From Metro to Mayhem: The Abuse That Followed Revival Culture - Adam Short

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend Adam Short, host of the grit in the wild podcast. Adam it's good to be back and today to hear more of your story we sometime in the past it's been a few months ago I had you share your story and you and your wife came on and there's so much more to tell I kind of feel like with all the different groups that you've been involved with we could have

probably I don't know 10-15 different stories but today we decided to go back and choose one that is fascinating to me and I think I think the listeners will be very interested to hear more about it so I'll just I'll let you run with it but today is another our stories with Adam Short. Awesome well thanks for having back John always a pleasure and yeah when you asked me about you know which story I was kind of like all right let's just roll the dice and pick one because I do have a few or several depending on how you slice and dice but but you

know really what came forefront to the top of my mind was to dive in a little more hone in a little more about my involvement in Kansas City so a lot of your listeners and viewers might be more familiar with my commentary on Bethel and I was very much neck deep at Bethel but prior to that I was actually in Kansas City and not a direct member of IHOP but I was a part of an organization well it's actually a church called Metro Christian Fellowship which many of y'all will have heard of or been you know are familiar with Metro Christian

Fellowship was originally founded by Mike Bickel back in early 80s-ish I think late 70s actually and at that time it was Kansas City Fellowship KCF and then it changed to Kansas City Vineyard KCV and then later down the line it became known as Metro Christian Fellowship in MCF so I was not there in the early early days that you know back in like the 80s or 90s or anything like that I I actually moved to Kansas City in 2004 and So a little bit of the backstory, I'll kind of get some context here and then talk through some of the some of my experience.

So originally from the Carolinas, you probably tell, not from Kansas City or California or any of those other spots that I've lived in. But yeah, from the Carolinas, but back in 2004, after I finished college, I was invited to go visit Kansas City to visit a very good friend of mine out there who had moved out there previously to be a part of a organization that was kind of pre-high hop.

It was known as Grace Training Center and Grace Training Center was sort of a sort of a precursor, if you will, to high hop. And it was more of a training organization. I did not have specific direct experience with Grace Training Center.

But I knew several of the people who taught at Grace Training Center had, you know, overlap connections there. So through that series of events, I ended up moving to Kansas City specifically to join a program that was sort of housed under Metro Christian Fellowship.

And it was a church planting organization, a missionary missions organization. So that was my goal was to eventually go out as a missionary and plant churches. So, you know, I moved to Kansas City. I had involvement informally with IOPKC. I attended Metro Christian Fellowship during my two years living there.

And then spent a lot of time at Metro. And, you know, again, a lot of the leaders at Metro also were leaders in the organization I was a part of the missions organization called All Nations.

And All Nations is still around. It's a, you know, a missions organization. It, you know, it sends out church planners throughout the world. And it was actually started by Floyd McClung, who was one of the top leaders of Y-WAM with Laurent Cunningham way back a long time ago.

So, you know, I know I'm giving a lot of detail, but I'm trying to set the context here. Floyd basically what happened was. So, in 1999, around 1999 to 2000 time frame, Mike Bickle stepped away from Metro Christian Fellowship to start IOPK, right.

And then Floyd, and I don't know all the details on the selection process, but Floyd McClung became the new pastor of Metro at that time. And so, previous to coming to Metro. Metro. He had started all nations, which is, like, as I said, a church planting slash missions organizations. So he started that before he came to Metro. And then when he came to Metro, he brought his, his all nations, uh, organization with him. And then it became sort of under the Metro umbrella. They were separate organizations, but they shared a building off of Warnall Road,

