Ern Baxter, YWAM, and the Rise of Spiritual Authority

Music Hello and welcome 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-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend Shelby Hauffer, former member of Y-Wam. Shelby, it's good to have you on and to talk about this subject that I'm I'm going to catch you off card a little bit because I want to see some surprise in your face. So William Brandham had many campaign managers as he changed his stage persona from time to time to time and one of those was Ern Baxter.

Ern Baxter, one of the Fort Lauderdale five of the Shepparding movement in a previous podcast with Jenny, I went through some of that history. I wanted to talk to you today based off of your experience with you with a mission about discipleship because for me this is critically important when you think of discipleship as it relates to the youth. For those who are unaware the Shepparding movement was this discipleship program that was really structured like an authoritarian pyramid. You had Sheppards, Shepparding the Sheppards and then those people would go all the way down to the rank and file member and people were submitting full authority to these people who were

there. I hate to use the word but it was overlords. They had overlords and so I'm trying to picture a world where that is safe for children to be in that type of environment. Youth and especially in the moldable years up until about the mid 20s how that would impact them because what happened in the United States is it got exposed as very destructive and this turned into a mess that John Wember and a few others tried to unravel and bring the charismatic movement back into unity but it really didn't quite work because it was so destructive but I want to know from the

perspective of youth with a mission how did Shepparding impact that movement. So thank you for coming on. Let's talk about Shepparding and discipleship. Yeah thanks for having me. It's good to be back. Yes Shepparding and discipleship. I don't know many specifics about the Shepparding movement itself.

It's not something I've done a lot of research on specifically nor earned backster as an individual but from even just that brief description that sounds very familiar in terms of how the sort of Y-Wam hierarchy and system is set up.

Especially in terms of, like you said, if you want to talk about discipleship, what does it mean to disciple others, to disciple young people into leadership positions, to offer discipleship programs, that's sort of the base and the foundation of the entry point into why women is their discipleship training school, where they promise that they will disciple you and train you to be a missionary.

It sounds really interesting and very familiar to what you're describing there. I figured it would be a little bit familiar. I am looking specifically, I want to talk about the intensity of the environment. So we have attacked the research on the shepherding movement from multiple angles, because ultimately that was the framework for setting up what became the New Apostolic Reformation. Honestly, there's so many different building blocks of theology and, quite frankly, bad theology, that the New Apostolic Reformation was built upon.

One of those building blocks was definitely the shepherding movement, and if you pull that building block out, you take away the authoritarian control, you take away parts of the fivefold ministry that apply to the rank and file members. There's a lot that the spiritual covering, all of that kind of goes away if you take away this discipleship shepherding thing.

But in youth with a mission, it's quite different because everybody's living together, worshipping together, studying together, and they travel to these bases where there's almost no separation between, I guess you would say, spiritual life, work life, and leadership. So those become intertwined in such a way that a person who is involved in this, it makes it feel quite different. It starts to feel almost like a family unit where the fatherly figure, the motherly figure, whoever's the one that the youth is picturing as their family unit, they start to feel like it's a father to them, this shepherd. And psychologically speaking, this starts to break down

barriers that should continue to exist, even if you're a youth on a mission. But when those barriers disappear because of discipleship, it starts to introduce things that just simply are out of their control as members of the group. So I wanted to attack it from an emotional standpoint, not really a historical standpoint. What was shepherding, what was discipleship like in the movement? Did they follow the normal patterns that you would see on other missions that involve youth? Or was it that close unity like I'm describing?

Well, I think that's a lovely can of worms to open up. So that's fun. I would say there's many aspects to that, right? And as per usual, of course, you're going to have maybe slightly different experience.

at different Y-WAM bases. I would say, again, from my 18 years in Y-WAM and my worldwide Y-WAM experience, all of the countries that I spent time in and all of the bases that I had lived at over those 18 years, plus, you know, the higher leadership positions that I was in, I have definitely seen this idea that ministry is life, life is ministry, that there are no boundaries, but it's not encouraged to have sort of personal boundaries, right? And so that's where you see a lot of spiritual abuse happen, emotional, psychological abuse, all the way into sexual abuse, because there are so many blurred lines often. And especially when

you come in, I think, very young. And you are straight away into this DTS. You're very young, and there is, like this trauma bonding that happens, where you are strongly encouraged to share your deepest darkest, to sort of create some sort of horrific testimony, or to share all of the things that have happened to you in the past, or any sins that you've had, or anything like that, this sort of confession moment. And when you do that with people that you don't know, plus there's the pressure of doing that. There's the pressure of performing. If you say, you know what? I don't know

