There are no doubt, many people in the IFB movement that are now questioning if the IFB is a cult, especially after 20/20 aired their story about 3 women who were molested and raped when they were teens in their IFB churches. The IFB is not the only denomination that has these crimes happening in their ranks. Regardless of whether or not they tell you they aren’t a denomination, they are. They have annual pastor’s conferences, they have specific leaders in their movement preach, they have annual marriage seminars and kids camps they all participate in. They also receive IFB missionaries as guests to present their vision for foreign missions and these IFB churches help support each other’s missionaries. If they weren’t a denomination they would reach out to other baptist churches, but they don’t. They only associate with other IFB churches.
free photo source Pix-O-Sphere
Yes, they claim to be autonomous, yet some of them won’t teach you how to vote a pastor out. If you try to go to another pastor in the IFB for help, you may find it very difficult for them to take you seriously. I tried to reach out to two well known IFB pastors and the CLA and they wouldn’t help. One refused to return my messages, the other sided with the pastor, and CLA continues to support and defend the church I contacted them about.
When we left the IFB, we didn’t want to cause an uproar so we chose to leave with a simple email to our friends that we were going in a different direction in ministry, that we know our ministry could not be supported through the IFB, because we were choosing a ministry not affiliated with them. My husband was rebuked for me sending the email and the pastor ‘told’ my husband not to talk to anyone from ‘his church’.
The pastor on 20/20 said they aren’t a network, but they are. They don’t ALL connect officially, but they don’t disconnect officially either. My mom was a member of an IFB church in her town and her pastor knew who my former pastor was. He never indicated to me that there was a concern about me going there. Until we left. Then he spoke up. He didn’t say anything incriminating, but he did say he has concerns about the one I came out of and that he won’t associate with the pastor. He said has concerns with how the church is being led.
I had been to this man’s church many times when my mom attended there. He is a soft spoken pastor, I never heard him yell from his pulpit. But as my parents slowly started missing services and walk away quietly, they started noticing a difference in how they were treated by it’s members when they saw them at the stores.
Somehow, at some point in time, something is being taught to the people in churches like these. Something that puts the people into a fear and anger towards those who leave. What are they hiding?
There is an overall teaching that is spread through the camps that indicates that the ‘devil will get you if you leave’. There are stories told about people who suffered awful tragedies after leaving. There’s a story that I have heard taught to teens at a IFB church camp. A story of a man who was a Bible College student that decided to leave the ministry. He had a wife and two sons. One day the man was on top of his roof doing some electrical work. He needed someone to run a line under the lattice covered porch. He asked his little boy to do it for him as he stayed on the roof. This story goes on to reveal that the son crawled into a den of rattlesnakes and began screaming for his life. The dad jumped down grabbed his son out of there, screamed for his wife, jumped in the truck to leave and backed over his other son. Both sons died…because he left the ministry. This story was never confirmed as true. No name was ever given. No evidence at all. To assume it happened BECAUSE he left the ministry and state that as a fact is heresy.
Then we started hearing of pastor’s sons who were killed in car accidents, motorcycle injuries that almost took their lives, pastor’s and deacon’s daughters in car accidents, one deacon’s daughter was in a skiing accident that took her life. Odd how the man’s two sons died out of the ministry and all these were happening within the ministry. They teach scare tactics to keep your kids out of the public schools yet so many pastors and deacons are arrested and convicted of raping and molesting children in the ministry. These stories have all been confirmed as true through various newspapers and public speaking by the children’s parents…the pastors and their wives.
Life and tragedies happen both inside and outside of the churches.
When it happends outside their ministry they call it God’s discipline or punishment on you for leaving.
When it happens in their churches they call it a test to strengthen your faith and permitted by God to be a blessing and help you grow. Sometimes it’s said to be a warning of what could happen if you leave.
I have sat in on numerous leadership meetings and conferences. I was a student at a local 2 year mini bible college. I listened to their teaching for 15 years. I attended the annual ladies conference in Napa, Ca for many years. I have read many of their books, training manuals, and ordered teaching tapes from various IFB preachers, evangelists, and women speakers. All of them teach the same things. I am not speaking about ONE isolated church. I am speaking about the numerous churches and their leaders from all over the country. We have traveled to other IFB churches when on vacation. We have put our kids in their Sunday School classes. Sent our kids to camps and teen conferences from various IFB churches.
