Elitism

There is a fundamental component or character trait of Wellspring – an inherent elitism. An arrogance that lifts itself up above all other churches. Certainly, they at one time had a very enviable church – full of the Spirit and good fellowship and good preaching. They were at one time, many years ago and many leaders ago, a well-respected member of the larger church community in the area. But as the years passed, the glory faded and the things that made Wellspring great were no longer present.  The sense of being fortunate and blessed to have received so rich a teaching, so full a measure of the Spirit was replaced with an arrogance, an elitism. And the MTS (Ministry Training School) became one of the primary sources of this elitism. At one time, MTS had been a source of creating a whole generation of people hungry to serve God and to build churches in far off places and carry on what was needed in all the ANTM churches. But over the last 20 years, Pastor Otis and soon Brandon Otis also, took over the MTS class and a new type of Christian was bred from those classes. 

 Emphasis in the MTS class was focused on elitism – discussion focused on the superiority of the church’s doctrine, the superiority of everyone in Wellspring Church, and the superiority of Wellspring in church history. It was regularly taught how many mistakes the great individuals of church history had made and how inferior these great names were to Wellspring Church (famous Protestants like Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also John Wesley and Aimee Semple Mcpherson).  One year of MTS was focused on Church History with the focus to educate future ministries on the history of the church and how we got here and all the key players involved and what they contributed and to give a hunger for the revivals and the greatness of past eras in the church.  But under the Chris Otis era, it was all about the superiority of his church and his doctrine. Which grew even more as Brandon Otis and Jay Gaynor took over and regaled the group on how they were going to help rewrite the MTS books and “fix all the errors in it.”  They talked regularly about how superior they were and their current doctrine was both to all of church history and to even the founder of their church, Pastor Norman James, Sr.  The arrogance is astounding!