Daddy Hammer and Mommy Chisel

This post will explore the goals, methods and effects of child-training as taught in an unhealthy fringe church. But first, it is probably helpful to understand the methods used to mold individuals in general to the group's aims and agenda.

The Geftakys assemblies prided themselves on having a deeper understanding of the Bible than other churches, and boasted that this understanding was a key in producing more serious, sanctified Christians than could be found in mainstream evangelical churches. The centerpiece of Geftakys teaching on sanctification was the teaching of our identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. Now I want to be clear that the Bible clearly teaches that it is by the death of Christ and His resurrection that we Christians are able to walk as those who are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Acting as those who are alive to God means giving Him the first place in our lives. And living the Christian life means that we rest in what Christ has accomplished for us, rather than trying to make ourselves perfect by living by a bunch of rules. How it all works is beyond the scope of this post, however.

But the Geftakys ministry subtly screwed up the teaching of the Cross. We were taught that the evidence of our putting God first was that we put the demands of the Geftakys groups first. We were taught that having wishes, aspirations and goals that contradicted the direction of the leaders was a sign that “self” was in the center of our lives instead of Christ. We were taught that someone who was really “going the way of the Cross,” as the leaders put it, would not insist on his own rights or object when those rights were violated by the leaders. We were taught in public that holy character is experienced through faith in Christ. Yet the leaders at every level were taught a behavior modification approach to holiness, or in other words, “change the person by changing their behavior.” This was seen in the way the group's ministries were run, the way the communal “training homes” were run, the way the leaders related to those who were led, and the use of negative reinforcement or “consequences” to discourage behavior that the leaders deemed undesirable. In short, the Geftakys teaching on the Cross was merely an expression of the group's war against independent individuals, their campaign to turn us all into unquestioning supporters of the group's agenda, perfectly trained servants of George Geftakys. (See also www.geftakysassembly.com, “George Geftakys’ Heavenly Vision”.)

So how did this work for Assembly children? The Geftakys ministry, citing 1 Timothy 3, taught that the “ideal” Assembly child was to be a validation of his parents' spiritual maturity and authority. A child who was less than fully, enthusiastically devoted to the activities of the group reflected poorly on his parents. The group also taught that one wasn't really “getting on with the Lord” unless one was rising through the ranks to positions of ever greater responsibility. Thus great pressure was brought to bear on Assembly children to force them to conform to the group standard.

The “Assembly child training” began almost from birth. Assembly meetings were long, and involved sitting still for long periods listening to men preaching. The perfect family was to sit quietly, without such distractions as children wiggling, talking or crying, for periods lasting over two hours, sometimes for two or three two-hour sessions per day. Mothers were taught to start training their children from three months old and onward to sit quietly on mats, and to swat them if they moved from the mats. These mat training sessions were to be done in the home, so that the training would be perfected by the time children were brought to the meetings. Older children were to be trained to take notes during the preaching sessions, and to prepare Bible study “chapter summaries” for the weekly Bible studies. The wife of one of George Geftakys' sons wrote a pamphlet entitled “Child Training for God’s Servants,” encapsulating this training approach (www.geftakysassembly.com, ChildTrainingPamphlet.htm). When children reached adolescence, they were strongly encouraged to do the following:

1. Ask to be baptized.

2. Start a campus Bible study at their middle school or high school.

3. Start praying out loud in the prayer meetings.

4. For males, start preaching at the beginning of the prayer meetings.

5. Start volunteering (or, perhaps more honestly, competing) for a position of ministry.

Children who did not do one or more of these things were considered to be failures.

The primary methods of child training taught in the Assemblies can be summed up in the statement, “Change the person by changing the behavior.” This involved both positive and negative reinforcement, including the excessive use of spankings. But when children came along who did not fit into the mold of the ideal Assembly child, the methods used to deal with them often became draconian. Even though such children were often guilty of nothing more than being uniquely-made individuals, a war was waged against them to “break their wills” and enforce compliance with the Assembly ideal. If for instance, there was an introverted child, perhaps athletically built and good in sports, but easily distracted because of body chemistry, he was still expected to sit quietly in long meetings while taking notes, to volunteer for things like “open-air preaching” in public places in front of total strangers during the yearly “Teen Teams,” and to “bring a word of ministry” (stand up in front of people and talk, for the uninitiated) during Sunday and Thursday meetings. Those who did not, or could not meet this ideal became targets. Evidently the targeting was too much for one kid in an Assembly in the Midwest, who committed suicide shortly before the revelations of George Geftakys' criminal activities became known.

A former Assembly kid said it best when he wrote, “Basically, an AK with fully involved parents (especially those who were leading brothers and workers) could expect in a normal day to wake up to morning devotions (both private and household), morning stewardships, school, afternoon stewardships, a meeting, homework. They were expected to prepare a chapter summary, eat dinner properly and in relative silence, recite memory verse or share a thought from a devotion, attend pre-prayer, set up chairs, perform and behave properly during the meeting, take down chairs, go home and do homework if there was time, sleep, do it again (the only variation being the type of meeting to attend-- prayer, chapter summary, tape, witnessing, all night of prayer, etc)...The bottom line was that an AK was required to be an Assembly adult. Any attempt to be a child and enjoy childhood was forcefully quashed.

“AKs were not taught to make choices (good or bad) on their own. They were not taught to relate to people outside the Assembly. They were taught that the Assembly was more important than family. They were taught that they must to be prepared to survive a horrible period of persecution before the return of Christ in the year ________ (depending on George's latest revelation). They were not in any way prepared to be autonomously functioning adults in the real world...These things AKs learned on our own: Our parents preached joy and were miserable. They preached freedom and were slaves. They preached Christ first and worshipped the Assembly. They preached love and looked down their noses at their fellow man. They preached humility, piety, sexual purity and truth, and bound themselves to an arrogant, lying adulterer.

