Good Experiences, Unhealthy Systems: A YWAM Exposé

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my very special guests, Shelby Hauffer, and Jenny McGrath, former members of Y-Wam.

Shelby, Jenny, it's good to be back. So many things that we wanted to talk about last time and never really made it there, and just chatting with you briefly before we started the podcast. I've realized that I don't think that there's a limit to the things that we could talk about in a different past week ago. There are so many things to talk through, and we've had so many people contact me from Y-Wam. In fact, I just recorded another one yesterday with a former member, and there's just so many things in directions we can go. But you mentioned one thing that I really think is

significant and important. There is this need to value the experience and the experience outweighs the doctrine. And that is a huge problem that exists, not only with this group, but there are several other groups that it exists with. Because when you do that, you evaluate the experience over the doctrine. Suddenly the people who have the more experiences are more gifted, if you will. And so you create this hierarchy of who has the most experience, who has the least experience. And what you end up with is something that isn't quite Christianity, but it pairs the name Christian.

So anyway, I wanted to talk through that with you, and I'm certain there's a hundred other things we can talk through. Yes, definitely. That's something that is quite important in my Y-Wam experience and many others Y-Wam experiences. And I realize when I talk about Y-Wam experiences, it's not going to be everybody. So I just want to caveat that that this is something we're well aware of that we're not trying to encompass every single situation in Y-Wam every single person.

However, there is a systemic issue. And these are the things that we want to talk about that is important to talk about and sort of push back on when we get the sort of feedback of, well, but it's not all places, it's not all Y-Wam locations or sort of it's their immaturity or age or whatever. So I think it is important that we can talk about that.

As you talk about that, Shelby, it makes me think about how a lot of what I look at is what I call the pure-to-purpose pipeline and these ideologies of purity culture and other high control religions and how they are systems of binaries. And I think for a lot of us, myself included, it's easy to go, is Y-Wam good or bad? Is it right or wrong? And I think I touched on this a little bit last time that some of my favorite life experiences happened when I was in Y-Wam. And there are still things that brought me so much joy and so much goodness. And we could,

and we probably will talk about those in some way at some time. And what is often less talked about are those experiences of pain and harm that are just as real. And I think a lot of times it's actually harder for us to hold the both end and the nuances and complexities of high control religion. And the types of felt community that it gives you, even if that community is precarious because once you start asking questions, then you're ostracized or you're labeled a Jezebel or anything that happens. But while you have it, it actually feels so powerful and good and

connective. And so I'm curious for you, Shelby, if you feel comfortable speaking to your own wrestling with maybe if I can speak for you some good experiences in the midst of also the harm that you've you've started talking about here. Yes, that is such a helpful distinction and I think to identify that it can be really challenging to hold what feels like two opposing truths together. And certainly it's youth with emission, right? So there are people from all walks of life, all generations. However, there is a really high emphasis on the youth. When you talk about

even just your frontal cortex isn't fully formed until you're approximately 25. I joined when I was 24. I came out a deeply narrow church. And you know, when you are often young, you're looking for purpose, you're looking for direction. You are looking even sometimes for someone to tell you what to do. And so you can go into a high control religious space and feel like, oh, this is good.

Like someone is telling me what to do with every hour of my day. They're telling me when I can sleep, when I can eat, where I can go, when I can talk to my family, who I can date, when I can wear, what I can watch, what I can listen to. And that can feel like a really good experience.

And I think what's challenging is oftentimes a lot of people will come into a space like, why I'm looking for that without understanding that they're looking for that. And therefore, they might stay in that for six months to six years or more and leave at some point and say, I had a really good experience without maybe understanding yet how that experience of control or manipulation or coercion or threats of spiritual consequences has actually impacted who they are, how they make decisions in their life.

So I think when people say, oh well, I've had a really good experience, I almost want to question, was it a healthy experience and how is that defined? How are you going to define what is a healthy experience or not?

So certainly for myself, I recognized early on in my DTS straight away this wrestling between, I don't think, something's off here, but also I'm not sure, I'm 24. I am sort of a new Christian in a lot of ways, I've certainly not a missionary yet and these guys have been on the mission fields or in missions for three years or five years or ten years or whatever it was, they had the YMDNA, this was this loaded language that I know John talks about really often is this YMDNA where you don't yet have that and so you sort of want to earn it and do what you can to earn that approval, earn that space

to be heard, but until then you are sort of tasked with holding those things and as I learned really early on, if I let my questions come out more than once, then there's going to be ostracized, I'll be ostracized, you know, there's going to be pushback, there's going to be punishment.