12411 Warnall Road. I will never forget the address, uh, Kansas City, Missouri. That's, you know, no longer meet there because the church doesn't exist anymore in its current form to my knowledge. But at that time, you had Metro in that building, you had all nations in that building. And you also had the, uh, was it demanding Christian school if I'm remembering the name correctly? It was a, um, there was a Christian, you know, early education school. So all that was in that building. So there was a lot of overlap there amongst the leaders, the members,

the members of the church, the members of the all nations programs and things like that. So there's a lot of overlap between what happened in that building and then what happened over on Red Bridge Road where I hop was. So, um, I, I got to Kansas City in 2004 to do the church planting school with all nations. And, you know, I look back on all nations and I would not call all nations a cult just to just to say that up for it. I don't believe all nations in it have itself is a cult. Um, but I want to talk about how because all nations became sort of

under the umbrella of Metro, it became, it was built for many years on the foundation of Metro. Okay. And so the belief systems, the structure, um, the practices, I think fundamentally were built in a large part upon a cult because if you look at the overall history of Metro and the offshoots of Metro, IE, KCF, KCV, you know, from that church were many sprouts and, uh, offshoots and tributaries, if you will, that sort of emanated out of that church over the decades.

And, um, and one of those offshoots in my opinion was all nations. Now, if you look at all nations as an organization and their ethos and compared to Kansas City, I'm sorry to, uh, IHOP KC, they're very different. They're very different, you know, they, they, they have, they had slash have very different missions, if you will, you know, all nations was a church planting organization that's it.

missionaries out all over the world, whereas IOP KC was very much of an inward-focused prayer room-based organization where people came into the prayer room to spend maximum amount of hours in prayer and worship.

So two different types of outworkings of practical belief systems and things like that, but still very much built on the same foundation, I think. So this is the early years that fascinate me, how it all came together, how it all came to be, and you're one of the few people who was in that that is willing to open up and talk.

So for me, this is just fascinating, especially with concerns to my research. But what you're describing there, this is the doctrinal foundation that created what became IHOP, and I understand what you're saying about the two different entities with the two different mission types.

What I'm really interested to know is some of the doctrinal framework that tied all of that together, because as you know, I'm certain you're aware, and anybody who is involved with it, this developed into spiritual abuse.

And for something to go, you know, I'm certain that in its inception, many of these groups had really good ambitions, good ideas, but slightly often, some doctrinal point that was a snowball going down a hill and became bigger until it exploded.

What were the doctrinal themes that joined all these together? And specifically, I'm wanting to know, out of my own curiosity, was the Joel's army a big theme back then, or did it had it changed later, or what was your experience with regards to the doctrine, the Joel's army framework, and what, you know, in times revival missions that IHOP case he had?

Yeah, yeah, back then, because I was so heavily involved in all nations, and Metro too, like, you know, I went to Metro as a church. I don't remember that being discussed, frankly, like, in the day-to-day all nations curriculum or belief systems or anything like that, was it discussed or preached about at Metro?

I don't remember, but I will say probably, well, no, let me go back a step, because before all that, I was a part of Morningstar. I've been in the tri-effect. I was at Morningstar, I think, Kansas City, then Bethel and Redding, okay?

So back in, back at Morningstar, there was talk about the Joel's army, because Bob Jones was very involved back then at Morningstar, and he also was at IHOP too. So Bob Jones, you know, I was exposed to Bob Jones and some of that Joel's army stuff here and there, but not directly as much when I was in Kansas City, but later I was at Bethel.

My theme did sort of- of ride across all three movements that I was a part of there, but then like to your question, what other, what were the doctrinal sort of beliefs? I think that under all of the, even though all nations was more of a church planting oriented organization, it was still a charismatic, you know, a charismatic group that believed a lot of the same things about prophecy, about the supernatural, and all that stuff, I think, was pretty much came from the framework that Metro had, you know, with a little bit of Y-Wam Flair, because you know, remember Floyd McClung

and he's a very well-known, you know, leader across Y-Wam, anybody that was in Y-Wam would know Floyd McClung, he's almost as, almost as well-known as Laurent Cunningham, you know, prolific author, everything. So in that sense, I think Floyd brought his own sort of flavor slash variation, if you will, of, you know, his charismatic sort of leanings, but I do think there are overlaps there amongst your doctrinal positions that people had or those organizations had.