these people. I think I'm just going to sit quietly back here. You know, this can be between me and God. People will often then approach you, and say like, hey, like what's going on? You know, you're not sharing. And it's like, you know, I just met you guys. They don't really, I don't really know, I'm not ready to share, you know, those sorts of things. And then it's like you have a spirit, you know, you have a spirit that doesn't want to come out. And so that spirit is trying to keep you silent. And those sorts of exorcism is trying to happen. And they're praying for you so that you

can share. So there's an immense sort of mob mentality or group pressure that comes in those moments, right? So there's the trauma bonding that happens. There's the, like you said, you're living an extremely close quarters 24-7. Your leader is, you know, maybe the same age as you, sometimes even younger than you. They maybe have less life experience than you, but they're over you, but then also they're like fun and funny and you're hanging out, maybe sometimes in the evenings or the weekends, some places you're living together with your staff for your leader. So all of those

lines blur to become this sort of pot that you're stewing in in terms of, this is my leader, but this is my friend or this is my confidant and how to sort of try to separate that out. You're not encouraged. Plus, either explicitly or implicitly, you are cut off or gently, slowly cut off from your outside support system. So you don't have a lot of people sort of speaking into that.

Thanks for you to say, hey, I'm not heard from you in months.

I'm worried about you, can we talk? Because you're kept very busy and everything. So just in terms of yes, discipleship, then often you said, as you said, the family language is used to create a sense of identity and a sense of intimacy that is often completely unearned.

And when you're going in and you're thinking these leaders, they've been in wine longer than me, they must know God. More than me, we've talked about this on previous episodes in terms of hearing God's voice or laying down your rights and that submission to authority.

So you have all of that that is ingredients to make this situation where you're extremely susceptible to needing to maintain those relationships at any cost because if you stop submitting or if you leave that in some way, or you upset this status quo, then there's a price for you to pay.

And just as a point of note, when you talked about that spiritual, where your spiritual mother or father sort of things, that is one of the signs of spiritual abuse listed in the book, Escaping the Mayas of Spiritual Abuse by Dr. Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphries, which is someone taking a divine position in your life.

And anytime someone is trying to take a divine position in your life, that is definitely a red flag. Absolutely. And what I've been able to tell and piecing all of this together and this is research that's really in its early phases.

So I don't want to go too far without saying something out of line. But from what I can tell, the problem really existed with the networking aspect of what became the New Apostolic Reformation.

It exists because you have all of these Apostolic networks. Earned Baxter was obviously in one of those. As leader, as one of the leaders of the Shepherding Movement, there's a period of time that he was easily accepted when he would go to other Apostolic networks.

And from what I can piece together, I think it's around 1970 or 1970. I think it's 1970. He starts going to these conventions. In fact, I've got one pulled up here. And he's with Reverend Dean Sherman, the director of youth with a mission, apparently, in Canada.

And they're holding revival meetings in the Christian faith center, all through the article here up on the screen. So people can see it. But what happened is he's being networked and he's being networked as an expert in Shepherding because that's what he was selling.

That was the brand of Apostolic network that he was selling. So his words on what discipleship meant would have carried weight. That's the point I'm trying to make. And the weight is being carried with people who are in director level positions, not just rank and file.

So that alters what I would perceive would be... the discipleship program within youth with a mission. If this is the person who they bring in as the expert, then the question becomes, were the leaders simply giving advice or were they being trained that their advice carried spiritual weight?

That is the significant difference between what the shepherding movement brought and what you would see if you sent your youth to say a mainstream denominational camp. They may give you advice that might be healthy advice, training for all sorts of things that they might experience in their life, and it would be normal training.

If you do these good things, you will have good fruit. If you do these bad things, you will have bad fruit, that kind of advice. But in the shepherding movement, it was different. The advice carried spiritual weight, and it was all surrounded by the concept of angels and demons in the back of your mind.

So whenever that aspect comes in, the one who is presenting usually is seen as a supernatural authority, no matter what their age. Yes, a hundred percent, Dean Sherman. Oh, Dean Sherman, you know what's interesting first about the networking aspect, as you mentioned, is you do find a lot of overlap in these movements, the word of faith and the letter rain, and obviously not the shepherding movement, Keith Green's last days ministries, like all of these people were connected to each other.

So it wasn't just sort of this amorphous influence that eventually sort of reached each other. They were all in the rooms with each other together. And I remember some of the research I was doing came across someone who had been working with Mike Bickle at IHOP KC.

And when they had started IHOP KC, they were like, everyone has to, no, we need to pay people, like to come and be staff with us. And then when Mike Bickle talked to Lauren Cunningham about how Y-Wam does their situation, you know, everybody raises their own money.

