gospel_outreach (gospel_outreach)
07-17-2005, 10:15 PM
I’d like to comment on the subject of Gospel Outreach and Gospel Outreach of Olympia. I no longer attend there, but I did for long enough to become quite involved, and to get a firsthand inside view of what happens there. I still hold a very large place in my heart for the people there, almost no day goes by that I do not remember someone there that I love and I send up a prayer for them that God would spare them and reach out to them right were they are at that very moment.
Meixner, unfortunately there is just far too much happening in Gospel Outreach that could be termed “highly unusual” and it is difficult for even ex-members to understand what has happened to them while they were there. I’m sorry that you are getting such wide a assortment of information and I hope I don‘t bore you or make it any worse. It is difficult to know even where to start, and a quick post cannot begin to explain.
The leaders there are always trying to make themselves out to look persecuted by a nasty group of half-crazed and vengeful ex-members. It is true the there are hundreds of ex-members with many different levels of experience. I disagree with the view posted by Anywhoo that nothing illegal has transpired and that the whole experience is beneficial to the children regardless of their choice to leave or stay on. There are few if any of their graduates who have gone on to college or who hold enviable positions in the “real job market”.
I encourage you to wade through all this as best you can. I don’t pretend to be entirely objective, as I have been both inside and out and have formed my own opinion. By far the consensus among ex-members is that all is not right and well in Gospel Outreach of Olympia.
I write this not out of any personal bitterness or anger over how I was treated. I willingly participated in the abusive behaviors and have had to make my own peace with God and with people whom I have harmed when engaging in the activities that are encouraged by the leaders. It always felt good to be “in” and to be the confronter instead of the confronted. If I personally experienced any of the abuse that I write about, I feel that I was fully deserving of it, because I was just reaping where I had sown liberally. Thank God for his forgiveness.
This is my take:
I have so many wonderful memories of the times working alongside other likeminded brethren. We did everything together, we lived communally we had long morning prayer meetings, we ate our meals together, we studied Gods Word, we worked together in the same businesses, we rode around in community owned cars, vacationed together, went to church together with excitement and anticipation to hear God’s Word being preached and to see the improvements in our character on a daily basis. It was sort of a spiritual hothouse, those of us who sincerely wanted to grow closer to God were able to experience a strong, deep, real, personal relationship with God.
The teachings of Jim Durkin carried an anointing that graced those who were open to receive the life contained therein. He spoke of the Kingdom of God, of training our souls, of purpose and vision for our lives, of believing, confessing with our mouths, and acting on it. There were literally hundreds of Jim’s sermons laying around on tape, if you were feeling discouraged or in doubt about something, you could pop in a tape and in short order the distracting thoughts would be pushed out of your head and you would become encouraged, strengthened, and be filled with the desire to encourage others and to serve them instead of yourself. In sharp contrast to the life giving Word being preached by Jim Durkin and recorded on tape for the whole world to scrutinize and listen to, the great leader of Gospel Outreach of Olympia allows no circulation of recordings of his words or preaching, claiming, just like nearly every other cult leader, that his words would be misunderstood or taken out of context. The truth being, if people were able to rewind and go back over what was being said, they would notice the inconsistencies and might begin to question. It was also noted that if people on the outside ever got their hands on recordings, they might use them to prove this leader was misleading the sheep.
Back to before things got too weird.
There was such a wholesome spirit, a spiritual cleanness, a sense of expectation that God was moving and that you were in a special place at a special time and were in the middle of a great thing and that God himself was pleased. You felt His hand and heard His voice and knew by the Holy Spirit that things were right.
We had outreach houses in town that welcomed “whoso ever will may come” to visit, to be ministered to, to spend the night, to stay forever or for a short while, what ever. Some people did street witnessing and many people were led to Christ. We were poor, we had day-old bread, we’d check for tossed out produce behind Safeway down-town, it was tough, but most of us were still thankful. We were humble, we depended on God for our livelihood, many learned trades that were passed along to us from other brethren in other Gospel Outreach churches.
God blessed our efforts and we began to actually learn to become financially self-sufficient. There were many marriages and even more children. We formed our own school after sharing school responsibilities with a local Abbot Loop church, known as Christian Life Community, for a couple of years. We used schooling materials that were designed for missionary children or home schooling. We wanted a healthy Christian environment in which to rear our children.
Other churches viewed us a little bit weird, but didn’t hesitate to send hitchhikers or homeless people our way, if they were looking for food or a roof over their heads for the night. We gladly took them in, we believed that “some have entertained angels unawares” and strove to treat every stranger as we would Jesus himself. We took very seriously the bible’s admonition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the incarcerated, to give a cold drink of water to every child, lost or found, who asked.
These things we did with a pure heart, knowing just how much we were forgiven by God, we loved much. We didn’t have a lot, but we were generous with our money, our time, our attention and our good will towards anyone who came our way, and even especially other brothers in Christ who were not in a Gospel Outreach church.
Jim Durkin was alive and we would get to see him in person once or twice a year. We often joined other Gospel Outreach churches for gatherings and camping trips. These were usually a time of great encouragement, fellowship and sometimes even the sending out of small groups of people to plant new churches.
As is true in gardening, not every church we planted bore a huge harvest of souls. Some remained small and reached only a handful of people and then melded into other churches in their community. This was viewed as a profound failure by some, instead of possibly what God had intended all along, that they would go out and be a light to the community that He had sent them into.
I refer to 1 Cor. 3:21-23 which says:
“Therefore let no one boast about his human teachers for everything belongs to you--be it Paul or Apollos or Peter, the world or life or death, things present or future--everything belongs to you; and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”
It happened then as it often does now, we get caught up boasting about our favorite leader, elevating them far beyond their station and opening wide the door of selfish ambition, pride, anger, pettiness, & divisiveness. We forget who the enemy is and end up accomplishing his goals instead of bringing unity we cause schisms and brother is turned against brother, all over who the great leader is or isn’t. How can this please God?
I do not point any fingers, we are all guilty if we participated in any way.
The people still inside who are not the leaders are to be pitied, they are most miserable. They are lost sheep who have not heard the voice of the true shepherd for so long, many can no longer discern His call. I find this particularly troubling, the people have over a period of about 10 years been slowly weaned from their prayer life. This is justified by using scriptures such as Joshua 7:10 “And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? The verse is then hastily finished with something like “go deal with the sin in the camp” giving rise to a bizarre, new ritual witch hunt like, constant digging and probing of members minds for any hint of dissent.
Group-think prevails, clever thought stopping code words have been invented to keep the sheep from using their God-given problem-solving cognitive skills. Constant droning meetings are used to wear people down to where they will accept anything just to have the meeting ended.
Accusing someone before you are accused is the rule of the day, if the accusation is false, it does not matter, only how you respond, thus blurring the lines between truth and lie. On lies . Lying by leaders is justified using the verse in 2 Samuel 16:2 “And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD.” In other words it is claimed that God Himself commanded Samuel to “lie a little”. Satan is the father of lies not God. God cannot lie, He is the truth. Because Joseph accused his brothers falsely to gauge their reaction, it is common practice for false accusations to fly back and forth with no regard for the 9th commandment that clearly states “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor”.