“And then we bolted. Wonder why?” (Source: www.geftakysassembly.com, “Being An Assembly Kid”)

Those who are reading this may well say, “What a bizarre, fringe group!” Yet I have to tell you that such teaching and practice regarding children is not confined to obvious fringe church groups. George and Betty Geftakys and their lieutenants often cited works written by others in supposedly “mainstream” evangelical circles in order to legitimize their aberrant handling of children. Within the larger evangelical world there are those whose teaching expresses a hatred of independent individuals, especially independent, competent young adults. In my post, “A Tour of the Fringes,” I mentioned the Ezzo's and the Fugates, and the strict, legalistic, conformity-based methods of child “training” which they teach. Material from the books and tapes produced by these two couples were used as reinforcement and validation of the child-rearing methods taught by the Geftakys assemblies.

But there are yet more bizarre teachers to consider, people whose teaching would have been quite at home in a Geftakys assembly, even though their names were never mentioned. There is Bill Gothard, founder and head of the “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts,” who teaches that God has set up an inviolable “chain-of-command” in which God holds in His hand a hammer (a man, a husband) with which He strikes a chisel (a woman, a wife and mother) in order to chip away ungodliness from a stone (a teenager, presumably the son or daughter of the hammer and chisel). His authoritarian teaching includes stating that a woman is to submit even to beatings from her husband; the teaching that sons and daughters are to obey their parents in entire submission even after they are legal adults; and the teaching that a person is not to leave his parents' house until he is married. Accordingly, Gothard has lived with his parents as an adult, although, since he is now in his 70's, his parents may no longer be alive. (Source: “Obey Thy Husband,” TIME Magazine, 20 May 1974; Wikipedia)

Gothard's prohibitions have extended to forbidding Cabbage Patch dolls and public school education, including higher education. Instead, he offers his own homeschool curriculum for parents to use. He has also become known for being above scrutiny or financial accountability, and for running his organization with an authoritarian, iron fist. (A few years ago I met a couple who had been involved with Gothard's ministry. More on that in a later post.) He formulated a teaching series on “character development” mirroring his teaching on “Biblical character”. That character development series became mandatory training in 2003 for personnel in the Florida Department of Children and Families under Gov. Jeb Bush (www.rickross.com, “Character Training Riles DCF Workers”). Also, some sources point to ties between recent Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and the Gothard organization (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/19/175629/012/188/439174).

There is also the dominionist, reconstructionist teaching on “courtship” which is now being popularized through the efforts of men such as Jonathan Lindvall and Steve Schlissel. The tip of the courtship “iceberg” can be seen in books such as I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. I am not saying that Mr. Harris is evil, or that his book is evil. But there are those in the courtship movement who take such ideas to radical extremes, teaching as Gothard did that children are to unquestioningly obey their parents in everything even when the children are legal adults. According to these men, parents have the duty and right to arrange every aspect of their children's adult lives, including whom they will marry. Adult children who disagree with their parents in these matters are to be shunned. One source cites how a 21 year old man whose family became caught up in “Lindvallism” wrote to Mr. Lindvall in protest, only to be answered by a quote from Deuteronomy about stoning rebellious sons to death. (See http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/largerhope/Courtship%20&%20Betrothal%20Essays/God%20in%20the%20back.htm)

Steve Schlissel is a Reformed/Calvinist pastor who has been featured on St. Anne's Pub, a podcast produced by Joost Nixon, Pastor of Christ Church, Spokane, Washington. He has boasted of how he has taught his children that they are to be an absolute reflection and extension of himself. In fact, Sarah Schlissel, one of his daughters, has written a pamphlet instructing daughters to consider themselves to be quite literally their fathers' property. This attitude, though, is typical of some of the more radical teachers on family and parental authority. (See also http://members.aol.com/usteach/Courtship/DaddysGirl.pdf)

And what does this teaching and approach produce? While it can, on the surface, produce thousands of smiling, outwardly conforming young men and women, it is well known that it also produces many, many wounded, violated people, because of the absolute, unchecked exercise of power by fallible men against young victims. Two names come to mind: David Ludwig and Matthew Murray, both of whom were raised by parents who employed Bill Gothard's child-rearing methods. Matthew Murray was also homeschooled using Bill Gothard's curriculum. Both suffered mental breakdowns and wound up murdering other people. Matthew Murray's last victim was himself. (http://www.helium.com/items/795351-gothard-nightmaredavid-ludwig-schooled)

Finding (and losing) Rebekah

At the end of my post titled, “A Tour of the Fringes,” I promised to tell about a woman raised in an abusive church environment, whom I met a year after I left the Geftakys assemblies. In what follows, I will not use her actual name, in order to protect her privacy.

It was the winter of 2004, very early in January. While I had been a member of a Geftakys assembly, my life had been occupied with going to a lot of meetings, such as Sunday morning worship and Sunday afternoon “stated ministry.” Now that I was no longer involved, I found myself with quite a bit more time on my hands. I had been going to the YMCA to work out, but while I was involved with the Geftakys group, I had to sneak in my midweek workout session, as it caused me to be late for their Thursday night “prayer meetings”. But now I didn't care. Instead of being busy all day on Sunday with meetings and “ministries,” I started going to the Y on Sunday afternoons. The gym opened on Sundays at 1 pm, and I found that if I got there right at opening time, I could usually count on having most of the gym to myself for at least a half hour. It was a good way to relax – trying to bench press 270 pounds six times or do some other challenging thing while listening to audio books such as The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Life of Pi, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and several of the John Grisham titles. (One warning: don't ever try to lift anything heavy while listening to a reading of Mark Twain. Laughter can be dangerous in such a situation.)