Y-Wam doesn't pay anybody. And that's how they have so many people coming is because they don't have to pay anybody. Everybody just raises their own money. And that's when Mike Bickle was like, off, he was like, we're gonna do that.

And that's when they changed the process. So it's just, it's really interesting to see how they all, yeah, are connected. Then what you said about the difference in the shepherding movement, being that what a spiritual, you know, leader said carried that spiritual authority, a spiritual weight versus just some sort of general advice or general wisdom that you might receive in a more healthy sort of organizational setting.

That is absolutely something that is very foundational to Y-Wam. And you hear that when Y-Wamers talk about the Y-Wam DNA, right, like you have to have a certain amount of the Y-Wam DNA, that means you have to have, then there are for a certain amount of time, but also it's not just about time spent.

It is about the sorts of people that you know and what those leaders. that top leaders have said about you and have what sort of authority they've given you. So for myself in my own story, when I left staff at the base that I was at here in Switzerland, I was having a meeting with the three leaders, you know, the main leaders, they had a leadership team, but they said, you know, I'm leaving stuff here, but I'm still part of YLAM, you know, I'm waiting for God to open up a door to see what God wants me to do, but I'm still a missionary

and still part of YLAM and one of the leaders said, oh, I'm really scared for you. And I said, oh, why? And they said, well, because you don't have any spiritual covering, if you're just out there in, you know, you're saying you're a YLAM or you're saying you're a missionary, but you don't have any spiritual covering. And I've seen this happen to so many people who leave YLAM or they leave the base and they go into ministry, but they don't have spiritual covering. And just such bad things happen. And I'm just really concerned for you. And I was like, I, but Jesus, is my covering?

Like, I think I'm okay. It was such a fascinating thing to hear so directly. And I will say that's not simply my experience. There are thousands of people out there that could attest to that level of it's never just advice coming from a YLAM leader or it's very rarely ever just going to be simply advice or wisdom coming from a YLAM leader because your thoughts that the YLAM leader carries a spiritual authority. They are your spiritual covering. And so if you're not paying attention to what they're saying to you, there could be dire spiritual consequences. Again, that's another

red flag of spiritual abuse is threats of spiritual consequences. So it's really strong in terms of you get into the DTS and you begin to learn those lessons straight away that you have to listen to the leaders or else. And it's really interesting how all of that developed. I started talking to people who were affected by the New Apostolic Reformation, most of whom thought this was something new that this just exploded into this new spiritual covering thing and why did we do it? And I'm thinking through the history of thinking, oh my gosh, I can't believe that this little tiny snowball

went down the hill and it grew into what it did. Whenever Ernst Baxter was with William Brannum, we would have never considered Ernst Baxter to be a prophet. Ernst Baxter was presenting Brannum as the prophet. And what's interesting about that is we have uncovered so many things that were completely false with what Brannum said about his own prophecies that Ernst Baxter would have without question known about. So he's presenting a false prophet who's presenting the stage act that the stage...

The act is entirely false. And Baxter himself, after William Brannum died, William Brannum's publicist, Lee Veil, said that he didn't even know why Baxter was involved with the ministry, because they would go on a mission overseas, and for example, when they went into India, the people in India said, is it right for this minister to have our women?

And he was drunk in, and according to William Brannum's publicist, all of this stuff was going on with Baxter, which I can't prove, I wasn't there. But that is what the publicists said, and that's what, apparently, he heard from Brannum, if his story is true.

But Baxter, after Brannum died because of his association with Brannum, he rose up into this position of leadership, where he's advertised like this. I pulled up a, what is this? This is a 1989 advertisement for Baxter's ministry.

Baxter has spoken to crowds of up to 200,000 people, and has been a major leader in the charismatic movement, and brings a powerful prophetic message. And I want to hone in on that word, prophetic, in his prophetic message.

In the Brannumite type religion, it isn't just that you're preaching, and you have something that is coming that you believe is inspired by God to say, it's that the words are actually prophetic in the speech.

In other words, I'm, whether I'm declaring it as a prophecy or not, every word that I say to you is prophetic. That's the type of mentality that Brannum had, and fast forward after his death.

I was in ministries where the preacher was the authority. He was the king of your domain, and whenever he preached, he would say, I have a message from God, and he would say it, none of it prophetic, some of it filled with hate, some of it just clearly did not come from God.

But that's how Baxter was presenting himself, and these are the years long after he would have been at the working with the people with Y-Wam, and so, unless he continued working with the people from Y-Wam.