Husbands and wives are encouraged to tattle on each other to those above them in the hierarchy. The women are encouraged to be more married to the church than to their own husbands, meaning that if the man decided that it was time to remove his family from Gospel Outreach, the woman would stay and keep the children. This keeps the man in the unenviable position of having to choose between loosing his wife and family or staying.
He is held there against his will and he tries desperately to force himself to believe and fit into that which his spirit cannot believe or fit into. Once the father is successfully tied up, his house is pillaged.
--His wife has despised him already in her heart and is clinging to her new husband “the church leadership”.
--The children are methodically turned against the parents, being told that they must “break their covenant with death”. Meaning that they must renounce their own parents and accept the parenting that “God intended for them”. (Sometimes it is the opposite, and it is the mother who is ostracized instead of the father if she questions or wants to leave Gospel Outreach).
The children are encouraged to spy on and report back everything that goes on in their homes, paying special attention to the failings of their fathers. If the child can produce “dirt” on their parents and convince those encouraging them to do it that they have renounced their parents and the “family spirits”, there will be rewards.
These rewards can mean different levels of immunity from the constant barrage of accusations, promotions at work, little leadership positions, inside knowledge of what is really happening, perks of various kinds, permission to court, permission to marry, more access to those in positions above them.
“Let the dead bury their dead“. Outside contact is not entirely forbidden, but is highly monitored and there will be consequences if you spend time with relatives outside Gospel Outreach. The consequences are mainly more accusations in the meetings, and falling a few notches in the hierarchy.
You must have little or no contact with those who have left Gospel Outreach, they are considered “covenant breakers” and worse.
Vacations are watched carefully, because it has been proven that when someone has time to step back, evaluate their situation, breathe fresh air away from the daily grind, they tend to come back with new resolve to make big changes in their lives.
Vacation time is when big career moves and major decisions are often made. They like you to go to Hawaii, to the same area with familiar surroundings and pressure you to go when other members are going so you can watch each other and continue the meetings and accusations. In truth it is an attempt to keep you from having time to think clearly, no matter how wonderful the surroundings.
Jesus Himself said that, “a tree is known by the type of fruit it bears”. It is very sad, but the children who do make the decision that Gospel Outreach is not for them, and go out into the world for the first time are horribly under prepared for what they will face.
They are constantly drilled with sayings such as “if you leave you will do an immediate nose dive into gross sin”, “you’ll go get a disease and die”, “you are so depraved that you will jump into bed with the first person who offers it”, “you will become a homosexual, because you are unthankful”. ( Referencing and misinterpreting Paul in Romans to mean that Homosexuality is like a curse that God puts on you if you aren’t thankful for all that Gospel Outreach’s leaders have done for you.)
While in truth it is the researched Christian’s opinion that homosexuality in men is much more often the result of a lack of fatherly affection and is aggravated even further by divorce and broken homes.) , “you’ll come crawling back and become a living proverb so all the other children will see how you destroyed your life”.
These children are told these things constantly and believe them, so when they leave they often say to themselves, “I might as well try everything, there is no hope for me anyway” and proceed down the wrong path.
Some seem to take a perverse pleasure in the failings of their own prodigy see Ace Bendage’s writing here called the “Little Dictator” wherein he describes in excruciating detail and with little masking of his delight, the alleged fall of one of the little ones whom even he himself may have had a hand in training.
If you want to see deep down into the very heart and soul of what is happening in Gospel Outreach, simply note his blatant condescension and the obvious glee at some one else’s stumbling, permeating Ace’s posts. He seems to be rejoicing in evil. The prevailing attitude of the leaders of Gospel Outreach in regards to people leaving seems to be “If I cannot use you here, then I hope you are destroyed”.
If you are succeeding, they do not want anyone to know this and work hard at controlling information to that effect. On the other hand if you fail in any way it will be spoken about from the pulpit and announced in every meeting and discussed to no end.
They will invoke your name, saying things like “do you want to be like so & so?” and of course they will renounce you, sometimes even spit and say “NO I don’t want to be like them!”. This helps them to keep people who have chosen to leave Gospel Outreach at odds with others who have left. If anyone criticizes them from the outside, they circle the wagons and claim that they are under attack.
Spending untold hours drilling the members on how bad these “attackers” are in an attempt to keep the members in tow. Damage Control, Damage Control! Run! Scramble! Like a rock lifted, the bugs scatter when the light shines on them.
Fear is the tool used to control. Fear of what those above you might say about you in the next meeting. Fear that you might drift off for a moment in a 5 hour meeting and be confronted from the pulpit. Fear that your children may be spying on you. Fear that you husband might be on the hot seat in the next meeting and that the leaders wives will treat you like dirt until you can come up with some good dirt on your husband that they will want to hear. Fear that your children won’t have bright enough faces to qualify for the next choir performance. Fear that your father isn’t “talking to the men” (meaning exposing every thought he has to them and every bit of dirt on his family, co-workers, other members, relatives who may have left. Any thoughts of doubt or dissent in himself or anyone he knows.) and that you may be the next one to be accused in a meeting. Fear that you will be fined for some infraction. Fear that your paycheck will be reduced for “not talking”. Fear that you will accidentally break one of the dozens of unwritten and unexplained little rules that are constantly changing at the leaders whims and varying with every meeting. Fear that you might unknowingly be talking with someone who is “out” meaning uncommitted or who was the recent subject of a meeting. Fear of not knowing what is happening and thus striving to attend every meeting possible.
The leaders love to bring letters of dissent addressed to them in front of the congregation where they read them in exaggerated whining tones to mock and disparage the writers, all the while hastily skipping past the most damaging parts and encouraging cat-calls, spitting, and a peanut gallery of booing from the listening members. Never are any concerns addressed seriously but are immediately slammed down and brushed aside as “attacks”, “coming in a different spirit” , “accusations from bitter and angry covenant breaking ex-members”. The letter in question is then quickly withdraw from sight to avoid any scrutiny by curious members. If anything reaches the members in print it is heavily edited to make out the person writing to be a snarling demon scratching with dissatisfaction and a hateful desire for revenge. Once the alarm is sounded, it will most likely be forbidden from the top down for members to read what is written here while they scramble to come up with explanations and cover ups.
On finding a mate within Gospel Outreach. The male to female ratio is impossibly and hopelessly slanted as a result of so many of the young men leaving Gospel Outreach in search of a better life. One Gospel Outreach leader was actually recorded having said something to the effect “there just aren’t going to be any husbands for some of them”. Which is true of course if they stay put.
Often the God-given desire for a spouse coupled with maternal or paternal longings will drive a single person to leave. Note that in any healthy denomination or Christian congregation the ratio of unmarried males to females is typical of what you would find in a public school.
