much GCC spent on upgrading King’s Orchard Church ($1.5 million) and outlined “the 5 Gs” that it takes to be a Garden City Farmer. He also returned to the theme of politics often, and said the world is separated into two types of people: “Givers, and takers.”
But first he kicked things off by calibrating the students and their families on how to respond to prompts throughout the sermon.
“When I say, ‘Are you ready?’ you will say ‘Yes sir!’” McPherson said.
McPherson said it takes grit (one of the “5 Gs”) to make it as a Garden City Farmer and they didn’t spend the money to create a school to create “soft” people. Soft is the opposite of grit, he said while writing it on the whiteboard onstage.
But first he took aim at what he views as the over-diagnosis and over-medication of children these days, most of whom just need a firm hand.
“We’re finding ways to diagnose children who don’t need drugs – they need a spanking,” he said.
Garden City Academy’s curriculum was designed to challenge the students academically, spiritually and physically. They didn’t build the school to “roll out the red carpet of comfort” for students.
He said they were going to challenge the children so that they’d have to “find your grit, or quit.”
That’s why on the first day of school Garden City Academy high schoolers swam the Columbia River and hiked to the top of Burch Mountain carrying rocks.
McPherson called it “Church to Burch” and said he hopes the name catches on and the event becomes a part of GCA tradition and lore. Instilling “grit” is important so GCA graduates can go out and change culture, taking back the power from “soft” leaders.
“We value, elevate and vote for soft,” McPherson said. “And when soft people lead and when soft people reign and soft people have the mic and soft people set culture everything gets worse.”
But it’s about more than just influencing culture – if you’re not gritty you can’t follow Christ properly. It’s the “prerequisite” for following Jesus, he said.
“If you put down your grit you cannot follow Jesus,” McPherson said.
Then he imagined a possible future in which this kind of talk could land him in jail, or even get him killed.
“There may come a time in our nation where it’s illegal to say what I’m saying out loud,” he said. “And I’ll either be dead or in jail and then you’ve got to decide if you’re gonna stand up and say it!”
The fifth “G,” and what all the other “Gs” build up to, is “give.”
And like all the other “Gs,” McPherson spent a lot of time on the word’s antonym.
He also returned to the theme of politics.
“What’s the opposite of give? Take,” he said. “And therein lies the social, philosophical, ideological and yes, political divide of our nation.”
McPherson said those on the “take side” might seem benevolent and even Biblical, but really it’s just a ploy to seize power.
“Ironically those on the take side have their whole political ideology around giving to the least of these yet in every nation where their ideology has been put to the test it results in the poorest of the poor people trying to flee that ideology,” he said. “Because it’s a Trojan horse to buy people’s votes to get into power so they can take more.”
You have to decide whether you are going to be a giver or a taker in life and that’s a “fundamental disposition” that many of the children in the crowd have failed to grasp, he said.
They take food, and shelter, emotional energy, gas and “conversation,” not realizing what kind of a toll that takes on parents.
“Maybe one of the reasons your dad is underperforming at work is because you’re taking from him at home,” he said. “Maybe one of the reasons your mom is a bitter, haggard woman is because you’re taking from her at home.”
McPherson ended his sermon with a slideshow and some video clips from the first day of school for Garden City Farmers, which included activities in the brand new gym for the elementary school children and a series of physical challenges for the high schoolers.
They started the day with a run down to the Columbia River, where they did some team building challenges and then got into inflatable rafts.
They paddled out into the river and then swam back shore. After that, they grabbed packs filled with rocks selected for them based on age, gender and weight and were released in groups in three-minute increments on a chaperoned hike from GCC’s compound to the top of Burch Mountain.
According to McPherson that’s more than 11 miles and even though some said they hated it and wanted to quit, all but three made it to the top.
“Everyone who started, except for the essentially broken ankle/rolled ankle, heat exhaustion and hernia, made it to the top,” he said.
You can watch the end McPherson’s sermon from Sunday featuring photos and video from GCA’s “Ruck Week” here:
While GCC Celebrates, Neighbors See Traffic Impacts
The first week of Garden City Academy classes at King’s Orchard brought with them the traffic congestion and other impacts folks in the neighborhoods around Orchard Ave. were concerned about when the plan for GCC to use the church as the home of its new K-12 private school.
Kevin McKee lives nearby and took this video on the first day of GCA classes.
McKee said the next day there was a staff member to help make sure no one is blocking the street but, “it’s still crazy busy.”
Another resident noticed students being picked up in areas not designated for pickup, which is something GCC leaders said wouldn’t be an issue in city planning department hearings.
But City Clerk Tammy McCord said City Hall hasn’t received any complaints about GCA traffic, and Wenatchee Police Chief Edgar Reinfeld said WPD hasn’t either.
Coming Up: A Look At The Curriculum
While McPherson didn’t spend any time talking about the academic side of things on Sunday, in my next piece on this subject we’ll be taking a look at the textbooks Garden City Farmers are required to read and the courses they are required to take.
We’ll also take a look at the publisher of many of those textbooks, Logos Press, which is owned by controversial Christian nationalist Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.
Infamous for minimizing the harm of American chattel slavery and for writing that “wives need to be led with a firm hand” and women who refuse the protection of a man “tacitly agree on the propriety of rape,” Wilson has been the subject of international media coverage from Vice News to Tucker Carlson for his extreme views and teachings.
His publishing house prints the textbooks Garden City Academy students from 7-12 grade are taking into Bible, language arts, literature and history classes.
I’m also interested in learning more about a special category of study called “homesteading skills.”
This is some of his most insane doctrine yet. Not explicit, but very coded in misogyny and western chauvinism. I think back to other cult leaders in my lifetime who were just begging for a fight from the big, bad government. The followers suffer the most, after they’ve lost all their family, friends, money, and sometimes their lives following their cult leader. With this new academy, families can now spend nearly their entire waking houes to live, breathe, and pay Josh McPherson—the ultimate “taker.”
The traffic issue is merely a distraction and not a battle worth fighting.
Well, this explains why an ex-cop who, I am pretty sure attends GCC, called me "a taker" twice last week, because in his opinion, most people are and I have never "served", thus done nothing for my country...even though he knows nothing about me other than I am a woman.
GCC: Misogynist. Supremacist,. Christian Nationalist.
Josh is taking his hateful sermons to a whole other, very dangerous level.
There is no way in hell I would have my child in that militant, toxic and, yes,...abusive...school. Nor would I allow anyone from GCC, most especially Josh, near my children.