So he's coming into the basis with a prophetic message, and this prophetic message is, you must submit to your authorities, you must be discipled, and how would a person who's in their teens to 20s perceive that type of mentality?

This is coming from the leadership, they're introducing this person. Well that must be the way that Christianity is structured. So here's where the problem gets big for me. It actually changes the nature of Christianity for those on the base.

Absolutely. As I am studying theology right now, I have the privilege to study theology right now at a master's level, and it is absolutely bonkers to me that I am discovering essentially other branches of Christianity that there is other ways to think about God, to think about something like submission to authority, or...

All of the things, right, like it's incredible work, it's exhausting work, you know, is deconstruction and reconstruction, reconstructing my faith. But it's because it was so deeply ingrained in us that this is the only way to think about God.

This is the only way to think about, you know, spiritual warfare. This is the only way to think about submission and authority and missions and relationships and, you know, all of this sort of stuff and anybody who thinks outside of that is less than, you know, so sometimes that was very explicit and sometimes it was incredibly implicit, you know, it's that we're gonna make you into sort of the best Christian that we can, that you can be.

And I was just reading a thing online about a circuit writers, which is this part of Y-Wam, and it's now, I think, left with Fire and Vregrants, which is sort of separated from Y-Wam because they got a little too crazy for Y-Wam, which is a big deal.

But it's this whole idea of, we can make you into a super Christian. And I just, it's been absolutely incredible to discover that there's something outside of that because for 18 years, that's what I was told, was truth, God's honest truth, no matter what.

And if you went outside of that, if you questioned it, you had a spirit of rebellion, you had a spirit of accusation, you had a spirit of independence, you know, all of this sort of stuff, so...

Absolutely. And ironically, that was the next question that I had him list to ask you, is hearing God the final word from these guys because when they present themselves as a having a prophetic message, you can't read that any other way.

Whatever they say came from God, it's a prophetic message. But here's a bigger problem that, not many people really think about, when somebody's in this network and they come with this prophetic message, their side of the network may not actually theologically agree with your side.

In youth with a mission, I doubt they would have ever believed that God was sending an in-time messenger who would be coming in the spirit of Elijah to deliver the world from evil in the last days and take everybody away in the rapture.

But that was the messenger that earned back sure was proclaiming in Brannum. So when he was teaching like this, he was hand in hand with Brannum and was pushing this agenda. Fast forward to youth with a mission.

Now you have these two theologies that are quite incompatible, but yet it's also a message from God. And how do you reconcile this? I experienced this to a limited extent because my family moved from coast to coast.

We live from Arizona to South Carolina everywhere in between going to different sects within Brannumism. Brannumism, like Pentecostalism, is this tree that produces never- branches, because people have a disagreement, a schism, and a new sect is formed, it just continues over and over.

So I'd go to one sect, and I would hear them preaching against the other sect, and then we would move to another sect, and they're preaching against both of those. And yet we're being taught that this is the message, this is the word of the hour, these are the things we should hear, and each one of these are playing their favorite quotes from either the Bible or the random, this disagreeing with these other people.

So I'm getting this message of confusion, and in the end, whenever I left, I started to read the passages in the Bible that said God is not the author of confusion, so how could this be a prophetic message from God?

So hearing from God as the authority, the final word, has a severe problem when you're in a group that is networking with different types of theologies. Well, and for all of my Williams' decentralization, they certainly try to, you know, as we've mentioned in previous episodes, sort of have one group of people making the cake mix, you know, sort of saying, okay, we need to diffuse this out to our leaders.

I think right now, actually, they're having another global leadership gathering, which is like, you know, the top 700 leaders in my way in the world. And this is where a lot of this theology and this understanding gets diffused.

So it could be that over here, they've gone a bit, you know, in this direction and over here, they've gone a bit this direction, but when they come together, either in regional conferences or in a global conference like this, this is where it's sort of re-siffused and sort of the lore is hold again and, you know, the trying to be apostolic and visionary, you know, for the future and what new things is God going to do and all of this sort of stuff.

So I think in some ways, they're able to, in some ways, do make some effort to control or to, you know, keep the message, a similar message, and that's what they try to do through their foundational values and their core beliefs and things like that, which of course are always being interpreted differently from place to place.

But that's also, I think, one of the challenges about Y-WIM is that it becomes an echo chamber. So all of the speakers, most of the speakers are from Y-WIM themselves. The books you read are from Y-WIM and, you know, authors, I've got two here from Dean Sherman.