Young women are particularly vulnerable to the pressures to stay on even with little or no hope of ever being married. When they expose their struggle with this thought to leadership, they are often coldly and dryly told something such as: “no one is stopping you, go get a job and meet some little boy if that’s what you want.”
While it is true they may go get a job on the outside there will be consequences that will lower their status significantly and put them at high risk of being the subject of meetings, accusations, and confrontations.
New members? There are very, very few new members especially adults. If you were not groomed carefully over several years to learn to accept the manner in which you will be treated, there is almost no way your mind will consent to this level of abuse. With the exception of having two new churches added to their sphere of influence, there has been a steady downward spiral in their addition of new members. To counter this, they strongly encourage married members to produce many children.
There are some women who have managed to keep up a rate of 1 child per year. Much like in the agrarian age, families with 10 or even 12 children are not uncommon. It is known that some will not stay when they are grown, so many are encouraged to be produced with the idea that at least a handful will stay on and be useful in the leaders design.
They often scorn other churches for “church growth” plans, stating that their children are their church growth plan and their retirement plans as well. Many adults and whole families have chosen to leave Gospel Outreach, especially in the outlying churches reducing them to small ingrown congregations of 2 or fewer families.
The Grants Pass church disbanded and some members moved to Gospel Outreach of Portland where there were only about 2 families left. Gospel Outreach of Tacoma is left with mostly the members of their pastor’s immediately family and a few stragglers.
There is no real outreach contrary to what their given name would suggest. They cling to it, having scorned at length any other Gospel Outreach church who changed their name to anything else, saying that these people have “renamed the wells that their father dug and named”.
This a reference to Isaac digging out wells that enemies had filled in and calling them by the name Abraham originally gave them. It is interesting to observe that that while they have not renamed the wells, they refuse to drink from them, having filled them in themselves and have chosen to dig their own new wells more to their liking.
Martin Luther was a prolific writer and orator and there are even more writings on his writings. In this huge pool of commentaries they have fished out what seems to back their positions. Just as in the bible, people can and often pick and choose their pet doctrines to justify their own positions. So it is with the teachings of Martin Luther and the reformation.
For example, I have personally read quotes by Martin Luther justifying premarital sex and even the murder and persecution of the European Jews, but of course I cannot tolerate either because they are in clear and obvious violation of scripture. The leaders are constantly scouring through books looking for “hits” meaning anything that justifies their position or even better makes a “hit” against anyone who opposes their position.
People who leave are often demonized and reviled as you can see clearly by admittedly alcohol assisted posts of Ace Bendage and the other couple of Gospel Outreach members who have posted their thoughts here on Factnet.
The fear in the hearts of the leaders is that current members will wonder what prompted the ex-members to leave and perhaps make contact with them and hear out the other side of the story.
This is much too dangerous to the leaders delicate control, so the current members are brainwashed into believing that those who have left did particularly evil things and often leave the inferred debauchery up to the members imagination by saying things like “what are we to think? Would they do any less than the prodigal son went out and did.” Or when quizzed on what happened to people who suddenly and surprisingly made their exit, they have sadly and slowly shaken their heads, repeated the ex-members name a couple of times in a disappointed tone. While not saying anything directly, they have spoken volumes on what they desire the quizzical member to surmise. The crime was simply unspeakable and too much for the leaders heart to bear, even to utter the words. This vicious lie of omission further validates, in the quizzical members mind, any twisted and perverse imagining planted there by the leader.
Of course at any time the leader can easily deny it, claiming “I never said that! I never said that!” In one meeting the leader was near spitting mad when relaying the words of a member who had just left. He told of how the ex-member used a curse word and defied the authority of the leader. He went on to tell us all that we were forbidden to have any contact with him and he then proceeded to say and I quote “I turn him over to Satan for the destruction of his body that his soul might be saved”.
Many years later I happened upon this man, and after talking with him briefly about what had commenced over that long period in which I had neither seen nor spoken with him. He expressed absolutely no animosity towards the offended leader nor any one at Gospel Outreach. I asked him about what led to his leaving and what was his final dialogue with the offended leader. He related an entirely opposite story, one of the leader commanding him to do something that he didn’t want to do, then the leader never returned his phone calls and the shunning by other members began.
The look of utter disbelief and genuine amazement, near shock on his face as I told him of how the leader had excommunicated him and turned him over to Satan told me without any doubt whatsoever that this leader is a liar. This offended leader made it out that any contact with the ex-member would be such a horrible sin, that we would shun him and avoid him at all costs, never even letting him speak one sentence to us “lest we partake in his plagues.”
I marveled at the information control, and to what extent this leader would go in his lies to cover up what amounted to little more than what Haman demanded of Mordecai, a bowing down of his will and an acknowledgment that that Haaman held power over him. There are still a few Mordecais around who will not bow down to the self-serving ambitions of such leaders.
On a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I remember the day when a leader began ranking down on the concept of a “personal” relationship with God / Jesus. They slowly but surely took away our relationship with God and replaced it with a relationship with the supposedly “anointed” leaders. In place of Christ we were now to commune with men. The direct access was taken away and we could only access the Father through these leaders. This destabilizes ones whole outlook on life and keeps you trying to please men instead of God.
It was such a relief to be reacquainted with God upon leaving this terrible deception.
Worship is stifled and controlled by the leader from the back of the room. Anytime you leave praise and began to enter worship he quickly cuts it off as “too soulish” so the Holy Spirit is quenched and people do not try to reach out to God on their own. At a later date another switch was made to Bach fugues and cantatas, with the young people striving and clawing to qualify to be in the Choir.
There is a constant striving for legitimacy through the pursuit of venues in which to display their singing skills.
They boast of singing the national anthem at ball games in Seattle, various functions at the Capitol campus such as war memorials, and the re-opening of the Capitol rotunda to name a few. They collect pictures and video footage of themselves with the ex-governor of Washington, with recording artists Annie Herring, and her brother Mathew Ward. They have notes of thanks from some of the people they sang for and some awards for entries in video contests from long ago.
When you search the net you will find that they are listed as a video production college, but of course no credits are issued.
On their private school. Parents are charged tuition and children must “qualify” for school. There has been little emphasis on academics when compared to their music program.
Children for many years had no hope of being able to attend an accredited college because their school was actually not legal. After investigations by the authorities, they scrambled together another show of legitimacy and even claimed to have enrollment open to the public. After a short while their affiliations lapsed and they were again operating illegally, this appears to have been solved once again and at last check they were legal again after 20 some years of operating without accreditation.
The leader often noted how disgusting it was that men would live out their thwarted dreams of baseball stardom in their sons, often screaming at them for better performance in Little League games. It would appear that the leader is living out his thwarted dream of directing a little league, music conservatory with the stolen children of the members of Gospel Outreach. To become a “teacher” in the school was an envied position by the young women. They were mostly graduates of their own school and had no formal education or training. The teachers were often held out to the others as the young women deserving of marriage.
