Neil has claimed that the IRD has a perfect right to send in their operatives and disrupt churches because the churches are not following the denominational rules and therefore their clergy were either lying when they took the orders, or became apostate later and lied in trying to continue in the ordination when they clearly could not conform to the tennents of their faith.  Steeplejacking, of course, gives us an example of how it's really the fundamentalists that do this when they infiltrate denomonations that have been historically liberal from their inception, such as the United Church of Christ.

As the famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was instrumental in the establishment of the United Church of Christ, once wrote: "We in the Evangelical Synod heritage are informed by a theological tradition that might be best defined as a liberal evangelicalism...There are no fundamentalists among us. (P. 92)

The authors tell the story of one George Dohm, who graduated from a UCC Seminary.  His first church, where he served as pastor, had been infiltrated by proponants of the Biblical Witness Fellowship.  Dohm and these BWF activists managed to work the politics such that eventually the church voted on wether or not to stay in the UCC.  The chruch voted to stay, but lost 1/3 of it's membership.  Anyone who has ever been a member of a church will know that this is not a healthy situation for a congregation.

Dohm's second call was to a church where he was asked to leave after removing the denominational logo from everything connected with the church.

Dohm's third assignment also ended due to what appears to be conrtol freak behavior;  He took the Director of Youth ministries job as well as the job of pastor.  He couldn't handel it, and had to resign.

Despite his "official" departure, Dohm continued to meet with the leaders of the church - who referred to themselves as Georges Disciples" - which is considered an ethical violation in most Protestant church organizations.  Under his guidance, the leadership pushed for the church to leave the denomination, in the process spreading the usual lies and innuendo throughout the congregation. (p.114)

Among those lies, the authors describe the leadership as spreading the rumor that in order to get denominational funds to help with the pastoral transition, the church would be required to accept gay members and affirm their lifestyle as well as being required to call a gay pastor.  This was untrue, but the damage was done.

People within the church who did not want to leave the UCC began to take action to save their church.  They came to the authors of the book and were coached on how to counter the well-prepared steeplejackers.  They kept track of everything that was happening in the church, wrote to members of the congregation to inform them what was going on, and invited speakers to talk about the UCC and it's values and teachings.  Georges Disciples also invited speakers, one of them was George himself.  During his speech he told a story containing an analogy that the UCC was dog excrement contaminating the brownies of Christianity.

I will quote some more of the story here, because it is so evocative of the sort of damage these IRD tactics do to congregants.

In a final effort to keep the church within the denomination, a team of concerned covenantal partners in the St. Louis area met with the congregation to remind them of the values they shared with the wider church, and to help them see that the United Church of Christ was something more than just dog excrement ruining the rest of Christianity.  During the course of one of these meetings, a frail, elderly woman stood and spoke to the crowd, addressing "Georges Disciples" in particular, though she did not call them that.  "You people scare me," she said.  "I have been a member of this church all my life, and for the first time I am afraid to speak in my own church." Later, as we were leaving, another elderly woman stopped us and asked, "What do I do if they take this church from me?  My husband is buried here.  My child is buried here.  Where do I go?" (pgs 177-118)

Back to summarizing, the vote to decide to stay in the UCC or leave was scheduled three times, and delayed twice.  In the end, they chose to disassociate by five votes.  I'll go back to quoting the book, because this is just a powerful example of the psychological damage that funamentalists are willing to do to their children in the name of acquiring church property.

A tape was made of the congragational meeting at which the vote was taken.  At one point during the deliberations, an eleven-year old boy, the son of one of "Georges Disciples", spoke.  Half-choking as he sobbed, he addressed the leaders of the congregation. "I don't know...how we...can even think...about being part of a church...that does not believe in Jesus...I don't know how...we can think...about being a part of a church...that does not believe in the Bible."  It was truly frightening to hear this child speak, and to wonder what had been done, or said to him, that would lead him to believe and repeat these lies about the denomination. (p. 119)

[UPDATE: Here is the link to the SPLC report on the Chalcedon's vow to "convert" fundamentalist churches to Christian Reconstructionism]