One is spiritual warfare for every Christian, how to live in victory and retake the land written in 1990 with Bill Payne. You know, he was the expert on spiritual warfare. He was the expert on relationships in Y-WIM, but in order to sort of tune out those other sort of confusing voices, whether it could be bringing helpful questions and clarification or unhelpful, you know, confusion, it's best to just keep the echo chamber closed so that we make...

sure that everyone is sort of singing the same song. 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, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

We've talked about the emotions of the youth quite a bit, but as it relates to shepherding, this becomes even more scary for me. Because a young adult doesn't naturally know what they're going to do with their life, where their life is headed.

They're looking for spiritual guidance. And in a non-discipleship scenario, if they're youth and they're going on to a mission with another group, they might give them, here are some examples of things that you can do in your life to make the world a better place.

In fact, I've actually set through one of those speeches with my children. And it's fascinating because I never had that world where we're trying to do good for the world, not trying to escape it.

But that's how that was whenever I sent my children to this. In the discipleship type mentality, you're trying as a youth, you're trying to figure out where you're headed, and you're looking for answers.

But in the discipleship mindset, the answers are coming from a person who claims they're speaking from God. So this accelerates the problem. Now you're in this intense spiritual world where, if I want to ask God to go to this person, he's my spiritual covering, he's my disciple, he's my shepherd.

So you go to your shepherd thinking that they're going to give you a divine answer. What happens is their advice actually becomes the word of God when it's in this case. And it goes beyond what we've said previously in even this episode, just normal advice, whenever youth go to a person and say, hey, I'm thinking about getting a degree in, I don't know, medical science, I want to be a doctor.

Well, if the person says, well, that's a long type of training. I'm not certain you want to go through all of that training. Now this question is planted, and they believe that the question was planted by God, and it actually sways their course of life.

This is a huge, huge problem for me, because I, thinking of my children. Whenever I raise them and I have one child who has been in college, now he's in his job, another one who just graduated last year, he's in his job, and one who I set at UofL for eight hours on Saturday, he's about to become a college student. So as they're preparing for college, I actually tried very hard not to sway their decision of where they was headed so that they could make their own decision and that they could choose their own pathway. In this type of environment though, I worry that the children actually don't

have a choice in their pathways. I would say, unfortunately, in my experience, that's been really true. And again, I'm not speaking just from my own personal, you know, choices in life that I made, but the clients that have worked with in member care over the years, the hundreds and hundreds of stories that I've heard and read and, you know, researched, seems to be a really common theme. And why I'm often has an answer for that because they also have a quote-unquote university. And there are not accredited. There are some other learning institutions that will accept credits or some credits from, you know, various

courses. I did my quote-unquote in patchless degree with the university of the nations. And so if someone is saying, oh, I think I'd maybe like to get into medicine or become a doctor, they would say, that's a lot of time to be spending because then you're not going to be able to do so much ministry while you're doing that. How about you come into our midwifery program or come to our, you know, healthcare degree track? And then you can do ministry at the same time, you know, so you're just, you're never stopping. You're able to just keep going as you're learning. And like you said, then, that sort of puts

that thought in your mind, you think, well, why not? I mean, sure, that sounds great. I know the organization, I know the people, I can still be out there serving God. That's without actually understanding that just as a Christ follower, showing up in the world with love and hope and peace and goodness and kindness and gentleness, like you are serving God. You are ministering to the people around you, but those distinctions are not made.

And as you said, the strength of the word of your leader is more often going to override your own any sort of inhibitions or any sort of like, oh, I'm not sure if this is the right thing. You see that all the time when someone says, oh, my leader asked me to staff another DTS. It's my third in a row without stopping. And I told them, I need to pray about it. I go away and pray about it. I come back and I say, hey, I prayed about it. I don't have peace because you can't say no. Right. So you have to say, I don't have peace about

this thing. And then the leader says, well, I really felt like God. has something in the season for you through this, I want you to go and pray again. So of course you do.

And then eventually somehow you come through and you're like, I'm tired, I'm suffering, I need a break, but you know what? My leader has said, this is something I should be doing, and so I should deeply take that into account, and I do, and so even though I'm tired and I'm burning out and I'm sick and I haven't seen my family in ages or whatever, there must be something that they know that I don't.

And so I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna say yes, and I'm gonna do it, and you know, then go back and say, okay, well, I guess I have peace about it because God's gonna take care of me, you know, no matter what, so many of the clients that I worked with, that was almost verbatim their story.

And then they're in burnout, they're seeing me because they're in burnout, they're in depressed, they're sick, they can't keep going. So it's an intense, intensely strong, way to utilize, like you said, that emotional immaturity in young people to get them to do what the organization needs.

So let's take a moment and talk about the other side of the discipleship because, as I understand how the bases work, it's youth with a mission, but some of the youth rise up into leadership, and they're still in their mid-20s, leading other people who are, you know, under them.