On marriage. There is a constant drumbeat to find out what it is in particular that a member wants. This is done under the guise of helping you get what it is you want, but is nothing of the sort. If they know your desires then they can control your destiny.
They hold out that illusive carrot on a stick to try to get you to trade your very soul in exchange for that rare prize. Young men and women must renounce their earthly families, often referred to as “breaking their covenant with death”.
Very often, after a courtship has gone on for a while, a great test of loyalty to the leader takes place. This test is that the girl and sometimes the man must call off the engagement and return any rings. They tell their fiancé that if they do not talk more to the leaders, then they will not marry them. This forces the young man to redouble his commitment and undying loyalty to the leaders, to grovel and let them rip out his soul for their own using. The young woman makes it clear that her marriage covenant is firstly with Gospel Outreach and it‘s leaders, and is null and void if he ever tries to leave.
Favorite family members of the leaders are often immune from this treatment but most members are not. There is no guarantee that they will re-approve of the engagement, so accepting this requirement comes with great risk to the couple.
From it’s very inception the marriage covenant is tampered with by the leaders. If they can separate the hearts of the wife and husband then they can steal the children and use the wife to keep the husband providing for the family but can take the children aside and turn their hearts against their fathers. It is Elijah’s work in reverse, they tell the children that they are so sorry that their parents aren’t really committed to the church, but they (the leaders) will become their new parents in the failed ones place.
New term: The ANTI-FATHER has come. After their time of usefulness to the leaders has ended the parents are squeezed out and reviled by even their own children. Most of the time they fade away, just a shell of the people that they once were.
Unfortunately these lost souls still hunger for acceptance from these leaders and they still believe the lie that there is “no life outside the body” meaning specifically outside of Gospel Outreach.
Family camp and weddings are a time when all the churches under the influence of leaders of Gospel Outreach of Olympia come together in one place and revisions to the rules can be explained.
For instance, they went from zero alcohol allowed to having kegs and wine racks almost overnight. The abuse of alcohol is rampant and it is common to observe people getting drunk at weddings. Cigar and cigarette smoking was once despised as harming the body which is “the temple of the Holy Ghost” while now it is common, especially cigars.
Children are given access to alcohol with no regard for the fact that they can become alcoholics in only 6 months of daily drinking, whereas an adult can take as long as 3 years to become hopelessly ensnared. Many of these people have now taken to drinking every night, and the smell leaches out through their skin and their breath is often awful, but because most all of them are doing it, they don’t seem to notice. Driving while under the influence of alcohol is now an issue after weddings and because they think they can hold their liquor, they think they are not impaired. It may take someone dying for them to wake up to this sad possibility.
Baptism, in it’s simplest form, is the public renouncing of the world and your old life of sin and the public proclamation that you are now a follower of Christ. When you are plunged under in obedience to scripture you arise a new creature. Gospel Outreach teaches that you are “baptized into the local church” meaning in effect you salvation hinges on your staying under their control. On a note of lesser importance, they have even reverted to infant baptism, perhaps to follow Martin Luther’s early vision of reforming the Catholic church instead of becoming protestant. What ever it is, they will have found it somewhere in the his writings and can probably defend it with chapter and verse.
Work and employment. The leaders own the businesses that you see nearly all the people working in. Their great leader is careful to keep his name off of the ownership of these business, but they are owned by his closest and most trusted children and sons-in-laws along with a few of the highest ranking leaders.
He controls these businesses in every way. He makes the decisions to hire, to fire, to give raises, to cut anyone’s pay even in half on a whim. He holds absolute dictatorial power over every business decision and over every employee. He often completely switches a member from one business or church job to another just because he wants to watch them more or wants them to watch someone else.
When quizzed on this strange practice of having nearly every member working in one of the leader-owned businesses, they quickly trot out a tiny contingent of fringe edge members who are otherwise mocked and ridiculed for having outside connections, to prove that they are a normal church with members working in every aspect of society. It is true that there is one woman who holds a teachers-aid job, one woman who is employed by the state, but they are older and had outside jobs before they joined. The are or have been a young telemarketer, a car salesman, a small handful of women who worked in grocery stores or places like Penny‘s, and perhaps a very few others.
There is a large pool of young people for the leaders to pick and choose from to work in their businesses, all are very eager to do so, just to be in the leaders good graces. All of the others are simply left-overs the undesirables. If at any moment they manage to impress the leader, they may get hired back in. They will leap with great eagerness at this chance to prove their loyalty and regain some status.
There are a couple of older men who have owned their own businesses for some time, and sometimes one or two of their own children work with them, but if you were to ask them, every one of them were fired, deemed unfit, or systematically squeezed out of one of the leaders businesses at on time or another.
This is especially true of older men, the leaders don’t want to be responsible for helping these older members in retirement, so they squeeze them out by continually reviling them, offering them a severance bonus, and continually lowering and lowering their pay until they are forced to leave or starve.
Some men have actually lost their homes because they could not see that the leaders were not going to help them, they clung in vain to their job, thinking that surely if they talked more and groveled more the leaders would have pity on them and reinstate their once living wage. But no such pity was shown, these unfortunate men end up being despised by their own wives and children as not being “real men” but little boys who did not have the spine to be included in the leaders businesses like the other more committed men. In one particularly disturbing case, a man apparently outlived his usefulness to the leaders in one of the businesses and fell out of favor. His pay was systematically lowered and lowered until his house was in foreclosure and had to be sold at auction. This leader had a 3rd party purchase the property for himself to avoid being seen at the auction, as the land was close to the church and hard by his own relatives it was desirable to him. There are shades of 1 Kings 21 and the story of Naboth’s vineyard here.
The privileged position of those in leadership or in the great leaders immediate family is striking in it’s opulence. To quote Ace Bendage as he described a leader and family member who left; “He lacked no good thing. Howbeit, over time, one can only surmise that the profusion of mammon brought about by this river of abundance made him a man who was used to getting his way.” Ace, in his own cleverly crafted words, describes their great leader and nearly every person in a leadership position. For their loyalty to the great leader they are granted soft positions mainly dedicated to monitoring the underlings and keeping them off balance and unaware of how they are being used.
The leaders control the members finances, pay level, personal spousal relationships, children, education, time, reading materials, vacations, relationships with those who are not members including relatives, how much they must money they must donate to the church etc… All that, along with the constant probing of the members minds for even a hint of doubt or dissent can mean only one thing: Gospel Outreach has become a predatory cult that is using the members for the personal gain of the leaders. The concept of personal privacy is scorned, the leader once declared in a meeting: “Do you think I am above spying?”…he went on to declare that he was not. Members are constantly drilled on the subject of what they observe about others behavior in true Orwellian fashion.
Don’t be fooled by the niceties and politeness shown to you as an outsider. If you are in contact with those inside Gospel Outreach ask them straight, hard questions and then research their answers carefully if they should respond. I would avoid revealing yourself to them, they for years afterwards, make snide remarks about neighbors who have made complaints about noise, traffic or have had other legitimate concerns. You are dealing with something unpleasant hiding behind a mask of normalcy and niceness. God forgive us who participated in securing power and wealth for these false shepherds who now seem to take delight in devouring God‘s precious sheep. These are only about a dozen of the 95 or more pages that could be nailed to their door.