I occasionally saw other people coming in early on Sunday afternoon to work out. Most of them were gnarly adult men around my age or older. But one day I noticed a youthful, attractive woman with a pleasant smile. I had arrived late that day, and she was just finishing her workout. Involvement in the Geftakys assemblies had pretty well trashed my romantic prospects, and in the time immediately following my departure, I was strongly feeling the damage and wondering what to do about it. Until the day I saw this woman, the Y hadn't really presented itself well as a place for finding romance. But I resolved to be there right at opening time the next Sunday.

I saw her again over the next few Sundays, but I was scared by the prospect of trying to initiate a conversation. In fact, I could never get up enough nerve even to say “Hello.” But one day, I came in right at opening time, and I was the only one in the gym, aside from the staff. She came about fifteen minutes later, and as I saw her I smiled, then quickly looked away. We both went through our workouts, and she finished before I did, so she prepared to leave. As she was leaving, she stopped next to me and said in a pleasant alto voice, “Have a good day.” Surprised, I said, “Thanks!” And I did have a very good “rest of the day.”

When she came the next Sunday, I greeted her and said, “Thanks for wishing a good day for me last week.” She asked, “Do you come here regularly on Sundays?” I told her that I did. “Well, have a good workout,” she said. “You too!” I replied. The Y was definitely becoming an interesting place to hang out. I started looking forward with great interest to Sunday afternoons. When I next saw her, she said, “I don't know if we've ever introduced ourselves to each other. I'm Rebekah.” She held out her hand, and as I told her my name, we shook hands. She asked me what I did for work, and I told her that I was an engineer. She was working as a physical trainer, but she really wanted to launch a career as a singer/songwriter. I asked her what style of music she was interested in, and she told me about some female folk artists who had really impressed her, women such as Eva Cassidy. I told her that I had not heard of some of the women she named, but that I would try to check them out.

The next Sunday I saw her again and we exchanged greetings, then got down to our workouts. But when she was finished, she came to me and gave me a CD on which she had copied a selection of songs from some of her favorite artists, including Eva Cassidy. “I thought I'd bring this to you as a little gift,” she said. “Let me know what you think about it.” I looked at her for a long moment. I was frankly more than curious. It was one thing to be friendly toward someone, but this was beginning to look a bit more serious. Yet I hardly knew her. “Um, I was thinking...” I began, suddenly tongue-tied. “Yes?” she said, encouragingly. “Um, thanks for the CD. I'd, um, like to get to know you a little better, if that's okay. And I was wondering...if you might want to get together some time, say at Starbuck's, so we could swap stories.” “I'd like that very much,” she said. “In fact, I've been thinking the same thing for a while.” We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to call each other during the week to set a date.

I began thinking. She was manifestly a physically attractive woman, and she seemed to have a pleasant, easy, quiet personality. But I did not yet know her well enough. And one thing I had acquired during my life was my Christianity. Even though certain charlatans had made a bad use of my faith, I had no intention of abandoning it. I was mindful of the passage in 2 Corinthians warning Christians against unequal yokes. Even though I wanted very much for our acquaintance to lead to something more, I knew that this was a situation that demanded caution. Therefore when we called each other during the week to set up our “date”, I said at the end, “Oh, and by the way, I wanted to tell you something about me. I'm a Christian.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Then her voice, which had been friendly and open before, came back cold and guarded. “Oh? That's interesting. Are you very involved...in church and things like that?” I told her that I was just going on Sunday mornings. Her tone surprised me. “Well, maybe we should postpone getting together after all,” she said, mentioning that she was going to have to take a trip out of town over the next week. “Could we get together after you get back?” I asked. “Let's see about it,” was her reluctant reply. We said goodbye to each other and hung up.

Needless to say, that conversation was a disappointment. But it also got me thinking. During the height of my commitment to the abusive Geftakys group, I was led to believe that anyone who rejected church or Christianity did so because “the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving,” as it says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, and that such people were “deceived by the prince of darkness.” So it was that when I used to go on Sunday noon “door-to-door witnessing” outreach to neighborhood homes, all dressed up in my Sunday best, I believed that people who refused to talk to me or who slammed the door in my face or who asked me to leave did so because they “hated the light of the Gospel.” I still believe that this world is antagonistic toward the Gospel; yet since I have become a homeowner, I also have come to understand perfectly the antipathy which homeowners feel toward strangers showing up on their doorsteps trying to get them to join or sign up for something. Now I had left the Geftakys group, seeing that it was a cult, and seeing that many who had been taught by that group to believe in a twisted version of God were now rejecting belief in general. These two insights began to give me a clue as to what was going on with Rebekah.

That Sunday, I wondered if she would show up at the gym at all, and was relieved when she did. But her “Hello” was curt, almost formal. When she finished her workout, I came to her timidly and said, “Can I walk you out?” “Okay,” she said slowly. We walked toward the front door.

“Could I ask you a, um, personal question?” I said. “This may seem silly, but I've been curious for the last few days. How is it that you were named Rebekah? Do you spell it the Hebrew way?”

“Well, it is spelled R-E-B-E-K-A-H. And my parents are Christians, and when I was growing up we were involved in a church whose members used to give Bible names to their children. Well, that is, I said we were in a church. It was really a cult. I refused to go to their meetings when I was a teenager, and my dad disowned me.” (By the way, she told me that the cult to which her family belonged was one of the Plymouth Brethren sects, the one started by the Asian man I mentioned in “A Tour of the Fringes,” the cult which sues people to death. I'm sure you'll understand if I don't mention them by name.)