I had no beef of Floyd, I knew Floyd, just to make that clear, like I had no, my abuse did not happen because of Floyd directly, it was, it was some other people that I'm happy to get into some of that, but like, just to your question, John, I think that would be my recollection of the Joel's army, like not as much friend and center in all nations and Metro, but that's just going off my memory, which is probably not the most reliable. Yeah, that's interesting. The morning star was so heavy into it back then, because I go back and forth, who is the one who really brought

this forward into IHOP? Was it Paul Kane that brought the Joel's army? Was it Bob Jones? Was it a combination of the two? Or was it just simply Laterane in general because this had kind of disseminated through Laterane, but sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your story, I'm just filled with questions trying to understand the owners, but it's fascinating though, so and you're mentioning Wywham, Jed and I are going through a bit of that history because he was also involved in Wywham, and there are some very, very interesting connections to Wywham to all of my research as well, much of which I haven't yet published, I'm getting there, but how much,

so on the Wywham side, how familiar were you with their outreach programs, were you actually actively going out with Wywham into other mission fields? What was your involvement there? Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So Wywham was not officially like, how do I say this? It was a separate organization much, much larger than all nations.

However, because Floyd was an executive very high up leader in Y-Wam for many decades, he had those connections to bring to the table when it came to building out all nations as an organization.

Okay, so I'll give you an example of what I mean. I knew lots of people who were in Y-Wam who did the DTS schools, disciples to training schools, and then they went on their outreach, friends that did that at the personal level, but then beyond that, as an organization, when I was actually a missionary with all nations, I moved to France, I lived in France, and then later I lived in West Africa as a missionary.

And during my time both in Europe and Africa, because of the connections that Floyd and other leaders he knew in Y-Wam, right, because of that overlap, there was access to people and resources and facilities, locations, et cetera.

So for example, I remember one time when I was living in France, there was a Europe event that all nations had up in Lozon, Switzerland. So basically what that means is all of the missionaries in Europe go to one spot and you have like a retreat.

And so this was actually at a Y-Wam base, beautiful property, right on Lake Lozon, overlooking the lake. But I just make that point because even though Y-Wam was a separate organization, there was a lot of relational connections that Floyd had that he was able to bring to the table and sort of, and we had sort of informal access to those kinds of things within all nations.

And the other thing I'll mention too is when it comes to teachers, teachers in the school that I was in, called CPX, church planning experience, some of the teachers also were from Y-Wam. So there were other folks who came in on staff who I think had history in Y-Wam.

So there was definitely a lot of overlap there for sure. But I didn't actually do Y-Wam formally, like outreach, Y-Wam. Our approach in all nations was very different than Y-Wam. Y-Wam is much more short-term missions organization where they send teams out for, you know, six weeks or, you know, three months or whatever it is.

But what I was in a part of was much more long-term oriented of where you're going into your actually the goal is to plant churches, long-term, not like a short-term mission strip. That makes sense.

And so when those groups came together and Mike Bickle is establishing his foothold in Kansas City, that made a good partnership because Mike didn't have the outreach he was focusing on Kansas City and the two could come together.

So I guess I understand that a good bit. Dr. Nellie speaking, what brought these to these multiple organizations together? That is a great question that I don't know the answer to. I would love to know more about that.

I would love to know and I've seen some of the correspondence that was released publicly back in, well, it was actually released after 2005, but I was actually in Kansas City when this hub hub happened between Mike and Floyd.

There was a big controversy and a lot of this stuff is public. If you go dig it up, there were letters that multiple letters of Metro wrote to Mike because there was, it turns out there was actually some beef.

I think that happened between Mike and Floyd when Mike left Metro and went to start IHOP. He sort of turned his back on any accountability and even though his own church leaders were trying to like, I think, bring accountability to the best they knew even though at that time, as I understand it, none of those leaders were aware that he was basically committing CSA against multiple people, 17 people now that we now know.

The beef that happened between Mike and Floyd became more public later and you can kind of see some of the beliefs of how church governance was handled back then. There was definitely a rift between what Mike believed and what the leaders of Metro were trying to push and hold him accountable to an extent, but he was just shunning that as it turns out.