Meixner, unfortunately there is just far too much happening in Gospel Outreach that could be termed “highly unusual” and it is difficult for even ex-members to understand what has happened to them while they were there. I’m sorry that you are getting such wide a assortment of information and I hope I don‘t bore you or make it any worse. It is difficult to know even where to start, and a quick post cannot begin to explain.
The leaders there are always trying to make themselves out to look persecuted by a nasty group of half-crazed and vengeful ex-members. It is true the there are hundreds of ex-members with many different levels of experience. I disagree with the view posted by Anywhoo that nothing illegal has transpired and that the whole experience is beneficial to the children regardless of their choice to leave or stay on. There are few if any of their graduates who have gone on to college or who hold enviable positions in the “real job market”.
I encourage you to wade through all this as best you can. I don’t pretend to be entirely objective, as I have been both inside and out and have formed my own opinion. By far the consensus among ex-members is that all is not right and well in Gospel Outreach of Olympia.
I write this not out of any personal bitterness or anger over how I was treated. I willingly participated in the abusive behaviors and have had to make my own peace with God and with people whom I have harmed when engaging in the activities that are encouraged by the leaders. It always felt good to be “in” and to be the confronter instead of the confronted. If I personally experienced any of the abuse that I write about, I feel that I was fully deserving of it, because I was just reaping where I had sown liberally. Thank God for his forgiveness.
This is my take:
I have so many wonderful memories of the times working alongside other likeminded brethren. We did everything together, we lived communally we had long morning prayer meetings, we ate our meals together, we studied Gods Word, we worked together in the same businesses, we rode around in community owned cars, vacationed together, went to church together with excitement and anticipation to hear God’s Word being preached and to see the improvements in our character on a daily basis. It was sort of a spiritual hothouse, those of us who sincerely wanted to grow closer to God were able to experience a strong, deep, real, personal relationship with God.
The teachings of Jim Durkin carried an anointing that graced those who were open to receive the life contained therein. He spoke of the Kingdom of God, of training our souls, of purpose and vision for our lives, of believing, confessing with our mouths, and acting on it. There were literally hundreds of Jim’s sermons laying around on tape, if you were feeling discouraged or in doubt about something, you could pop in a tape and in short order the distracting thoughts would be pushed out of your head and you would become encouraged, strengthened, and be filled with the desire to encourage others and to serve them instead of yourself. In sharp contrast to the life giving Word being preached by Jim Durkin and recorded on tape for the whole world to scrutinize and listen to, the great leader of Gospel Outreach of Olympia allows no circulation of recordings of his words or preaching, claiming, just like nearly every other cult leader, that his words would be misunderstood or taken out of context. The truth being, if people were able to rewind and go back over what was being said, they would notice the inconsistencies and might begin to question. It was also noted that if people on the outside ever got their hands on recordings, they might use them to prove this leader was misleading the sheep.
Back to before things got too weird.
There was such a wholesome spirit, a spiritual cleanness, a sense of expectation that God was moving and that you were in a special place at a special time and were in the middle of a great thing and that God himself was pleased. You felt His hand and heard His voice and knew by the Holy Spirit that things were right.
We had outreach houses in town that welcomed “whoso ever will may come” to visit, to be ministered to, to spend the night, to stay forever or for a short while, what ever. Some people did street witnessing and many people were led to Christ. We were poor, we had day-old bread, we’d check for tossed out produce behind Safeway down-town, it was tough, but most of us were still thankful. We were humble, we depended on God for our livelihood, many learned trades that were passed along to us from other brethren in other Gospel Outreach churches.
God blessed our efforts and we began to actually learn to become financially self-sufficient. There were many marriages and even more children. We formed our own school after sharing school responsibilities with a local Abbot Loop church, known as Christian Life Community, for a couple of years. We used schooling materials that were designed for missionary children or home schooling. We wanted a healthy Christian environment in which to rear our children.
Other churches viewed us a little bit weird, but didn’t hesitate to send hitchhikers or homeless people our way, if they were looking for food or a roof over their heads for the night. We gladly took them in, we believed that “some have entertained angels unawares” and strove to treat every stranger as we would Jesus himself. We took very seriously the bible’s admonition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the incarcerated, to give a cold drink of water to every child, lost or found, who asked.
These things we did with a pure heart, knowing just how much we were forgiven by God, we loved much. We didn’t have a lot, but we were generous with our money, our time, our attention and our good will towards anyone who came our way, and even especially other brothers in Christ who were not in a Gospel Outreach church.
Jim Durkin was alive and we would get to see him in person once or twice a year. We often joined other Gospel Outreach churches for gatherings and camping trips. These were usually a time of great encouragement, fellowship and sometimes even the sending out of small groups of people to plant new churches.
As is true in gardening, not every church we planted bore a huge harvest of souls. Some remained small and reached only a handful of people and then melded into other churches in their community. This was viewed as a profound failure by some, instead of possibly what God had intended all along, that they would go out and be a light to the community that He had sent them into.
I refer to 1 Cor. 3:21-23 which says:
“Therefore let no one boast about his human teachers for everything belongs to you--be it Paul or Apollos or Peter, the world or life or death, things present or future--everything belongs to you; and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”
It happened then as it often does now, we get caught up boasting about our favorite leader, elevating them far beyond their station and opening wide the door of selfish ambition, pride, anger, pettiness, & divisiveness. We forget who the enemy is and end up accomplishing his goals instead of bringing unity we cause schisms and brother is turned against brother, all over who the great leader is or isn’t. How can this please God?
I do not point any fingers, we are all guilty if we participated in any way.
The people still inside who are not the leaders are to be pitied, they are most miserable. They are lost sheep who have not heard the voice of the true shepherd for so long, many can no longer discern His call. I find this particularly troubling, the people have over a period of about 10 years been slowly weaned from their prayer life. This is justified by using scriptures such as Joshua 7:10 “And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? The verse is then hastily finished with something like “go deal with the sin in the camp” giving rise to a bizarre, new ritual witch hunt like, constant digging and probing of members minds for any hint of dissent.
Group-think prevails, clever thought stopping code words have been invented to keep the sheep from using their God-given problem-solving cognitive skills. Constant droning meetings are used to wear people down to where they will accept anything just to have the meeting ended.
Accusing someone before you are accused is the rule of the day, if the accusation is false, it does not matter, only how you respond, thus blurring the lines between truth and lie. On lies . Lying by leaders is justified using the verse in 2 Samuel 16:2 “And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD.” In other words it is claimed that God Himself commanded Samuel to “lie a little”. Satan is the father of lies not God. God cannot lie, He is the truth. Because Joseph accused his brothers falsely to gauge their reaction, it is common practice for false accusations to fly back and forth with no regard for the 9th commandment that clearly states “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor”.