“Oh,” I said, slowly. “I'm really sorry about what happened to you. But I was suspecting after our phone conversation that something like this might be what was going on. Don't get me wrong, but your name gave me a clue. You see, I too used to be involved in an abusive, cultic church. I've been out for a while, but I'm still trying to sort things out. And that's one reason I'd still like to get together with you, if that's okay...if I'm not a scary person in your eyes...” She reluctantly agreed, and we set a date for the following Sunday afternoon at a local Starbuck's.

I showed up early at the Starbuck's. The weather was now quite warm, and it was pleasant to sit outside in shorts and T-shirt, picking away on my guitar and watching people in co-ed pairs lounging around, talking. At least today, I would get to enjoy being part of such a pair. Rebekah came about ten minutes later, and I waved to her. She looked especially attractive. When she had gotten her drink and I had gotten mine, I said, “It looks like we both have quite a story to tell each other. Do you want to go first, or would you rather I did?” “Why don't you go first,” she said. Her manner was pleasant, yet guarded.

I told her about my upbringing, my conversion to Christianity, my Army tour, and my stumbling into an abusive church. I tried to make it clear that I was no longer associated with that abusive group, that I thought they were kooks, and that I was now trying myself to sort my life out. I told her that I was going to a Lutheran church, because I believed that I ought to go to church and because so far, the Lutherans were the easiest on my nerves. I tried to show her that I understood where she was coming from. I talked a lot, and she merely listened, as the sun slowly went down and the streetlights came on. I asked her if she wanted to tell her story, but by that time it was after dark and the night was becoming a bit chilly. She declined, saying instead that she really needed to go. I walked her to her car and held out my hand, thanking her for letting me tell her my story. She reluctantly shook hands. The guardedness never left her.

We had only one other conversation of any note after that Sunday. Rebekah called me up to talk about things; I think she still liked me, but was struggling with ambivalence. We talked about her musical aspirations (she was discouraged, seeing how difficult it is to make it as a folk singer/songwriter), and I talked to her about church. She told me that she was like I was at the beginning of her exodus from the cult her family was in: she saw that it was a cult, and left it in order to try to find a church that is “true and faithful.” Her experiences in dealing with church people were very negative. I told her again that I found the Lutherans to be very easy on the nerves, and asked her if she had ever checked out a Lutheran church. “If you really want to know, I think most people in church are d___'s, and they scare the h___ out of me,” she said. I knew not to press the subject any further. She told me that her mom had also left her cultic church, and was so angry and bitter that she refused to have any religious belief. But her dad stubbornly remains involved in the cult, even hosting regular weekly meetings in their home. I don't know if our phone conversation helped her in any way.

I saw her only a few times after that. Eventually, she stopped coming to the Y on Sundays. I don't know if she ever made it as a singer. Meanwhile, I was left alone again, like the Will Smith character in the movie I Am Legend – solo, but not by choice. Or then again, maybe like a character in a Jackson Browne song.

Interview With Justin Zoradi

This post is a “bonus” post, which I should have published sooner. It's time to catch up on a bit of news. But first, a confession: although I am still TH, I no longer live in SoC. Last September, my company transferred me from Southern California to Oregon. I suppose I should now call this blog TH in OR, but I'm too comfortable with the present name to go through the hassle of changing it.

Anyway, about a month and a half ago, I was browsing some of the old posts from the blog, JZ in NI, written by 25-year-old Justin Zoradi, about whom I have written before on my blog. While he was actively writing JZ in NI, he was involved in missionary/reconciliation work in Northern Ireland. He is now involved in a missionary/social aid organization called These Numbers Have Faces. I looked up their website and discovered that Justin has also relocated to Oregon, and was living nearby. Thus it was that we connected with each other at a local coffeehouse on a Saturday evening. I had only seen a few pictures of him on his blog before our Saturday meeting, and he had never seen me.

If you go to his blog, under the “About Me” section is a picture of black rap musician Jay-Z (born as Shawn Corey Carter). I'm really not into rap music and had never heard of Jay-Z, so when I first stumbled across Justin's blog and saw the picture, I found myself scratching my head and asking, “What's this guy doing as a missionary in Northern Ireland? I'm impressed!” Later, I ran across some actual pictures of Justin, and got a bit of a chuckle out of his profile “ruse.”

During our Saturday meeting we swapped abridged life stories. He is originally from San Luis Obispo, California, while I was a resident of Orange County before my job transfer. We are both relatively new to Oregon, and are both getting used to such things as the mostly cloudy climate. He is now pursuing a Master's degree in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies at Portland State University, while his fiancee is pursuing a Master's degree in Social Work at Portland State. I didn't get to meet his fiancee, as she was unable to make it for our Saturday meeting. They intend to get married after they finish their education, and to move to South Africa in support of These Numbers Have Faces.

Justin described his family as a loving family, with an orthodox faith. His schooling was also good, as he attended private Christian schools from the beginning of his education until his bachelor's degree. Yet as he moved into high school, he began to notice a disconnect between the faith that was being taught to him and the suffering and injustice he was seeing in the world. This led to a lot of questioning, as well as a bit of a rebellion against the “safe” Christianity he had known all his life. But while pursuing his undergraduate degree, he met a professor who told him that his questions were valid, and who challenged him to join the professor in Northern Ireland as part of a missionary team working to end sectarian violence by reconciling Catholic and Protestant factions. Justin accepted the challenge, and so his blog, JZ in NI, came into being.