So it's something that is unfortunately really, I think a common experience and I see this with clients I've worked with over the years in YMDNA with friends who are even still maybe in the organization, so I think it's fair to say that this is a really common experience for people because you are sort of encouraged to turn off your critical thinking.

And so it's to say, hey, you know, we want to show you the way and if you're at all inclined to say, I'd like someone to show me the way, then it's a match.

And the critical thinking for me is really the key. So whenever you're in these high demand groups, it is exactly like Jenny said, there are these binaries and it's either black or white, you can't see the gray, it's really, really odd.

Many people who escape the high demand groups or high control groups, they'll tell you that I left and I woke up and suddenly I realized that everybody in there acts like zombies. That's usually the phrase that is used, but it isn't really that.

So much as there are people who are trained black or white. is no in between, and they cannot critically think to see the in between. So they seem like, you know, they seem like zombies, unfortunately.

I started thinking of it much differently, so my experiences in the cult were actually good. I had really good experiences, contrary to a lot of the people that I interview who had really horrific experiences I didn't.

But with every stream of good, there is always something that tainted it. It would be like if I'm painting my house, I'm painting it white, well, something is leaking into the paint bucket that's brown, I don't get white, it doesn't look right.

It was kind of like that. There were really, really good streams, and then there would be this one bad stream. So I started thinking after leaving on these terms, if I had children in school, and I suddenly learned that their teacher was an ex-convict, but he's teaching him arithmetic, he's teaching them all of these good things.

And then suddenly I learned, well, he's also teaching them how to, even though he's not telling them to act upon it, he's teaching them how to hotwire a car to steal it. Would I want my children to go to this?

You know what I mean? He's teaching them good things, yes, they're having good experiences, yes, but I don't want my children to know how to hijack a car and steal a car, and not that they would do it, but that's kind of the way it is in these high demand groups.

They're teaching you Christianity, yes, they're giving you good experiences, yes, but there's always that something else that's mixed with it, otherwise they would just join mainstream Christianity. Absolutely. And what's interesting is I've seen over the years, you know, because I was in it for 18 years.

So there was a lot of good. I experienced a lot of good, like Jenny said, and I actually really appreciated the episode where Jenny first talked about her good experiences. It felt sort of like I could validate my own good experiences as well and say, yes, like I have friends all over the world because of this.

You know, I got to travel and learn so much and grow so much. I had the most fun I've ever had on my like healthcare outreach. We almost died like a bunch, but we had fun, you know, like I felt really useful, and I think that that's sort of maybe a sidebar, but I think that's a really common desire for people who engage in mission work is there's a need to be needed.

There's a need to feel useful, but yeah, sort of understanding that there's not space for gray. And I have seen locations, why I'm locations where if they tried to create space for gray, they were eventually sort of punished, which is really interesting because why I'm so decentralized.

And if abuse is brought to light, the first response is often, well, we're decentralized. We can't fire anybody. We don't have a code of conduct. We have no authority to do anything. then sort of hands-off hands-off hands-off until it gets extremely serious and local authorities get involved or whatever. On the other side of the spectrum, if there is a location that is trying to bring in nuance, trying to encourage critical thinking and there is some space for gray, why won't leadership will often come down really hard on those places to say no?

Nope, that's not us. You can't have any space for gray and people leave or a location might even get shut down because there's not enough people to keep it. So the longer I am out of it, the more I can have conversations like this, the more I think I see those things that I'm like, oh, geez, there's not space for gray and if you try to make space for gray, you're often punished.

Yeah, I really like that distinction between good and healthy because I also would have said I had a lot of good experiences and I think what you shared is really critical because I've noticed this anecdotally pretty across the board that I joined Y-WAM right out of high school. Like, I wasn't even 18 and so my parents had to sign the forms that said if I die overseas, Y-WAM is not paying for my body to be sent back and they're like, what? What is this that you're going to?

And I was so young and I was really good because of purity culture and my conditioning in there that I really didn't ask questions and I've noticed even for folks who are 21, 22, 23, 24 who have had maybe college experience or a little bit more life experience, there's often more rub and there's more friction because things become more hostile or more intense as soon as you don't ascribe to the hive mind and as soon as you say, wait, what are we talking about? Why are you doing this? And the things that you've already shared here that are extremely alarming and problematic

in terms of bodily autonomy and consent and choice and if you have any inkling of those things then similar to what you're talking about with Y-WAM coming into bases, I think that happens on an individual level as well. If you are someone who has a little more nuance and a little more skepticism in questioning, I think you're less likely to have those good experiences because you're going to experience more of the totalitarian nature of these systems. And I'd love to hear what you think about that, Shelby. I am sure that those people exist. I have certainly seen in my