He's going to bail jump ship and go start IHOP and basically put that in the rear view mirror. But like doctorally specifically, I would like to know more about that too. I don't really feel like I have a good understanding on that.

Yeah, that makes sense. I've been investigating many of the other connections like the shepherding movement got involved to some extent and to I've been studying John Wimber, his involvement and interestingly Wimber's brief involvement with the shepherding movement.

It seemed as though a lot of these charismatic groups were trying to find their footing. So it could have been that they were just trying to try something new to see if it could spark.

There's this mentality within the charismatic movement that if you can spark that revival you can hasten the coming of Jesus. And so maybe they were attempting that, I'm not certain, but there's a whole element of that that is just simply the charismatic movement which could have brought it together.

But fascinating and curious all at the same time, as you're talking, I'm taking mental notes. and go research some of these areas further. Yeah, no, you're giving me ideas too to research further. I want to answer those questions too.

This is part of my deconstruction journey and reconstruction, peeling back the layers, putting it all on the chopping block, and then like trying to figure out what parts of this, do you just need to throw away in what part we need to keep?

And you know, that's just a never ending drama, at least in my head. But, you know, I guess moving from there, just to kind of speak to my experience, really the nitty-gritty of what happened in my personal life.

So, you know, I, I was in Kansas City a couple of years there and then once you go through the school, you know, once people went through the old nation school, then the next step for a lot of people was to actually be sent out as a missionary and that's what I did.

And I was really fortunate at that time from the standpoint of support, like both financial and spiritual support, I had like four or five churches who, you know, sponsored me as a missionary and sent me out and financially, you know, contributed to what the, you know, the work that I was gonna do over in Europe and Africa.

So, what, the kind of what happened was, through a whole, a whole story I won't get into right now, I became acquainted with a pastor in West Africa,

an African pastor. And this was after I had been in France and made the decision to transition and move to Africa. So, I began getting to know this pastor in Africa and, you know, and just to kind of provide a backdrop.

This person was, as I look back now, a very grandiose person, this person was very, very,

just always talking about these visions and dreams and encounters that he had, the supernatural counters, he had all of these stories of just things that would blow your mind, right? Like, I'll give you an example.

And truthfully, like, I still try to understand, if some of this stuff is true. I witness some of this stuff with my own two eyes in Africa, things that I cannot explain

that do not logically make sense whatsoever. And I'm gonna share one of those, but before I do, let me say this, this pastor would tell stories about when, you know, he was preaching in this certain village, I can't remember where, right now.

But he told this story multiple times where people were starving and... And so he basically, he said, I prayed, and it rained, and there were all these water puddles on the ground, and fish started jumping out of the puddles.

Okay. And people went and collected buckets and buckets and buckets of fish, and they were able to eat. And I'm hearing these stories, and this is a guy, you're talking about somebody who came from a supernatural background.

Like I was at Morningstar, I had a grid for miracles, I, you know, I had an encounter, I met the Lord in an encounter by myself when I was a teenager. So here I am in front of a pastor, working with a pastor in Africa, along with another missionary, and he's telling these stories, and I'm like, okay, this is so out of my realm of normal that I don't know to do it this, but it sounds plausible, it sounds real, I don't have any reason to doubt what he's saying.

But very, very soon after arriving in Africa, people talk about they said something was wrong. Okay. And that was exactly what happened with me. It was actually, I pulled up my journal from back then, those 2007, and I remember in the first week, I had written in there that I had very, very serious concerns, and I was very uncomfortable with just, it's just intuitively, you know that something's wrong.

Let's see, my, my optimistic outlook on faith and sort of a supernatural, like miracles and all that stuff, I, I pushed that down, I pushed it down. I said, no, just, let's just give this some time, I'm sure this will work out just fine.

But it didn't, it didn't work out. It got worse, it got worse, and it got worse. I discovered that this man was a very unsafe person. And it wasn't just spiritual stuff, it was like, it's hard for me to talk about, I've not really talked about this publicly, so don't bear with me.