His work with that professor in Northern Ireland showed Justin that there is in fact a strong connection between the Bible and social justice, and that the Bible has many relevant things to say about the condition of this world, and the duty of Christians to practice charity. If you read his blog, you can see the many practical, incarnational graces which his missionary team was called to practice. For instance, he learned a lot about mentoring young, fatherless kids – lessons which he is applying in his neighborhood now in Portland, where he and a few other Christian young men deliberately chose to live in a house in a poorer part of town, so that they could minister to fatherless, directionless kids.

He also told of a couple of tight spots he got into while in Northern Ireland – once at a Catholic gathering to which he had been invited as a guest. While the gathering was in progress, some Protestant paramilitary members came and began to surround their meeting place. A couple of young kids helped him escape before anything happened. There were a few other tight spots as well.

We found out that we both have a similar problem with regard to finding a church – he attends a Mennonite church because of its rich spiritual tradition, but also likes visiting a more lively modern church in town because it has a strong emphasis on the arts in ministry. He doesn't quite feel at home in either church. Likewise, when I go to church, I usually go to a Lutheran church because of the richness of the liturgy and the hymns. Yet I don't feel quite at home among the Lutherans – their traditionalism tends to make them ignore the needs of the larger world. It turns out that we both prefer old, theologically rich hymns rather than the new “praise music.”

If you go to the These Numbers website, you'll find the following information in the “About Us” section:

We are realistic.

We have read the statistics, heard the news stories, and seen tragedy and brokenness with our own eyes. We recognize how easy it is to forget that there are human faces behind the numbers. Yet we are committed to confronting apathy in direct and concrete ways by listening and responding to the lives of our friends.

We are hopeful.

We believe that the smallest actions can produce small changes, which over time can lead to revolutionary results. We do not claim to be the saviors of the poor; we are no more gifted, talented, or superior than our friends in need. We only desire to marvel in our interconnectedness and share the stories of those we meet in hopes of bringing transformation, joy, and purpose to all our lives.

Why we’re different:

Lets face it. There are thousands of nonprofits, NGO’s, and faith-based organizations doing work in Africa. Why is These Numbers Have Faces any different?

First, we believe in the skills and abilities of Gugulethu locals to affect change in their own communities. In short, we think South Africans know what’s best for South Africa. We simply want to highlight, advocate, and support the initiatives already in place by the people themselves.

Second, we’re starting small by sharing the stories of a few real people. Statistics, graphs, and pie charts can be helpful, but we think the faces, experiences, and insight of local people are far more compelling. While we may only support one soccer team and one student in college this year, we think that’s how these things start - one person at a time.

The members of These Numbers realize that their strength and resources are small, and that the challenges they are trying to confront are great – yet they are learning how to meet those challenges with a little strength. That should be an encouragement to all of us who are trying in any way to be operatives of God's Kingdom in a fallen world. Although my blog, TH in SoC, has been focused mainly on problems within the American evangelical community, it is refreshing to take time once in a while to look at examples of people who are trying to do things right. If any readers want to point out other examples, feel free to send me a comment.

One other thing: I have started a new blog titled, The Well Run Dry. That blog will explore day-to-day experiences in the world we are now starting to see – a world whose high technology and high standard of living are beginning to fail, due to resource shortages and climate change. That blog will address things I was only able to barely touch on TH in SoC. However, I will only be posting sporadically at first on the new blog. Feel free to check it out.

A Tour of the Fringes

In dealing with the abuse of power within modern American evangelicalism, it has been helpful to break the analysis down into categories. Thus we dealt first with evangelicals and political power. Now that we are dealing with evangelicals and ecclesiastical power, I propose a further subdivision, namely, a division between obvious “fringe” groups, commonly classified as cults, versus power abuse in churches and church organizations that are typically regarded as “mainstream.” This post begins a tour of a few typical fringe churches, leaders, and organizations. We will start with my old abusive church, described in my blog posts titled, “What My Old Church Was Like.” But whereas those posts were personal in nature, this post will have a more forensic and analytical tone. I do hope, however, that writing this post won't lead to bad dreams (I'm not joking!) or to the urge to use a few choice four letter words. It's been over five years since I left that messed-up church. One other thing: if anyone reading this is an ex-member of that church, please forgive me if I accidentally irritate old wounds. That is not my intention.

George and Betty Geftakys are a small-time religious husband-and-wife con artist duo with a storied past, although you'll get a less-than-accurate version of that story from their mouths. They now live in an upscale retirement facility in Southern California's Inland Empire, their expenses financed by proceeds from gifts and offerings which they swindled out of their followers over a period of at least twenty-five years. George is now pushing 80 years of age, but began his “career” long ago as a Baptist pastor, according to his own account, after enlisting in the military as a teenager during World War II. George considered himself to be successful as a pastor; yet he states that a morning came during which God began to speak to him and to show him that the pattern of church government in which he was involved was wrong, and that God was calling him to “New Testament simplicity.” He says that when he began preaching the things he was seeing in Ephesians regarding God's pattern for the Church, the elders and deacons of his church graciously suggested that he should leave the church and find a place that expressed the pattern that George had discovered.

Thus during the late '50's (?) and the 1960's, George and Betty began meeting with a number of “assemblies” affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren movement. George has often related how he met “dear brethren in the Lord” in these assemblies, and how he “stood courageously” against certain “false teachers.” But there came a time during the 60's in which, as George began to see that the Brethren assemblies were “losing their vision,” God called him to a “season of fervent prayer and fasting,” that the Lord might show him His purposes for him. So it was that “God called George to begin a new work.”