contacts as well, like you said, people that maybe come in older with a different life experience. What's really interesting and what I'm sort of exploring now and even looking at in my master's is the way that theology comes into play. So when you have somebody that has a lot of life experience or some even some life experience outside of that high control religious space and for whatever reason they feel called, right, there's a calling, there's some way of hearing the voice of God to say, I want you to join, why, why, I want you to join in this location. But what's funny to me that I'm realizing, I'm like, oh, I didn't

realize this before, but like if you apply for a passport, you're probably going to get a passport. But it's turned into this spiritual thing, right? Oh, I got my passport. So that means God is on my side. And I'm like, but that's how governments work. But that's not how you're taught to think, you know, oh, I I wanted to make this flight and someone sent money in last minute, you know, it's like, well, you literally told everyone you know, and you're 21 and they all feel bad for you.

So of course, they're going to send money to be like, all it's help, precious little shall be get onto her flight, you know. And so with these people who have more life experience and they're coming in, they have had whatever experience where they feel like God has called them to this place.

And I'm seeing a lot of the way that theology deeply, deeply impacts this because there's a heavy dissonance for these people where like you said, they're seeing the things that are not okay. And yet they have to justify it somehow to themselves because if they leave, then they must have heard God wrong in the first part. Then what does that mean about them?

What does that mean about their relationship with God? What does that mean about their ability to hear God's voice? And the this like you pull on one of the threads and everything starts to unravel.

So what I've actually seen with these people is like a like a deeper digging in to like, yeah, no, I see it. It's so bad. But God hasn't released me yet. God hasn't told me I can leave.

God told me I have to stay here three years and those three years aren't up or, you know, whatever it is. And I'm really fascinated and honestly saddened by that because they can see the unhealth. They can see the destructive nature of the system. And then they say, well, yeah, God hasn't released me. On the other hand, you get the people who are like, well, I'm going to change it from the inside. I can change it from the inside, which I feel is...

sort of like the height of arrogance to say all of these victims that have spoken of all of these people over the years of the entire history of why one that have tried to speak up have tried to change it have been unable to change it and you're sitting here telling me you know I'm going to stay inside I actually had some of my former team tell me like well we're staying when I said I'm leaving I need to leave and they said we're staying and they invoked Bonhoeffer you know the Bonhoeffer did your Bonhoeffer worked within the system and so we're working and

I'm like he did not what are you talking about like he was a German national who lived in his country that's not working within the system like you're talking he didn't become a Nazi to work yeah so the sort of mental gymnastics that are needed for a myriad of reasons and so it's I actually feel worse in some ways for those people because it's such a clinging onto we have to make this make sense because it so deeply doesn't make sense so their experience their life experience and their education can often be a deeper hindrance I feel like

because of that I used to do IT consulting and I remember having this one contract I had to go in as middle tier management I usually did upper tier management but I came into the to the facility and it was pure chaos and I was talking to the guy that had connected me and he said this place is a little bit of a mess John we we kind of have to manage from underneath and at the time that sounded good I come in he said that he had been doing it some other people had been doing it

they're basically managing underneath the manager the problem that I hit which is what everybody will hit if you try to do this kind of thing is that the one above you may be in chaos but he may be in chaos because somebody above them is directing them into the chaos so what ends up happening is the person who's trying to fix things from underneath they hit the same brick wall and they become burnt out they try so hard it doesn't succeed and it becomes like insanity you keep trying to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result well upper management is going to

make sure you don't get the same result I look at all of this you know when people first came to me and they said why WAM is connected to this I actually didn't believe it because the doctrines were so far different but I started looking beyond the doctrines into just the schematics of how or the dynamics of how it was working and I started to see systematic similarities in the framework I guess is the best way to put this so start digging to the framework and it is exactly what you described whenever people can feel like

getting the license or getting whatever it is, was a gift from God. Whenever they're at that level where they're not thinking critically enough to realize that, well, the guy down the street got his license, is he getting it from God too, you know?

You've shut off critical thinking to that point, to try to prove that the movement was of God. So in my IT scenario, I would just not critically think about the chaos, to try to believe that this is a movement of structure in IT.