I was very afraid of this man. And he, if he was so controlling that if you did not do things exactly how he wanted you to do, he would go into fits of rage, and he would lay into you, I mean, just, he You would, you would, you would get chewed out and verbally abused, verbally berated.

And so I began to get used to this type of treatment on a regular basis. And because he had a lot of stature in this country, he knew the president, we went and we met highly high level leaders in the country that he knew.

He was very connected politically, not many people in the United States follow West African politics. So none of the names that I would mention would mean anything to a lot of, to most people.

But I will tell you that he was very well connected. And so here I am, I'm just a little nobody, right? Like I'm a little bit, no person, nobody person in Africa here trying to plant a church.

And what I was taught is you submit to the pastor, and this is even before I was exposed to Bethel's honor culture, but even at that point I knew that, okay, what you're supposed to do here is you're supposed to listen to what the pastor says, honor the culture that's hosting you, and just, you know, basically do what you're told.

So that's what I try to do, but the more this went on, the more I felt, the insides of me were collapsing. My spiritual framework, my relationship with the God was literally being destroyed.

I remember feeling like I could hear the voice of God on a daily basis, but as time went on living in Africa under his leadership, that just totally just went away. Like I didn't know where God was.

I felt like I had been abandoned, and here I am with a unsafe, unpredictable spiritual leader who not only treats me that way, but he treats everybody else that way too. Everybody has churches, and there were multiple church locations, we would go all over the area, you know, preaching in the churches.

And you have to understand, in Africa, in this part of Africa, there is an awareness of the spirit realm very much unlike here in the West. And I don't care what you believe about the spirit realm.

I'm going to tell you what I saw with my own two eyes. It is a very charged atmosphere, and it's very, very scary when you don't know what to do with it. So there's just one time when these people that lived in a nearby village, they Hey, this is the wild part.

They had asked the witch doctor to come and the Charlotteson and a bunch of other, you know, dark magic people to come and fix this problem at their house and nobody could do it.

And so what would happen is they told us every afternoon at a certain time, I think it might have been 4 p.m., I can't remember now exactly what time it was, there was still daylight when it would happen.

These people would be sitting outside under there, they had like an overhang with a 10 roof over it, concrete floor and their house was surrounded by a seven foot concrete wall. And the only thing above it was trees.

And every afternoon, rocks would fall on their house. I mean, y'all are gonna think I'm crazy. I mean, I wouldn't believe this. If you told me this, I wouldn't believe it. So I don't, if you're here in this and you don't believe it, I don't blame you.

But they came to us, they heard that we believed in Jesus. And so they said, can y'all come down here and pray over our house and make this go away? Nobody else can make this stop.

So we went down the pastor and I, and the other missionary and some other people I think went, no, actually it was just three of us, the three of us went. And we went over to their houses, this little village out in the woods, the bush.

And we went in, they opened up their door, their gate, went in. So there's like a wall around their house, like a seven foot concrete wall. And that's pretty typical in Africa, at least that part of Africa.

We go in and they're very hospitable. You know, they offer us water and then we came in and sat down under this overhang. It's outside, it's like you'd be on a screened in porch but no walls, right?

It's like a, almost like an awning, if you will. Ten roof boards holding up the ten roof, completely solid metal and wood, okay, concrete floor. And they said, okay, we're gonna sit down and it'll start here in a minute.

And we sat there for a few minutes and sure enough, clockwork,

we started hearing rocks hit the ceiling or the roof, the ten roof up there. Not only did they hit the ten roof, they went through it. There are no holes in the ten, like it's solid metal.

It's like a ten sheet metal of a roof. And the rocks would fall right onto the concrete, right in front of our feet, where our feet were planted on the ground, where we were sitting.

You heard the sound and then they landed, right in front of. And... I mean, I'm listening to myself say this and I'm like, I'm hardly believing it myself, but that is what happened and the reason I share this is because this is the kind of environment that Africa is.

