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Focus of this Blog

James Michael McDonald, V and his wife Stacy purchased and operated Homeschooling Today Magazine unsuccessfully for a number of years before its resale. During that time, the venture turned out to be far from profitable, and the McDonalds have not been honest about how they established themselves in the homeschooling community, how they operated their business, or even about their personal lives.

Certainly no one rejoices in the drawing of attention to these matters, they must be noted in order to stop the deception. This movement of patriocentricity promotes false doctrine by perpetuating lies, profiteering off of the trust of earnest Christians who believe the shaming messages promoted by the movement. The end should never justify the means, and the Christian homeschoolers that support the McDonalds have the right to know the truth. This blog hopes to draw attention to the behaviors of the McDonalds, particularly those concerning the period of time during which the McDonalds owned and operated Homeschooling Today Magazine.

Friday, February 20, 2009

James M McDonald, V has an Alias?


Well, someone named "Kelly McDonald" who comes up as a relative of Both James and James' first wife Sandy in Wyoming (at that time) has an alias of James M McDonald, V.

That seems like much of the same thing to me.

When James McDonald contacted a public minister who is a dear friend of mine, accusing my husband and me of lying about him and asking "how to deal with us," I decided to work a bit harder at figuring out just who this man was. Apparently, when contacting my friend, all James was primarily concerned about convincing this minister that he was really ordained. This person neither knew who James was nor cared. But the whole idea that this person would start calling people who posted comments on my blog really didn't make me very happy.

I wanted to find out whether James had actually been ordained as a minister in an Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) church in one of his former residences. I spoke to someone who was friends with Stacy in the 1990s during the period of time when they went to get the four children between James and Stacy. Part of those discussions included the fact that James who was Pentecostal at the time could not ever get ordained as a pastor or as an elder because their church did not ordain anyone who had been divorced/remarried. I contacted the central SBC to inquire about ordination information, but since the SBC is a very decentralized organization (???), they do not keep track of ordinations. Ordination is not tracked by the national organization, and only a few state organization have any info about individual ordinations within their states. I was told that I would need to find the individual church who had supposedly ordained James in order to verify that he had ever been ordained.

It is no light matter to me to question whether a minster has been ordained, so I looked online with a couple of objectives. I wanted to know exactly who James was, where he could have been ordained and whether I could find his first wife in order to find out whether he actually had been ordained in some manner, shape or form. Maybe he had actually been an elder somewhere and felt okay about stretching the truth. There were some tall tales told on the old, defunct Sisters in Christ Yahoo group and the message board that preceeded it before it was all moved onto Yahoo about Sandy. That was another reason for crashing those archives prior to the establishment of Family Reformation Ministries, because it documented James' previous marriage and the fact that Sandy was the parent of James eldest four children. There was some story of elders trying to minister to Sandy after a group of ministers gathered over her in her bed or something, somewhat reminiscent of the Pharisees finding the woman in the act of adultery. Some of that could well be true, but I thought that perhaps Sandy could answer these questions if I could get in contact with her.

So I started searching, and the name Kelly McDonald came up on a free record search, along with James' name and Sandra's name. Sandra is associated with both James and a person named “Kelly,” and Kelly and James are associated with one another. I did not know if this was another child or perhaps another wife. So I paid to do a search on the name because the name kept coming up, even showing up as a relative on James’ profile in Texas.

(This information can be accessed for free at Intellus.com.)

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When I did the search on Kelly in January of 2008, I expected to find that Kelly was a woman. I did not anticipate to find that, according to Intellus, that James M McDonald V both shared a birthdate with Kelly McDonald, let alone that James was his alias. (I've obscured the specific date of birth from the report, BTW.)


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What does this mean? In the post to follow this one, I was able to find out where James lived before and even was given the phone numbers for his neighbors in Katy, TX. I did not learn any new information about Kelly or about Sandra, James McDonald's first wife and the mother that birthed four of his children. I think it means that people have more of a reason to question the past of James McDonald. There may well be a reasonable and adequate explanation for all of these things. Will we find the answers?

That is also another interesting thing that conveniently went away when Stacy convinced the co-owner of the old and now defunct Sisters in Christ list to destroy all the archives. James claims to have only lived with his former wife for 3 years in a few posts in those archives. But James has four children with Sandy. Hmmm.

This does not prove without doubt that James McDonald has an alias, but it certainly does add to the ambiguous nature of James' past. Now there are more questions. I've spoken to some of the Homeschooling Today creditors about unpaid balances while James was owner, amounts that could outright finance five of the brand new car that I now drive (which I had to finance). Did James create an alias so that he could skirt his debt in Wyoming? Is that why Kelly shows up as a relative of James in his Texas search in his Texas household? How are we supposed to know? He won't even disclose what SBC church ordained him. (BTW, I called the SBC churches in his towns in Idaho and Wyoming. None of them knew of a James McDonald during the time periods that matched his dates of residence. I contacted several SBC churches in Texas but received no response from them. And a friend of mine contacted someone named Kelly McDonald in Wyoming, wondering if Kelly might be a twin brother.)

Maybe there is a simple answer to these questions that is reasonable. Maybe there is an error in the information in the Intellus system and Kelly is a relative. Someone suggested that maybe "Kelly" is a nickname to differentiate between James the IV and James the V. But we will likely not find out because James McDonald can't even tell us where he was ordained, let alone any of his personal information. As Christians, we are to be open books to be known and read of all men. Ministers and teachers of the Gospel are to be above reproach as well.

(Note that I cropped out information that did not match James M McDonald V or Sandra McDonald. Please also note that I performed the search in January of 2008.)

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For $50, you can pay to do your own search on Kelly McDonald in Wyoming to see if it also lists James M McDonald, V as an alias. Again, this is only an internet record search and I would not ever go to court on this information alone. But why does it have such a specific name listed as an alias?????

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