It never works. But the movement has taught you this and there's a systematic changing of ideologies and suppressing of critical thinking that gets you to that level. Certainly, and I think because why I'm is very insular, the speakers are mostly from why I'm the books that you have to read are written by people within the organization that sort of, you know, a lot of people around the world's work is like keeping up a property so that we can welcome other Y-WAM teams to come to our property and then we're gonna go to another property so that we can go have a retreat at their property

and then they're gonna go to that person's, you know, and certainly having that very, very insular understanding creates an echo chamber where you don't get those outside voices. And in fact, you're not actually encouraged, again, this is on a large scale, a general scale, to look for outside resources, to engage with people back home so much, your mentors are all gonna be in Y-WAM, your one-on-ones are in Y-WAM, your friends, your whole community becomes Y-WAM.

Maybe you go back and see your parents or your family, you know, from time to time. I actually had a friend who was doing the Y-WAM Bible school and they had an outside Y-WAM speaker come to teach one of the weeks.

And my friend had said, wow, this was so helpful, I didn't agree with everything this person said, but I found their content around, you know, biblical studies and everything really interesting, really helpful to inductively study the Bible.

And she was very excited to sort of encourage the course leader to say, wow, thank you so much for bringing this person, you know, from outside of Y-WAM. And as soon as the speaker sort of finished on the Friday and left the room, the course leader came in and was like, you guys, I am so sorry that I invited this person, like I cannot believe what this person said, like ignore everything, like we will never have this person back again.

And my friend was sad, they're really confused because she was like, well, maybe didn't agree with every single thing that this person said, but it was a really helpful perspective to think differently and to think critically.

And just this, like, yeah, sort of deep disappointment. that around outside voices are not, are not invited. However, you do get the outside voices that are like friends of my way. So people who are outside of the organization, not, John, I don't know if you've seen this in, in other of your research, where that is sort of the people that prop up the organization from the outside by saying like, oh no, I totally validate, you know, this organization, I think they're great, but here I am on the outside, so I can speak to that. I don't know if that's, you've seen that at all.

Yeah, we call it in, in the business world, we call this kickbacks. And it's the same. I mean, when you really think about it, it's all business, right? So when you have one organization that says, oh, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. I'll promote your ministry if you'll promote mine.

I'm seeing a lot of that and that isn't so much a unique thing to youth with a mission or even any of the groups that I'm talking about. This goes all the way back through time. That's just how human humanity works. The problem is because it is, so say it's IT world, say I promote another guy's IT business and he's promoting mine. And I know he's got maybe a couple bad workers, but he has problems, but he can get us there. I will promote his ministry. Well, how does that apply to the spiritual world? I know this ministry and he's got this one bad apple that's teaching Hinduism

and calling it Christianity. They can probably do some good. Are you going to think this way? In Christianity, you don't. In business, you do. So that actually, that's actually where I was trying to head with what I said before. The structure is what I'm seeing is so similar. This is a business strategy. This is not a religious strategy. I think for me, that's why it feels so important to continue talking about NAR and the Seven Mountains Mandate because I feel like that is the umbrella over all of these structures. I just read a really great book I love to call the Seven

Mountains Mandate by Matthew Bodhi and he traces a lot of the inner sections of Bill Bright, who is the founder of Campus Fruit Crusade for Christ and Lauren Cunningham. And there's this like mythological story that they both got together in Colorado at the same time and they both had the list of the seven spheres of society that they were supposed to impact. Uh-huh, yep.

Even though, you know, that had already been around from Rush Duny for several years, but that part of the story isn't told. Again, it's this God gave us this and there's something I talk about in my book where I say, you know, when the favor of God is actually just white privilege.

And I think about that a lot with these stories of I got my passport and and how privilege is so- invisibilized in this world. I was about to lead a team to Uganda and I walked into my team meeting and there was an extra person in our meeting at the time and one of my colliders said, uh, Jenny, this is Dan Bauman. He was imprisoned in Iran for nine weeks. That's how he was introduced to me. And I was like, nice, because I thought, you know, right, you're bragging about this martyr, and he goes, nice. And I was like, well, how am I supposed to respond to that? And he goes,

not nice. And I was like, oh, okay. And Dan Bauman has written several books. He's become this like huge figure in youth was a mission because he was imprisoned in Iran for nine weeks.

And several years ago, this is like decades later, he's still telling this story on YouTube. It's a reaching huge audiences. And he says he was in Iran on a bus sitting next to a quote-unquote African man. But then he starts talking to the man and the man has an accent from Louisiana. So he's talking to a African-American man, but he calls him an African man. And this other man says he's been imprisoned in Iran for 18 months and he has no idea why he's there. And Dan ends the story and says, I never talked to him again, but I know he got out and gives no context for how he

knows that or if that's actually true. And, you know, Dan has Swiss citizenship. He had very powerful people contacting the government of Iran to get him out. But it's told in this story of like God is bigger than fear. So don't have fear, which is incredibly dangerous when we look at right now what is happening in Iran and the ways in which who gets to listen to fear and how is actually like our privilege and the passports we hold influencing these stories where we're saying, oh yeah, this is what God wants. But actually, it's just a manifestation of

seven mountains mandate. Yes, absolutely. The lore is what feeds the engine, right? So the books and the stories that were written and like you said, I just told over and over and over for decades and decades becomes the sort of foundation of every other, you know, experience.