Husbands and wives are encouraged to tattle on each other to those above them in the hierarchy. The women are encouraged to be more married to the church than to their own husbands, meaning that if the man decided that it was time to remove his family from Gospel Outreach, the woman would stay and keep the children. This keeps the man in the unenviable position of having to choose between loosing his wife and family or staying.
He is held there against his will and he tries desperately to force himself to believe and fit into that which his spirit cannot believe or fit into. Once the father is successfully tied up, his house is pillaged.
--His wife has despised him already in her heart and is clinging to her new husband “the church leadership”.
--The children are methodically turned against the parents, being told that they must “break their covenant with death”. Meaning that they must renounce their own parents and accept the parenting that “God intended for them”. (Sometimes it is the opposite, and it is the mother who is ostracized instead of the father if she questions or wants to leave Gospel Outreach).
The children are encouraged to spy on and report back everything that goes on in their homes, paying special attention to the failings of their fathers. If the child can produce “dirt” on their parents and convince those encouraging them to do it that they have renounced their parents and the “family spirits”, there will be rewards.
These rewards can mean different levels of immunity from the constant barrage of accusations, promotions at work, little leadership positions, inside knowledge of what is really happening, perks of various kinds, permission to court, permission to marry, more access to those in positions above them.
“Let the dead bury their dead“. Outside contact is not entirely forbidden, but is highly monitored and there will be consequences if you spend time with relatives outside Gospel Outreach. The consequences are mainly more accusations in the meetings, and falling a few notches in the hierarchy.
You must have little or no contact with those who have left Gospel Outreach, they are considered “covenant breakers” and worse.
Vacations are watched carefully, because it has been proven that when someone has time to step back, evaluate their situation, breathe fresh air away from the daily grind, they tend to come back with new resolve to make big changes in their lives.
Vacation time is when big career moves and major decisions are often made. They like you to go to Hawaii, to the same area with familiar surroundings and pressure you to go when other members are going so you can watch each other and continue the meetings and accusations. In truth it is an attempt to keep you from having time to think clearly, no matter how wonderful the surroundings.
Jesus Himself said that, “a tree is known by the type of fruit it bears”. It is very sad, but the children who do make the decision that Gospel Outreach is not for them, and go out into the world for the first time are horribly under prepared for what they will face.
They are constantly drilled with sayings such as “if you leave you will do an immediate nose dive into gross sin”, “you’ll go get a disease and die”, “you are so depraved that you will jump into bed with the first person who offers it”, “you will become a homosexual, because you are unthankful”. ( Referencing and misinterpreting Paul in Romans to mean that Homosexuality is like a curse that God puts on you if you aren’t thankful for all that Gospel Outreach’s leaders have done for you.)
While in truth it is the researched Christian’s opinion that homosexuality in men is much more often the result of a lack of fatherly affection and is aggravated even further by divorce and broken homes.) , “you’ll come crawling back and become a living proverb so all the other children will see how you destroyed your life”.
These children are told these things constantly and believe them, so when they leave they often say to themselves, “I might as well try everything, there is no hope for me anyway” and proceed down the wrong path.
Some seem to take a perverse pleasure in the failings of their own prodigy see Ace Bendage’s writing here called the “Little Dictator” wherein he describes in excruciating detail and with little masking of his delight, the alleged fall of one of the little ones whom even he himself may have had a hand in training.
If you want to see deep down into the very heart and soul of what is happening in Gospel Outreach, simply note his blatant condescension and the obvious glee at some one else’s stumbling, permeating Ace’s posts. He seems to be rejoicing in evil. The prevailing attitude of the leaders of Gospel Outreach in regards to people leaving seems to be “If I cannot use you here, then I hope you are destroyed”.
If you are succeeding, they do not want anyone to know this and work hard at controlling information to that effect. On the other hand if you fail in any way it will be spoken about from the pulpit and announced in every meeting and discussed to no end.
They will invoke your name, saying things like “do you want to be like so & so?” and of course they will renounce you, sometimes even spit and say “NO I don’t want to be like them!”. This helps them to keep people who have chosen to leave Gospel Outreach at odds with others who have left. If anyone criticizes them from the outside, they circle the wagons and claim that they are under attack.
Spending untold hours drilling the members on how bad these “attackers” are in an attempt to keep the members in tow. Damage Control, Damage Control! Run! Scramble! Like a rock lifted, the bugs scatter when the light shines on them.
Fear is the tool used to control. Fear of what those above you might say about you in the next meeting. Fear that you might drift off for a moment in a 5 hour meeting and be confronted from the pulpit. Fear that your children may be spying on you. Fear that you husband might be on the hot seat in the next meeting and that the leaders wives will treat you like dirt until you can come up with some good dirt on your husband that they will want to hear. Fear that your children won’t have bright enough faces to qualify for the next choir performance. Fear that your father isn’t “talking to the men” (meaning exposing every thought he has to them and every bit of dirt on his family, co-workers, other members, relatives who may have left. Any thoughts of doubt or dissent in himself or anyone he knows.) and that you may be the next one to be accused in a meeting. Fear that you will be fined for some infraction. Fear that your paycheck will be reduced for “not talking”. Fear that you will accidentally break one of the dozens of unwritten and unexplained little rules that are constantly changing at the leaders whims and varying with every meeting. Fear that you might unknowingly be talking with someone who is “out” meaning uncommitted or who was the recent subject of a meeting. Fear of not knowing what is happening and thus striving to attend every meeting possible.
The leaders love to bring letters of dissent addressed to them in front of the congregation where they read them in exaggerated whining tones to mock and disparage the writers, all the while hastily skipping past the most damaging parts and encouraging cat-calls, spitting, and a peanut gallery of booing from the listening members. Never are any concerns addressed seriously but are immediately slammed down and brushed aside as “attacks”, “coming in a different spirit” , “accusations from bitter and angry covenant breaking ex-members”. The letter in question is then quickly withdraw from sight to avoid any scrutiny by curious members. If anything reaches the members in print it is heavily edited to make out the person writing to be a snarling demon scratching with dissatisfaction and a hateful desire for revenge. Once the alarm is sounded, it will most likely be forbidden from the top down for members to read what is written here while they scramble to come up with explanations and cover ups.
On finding a mate within Gospel Outreach. The male to female ratio is impossibly and hopelessly slanted as a result of so many of the young men leaving Gospel Outreach in search of a better life. One Gospel Outreach leader was actually recorded having said something to the effect “there just aren’t going to be any husbands for some of them”. Which is true of course if they stay put.
Often the God-given desire for a spouse coupled with maternal or paternal longings will drive a single person to leave. Note that in any healthy denomination or Christian congregation the ratio of unmarried males to females is typical of what you would find in a public school.
Young women are particularly vulnerable to the pressures to stay on even with little or no hope of ever being married. When they expose their struggle with this thought to leadership, they are often coldly and dryly told something such as: “no one is stopping you, go get a job and meet some little boy if that’s what you want.”