This “new work” was the founding of a large chain of “assemblies” modeled after the Plymouth Brethren pattern, although George denied any connection between his Assemblies and the Brethren. The founding of these groups began in the late 1960's and early 70's, and continued without interruption until 2002, when a number of ex-members discovered that one of George's sons had been a wife-beater during the entire duration of his marriage, and that George himself had actually been excommunicated from his former Brethren assembly for adultery. They posted their findings, including restraining orders obtained against the wife-beating son, on a website to which they invited all current members of the Geftakys assemblies. Once this website became widely known, other things came to light, such as the embezzlement of large amounts of money from the offering known as “the Lord's Treasury,” the assertion by one source that George had four Social Security numbers, and the adultery George practiced while he presided over his assemblies – adultery which consisted of his ordering young women to serve as his secretaries, while secretly forcing himself on them. It is quite likely that George's sexual shenanigans were the reason he was obliged to leave the Baptist church he pastored at the beginning of his “career.” Also, those who are still alive from the time of George's stay with the Plymouth Brethren can attest that George had other problems, including a lack of social skills which expressed itself as a strong drive to dominate people.

The Assemblies of George Geftakys advertised themselves by such things as college campus “outreach” groups, “Gospel tent campaigns” in various cities, “mission and training teams” sent out to start new assemblies, and “gospel marches” on city streets. But in 1992 they got a bit of publicity they weren't looking for, because that was the year that Churches that Abuse was published. Churches that Abuse was, among other things, a much abridged catalogue of several cultic and damaging churches, among which the Assemblies were also mentioned. When Churches was first published, we who were in the Assemblies were all warned that it was “an attack by the Devil to stir up persecution and discredit the Lord's servant.” But having read the book, I now think it very accurately called a spade a spade. And anyway, crooks almost always deny that they did the crime when they are first fingered. By the way, you can also find out more about George and Betty Geftakys from the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements (www.rickross.com), and from the “Assembly Reflections” website (www.geftakysassembly.com). If you go to the Rick Ross website, just type “Geftakys” in the search box.

Some mention of the Plymouth Brethren is in order, since they were the source of much of George's teaching and practice. In the early 1800's a number of people in the United Kingdom became disaffected with certain practices in the Church of England, and began simple “house church” style meetings instead. They became known as the “Brethren.” Most of their groups had no strong leadership or dominant figures, and only a primitive organizational form. But that all changed when a young clergyman named John Nelson Darby joined one of these groups. He was an extremely well-educated man, as well as an overpowering, domineering man, and he quickly made a rigid, restrictive, tightly governed organizational machine out of the majority of these groups, which had formerly been simple gatherings of believers who just wanted to meet each Sunday for mutual encouragement.

Darby also taught and wrote extensively. From the groups he founded, as well as the ideas contained in his writings, certain groups have arisen which are cultic in the extreme, radically shunning the outside world, micromanaging their members' lives to within a “gnat's eyebrow,” and governed by leaders who are rabidly willing to sue the living daylights out of anyone who dares accuse these groups of being cultic. One such group, founded by an Asian man in the 1950's, used to sue Christian book publishers whose books cast the group in an unfavorable light. The lawsuits always demanded obscene amounts of money (the last suit was for $300 million). The lawyers for this group typically relied on a strategy of bleeding the opposition dry through rounds and rounds of endless depositions, thus forcing the publishing companies to settle or go bankrupt. However, this group lost its most recent lawsuit. Groups based on the Plymouth Brethren have also been the target of a scathing lampoon by Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion. It seems that Mr. Keillor had to suffer through a Plymouth Brethren upbringing as a child. However, no one has dared to sue him for speaking out.

The Geftakys assemblies definitely fit the list of danger signals found in Churches that Abuse and at the Rick Ross website (www.rickross.com/warningsigns.html) concerning aberrant groups. But it is helpful also to consider the patterns of power abuse which were present in the Assemblies.

First, the thing that drew so many of us into the Assemblies, and which held us there, was the hunger many of us had for a “deeper spiritual experience,” and the message from George and his deputies that they had what we needed. George communicated this in many ways: talking much about the visions and revelations which he had “received from the Lord,” the “insights” which God gave him, the miraculous signs which had accompanied him on his missionary journeys, etc. Though the Bible warns against this kind of boasting (Colossians 2:18), we fell for it.

But the second thing that George did was to discredit any other source of spiritual knowledge or insight beside himself. Thus it was that in the early days of his assemblies, when he held regularly scheduled Bible studies, he would not allow anyone but himself to preach on certain Bible passages, such as the Prophets or Revelation, since no one yet “had as much stature and maturity as he.” Later, he did allow his most trusted lieutenants to preach on these passages. But reading of devotional books written by people other than himself was strongly discouraged in general, unless cleared by the leadership, since most other authors “did not have the vision of the House of God.”

Also, the followers in his groups were taught to “seek counsel” from the leaders for almost every major life decision, including whom to marry and what career to have. This pressure to clear every decision with the leaders had another corollary: the subtle communication of the idea that unless one was being discipled and groomed for positions of greater responsibility within the group, one wasn't really “getting on with the Lord.” This had the effect of training most of us to be like typical Haley Joel Osment movie characters: lost little children looking for adult shoulders to lean on, while being told that the only worthy shoulders were those of the leaders.

George elevated himself above all the members of his group, going so far as to call himself “the head steward of the work,” along with other crackerjack titles, and frequently stating that “...you're not my peers!” during his “sermons.” Moreover, he alone chose those who assisted him in leadership; input from the followers was usually not solicited. Therefore, there was no way of holding him or his deputies accountable for anything (at least, until the Internet;-)).