Like something that I get I just like I can bear it sometimes. I'm like, how did I think this way or you know, stay in this for so long. But, you know, you're often confused. Like, oh, little David, you know, did this King David or, you know, Mary or Jesus. And I'm like, you are not King David. It's like just actually understanding this. It was a friend, my best friend, she had also come out of this and she is brilliant. She's an amazing mind. And she had said this to me at some point, because I was like, oh, this person is saying, but David, and she's like, but we're not David.

We can't apply the same stories and things. And so we do that with the biblical stories, but in Y-Wam we do that with the Y-Wam lore. It's intense. I feel like we're rehashing the last five podcasts that you haven't heard yet.

I just had this conversation actually earlier recently. The problem is they have taken biblical figures and they've made them into hero worship. And people begin worshiping the hero human instead of the God that they're supposed to worship. And they become untouchable.

Every single time I talk about Bickel to somebody who is not quite sure if it's a problem or not, they will always go to David. And not just Bickel, I can go to all of the different ones who have accusations. Some of them unsettled accusations. I'll say it like that. They always go to David, because David send, therefore they can send to, that's not how the Bible works. That's not how Christianity works. Take Solomon. This is the same example, but in a different direction. Solomon was anointed by God. Is he untouchable? Solomon also brought Israel into idolatry. Are you going

to say that's of God? No, it's the wrong God, right? They make the biblical figures untouchable in the movement. Because if you do that, then suddenly now the anointed in the movement today, they're also untouchable. They're hero worship. And that's why they use the phrase touch-knock gods anointed. Yes. And those biblical stories, the why why I'm stories become as powerful as that, you know, like the Dan Bauman story. I had Dan Bauman teach in one of the schools that I did, you know, and tell the story of the orange. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,

or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McGummery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. My husband is a farmer, and he runs a farm here that is owned by YWAM, and that's part of the YWAM lore from the first book I think that Lauren Cunningham wrote called Is That Really You God?

And they were in Luzon, they had purchased his property, and the farm across the street was selling things because there was gonna be a hotel school bill across the street, and Lauren Cunningham felt like God said, he's going to give YWAM a farm.

And now this even was, I don't know, something like 10 years later, whatever, a long story short, there's an orphanage here in this village. There was a single farmer who had sort of joined with them, and so it was this big property with this big orphanage, and this farm attached to it, that was not run by the orphanage, it was had tenants.

And YWAM took ownership of this property that included this farm, and so this was the thing, and there was a prophetic act, Lauren Cunningham went across to the street and Luzon to the sale of the farm that was happening there, and bought a hay wagon.

And they capped a piece of this hay wagon, this long like piece of this hay wagon.

Tom Bloomer, who was a university provost, the University of the Nations, which is YWAM's educational arm. He also lives in the village, it's very sweet old man, but it's the same thing, like he will bring out this piece of this hay wagon and tell the story to all the new staff and students that would come in through our village here, and tell the story of how God gave YWAM this farm, and it just, it becomes hutch, if you wanna touch the stick, if you could touch the hay-bale wagon thing, and feel the promises of God come true,

and it's just this, these things that become the standard by which everyone else has to follow. So your life has to be lived like this. You have to go to the places like Dan Bowman, you have to be willing to be arrested and do all this stuff because, I don't know, the world is ending, and Jesus is coming back in our generation according to Lauren Cunningham in 1988.

It's powerful, that's unfortunately very powerful. Yeah, I mean, I think about as you're like, how did I believe these things? Like I'm thinking about how I went to Seattle to go to grad school, but I was still technically on staff with YWAM, and the agreement was, I was gonna go to grad school for three years, and then move back to Uganda, and so because of that, I was adamant I cannot take out student loans. I'm gonna be a missionary and I would literally go on hikes around Seattle and like look under rocks and be like maybe this is a prophetic act and

Lauren Cunningham found coins and fishes mouths and like all of these stories that you read and you're indoctrinated too and so then when those miracles don't happen it kind of sends you freaking out because you're like am I not listening to God should I not be in Seattle should I be in Uganda and there's so much um little sense of trust of self of intuition of just basic reality and what is necessary I like went to the president of my graduate school and I was like God wants me to go back to Uganda so you should let me come here for free and they're like what? Who are you?