One of the other problems with the shepherding movement was the confessions. What was happening is you had people who were confessing their sins, one to another as as as biblical, but you also had people who believe they were in supernatural authority over the people confessing to them.

That goes to your head, especially if you're a youth. Oh my gosh, look what they confessed to me. I'm going to come down very hard and make this stop. And that's really what happened in the, I can't remember what state it is, but in the United States, the shepherding movement actually progressed in some of its sects into adult spankings.

The adults would spank each other and try to disciple and keep them in line, because that's the type of mentality you have. I'm going to take anybody who confesses and I'm going to make them behave because I'm their shepherd.

I'm responsible for that person. When you have a youth who feels like they're responsible for another youth, this accelerates the problem because they don't know how to handle that type of power. And I'm worried that if that mentality entered into youth with a mission, I'm worried that that may have been a factor in what has happened and why we have people who are coming to me saying, I gotta get out of here.

This is really harmful. Absolutely. I know there was one base, it was in the States. I want to say it was Elm, something was the name Elm's Dale or something. Where it got really bad, like that was very much like cult shepherding.

that one was specifically highly influenced by that authoritarian, I don't know if it specifically you know advanced to the place of something like adult you know spankings and hitting each other in terms of punishment but I would say that that is a really common like you said it it these young people are witnessing these confessions or witnessing this sharing and it's something always bothered me as someone who was pursuing counseling and mental health treatment was this sense of you're having these young people show up two three six weeks in you know they're told they need to confess all of their sins and all their deepest darkest

even if they've already confessed it to God or to other people in their lives this is not like never confessed stuff this is just anything ever give it all to us and they're being sort of bombarded with people's trauma and everyone's just sat there in a group you know it's usually you've been sitting there for a really long time praying maybe worshiping your hungry your thirsty your tired your emotionally heightened and you know everyone's just getting washed over by each other's trauma and there's nobody there to catch them there's nobody trains or qualified to catch anybody

including the staff members including the leaders so I think there's that aspect of it as well of those people who are not only given an immense amount of power as you said but they're also faced with the reality of just people's trauma and things and even there have been so many times where people have confessed crimes in these sessions and the staff don't do anything else they just say well you're forgiven it's forgiven it's like no these are these are unconfessed crimes that are now being confessed to you that this person has sexually assaulted a woman in his past

and has never told anybody and so like oh great let's pray for him he's confessed and now we move on with the DTS so yeah and then like as you as you said there are certainly there's certainly that dynamic of the power that you said in some ways going to the head of of not just the young people I've I found this often with oddly enough a lot of what are they called gen X yes gen X so I'm a late millennial gen X where when the organization started you know it was a lot of young

people and then they are sort of figuring it all out you know they're if you're in the end crowd you're in the end crowd and those are the leaders that are sort of growing up they're getting into the 30s and the 40s and then they instead of seeing their power and their stuff onto Gen X, as it sort of should have been, they begin to pass it on to the elder millennials.

And so Gen X sort of got past overs, it so often does, sorry, Gen X, in terms of taking a power in authority. And so when those people, again, this is anecdotal, oftentimes those people that finally achieve a sense or a place of authority or power within the organization, they're not ready to let that go anytime soon.

And they're, yeah, I think in a lot of ways it can go to their heads, as you said, which can have really intense consequences for the people who are under them, especially if that's a moment.

You know, as you said, there's the young people who sort of achieve power and they don't know what to do with it. And they're like, ah, and then there's sort of the older people who've been waiting for power and they achieve that position and they don't want to let it go.

And so getting to tell people who they should date, where they should go, what they should study, what ministry they should be working in, what they should be leading. There is, I can imagine, a certain headiness to that sort of power over others.

So the big surprise, I mentioned directors and youth with a mission. And to the audience, I was trying to see the expression on her face. As I mentioned, that earned backster and Lauren Cunningham were holding conventions together in the 70s.

So this is a point in which the shepherding movement is in its prime. They're really teaching all of these negative things that I'm talking about. And Lauren Cunningham is joining forces with earned backster and I'll throw the newspaper article up on the screen.

But it changes in altars. We've talked about the confessions. It even changes what the confessions are about because the people who are confessing to the youth who aren't in charge of their own emotions as they're being confessed to, well, now they're disclosing, like you said, crimes, fears, et cetera.

But they're disclosing it in such a way that they believe that they're talking to a mediator between God and man. That is really, as I'm building up to the climax of the problem, that's really it for me.