George also preached and taught a version of the Christian life that was so rigorously perfectionist that almost none of his hearers believed that they would ever be able to attain such perfection. Some of his ex-followers have gone to great lengths (and used many reams of paper in the process) in an attempt to refute George's teachings by comparing them to the writings of great Church historical figures such as Augustine or John Calvin, or by performing exhaustive, highly technical exegesis of obscure Bible passages. For a long time I have thought such efforts to be a waste of time, since it seems obvious to me that the reason why George preached such a perfectionist message was not theological, but so that he could by one more means establish himself alone as the top dog in our little dogpile. All I care about is the fact that George turned out to be a liar (oh! how I want to say something much stronger!), and that his teaching drove some people to suicide. As far as George's theology, I am no more interested in analyzing it than I am in performing a rigorous toxicological analysis of the potato salad that has just sickened a hundred people at a church picnic. It's better to just toss the whole mess and get on with life. While my theology nowadays is a work-in-progress, it is my work, and no one else's.

But there were two particular effects of George's teaching and practice. First, because we were all taught to believe that one wasn't “getting on with the Lord” unless one was rising through the ranks to greater positions of leadership, an intense competition was generated in our midst for those positions of leadership. Secondly, because George preached such a rigorously perfectionist, legalist version of Christianity, and because he held himself up as the one man who could live such a life, everyone who was vying for leadership positions was trained to be legalistic and demanding in his dealings with his fellows.

This manifested itself in three areas: ministry, child-rearing and the marriage relationship. Those who were granted positions of authority frequently tried to prove their worthiness by being as hard as possible on those whom they led. This led to a lot of stressed-out members of communal “training homes” whose lives were traumatized by the “head stewards” who ran the homes. It also led to a living hell for many wives and children of ambitious men who desperately wanted to “grow in stature.” These men were counseled on the proper techniques of “domestic management” by George's wife Betty, whose teachings were actually an attempt to legitimize the deviant home life practiced by George and his sons. It is important to note that as a justification and backup for her teachings, Betty used books by authors who were quite in vogue in mainstream evangelical circles not very long ago: books by Gary and Ann Marie Ezzo, and by Gary Ezzo and Dr. Robert Bucknam (Babywise, Parent-Wise Solutions, November 2001; Growing Kids God's Way, Biblical Ethics for Parenting, January 2001), as well as books by J. Richard Fugate (What the Bible Says About Child Rearing, Aletheia Publishers, 1980 ). The premise of these books is that the evidence of godly leadership in the home is that a man rules his family well, as is stated in 1 Timothy. However, the “rule” outlined in these books is, I think, a far cry from the kind of “rule” God actually wants. “Godly home rule” as practiced by a typical Geftakys assembly family, involved a husband who trained his wife and children that they were merely his servants, and who drove them unceasingly to perform his perfectionist, legalistic demands.

Future posts will examine the abuse of power in ministry, child-rearing and marriage, as practiced in a fringe cultic church. I will also perform a more detailed examination of some of the supposedly “mainstream” teachings by “mainstream” evangelical authors which have been used to justify some “fringe” practices in this area. And I shall examine a typical list of “warning signs” concerning unsafe religious groups and see how they fit with some of the more well-known fringe churches.

But I will also tell personal stories. Therefore, the next post will describe a woman who had been raised in an abusive church background, and whom I met about a year after I left the Geftakys assemblies. She is illustrative of the damage that is done to people who are born into such groups.

Evangelicals and Ecclesiastical Power - An Introduction

Let's begin by playing a little game. I will list a few rather uncommon words, and you try to guess something of their meaning. The words are:

mesothelioma, erythremia, uremia, eritheia, mycetoma

They sound like medical conditions, don't they? In fact, four of these words denote a diseased condition of the body. One of these words denotes a diseased condition of the soul. Without reading further, looking in a dictionary or doing a Google search, can you tell which of the words denotes a soul disease?

* * *

Within the Church at large, there are those who are susceptible to many kinds of sins. They must constantly keep watch against their particular brand of weakness. But there is a sin which is much more damaging than most, because those who indulge in this sin do great damage to many others beside themselves. This sin is the lust for power over others. The Greek word frequently used in the original New Testament writings to describe this sin is eritheia.

In the New Testament, eritheia means “electioneering or intrigue”, that is, engaging in secret schemes to advance oneself or one's agenda within a church body. But the word has a rather interesting etymology. Originally it was derived from eritheuo, which means “to work for hire.” Thus eritheia originally denoted someone working for a wage. But later, the word came to mean someone who was interested only in his own personal gain. In the common, non-Biblical Greek usage of New Testament times, eritheia meant “...one who seeks political office for the fulfillment of his selfish ambitions and personal gains” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Geoffrey William Bromiley, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995).

Another source states the following: “Kittel (1:660) writes that Aristotle (the most famous and influential Greek philosopher) used eritheia when he wrote in Pol., V, 3, p. 1303a, 13 ff. to describe someone who was procuring public office by illegally manipulating the process. He used the word to refer to the attitude or spirit of what they were doing rather than a specific action. Kittel (1:660) also writes ... that eritheia was used in the civic oath of the Itanians: 'I will not on any pretext bring a charge of failure to keep civic law against any citizen for personal reasons.' The key portion of this oath lies in the word eritheia; it says basically that “I will not bring a charge that is motivated by eritheia.” Using the legal system of the state—authority greater than themselves and meant for the common good—for personal revenge or personal advancement was strictly forbidden. Kittel (1:660) records that Polybius (200?-118? B.C.; a Greek historian who wrote the 40 volume Universal History about the history of Roman conquest between 264 and 146 B.C. (Encarta)) used eritheia in X, 22:9 and in V, 2, p. 1302b, 4 to discuss someone influencing others for their own interest...” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976; “Word Study of Hupokrisis and Eritheia,” Hans Mast, Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute, 1 December 2006, http://hansmast.com/media/Word%20Study.pdf)

In the New Testament, eritheia is demonstrated by the struggle among the 12 disciples to see which of them was the greatest. Later, it is seen in the churches at Corinth and Galatia with those who were trying to put themselves forward in order to gain a following, who fought against each other as rivals and who were warned thus by Paul: “But if you bite and devour one another, be careful that you don’t consume one another.” - Galatians 5:15, World English Bible. Eritheia is a sneaky sin – all “Hail fellow well met,” suave, smooth, agreeable and affable as long as it is getting its way, but explosive in its wrath when it is denied. It is uniquely a sin of the powerful, because those who rise to prominence in today's society are too often driven to power by the lust and ambition for power, and not by a genuine desire to serve their fellow human beings.