Well you get into this place where you think it's spiritual like you mentioned the getting the license or whatever getting a visa even you get to this place where you start to apply the spiritual to everything well if God is empowering you then God is also going to control and manipulate the people who you're trying to get things from I have seen that I can't tell you that there came a point in my business whenever I was in the Heideman group I would not do business with another person who is in the group I would always go outside because they're gonna try to rob you blind I

did not know why that was but the problem is they feel like they're empowered by God therefore you're going to submit to their will and what it ends up they basically it's this idea that you are a sorcerer of kind of sorts your sorcerer who can project your thoughts on another person and they're gonna give you a discount that's not how God works yeah there was a scandal here in the 90s with an organization that was part of why I'm called Le Houchi so it's now a really well-known debriefing center they have done some reconciliation work in Rwanda like after the genocide

there's a whole story with their stuff but there was this like I'm gonna get the details wrong some Norwegian investor that came and encouraged all of these missionaries to invest their life savings and their retirement into this thing that was going to give them all of these dividends to help them continue to be missionaries and to let them be on the field forever and ever on end and it was like a Ponzi scheme and he took their money and ran and what was more interesting or sad was the person who had connected them with you know connected these guys the investor fake investor with

the missionaries who were giving you know all of this money is that he was sort of like that's not my fault like you guys prayed you you know felt like you were supposed to do this like so I have zero culpability in this because this was God or you know Satan or pick one I guess on the day. So the sort of lack of accountability because we can just say it was God, you know, or we can say it was the devil, whichever fits your narrative best. Well, I didn't get my passport. So this was, this is very common, you know, I didn't get my passport. If

something bad happened on that trip, I was supposed to be on, then I didn't get my passport because God didn't want me to be there. But then what? God wanted the other people to be there. Or if I did get my passport or I did get my passport and it was the trip was good, then it was the devil that was prohibiting. And like you said, John, that assumes a position of God and or the devil sort of like manipulating and compelling people to do things, which is not that that's not God does not compel people.

I was in a vehicle one time with a lady who was very spiritual and handicapped. And we're going through the circles of the parking garage and she saw one handicapped spot and saw another car coming towards it and started praying, oh Lord Jesus, oh Lord Jesus flew in there. We were squalling tires and cut the other person off who's handicapped and then got down and prayed, oh thank you Lord Jesus for giving me this. I'm sitting. Number one, I had a hard time bowing my head and praying to God because I didn't think that was the God I wanted. But number two, I was

looking as she was praying, I was actually looking at the lady in the car that she cut off, just mortified that I'm in this vehicle that's done this. When you get caught up in that type of spirit, you don't think about the consequences of trying to make yourself the target of all of God's power. There's always somebody else who can also be just as needy as you. It was that moment, we were fresh out of the call. It was that moment I realized that the God that we were serving wasn't really a God. This was just selfishness. Yes, the definite name and claim it or declaring

or activating, whichever word you want to apply to that. I remember there was this group from fire and fragrance. I don't know, Jenny, if you know her and fragrance, yeah, which was based in Coda Hawaii. I think that's the only way they are. They come to Switzerland as part of an outreach. We took them to IKEA for some reason. Bless these girls came out. They got their little IKEA catalogs and I had gone to do my shopping and I came back and I was like, oh, is it too long? You guys okay? They're like, no, we were going through these IKEA catalogs

and we were declaring what we were going to have in our home. At some point in the future, when we get married or whatever, that we were just declaring over praying over these that this was what our home was going to look like and God was going to blast.

says, with this, the problem is that what happens when that doesn't happen, or what happens when you stay in Y-Wam forever and you're in decrepit, moldy, leaking Y-Wam housing with two babies, and you know, you can barely afford to eat, much less, go out and buy furnishings, you know, for your house. The devastation that I've seen, the sort of thinking cause on people's lives, is horrific, and it is systemic, and I've seen either people sort of reach that place of, well, I'm a missionary, so I'm supposed to suffer, and this is just what it is,

you know, God asks us to do this, so, or, you know, the just deep burnout takes years and years for them to recover it, coupled with a feeling, a deep feeling of shame and failure, because they didn't have enough faith then, they were trying to name it and claim it, it didn't come true, so they didn't have enough faith, and this sort of theology, this sort of system, like we talked about, good experiences versus healthy, it's not healthy, it does not lead to life, but one thing that we see really often in a YWAM, and you know, you can speak to this,