The shepherding movement presented itself as a mediation between God and man because these are the shepherds. These are the ones that you go to. They did not use the word spiritual covering back then, but that's ultimately what it developed into with new apostolic reformation.

But it created this unhealthy dynamic where your spiritual covering was not really any theological expert in many cases. There were just average people who became your shepherds. They would give you advice that may not be good sound scriptural advice because many of them didn't know theology, but they submitted their authority to the shepherds and those shepherds to more shepherds.

And it was the spearmen, right? So when you have this type of mentality and now you're bringing in the directors, the founder, of the organization, all of this with the person who, one of the five people who was founding members of the Shepherding Movement, you think that this is a good thing.

Our founder is with this person. This person must be an expert in his field and his field is how we submit ourselves and give authority to people who really shouldn't have it. Yeah. I think in a lot of ways, why we am adopted a lot of the principles of the Shepherding Movement in some ways, perhaps, trying to soften them, so maybe not explicitly talking about, you know, we are mediator, your leader is a mediator between you and God, because they were very big on hearing God's voice, but they only softened it, they didn't flatten it all the way, you know, sort of thing.

So in that sense of, yes, you can hear from God as well, but I hear from God better because I'm your leader. And that's usually not simply because I'm your leader and I'm in a position of spiritual authority over you.

There's usually some other qualifier of, I've been at this longer, I've been part of the organization longer, certainly there was the use of, well, I'm your spiritual covering, I'm a 24 year old and I'm supposed to be, you know, leading the scores or discipling you.

And so because I am your spiritual covering, then you have to submit to me, you have to listen to me, you know, so absolutely, there was also that level of that sort of taking that place of a mediator, if you will, or taking that place of, you know, I know better than you.

What God is trying to say, but it's very interesting to see where these different parts of those networks or those parts of those organizations sort of came together, shared ideas, shared values, principles, strategies, you know, whatever, and then sort of sifted through it on their own.

I know for a while, why I was teaching like moral government theory and then they sort of had to come in after some years and be like, actually, this is really theologically bad. We need to shut it down and they managed to, in some parts, but because it's so decentralized, there were other people that just kept right on teaching it.

So yeah, it's, I think it's interesting to hear, you know, the history you're talking about with Urmbaxter and the Sheparding movement and how each of these groups sort of took things from each other that they wanted to maybe shifted it, molded it, you know, made it into something that fit better with them, or maybe they saw where the Sheparding movement went really bad and so they're, you know, intentionally tried to soften it or tried to change it, but I find it really fascinating how they all touch, they all influence each other in some way.

They do. And in this case, again, it's all about... What flows downhill? It's flowing downhill from God. That's the concept that they're trying to portray. So when you are Going to the shepherds for your guidance, your discipleship, your leadership, you're going because you want to be teachable.

The question becomes what happens if you are Untitiable. That's really, if you think about it, that's really the ball of worms that's in this whole conversation Because there are people who might be untitiable by a specific Leader in the movement, but that leader might be appointed as a shepherd or the movement might see them as the shepherd because they're Just simply in the point the position of leadership. So what happens when somebody's incompatible with one of the shepherds and in youth with a mission's case what happens whenever you're incompatible with the person who's leading your group?

Does that make you untitiable by God? That's really what happened in the shepherding movement. If you are untitiable by a shepherd, you must have gone astray and you must not be worthy of being part of us.

And I'm laughing because of the absurdity of this. I Can't imagine a world where I would send my children to this type of environment where if they were deemed untitiable, they were deemed to be branded as Abandoned by God and I'm Very certain that in the shepherding movement this kind of thing happened. What do you think about youth with a mission?

Was that something that could have happened or did it? Yeah, I'm also laughing because I'm like, oh, I'm poor young Shelby was wanting so badly to be taught and to understand and to grow as a Christ follower and I wanted to be discipled And I had questions and I think that was what was challenging was asking questions more than once like, you know, sort of pushing back on the response that you got was what At times labeled me as untitiable now because I joined Wyland to complete a degree with their what I thought was a university

It was extremely important to me that I was able to pass my courses and in order to pass my courses I had to be liked by the leaders by the staff So it wasn't simply about my academic achievements or my ability to Pass a test or write a paper or to disseminate the information that I was being taught It was also about what was deemed my character or you know someone's character You're also receiving marks for that and that also becomes part of your overall grade. So Shame. Yeah, that's definitely

The teachability factor is I think something that keeps people Quiet in a lot of ways

Because what I saw a law in Wyland was there would be people who would be deemed difficult Yeah, there were difficult person like you said people Well, thought, oh, maybe it's just a personality.

They have a really hard personality. They just clash. And so they would get sort of moved from like base to base. And I have heard people engage with some of these people that were deemed difficult in a manner of, well, I can change them, you know.

