Grace City Church, the Vector Academy, and a struggle for power in Wenatchee, Washington

For more than a year now I have been keeping an eye on Grace City Church in Wenatchee. The organization first caught my attention more than six years ago, when I learned that Grace City’s predecessor, Grace Covenant Church, was an offshoot of Mars Hill in Seattle. Mark Driscoll, the former pastor of that now defunct church, resigned in disgrace after a fraud scandal involving church funds being used to buy copies of his book, “Real Faith” and make it a best-seller. I found out that Grace City Church’s founding pastor and church planter Josh McPherson had been a member of the Acts 29 network and had strong ties to Driscoll and Mars Hill. McPherson and Driscoll still have strong ties, apparently.

But it wasn’t until the the COVID-19 pandemic, that Grace City Church and McPherson started to pop up on my radar more and more. I heard from multiple sources that during the COVID shutdowns in early 2020, that Grace City was flouting the guidelines and meeting in person anyway. I heard that the church had been seeking members in positions of power, specifically members of law enforcement and elected officials. But the information I was hearing was all hearsay at that point.

So I started asking around, gathering string and compiling every link and document I could get my hands on if it had anything to do with Grace City and their relationship with the Wenatchee community. It didn’t take long before people started to approach me in person and online, saying they heard I was working a story about Grace City and they wanted me to know about this or that. Some of them even had documents or screenshots that helped me fill in some blanks. I even went out to the Sunnyslope neighborhood of Wenatchee and spoke with a few of Grace City Church’s neighbors, many of whom are not thrilled with the organization for a number of reasons. But it wasn’t until the Church started marketing an unaccredited “academy” called The Vector Academy set to start in September 2021 that I had something I could really bite into and start reporting on. After taking one look at the PDF for The Vector Academy on their website, I had a feeling that it would be taken down very soon. I was right. They took it down quickly, but I had already downloaded a copy for my own files before they removed the PDF. You can still view the marketing video for the academy on their website here.

Once I had the names of the faculty members, I could start looking into who these men where, and it didn’t take long to find some disturbing patterns of behavior. Men like Doug Wilson from Moscow, Idaho and Art Azurdia from Portland, Oregon, for instance have shown disturbing trends of behavior that include pastoral abuse and defending American slavery by claiming it was “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”

I created this slide deck to keep track of the beats as I began to outline the story.

Once I had that put together I sent it to a journalism professor of mine from college, and he said he thought I have something here. He gave me some names and contacts for editors he knew who might be interested in the story, and I planned to reach out to them. But before I could do that, a source came forward to provide a PDF that was distributed in September/October of 2020 for elders and members of the church to, as the authors put it, “To Help See COVID More Clearly.” It was a big part of the puzzle that I was still missing. It outlined the game plan on how they were going to commit “civil disobedience” as they put it, and flaunt COVID guidelines.

From page 14, which is the beginning of the chapter titled Theological Lens:

“The state has no God-given authority over any church matter. This is clearly taught in Scripture and was the primary motivation of our nation’s founders in penning our Constitution. God is over all things, including both the Church and the State.”

My decision to go public with what I have so far might jeopardize my “scoop” and allow other journalists to swoop in and report this story themselves, but in light of what happened at the Wenatchee School Board meeting on Aug. 24, 2021, I feel that it is in the public’s best interest to know what I know.

As you can see, according to this woman, Grace City Church was involved in staging the protest that ended up shutting down the school board meeting and forcing board members to leave the building and resume it online. Pastor Carey McPherson, who the woman refers to in her post, preached this sermon at Grace City the Sunday before the events that transpired at the Wenatchee School Board meeting on Wednesday evening.

If you’d like to watch the full video from that meeting I attended it and recorded the in-person portion myself, before it was shut down by an angry anti-mask protestor. Here’s that:

I do not stand to make any money by releasing this information, and like I said, I might even lose the “scoop” by releasing what I have. But all my instincts as a journalist and a citizen tell me that the public needs to know about this behavior. Folks should be able to connect the dots for themselves, especially before November when our community is set to choose to either retain or select new school board members.

The last thing I would like to say is that I am not anti-religious, or anti-Christian. I grew up in a very religious household and to this day I have many friends and family members who are devout Christians. I respect and admire many people of faith both in this community and across the globe. I traveled the country for a year serving as a youth minster after high school and even considered the seminary myself as a young man. I have no ax to grind with religion or Christianity. On the contrary, it seems like a deeply hypocritical perversion of the teachings of Christ to use his words and legacy to manipulate others and amass wealth and power while doing so. My hope is that rather than dividing the community this information will help benevolent Christian congregations in the Wenatchee Valley realize who and what is in their midst and perhaps do something about it. Organizations like this and Mars Hill tend to cast a bad light on all Christians to outsiders looking in.

I will continue to gathering string on this story, and this week will be meeting with a local pastor who wants to go on record about what he thinks about a church helping organize protests to harass publicly-elected officials. And maybe going public at this stage can help me find the missing pieces I would still like to include in this story, like a copy of Grace City Church’s more recent document titled “9 Protests Against Vaccine Mandates and Government Outreach” or the oath document new members have to sign to become a member.

I’d also like to speak to anyone who has left the organization and wants to go on record about that. If you’d like to get in touch with me about those topics or anything else regarding this story, you can send me a direct message on Twitter. And if you’d like to see all the sources I have compiled so far, you can check them out here.