if this was also your experience, was talk of fruit, you know, oh well, this person is doing so many things, you know, whatever that is, but the fruit is always measured by numbers, or how many people you've prayed for, or served, or welcomed into your schools, or, you know, whatever, look how well known that leader is, look at the positions of leadership that they hold, look at the fruit, and just coming to realize, like that's not the fruit that God is looking for, it's the fruit of the spirit, or love, gentleness, patience, peace, kindness, goodness,

self-control in these spaces, and I don't see it. Adolescence, late adolescence, when many people, not everyone, but many people join YWAM, it is develop mentally a narcissistic stage. When we are 17, 18, 19 years old, we think we're invincible, we think the world revolves around us, we don't really have that much concern for other people, that's pretty normal for that age, as we are coming into the growth of our frontal cortex, and it feels like these systems then solidify that developmental stage, and there is this grandiosity and this narcissism, like if the God of the entire universe is following me around, blessing or fighting

against every single decision I make. Wow, I am so powerful, and you know, I had this amazing therapist one time who like for years and years and years would just go, Jenny, you're not that powerful. Jenny, you're not that powerful. And I'm like, no, I am. You don't understand. It's just like, Jenny, you're not that powerful. And it was just like, I didn't even realize how much like negative narcissism I had of like every mistake I make, the consequences are going to be so catastrophic. And so you're either inflated or deflated. And there's no real sense of like, yeah, life happens. And I make

mistakes. And I make good decisions. And I can have the ego and the self-strength to metabolize that. It's like, everything has to up the ante just a little bit more. So I keep puffing myself up, which then sets up for the collapse being even bigger. And as you mentioned, like I've seen that be so devastating. I've experienced that to be so devastating. And then I've seen that for others as well, time and time again. Absolutely. What's interesting, though, is like you said, like it can get build up, build up until you maybe crash. And there's the few who crest that wave

and like jump onto a mountain, right? And then they are the chosen ones. They're the next leaders. They're the ones on the stage at the big conferences. They're the ones sort of of giving vision for the next season, moving forward. And this feeling of grandiosity or this worldview of grandiosity, if you can connect that with the Seven Mountain Band-8, right? Where the prayer walks, Jenny, you know about the prayer walks. And going to those places, you know, I live 30 minutes outside of Geneva, which is a hub for commerce, trade, banking, non-governmental organizations, you know, and there's a lot of horrible stuff that happens as in

any city as well. And this idea of we're going to go and we're going to prayer walk around this place, we're going to, you know, bind these strongholds that are over this spear of government.

I even see that, like, this friend of mine, you know, in the working at the EU, or they're like, we're going to go do a prayer walk at the EU, you know, because we're really making a difference there by praying and walking around this place. And it's such a privilege to be able to do this in Northern Ireland. There is a wide web base that says that they specialize in reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics. Now, nobody there is qualified. It has any experience in reconciliation, training, or theology, or anything but what they do is they do this border walk.

And every year, I think they walk along the border between, you know, regions. I'm not sure if someone's gonna correct me on that and pray and everybody at the base has to do it.

Like you have to have like a medical receipt essentially from a doctor to say that you, you know, aren't gonna be able to do this. And they sort of tout themselves as, yeah, we are, we are specialized in reconciliation and like you do not.

You literally do not, nobody there is qualified but it's like you said, this feeling of grandiosity which I can recognize so much in myself. I had Cindy Jacobs prophesied over me in the year 2000 that I was going to change the world.

So here we go. But with why am I think especially, it's sort of a situation where like big fish and a little pond, where this feeling of being puffed up, this feeling of this grandiosity says like, well, look at me, I've done X, Y, and Z or I am qualified to do reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics and super damaging, super damaging.

It may, yeah, yep. I remember those prayer walks very well. I would do them all over the place and yeah, just the idea of territory and what territory was gods. And I, you know, I was on staff with Colorado Springs, YM and their target nations are the 1040 window but I was in Uganda which technically isn't in the 1040 window but it was like, well, you are right below the Muslim nations and so you are staking a stronghold and you're gonna hold back the expansion of Islam into South, they're like Southern Africa.

And I'm like, yep, that's it. That's what I'm doing as a 19 year old. I'm literally thinking like God is using me to change Northern Uganda and I'm going to save hundreds of thousands of people that are already Christians by the way but like the idea of just that level of, yeah.

And it makes me think it's this kind of interesting and hilarious story that actually caused me to leave was that same thing. My body had crashed out, burned out, I needed a break. And instead, my base leaders were like, hey, come to YM's North American Leadership Conference in North Carolina.