While it is true they may go get a job on the outside there will be consequences that will lower their status significantly and put them at high risk of being the subject of meetings, accusations, and confrontations.
New members? There are very, very few new members especially adults. If you were not groomed carefully over several years to learn to accept the manner in which you will be treated, there is almost no way your mind will consent to this level of abuse. With the exception of having two new churches added to their sphere of influence, there has been a steady downward spiral in their addition of new members. To counter this, they strongly encourage married members to produce many children.
There are some women who have managed to keep up a rate of 1 child per year. Much like in the agrarian age, families with 10 or even 12 children are not uncommon. It is known that some will not stay when they are grown, so many are encouraged to be produced with the idea that at least a handful will stay on and be useful in the leaders design.
They often scorn other churches for “church growth” plans, stating that their children are their church growth plan and their retirement plans as well. Many adults and whole families have chosen to leave Gospel Outreach, especially in the outlying churches reducing them to small ingrown congregations of 2 or fewer families.
The Grants Pass church disbanded and some members moved to Gospel Outreach of Portland where there were only about 2 families left. Gospel Outreach of Tacoma is left with mostly the members of their pastor’s immediately family and a few stragglers.
There is no real outreach contrary to what their given name would suggest. They cling to it, having scorned at length any other Gospel Outreach church who changed their name to anything else, saying that these people have “renamed the wells that their father dug and named”.
This a reference to Isaac digging out wells that enemies had filled in and calling them by the name Abraham originally gave them. It is interesting to observe that that while they have not renamed the wells, they refuse to drink from them, having filled them in themselves and have chosen to dig their own new wells more to their liking.
Martin Luther was a prolific writer and orator and there are even more writings on his writings. In this huge pool of commentaries they have fished out what seems to back their positions. Just as in the bible, people can and often pick and choose their pet doctrines to justify their own positions. So it is with the teachings of Martin Luther and the reformation.
For example, I have personally read quotes by Martin Luther justifying premarital sex and even the murder and persecution of the European Jews, but of course I cannot tolerate either because they are in clear and obvious violation of scripture. The leaders are constantly scouring through books looking for “hits” meaning anything that justifies their position or even better makes a “hit” against anyone who opposes their position.
People who leave are often demonized and reviled as you can see clearly by admittedly alcohol assisted posts of Ace Bendage and the other couple of Gospel Outreach members who have posted their thoughts here on Factnet.
The fear in the hearts of the leaders is that current members will wonder what prompted the ex-members to leave and perhaps make contact with them and hear out the other side of the story.
This is much too dangerous to the leaders delicate control, so the current members are brainwashed into believing that those who have left did particularly evil things and often leave the inferred debauchery up to the members imagination by saying things like “what are we to think? Would they do any less than the prodigal son went out and did.” Or when quizzed on what happened to people who suddenly and surprisingly made their exit, they have sadly and slowly shaken their heads, repeated the ex-members name a couple of times in a disappointed tone. While not saying anything directly, they have spoken volumes on what they desire the quizzical member to surmise. The crime was simply unspeakable and too much for the leaders heart to bear, even to utter the words. This vicious lie of omission further validates, in the quizzical members mind, any twisted and perverse imagining planted there by the leader.
Of course at any time the leader can easily deny it, claiming “I never said that! I never said that!” In one meeting the leader was near spitting mad when relaying the words of a member who had just left. He told of how the ex-member used a curse word and defied the authority of the leader. He went on to tell us all that we were forbidden to have any contact with him and he then proceeded to say and I quote “I turn him over to Satan for the destruction of his body that his soul might be saved”.
Many years later I happened upon this man, and after talking with him briefly about what had commenced over that long period in which I had neither seen nor spoken with him. He expressed absolutely no animosity towards the offended leader nor any one at Gospel Outreach. I asked him about what led to his leaving and what was his final dialogue with the offended leader. He related an entirely opposite story, one of the leader commanding him to do something that he didn’t want to do, then the leader never returned his phone calls and the shunning by other members began.
The look of utter disbelief and genuine amazement, near shock on his face as I told him of how the leader had excommunicated him and turned him over to Satan told me without any doubt whatsoever that this leader is a liar. This offended leader made it out that any contact with the ex-member would be such a horrible sin, that we would shun him and avoid him at all costs, never even letting him speak one sentence to us “lest we partake in his plagues.”
I marveled at the information control, and to what extent this leader would go in his lies to cover up what amounted to little more than what Haman demanded of Mordecai, a bowing down of his will and an acknowledgment that that Haaman held power over him. There are still a few Mordecais around who will not bow down to the self-serving ambitions of such leaders.
On a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I remember the day when a leader began ranking down on the concept of a “personal” relationship with God / Jesus. They slowly but surely took away our relationship with God and replaced it with a relationship with the supposedly “anointed” leaders. In place of Christ we were now to commune with men. The direct access was taken away and we could only access the Father through these leaders. This destabilizes ones whole outlook on life and keeps you trying to please men instead of God.
It was such a relief to be reacquainted with God upon leaving this terrible deception.
Worship is stifled and controlled by the leader from the back of the room. Anytime you leave praise and began to enter worship he quickly cuts it off as “too soulish” so the Holy Spirit is quenched and people do not try to reach out to God on their own. At a later date another switch was made to Bach fugues and cantatas, with the young people striving and clawing to qualify to be in the Choir.
There is a constant striving for legitimacy through the pursuit of venues in which to display their singing skills.
They boast of singing the national anthem at ball games in Seattle, various functions at the Capitol campus such as war memorials, and the re-opening of the Capitol rotunda to name a few. They collect pictures and video footage of themselves with the ex-governor of Washington, with recording artists Annie Herring, and her brother Mathew Ward. They have notes of thanks from some of the people they sang for and some awards for entries in video contests from long ago.
When you search the net you will find that they are listed as a video production college, but of course no credits are issued.
On their private school. Parents are charged tuition and children must “qualify” for school. There has been little emphasis on academics when compared to their music program.
Children for many years had no hope of being able to attend an accredited college because their school was actually not legal. After investigations by the authorities, they scrambled together another show of legitimacy and even claimed to have enrollment open to the public. After a short while their affiliations lapsed and they were again operating illegally, this appears to have been solved once again and at last check they were legal again after 20 some years of operating without accreditation.
The leader often noted how disgusting it was that men would live out their thwarted dreams of baseball stardom in their sons, often screaming at them for better performance in Little League games. It would appear that the leader is living out his thwarted dream of directing a little league, music conservatory with the stolen children of the members of Gospel Outreach. To become a “teacher” in the school was an envied position by the young women. They were mostly graduates of their own school and had no formal education or training. The teachers were often held out to the others as the young women deserving of marriage.
On marriage. There is a constant drumbeat to find out what it is in particular that a member wants. This is done under the guise of helping you get what it is you want, but is nothing of the sort. If they know your desires then they can control your destiny.
They hold out that illusive carrot on a stick to try to get you to trade your very soul in exchange for that rare prize. Young men and women must renounce their earthly families, often referred to as “breaking their covenant with death”.