It is a very, it is an atmosphere where people readily believe in the supernatural. They know that there are dark forces and bright forces and all this kind of stuff. And I'll be honest with you, that was a very, very, very scary experience.

Even now, it's only been recently that I've been able to talk about it and not be completely horrified. It's hard to explain. When you experience something like that, it's almost like you were in the middle of the horror movie.

So to wrap that story up and get back to the pastor for a minute. So I asked my friend, my other friend missionary who was there as well. Hey, do you think we should take some of these rocks back to the house with this and just see what happens?

Like, we're just kind of curious. What would happen? What are these rocks? What, like, were they, well, they'd be there the next day, will they disappear? So we did. We took a handful of them back and we set them outside of our house that evening.

And the next day they were gone, they had totally disappeared. Now, I don't know if somebody picked them up and threw them somewhere or they just dissolve. I have no idea. Like, this is, this is the kind of stuff that I don't have an answer for.

I can't give you a logical explanation. It defies logic. It defies physics. It makes no sense.

So that's the kind of place that I lived. It was a very, very different type of environment than the United States. But that's all important because this pastor that I worked under leveraged that spiritual dynamic, that supernatural slash spiritual, you know, belief system.

And he used it to harm people. And he used it to harm me spiritually over a period of months to where it really left me. I was actually afraid for my life. And so ultimately I ended up coming back to the United States, completely devastated and really not sure what happened to me.

And this was at a time when spiritual abuse was not as much talked about or, you know, there wasn't as much awareness. I remember reading a book called The Settle Power of Spiritual Abuse by Jeff.

I think it's Jeff Van Vonderin, if I'm getting his name right. I was the first grid I had for spiritual abuse and started really trying to get my head around. What has happened to me?

But that experience over there, I'm leaving out a lot on purpose because I don't wanna talk forever. But it was so devastating that I'm still, and this was 18 years ago, and I'm still marked and different because of it.

And I don't know if I'll ever fully recover maybe I will, not sure, but the damage that the spiritual abuse caused under that pasture was,

it was unquantifiable for me. And so, yeah, that was a long monologue there, but that was kind of a snapshot of Africa. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation?

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You know, I have friends who are missionaries in other countries and some of the stories they tell me. Unbelievable. I like you think very clearly, think very architecturally minded. I want to know why things work the way they do and how they work.

But some of the stories that they tell me, there's just no way that you can, it defies all logic. There's no way that you can explain it. And that's what they experienced. So I, like I say, I try to figure things out and I wasn't there, so I can't.

But it matches to some extent. I've had experiences with myself that I just can't explain. How did this happen? Why did this happen? You know, I was in a cult and I was praying to God, but I've learned sense that the cult, the God that they worship, nothing even resembles Christianity.

So it wasn't a different God, I don't know. But there are some questions that I have too that I'm working through. And for now, I just put that on the shelf and I focus on the research.

But to the point of the pastor, it's interesting the way that you described that. And I'm glad. that you did. Because a lot of people will get into a similar situation, they'll endure spiritual abuse, and they leave and they will think that the group is occult. And maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I'll let you answer that. But their experience with the leader brands the whole thing. They hold, sometimes it's an entire denomination. I'll never go back to this place. This place treated me like a cult. And all it takes is one bad leadership, bad leader that's appointed into leadership to cause somebody's entire life to change.

That's how impactful this can be. After we left the cult, we experienced many different churches. And one of them, there was a pastor that I will never forget some of the things that happened to me. It was very clearly spiritual abuse that they were attempting to do to me. Fortunately, I had just came out of a cult and I recognized it as they're doing it. And I very quickly put my foot down and you're not going to do this to me. But there are people, because it's a church and because they're trained to respect leadership and

churches, there are many people that won't put their foot down. And it can change their lives forever. So I'm glad that you're I'm glad that you're able to process it. But I understand that's very hard to work through. Yeah, no, absolutely. No, that's a good point. You know, you can have one bad apple. And it's kind of like the verse in the Bible that says, a little bit of leaven will work through the whole lump of dough. I'm kind of paraphrasing.