I assert that this sin is alive and well in the Church, and that this sin is the motivation behind many of the powerful figures in American evangelicalism. Eritheia is the sin of empire-builders, of those who seek to create their own private flock or kingdom or army of followers to indulge their ego-cravings. It is the sin of individuals who fight for control of a church so that they can say, “This is MINE!”

I am reminded of a TIME Magazine article from February 2005, entitled, “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.” The entire article was interesting, as it explored the intersection of American evangelicalism and politics (most of the individuals covered in the article were involved in politics, usually supporting the Republicans). One noteworthy person was Pennsylvania pastor Luis Cortes who admitted in a 2005 New York Times interview that he endorsed President Bush because of the money that the Bush Administration provided to his organization, Nueva Esperanza, through the Administration's faith-based charities initiative, as noted here: FindArticles - Show Me The Money!: Pastor Says He'll Trade Support For Cash
Church & State, Jul/Aug 2005. Mr. Cortes seemed to imply that he would endorse anyone as long as they provided money to his organization, and he seemed confident of his ability to use his clout to extort the requisite cash from politicians.

But the most riveting part of the article wasn't in words. Rather, it was a picture of T.D. Jakes. You can only find the picture in paper copies of the magazine; forget about trying to find it on line. In that picture, Mr. Jakes is facing the camera, holding a Bible and dressed in a dark suit, while in the background is the rich woodwork of the massive meeting hall of his church. The look on his face is what arrested me. It was a look of absolute authority, of absolute command, of stern possession; a look which shouted “MINE!”

It was also a profoundly insecure look, full of tragedy.

Maybe I'm reading too much into one look; I certainly don't know Mr. Jakes personally. But the attitude which that look conveyed was no doubt present in many of the other people profiled in the TIME article, even if they were more skillful in controlling their faces to hide it. That attitude is alive and well in many big-time evangelical figures, and in many megachurch and small-time “wanna-be-megachurch” pastors, no matter how charming they may seem on the outside. But that attitude always brings with it certain actions which have the purpose of enslaving and exploiting others. That attitude is the hallmark of leaders of abusive churches. This whole blog, TH in SoC, began, in part, as my attempt to sort out the damage done to me by an abusive church, and to make some sense of why, even after leaving that church, I was unable to find another church where I did not feel threatened. Admittedly, my old church was out in the fringes, full of strange practices and even stranger people (some who left that church can truthfully state that I was also a little bit strange while I was there). The problem I found afterward was that I kept finding churches where I encountered the same old power plays and dominance games that were played in my old church, even among churches that were supposed to be “normal” and “healthy.” This has led me to believe that the problem of power abuse in churches is much more widespread than the evangelical community would like to admit.

Those who are driven by eritheia to build a church empire for themselves always leave a trail of wounded people behind them. They try to hide this fact, at first denying that there are any problems within their churches or church organizations. If denial doesn't work, they try to demonize their accusers, saying things like, “You're blaspheming the Holy Spirit!”, or “Don't complain against the Lord's servant!”, or, “You're not being submissive!”, or “Touch not the Lord's anointed!” They may go on to say that the accusations are the work of the Devil, or that they dishonor Christ, or that they hinder the Gospel and the work of the Lord. Yet the damage done by these empire-builders cannot be hidden forever. It does no good to put a smiling face on the problem, hoping that it will go away by itself, nor does it help to pretend that the problem doesn't exist, because the unsaved and/or “unchurched” who are lured into involvement with such church empires, who get used up and abused and shoved out the back door of such empires are an undeniable proof of the damage done by such empires.

And these victims are finding their voices. From personal stories appearing in Churches That Abuse (Ron Enroth, Zondervan Publishing House, 1992) and The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse (David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen, Bethany House Publishers, 1991), to the hundreds of blogs now appearing on the Internet, abused people are telling their tales. The best way to prevent more damage to the testimony of the Church is not to pretend that power abuse doesn't exist, but to confront the problem bravely, so that it may be fixed. The next several posts of this blog will attempt to do just that. Drawing on my own personal experience, I will examine characteristics typical of authoritarian “fringe” churches. Then I will describe some troubling trends in many supposedly “mainstream,” popular present-day American evangelical movements – trends toward concentration of church authority in the hands of a few without adequate checks and balances to prevent the abuse of that authority. I will also discuss the social implications for the megachurch phenomenon in view of the problems which many large institutions will have in an era of declining availability of energy, finances and natural resources. Lastly, I will propose safeguards against the abuse of power in the Church.

One more thing. I want to make it clear that while there are definite problems with power and authority within American evangelicalism today, not all churches are weird or dangerous places, to be avoided at all costs. In fact, there are many churches in the United States which are attended by genuine, gracious people. And there are many sincere Christians, gracious and charitable, truly “the salt of the earth.” But it's time to learn the difference between the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30).