CFF and the ministry to Christian furries is something that has been on my heart for some time; it’s a ministry in which, I, myself have grown a great deal.  Being such a powerful and effective ministry, it’s no small wonder that a lot of opposition and drama have surrounded it from time to time.  It pains my heart a lot to say that a lot of the drama has come from someone who has been highly gifted of God, someone who at one point in time I had mutually considered a close friend and colleague, the former Pastor of CFF, Oren Otter.

I should note, these are not the first instances of issues with CFF and Oren, but, prior incidents I wasn’t around for; so I speak only of those I was present for below.

My story as part of the leadership of CFF, in actuality, begins quite a bit differently than his first comic about me would lead people to assume.  Since he calls this comic a “a dramatization of a true story” on his blog I’m sure he won’t mind me telling the true story bit, since he has the drama portion well in paw.  You see, I found CFF though various web comics, who’s forums had linked to the ministry as part of a funeral announcement.  At first, I was skeptical if you could have a furry Christian community, then discovered some of the comics I’d been reading were written by Christians.

By and by I came to fall in love with the people there, and requested and obtained membership to CFF.  After a period as a member, I approached Oren, asking if there was anything I could do in the ministry; and he recommended me for music director (since Ashen has been away with the military, and had left before my time).

After I had been there for awhile, Oren started becoming erratic.  On one occasional someone coming into the channel said they were once saved, and was booted by Oren citing that no one deserves a second chance.  In the murmuring against that decision a large amount of the channel was banned.  Multiple instances such as these occurred, many times of which Oren would delete the furrychapel website and ban much of the membership.

Various attempted were made at avoiding any sort of Church split.  From Draco’s idea of lowering Oren’s op powers so he couldn’t ban other channel operators (which didn’t work as he still banned members, so all op powers were eventually removed), to letting Oren take a sabbatical after he said he wanted to resign (I believe he resigned, at last count 3 separate times, on the last time the resignation was accepted).

After all this was occurring, the board began to work together to rework CFF so no one person could have total control; attempting to ensure issues like this couldn’t happen again, and we decided not to be looking for a new Pastor, but instead to have rotating teachers that could minister to the community.  We became worried that people would treat CFF as a “church-replacement” and stop attending their local Church (as there had been examples of this), so we also wanted to avoid a lot of the usual Churchy jargon.

After Oren’s powers were removed, he began to digress into name calling and sympathy pleas to have them restored.  In one case threatening suicide with a syringe and window cleaner if he couldn’t have the channel back.  Thankfully some members we able to calm him down so that didn’t occur.   Oren became less frequent to the channel; and created his own channel he could have full op powers over, which he named #C_F_F and claimed he was in exile (how you can be in exile from something you resign from, I’m not sure).

When the time came to update the channel structure to add new hops, it was realized Draco still had the only access to the channel; which he said he would not give up became he had promised Oren he would only give them back to him.  Oren had, from what Draco had relayed threatened to not be his friend if he gave us the channel access.  Even though, at this time CFF was reorganizing and Oren was no longer in any sort of leadership, this was at the request of the majority of the community and not a power play on anyone’s part.

After it became obvious Draco was going to refuse to pass the channel onto the new leadership, and, in fact had suggested he was giving it back to Oren, we moved the entire community to the new IRC network, and set a global ban on the previous channel so Oren would not be able to “retake” it and claim that he’d restored CFF, when in fact CFF had moved.  Oren was also banned from the new server for entering the room and attacking the membership at large.

We later had to re-enable this ban after he came into the room under a false name, and proceeded to ban anyone from his room who was also in ours saying anyone who attended services with the original CFF was against him and his enemy.  He also began to post broad mis-representations of the events that occurred to his journal, and in a “autobiographical comic” which I reference above.

Now, I don’t want this post to be about condemning Oren.  Rather, I want those who read this to take the time and pray for Oren, that eventually we’ll be able to reconcile without spite and be able to minister as I know he is able to do; but lately has been tainted with his own ego and pride.  I ask if anyone can, please comment and validate this as the actual series of events that occured, and feel free to included personal experience during that time frame.

Jeffery Core,
A servant of Christ