But yeah, I mean, you can have a bad actor. And it doesn't necessarily mean the entire organization is corrupt, but it does beg a lot of questions like, why is that person or leader continue to allow to operate, especially after the other leaders are notified that the harm occurred. And I did want to add that I did notify the leaders of my organization, all nations

when this abuse was happening. And there were other allegations that I won't get into now that were they were quite dark that involved CSA that that that folks came to several of us and and told us about and you know, we we raised it with the leaders of the organization in Africa and all nations in Kansas City. And to all nations credit, they did send one of their leaders to Africa to meet to try to work this out. And unfortunately, it was it was largely ineffectual.

And you know, the conclusion was I was the one with the problem. This was my fault.

It was my fault that I was spiritually abused. That was really the conclusion that all nations reached. And unfortunately, I came back a complete wreck. Um, I was basically, it was as if I'd, you know, I just dropped off the radar. I mean, I had no, I had no help, no resources other than, um, one of the leaders came to all day or came to Africa, which I given that. That's this credit. Great. But truthfully, like I was a complete and utter wreck when I came back. And I just quietly left the organization. And that was that. And there was no care. There

was no follow up. There was no nothing. And to add insult to injury, um, this pastor ended up moving to the United States to Kansas City, where he is still now, the last I check, preaching.

He became a leader of a church organization in Kansas City that I was very close to. I knew pretty much all of the people that led that organization. He worked his way. He weaseled his way in to that organization after all of the CSA allegations. And after all of the, um, all the abuse, not just mine, but a lot of other people work his way into a church leadership in Kansas City.

And I don't know all the details of what happened after that. I just know that publicly he is still, you can find him preaching, you know, preaching in a church. And so, and that was 18 years ago, 18 to 20 or sorry, 18, 16 to 18 years ago when that all went down. And so this is an example of another. Really, I would call predator who has just been allowed to continue to rinse and repeat.

And I hope to God. He didn't have other victims in the United States. I hope he didn't. But unfortunately, the pattern that we've seen with a lot of the high profile cases that have come out over the past couple of years is this is these are not isolated. These are not isolated abuse stories. These are these are typically patterns of abuse that extend across many decades.

And you know, that was the case with Mike Bickle. It's the case with Robert Morris. And so,

I'm probably, well, not probably, I know for a fact, I'm one of several victims slash survivors of this pasture. But he's, he's just, nope, I don't know that anybody held him accountable. And, you know, he was able to get back or move to the United States. And I, and somehow be here.

And continue, continue his harm to people. And so that to me, John, is when you go to go back to your question on the doctoral overlaps, I think that is one of the underpinnings that all of these organizations having common is they categorically will not hold predators accountable, full stop.

And so that's one of the reasons you get reiterations and new churches planted and new organizations created and founded by these same people is because they move to another state or another part of the town and create a new organization and they do the exact same thing again and again and again.

I have a friend who often says that there are people who are so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good or they're so earthly minded that they're no heavenly good. And what he's essentially saying is you must have balance.

What I've found in many of these groups, they have great ambitions and they think that they are doing God's work, but they become so focused on God's work that they don't really see the world around them as the world exists around them.

And they don't see the people as just people, they see them as tools to further their ambitions and God's work. Many of them, as Bob Scott and I are talking through, many of them have narcissistic tendencies, which is kind of what you're describing this person has.

The sad part about it, what you said is absolutely true. The sad part about it is once you get up into higher leadership and you see somebody who really has that drive and ambition, you tend to overlook the narcissistic tendencies because they may do more for the quote unquote kingdom than the average drink and fall member who doesn't have that same ambition.

And so the overlook personality traits that are very dangerous and put people in leadership and when those traits start to abuse people, if they've advanced the quote unquote kingdom just a little bit, they see the advancement as more beneficial to the body of Christians, then they do the actual Christians.