Very often, after a courtship has gone on for a while, a great test of loyalty to the leader takes place. This test is that the girl and sometimes the man must call off the engagement and return any rings. They tell their fiancé that if they do not talk more to the leaders, then they will not marry them. This forces the young man to redouble his commitment and undying loyalty to the leaders, to grovel and let them rip out his soul for their own using. The young woman makes it clear that her marriage covenant is firstly with Gospel Outreach and it‘s leaders, and is null and void if he ever tries to leave.
Favorite family members of the leaders are often immune from this treatment but most members are not. There is no guarantee that they will re-approve of the engagement, so accepting this requirement comes with great risk to the couple.
From it’s very inception the marriage covenant is tampered with by the leaders. If they can separate the hearts of the wife and husband then they can steal the children and use the wife to keep the husband providing for the family but can take the children aside and turn their hearts against their fathers. It is Elijah’s work in reverse, they tell the children that they are so sorry that their parents aren’t really committed to the church, but they (the leaders) will become their new parents in the failed ones place.
New term: The ANTI-FATHER has come. After their time of usefulness to the leaders has ended the parents are squeezed out and reviled by even their own children. Most of the time they fade away, just a shell of the people that they once were.
Unfortunately these lost souls still hunger for acceptance from these leaders and they still believe the lie that there is “no life outside the body” meaning specifically outside of Gospel Outreach.
Family camp and weddings are a time when all the churches under the influence of leaders of Gospel Outreach of Olympia come together in one place and revisions to the rules can be explained.
For instance, they went from zero alcohol allowed to having kegs and wine racks almost overnight. The abuse of alcohol is rampant and it is common to observe people getting drunk at weddings. Cigar and cigarette smoking was once despised as harming the body which is “the temple of the Holy Ghost” while now it is common, especially cigars.
Children are given access to alcohol with no regard for the fact that they can become alcoholics in only 6 months of daily drinking, whereas an adult can take as long as 3 years to become hopelessly ensnared. Many of these people have now taken to drinking every night, and the smell leaches out through their skin and their breath is often awful, but because most all of them are doing it, they don’t seem to notice. Driving while under the influence of alcohol is now an issue after weddings and because they think they can hold their liquor, they think they are not impaired. It may take someone dying for them to wake up to this sad possibility.
Baptism, in it’s simplest form, is the public renouncing of the world and your old life of sin and the public proclamation that you are now a follower of Christ. When you are plunged under in obedience to scripture you arise a new creature. Gospel Outreach teaches that you are “baptized into the local church” meaning in effect you salvation hinges on your staying under their control. On a note of lesser importance, they have even reverted to infant baptism, perhaps to follow Martin Luther’s early vision of reforming the Catholic church instead of becoming protestant. What ever it is, they will have found it somewhere in the his writings and can probably defend it with chapter and verse.
Work and employment. The leaders own the businesses that you see nearly all the people working in. Their great leader is careful to keep his name off of the ownership of these business, but they are owned by his closest and most trusted children and sons-in-laws along with a few of the highest ranking leaders.
He controls these businesses in every way. He makes the decisions to hire, to fire, to give raises, to cut anyone’s pay even in half on a whim. He holds absolute dictatorial power over every business decision and over every employee. He often completely switches a member from one business or church job to another just because he wants to watch them more or wants them to watch someone else.
When quizzed on this strange practice of having nearly every member working in one of the leader-owned businesses, they quickly trot out a tiny contingent of fringe edge members who are otherwise mocked and ridiculed for having outside connections, to prove that they are a normal church with members working in every aspect of society. It is true that there is one woman who holds a teachers-aid job, one woman who is employed by the state, but they are older and had outside jobs before they joined. The are or have been a young telemarketer, a car salesman, a small handful of women who worked in grocery stores or places like Penny‘s, and perhaps a very few others.
There is a large pool of young people for the leaders to pick and choose from to work in their businesses, all are very eager to do so, just to be in the leaders good graces. All of the others are simply left-overs the undesirables. If at any moment they manage to impress the leader, they may get hired back in. They will leap with great eagerness at this chance to prove their loyalty and regain some status.
There are a couple of older men who have owned their own businesses for some time, and sometimes one or two of their own children work with them, but if you were to ask them, every one of them were fired, deemed unfit, or systematically squeezed out of one of the leaders businesses at on time or another.
This is especially true of older men, the leaders don’t want to be responsible for helping these older members in retirement, so they squeeze them out by continually reviling them, offering them a severance bonus, and continually lowering and lowering their pay until they are forced to leave or starve.
Some men have actually lost their homes because they could not see that the leaders were not going to help them, they clung in vain to their job, thinking that surely if they talked more and groveled more the leaders would have pity on them and reinstate their once living wage. But no such pity was shown, these unfortunate men end up being despised by their own wives and children as not being “real men” but little boys who did not have the spine to be included in the leaders businesses like the other more committed men. In one particularly disturbing case, a man apparently outlived his usefulness to the leaders in one of the businesses and fell out of favor. His pay was systematically lowered and lowered until his house was in foreclosure and had to be sold at auction. This leader had a 3rd party purchase the property for himself to avoid being seen at the auction, as the land was close to the church and hard by his own relatives it was desirable to him. There are shades of 1 Kings 21 and the story of Naboth’s vineyard here.
The privileged position of those in leadership or in the great leaders immediate family is striking in it’s opulence. To quote Ace Bendage as he described a leader and family member who left; “He lacked no good thing. Howbeit, over time, one can only surmise that the profusion of mammon brought about by this river of abundance made him a man who was used to getting his way.” Ace, in his own cleverly crafted words, describes their great leader and nearly every person in a leadership position. For their loyalty to the great leader they are granted soft positions mainly dedicated to monitoring the underlings and keeping them off balance and unaware of how they are being used.
The leaders control the members finances, pay level, personal spousal relationships, children, education, time, reading materials, vacations, relationships with those who are not members including relatives, how much they must money they must donate to the church etc… All that, along with the constant probing of the members minds for even a hint of doubt or dissent can mean only one thing: Gospel Outreach has become a predatory cult that is using the members for the personal gain of the leaders. The concept of personal privacy is scorned, the leader once declared in a meeting: “Do you think I am above spying?”…he went on to declare that he was not. Members are constantly drilled on the subject of what they observe about others behavior in true Orwellian fashion.
Don’t be fooled by the niceties and politeness shown to you as an outsider. If you are in contact with those inside Gospel Outreach ask them straight, hard questions and then research their answers carefully if they should respond. I would avoid revealing yourself to them, they for years afterwards, make snide remarks about neighbors who have made complaints about noise, traffic or have had other legitimate concerns. You are dealing with something unpleasant hiding behind a mask of normalcy and niceness. God forgive us who participated in securing power and wealth for these false shepherds who now seem to take delight in devouring God‘s precious sheep. These are only about a dozen of the 95 or more pages that could be nailed to their door.