So they've come to my base now. I'm leading like I can get through to them. I can change them. I can disciple them in the way that they will no longer, you know, pay difficult.

And then after a few years, they're still considered difficult. And then they're sort of shuffled off to another location. So yeah, I think that was quite sad seeing how those people weren't doing anything wrong.

There was just personality differences. Or, you know, just for whatever reason, they wanted to be cat, like why would want it to keep them? And so they would allow them to sort of be shuffled from base to base, perhaps with this understanding that well, maybe the next person can teach them.

Maybe the next person will mesh with them better, you know, than we did. So I think that's something that, yeah, I've certainly seen as a common practice, if you are considered difficult, you're usually considered untitled.

It's so sad. You mentioned being sent to another base. I want to think through that. And I want to tread very carefully how I ask this question, because there are cans of worms that I don't want to open here.

In Dr. Stephen Hassan's bite model, behavior control, information control, thought control, manipulation, emotional control. Within that realm, there are the definitions of what makes a group destructive. And if you read combat and call it mind control, it even goes deeper with all of this.

But one of the aspects that is shared by most destructive groups is that you build up a mentality that is hard to break away. You're in a group, and suddenly you're in a group, and you can't leave the group.

You feel like your whole world will be crumbled. When I'm thinking about what would happen with the discipleship that I'm describing that came from urn backster side, his flowing from branemism, I was in branemism, so I know that type of mentality.

Give that power to somebody who is in their 20s or younger. And suddenly, now you have an authority that makes it where there is a scenario that might fit the qualifications of being in a destructive group.

I'll say it like that, and I'll leave it there. If you're in a movement like this, as I understand youth with a mission, the DTS is what, six months, something like this initially, we go to the person and say, I've had a great six months, I want to go home, I want to go to college, and then this person who's been given this unwielded authority says, but...

God really wants you to go to this other location. Well now you have the six month investment and you go and suddenly a six month investment turns into 12 month and 12 month to so on and so forth.

Well each addition to your investment makes it such that you feel like it's really hard to walk away from this. I've invested so much of my life. I want to make this my ultimate career.

I want to, like Jenny said, I want to martyr myself to this movement. I'm seeing this as something that potentially could turn into something destructive and I just really wanted to know your thoughts.

Well it's that sunk cost fallacy, isn't it? That well I've already given so much time, so much money and might as well keep going. That's certainly how it was for me. I wanted to do this quote unquote degree and I've already given six months and what was it, seven, nine, 10,000 dollars to this, so I might as well keep going and then sort of was okay for a bit and you're like, okay, this was okay and then you have another horrible experience but now you've got a year in and close to 20,000 sunk into this.

I think there's certainly that it's very, very common after someone does the DTS for them to try to be recruited. Oftentimes, even if someone is like, oh yeah, you know, that was great, think I'm good.

I'm going to go home oftentimes again, it's extremely common, it doesn't happen for every single person but it is extremely common for the staff or the leadership of the base even to be like, I've had my eye on you the six months.

We really feel like God has something for you here and if the base leader comes to you and is like, I feel like God is, you know, saying that maybe he's got something for you here, like maybe you should pray about coming back and staffing, you know, at our base.

It's unusual, unless someone is deemed difficult, it's for them to try to shuffle you off to another location because they want people on their locations and so that's money coming into their pocket, that's, you know, they can say they have more staff that looks more attractive for other people who, you know, maybe it would come as well.

Yeah, so I think there is this sunk cost fallacy for people but then as well, like you said, it becomes your whole life and so leaving begins to feel impossible for so many reasons and many of which we've documented in other episodes but for the sake of this one, you know, talking about I don't want to be wrong about what I'm hearing from God.

So if this leader is hearing something for me from God, I need to take that into very serious consideration because if I miss what God is telling me, there are very dire spiritual consequences.

I could derail my whole life. I could wind up missing. a spouse or not sure of career is the right word but a direction, you know, that I should be going. So it's incredibly dangerous for people who are coming to join because it's so very rarely six months.

And that's really the problem that I see. If you don't engage critical thinking, which is very difficult when you're at a young age, if you don't engage critical thinking, this can turn into a disaster. So I'm very, very scared to think what might happen if this continues. But hopefully something we've said can make it change even within the organization.

If I was in an organization now or to see these kind of problems, and definitely if I were to see these types of connections, I would take a step back and say, wait a minute, I need to examine what, what is our core theology? Do we go off into this error or are we more biblically based? So thank you so much for doing this.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure as always. 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-branam.org. 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 Automotive.