And so then what happens is it becomes a religion based on the agenda rather than a religion based on Christ? Yeah, that's a good point. And it's almost like, you know, if you take all of the net positive, so to speak, the quote unquote, like you said, you know, advancing the kingdom, put all that over on one side of the page and on the other side, like under the prose column, look, looking all the good stuff they're doing, they're supposedly advancing the kingdom, they are moving heaven and earth, blah, blah, blah.

So then on the other side of the page, you have all of the negatives, the cons as it were, cons, exactly what it is, it's a con. They're conning people. And, but, you know, if that stuff is hidden, if we, if we, as a church just say, well, that's just not as bad as we think it is and, you know, we're just going to kind of wink wink. He's doing good. And let's just kind of overlook. Love would overlook that. It's kind of the belief. But, um, but that's not true. That's false. Like, love actually cares

for the one person that's bleeding out in the ditch. I mean, it's like the Good Samaritan story. Um, and the Good Samaritan story was an indictment upon the church, well, not the church leaders, but the religious leaders of the day during Jesus' time. They were totally offended when he shared that a Samaritan had stopped to help somebody because the Samaritan was kind of like what they called a half breed back then. And, but now this, uh, the Good Samaritan story is an indictment upon our current church and, uh, religious leadership because, um, the narcissistic leaders are too busy and too important to stop for the

one person bleeding out. And what's ironic is I cannot tell you how often I've heard that, uh, heard it taught from like pulpits and stages, well, Jesus stops for the one except they don't do that. They don't do, they don't stop for the one. They are after the crowds, they're after the dollars, they're after the fame, they're after the influence, they're after, you know, anything that advances their ego. That's right. And it's really sad for the people who've experienced the spiritual abuse because like I said, and like you said, you never, ever get over it. You always remember this because it's something that you really suffered

through. It would be the equivalent if you were to have been in an accident and had some traumatic injury to an arm. You're always going to remember that that arm got hurt. Well, this impacture, not only your spiritual belief set, it also impacts your psychological being, your well-being. Yes. So there are people who are just devastated by this kind of thing. And the leadership who are involved in spiritual abuse, many of them without having the correct, without having empathy, a narcissist does not have empathy. Without having empathy, they can walk all over people and not even care that they did. And in my opinion, I've,

I've voiced this a few times now, but in my opinion, there is no level of advancement for the quote unquote kingdom that they can do that can offset this. If you have this type of mentality, you're not meant to be a shepherd of people. Absolutely. Yeah. It's the exact opposite of the kind of people that should be shepherds, you know, who are not putting themselves first, but are putting the people that they lead first.

You know, so, you know, for me, back to my experience, like I, it took me, and I still struggled with this, like I, I'm very hesitant to trust pastors. You know, I think I have grown in my ability to trust pastors and spiritual leaders, but it's very, very different than it used to be. I used to be a very trusting person, but now I'm like, what do you put your agenda?

Like, you know, I'm like trying to constantly look past what you see at base value and say, what is your in-game again? Are you looking to get something out of me? Do you want money? Do you want blind loyalty? Do you want, you know, do you want to be worshipped on the stage? I don't know, you know, but I will say though, it's been cool to run across a few very, very good people, you know, in recent years who are great pastors, they're great, you know, spiritual leaders, you know, they're trusting people and trustworthy people and doing a great job leading their

churches. And so I think that most of those are people you'll never hear of, they're not famous, they're just doing the stuff, so to speak, like in their corner of the world, and they're not seeking to, you know, be famous and make a name for themselves. So that's really encouraging. I find encouragement in that. Yeah, I know a few people who are like that, they don't want their name to be recognized. If something were to happen and they were to be instantly famous, they would just walk away from it. And I'm in this interesting world because of what I do, bringing all of the people

together to share their stories, I'm kind of out in the open, but it's the opposite of my personality as well. I just, I don't like it. I don't like, I don't like the public attention.

But what I do like is I like watching people who can share their stories with other people who have gone through something traumatic because all of the listeners who are suffering through similar experiences and can't yet put it into words when they watch another person who can overcome this and who can start to heal, they too can find healing. So thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. Yes. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org and the grit and the wild podcast. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.