And so I was 21 years old, had no idea why I was at this North American Leadership Conference and I didn't really know anything, anyone. So I started talking to this person at lunch asking him where they were from, they started asking me and I was like, yeah, I'm the only person working in Northern Uganda.

I'm trying to establish a base. They started to seem very excited. And after lunch, one of the people from my base goes, wow, Jenny, you're hanging out with the big leagues, huh? And I was like, what do you mean?

And she goes, you know who you were eating lunch with, right? And I said, no, she goes, that was John Dawson, who at the time was the president of Y-Wam. And I had no idea.

And so he ended up introducing me to one of the speakers at the conference who was the founder of my graduate school. And it was sort of this like, his favor being handed off.

And I ended up getting accepted to my graduate school as a life experience equivalent of a bachelor's degree, unwittingly not knowing how powerful the people around me were and the connections that they had and just thinking, again, oh, this is the favor of God.

Not, these are really powerful men positioning me to be a soft agent of empire in Northern Uganda and figuring out how they can work to make that happen. So Jenny, I find that really interesting what you said about you being in Northern Uganda and you being the sole thing between the rest of the continent and Islam and having to sort of hold that back from trickling down.

And I can't even imagine the weight that must have been for you. And you said like your body gave up and eventually that was what had to take you out. And I see that so often, this idea of you're the only thing standing between that person and hell.

You're the only thing standing between governments, doing what God wants them to do. You're the only thing standing between, yeah, in these spheres of education and family and church and whatever. And just the intense pressure that puts on a person and then when or if you can't accomplish that, the fears of failing, when your body does give up, the shame and the guilt that stems from this, to me, it's unfathomable that people would then come after hearing these stories and say what is not all basis or it's not all leaders because it is systemic.

No, it's of course it's not every single person. If you tell some people, this is what the Seven Mound mandate means, it's dominionism. They'll say, oh, no, no, no, but we weren't taught that.

We were just taught. If you're called to a sphere, you go be in that sphere and you be a good person and we're just trying to get into the spheres and I give it, why are you trying to get into the spheres?

What is a follow-not all the way through, right? So. I'm so sorry that that happened to you, and I just want to validate that, I just have this like mental image of young Jenny out there trying to hold back Islam from the rest of Africa.

Thank you for sharing that, because that's really powerful. I just want to validate that. And to further emphasize what I said earlier, if I sent my children to school and one of the teachers is teaching them something really, really bad, I'm not going to expect the school, if I talk to a different school, to say, well, not all schools are like this.

They're going to go try to correct the problem. You know, they're not going to let the problem be isolated, and they're not going to just discount my thought, my fears. They're going to try to console me and say, I'm very sorry, this has happened.

We're going to get to the bottom of this. That's what's going to happen. But time and time again, in these religions, what I see is they want to suppress the critical thinking. They want to stop the person who's speaking out to protect whatever is happening.

That's not Christianity. It's just wrong. But thank you so much for doing this. I, you know, the more I hear about what you guys went through, the sadder I get, because I, not just you, but there's so many people that's going through the same thing.

Yes, there may be some good basis, yes, there may be. But if there's just one, just one base causing a problem, why would you let it continue? I think that is the challenge is because it's not just one base.

It's, you, you, I'm not even sure you can say there's a good base, you know, oh, some bases are good, because they're all swimming in the same water. They're all sort of affected and influenced by the same flavor that is maybe contextualized to their culture in some way.

So if you're, and I know in like Argentina, there's high, high authoritarian structure that you will go to hell if you don't do what your leader tells you to do. You know, whereas in Europe, you're not going to get that explicit, well, depends on where in Europe, but in some places in Europe, you're not going to get, you know, that explicit sort of threats, it will be subtle, but it will be there.

So I find it really challenging when people say, well, my base was good. Also people cycle through why I am so often that if you had a good experience somewhere two years ago, that location might not still have the same people, most likely won't have the same people who are doing the teaching and the training and things like that.

So like you said, John, it's, you would think that when concerns are brought, that that would incur a curiosity towards how can we do better? lies that the challenge with that and why Lyme doesn't do that is because they agree with it. It is what they believe. It is what gets their vision accomplished. It is what accomplishes their bottom line, I suppose. Like you said, it's not a business, but it is a business structure. I mean, God, the financials of Lyme, that's a whole other conversation that we can talk about in regards to it being a business, but it's the system. I'm very

glad that you're able to talk about the system. I'm glad that you both are out to do it. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks for you guys for magnifying these stories and these voices. That's important.

Well, 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-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available in Amazon, Kindle and Audible.