If not all IFB churches teach the same things, then I sure live in a state that has a BAD infestation of false IFB pastors and the rest of the country’s IFB pastors should be raising hell over it. oh but many of the evangelists and pastors who traveled from other states have come to my state and supported all these churches, speak at their events, and camps and teen conferences. So I guess it’s not isolated to California.
Is the IFB a cult? Is it a denomination?
You decide.
Just before I typed out this article one of it’s members came to my home to invite me for Easter service.
It’s been two years since we left.
This person knows why we left.
Don’t they EVER STOP???
If you’re from my former church, please don’t ask us to come back. We’re NOT going back. Besides, with all my public testimony coming out, I doubt your pastor would want me there.
The armed guards that block the exists during service is a bit creepy to me. No thanks.
SisterLisa
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IFB is NOT a cult, except to those who have been hurt and carry around a bitter spirit. IFB is not a denomination, but is to those who don’t see that it is helpful to fellowship with others who are of like mind, spirit, and convictions. It’s sad that so many have been hurt and abused in the church, but independent fundamental baptist churches aren’t the only places where this has happened. Sin is everywhere…and I think Satan is using hurt, bitter folks to destroy the church and God’s people.
well, TJ, I think satan is using perverted abusive men who call themselves pastors to destroy the Body of Christ. The victims speaking up to get help isn’t the problem. Go take it up with those in leadership. And if they continue to abuse the people, they’ll continue to speak up about it.
Interesting that someone’s already gone the “bitter” route. Synonyms for bitter – distasteful, distressing, poignant, painful… I think bitter is an apt description of those who have been abused by the IFB, b/c abuse is painful, distasteful, and distressing. Accusing someone of harboring sin when that have those very natural feelings is abhorrent. It’s like stabbing someone with a knife and telling him that he shouldn’t feel pain afterward.
Just another proof that there is a cult-like spirit in the IFB.
Hey Lisa,
What a well written article. Your story resonates with every story I have heard from other IFB victims, including myself.
The whole IFB structure is set up as a cult! I am surprised at how tolerant you are of these ‘naysayers’.
They are either completely blind or they are misinformation agents. I get them all the time and I just block them and delete them from my youtube channel. They’re just there to create noise and water down the message.
If we apply the famous quote from ‘Sherlock Holmes’ to the IFB Cult:
‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth’
Then we would have to conclude that the IFB is a ruthless, murderous cult ran by evil men to ensnare Christians and enslave them in a legalistic, heavily mind controlled environment.
We must stay together and speak out boldly against the IFB Cult!!
God Bless,
Allen
duh. IFB indisputably IS a cult. AND a denomination. Like pretty much all religious organizations. (Of course the definition of “cult” can be pretty subjective, but the IFB fits pretty well most definitions I’ve heard. But inasmuch as all denominations are essentially monuments to human ego (birthed as they were, out of a “my doctrine’s better than your doctrine” attitude), all could qualify as “cults” in my book. The bigger issue, it seems to me, is whether they are abusive and to what degree. I’ve seen abuses in most all denominations I’ve had contact with, but the testimonial evidence against IFB blows away anything I’ve experienced. My heart goes out to those wounded by them.
I have been in IFB for 13 years I attended Hyles for 2 1/2 years. All the points given about IFB being considered a cult are sadly true. I am wondering why people are not talking about something I think is a HUGE deal: Their view of Sex and the Bible is SO perverted! Just read, “Marriage the divine Intimacy” by Jack Schaap page #42; he talks about the Lords supper being spiritual intercourse! SICK! I finally left this cult just last year after Ladies Spec in Hammond I lost it when Shcaap got up to preach to an auditorium full of ONLY women and their daughters and preached on SEX. If he had to preach on the subject why do it at night when the kids were back. He talked about putting a lock on the door romantic lighting, making a lot of noise etc… That raises a lot of questions for children.
Bless your heart Nicole. I once visited my cousin at Hyles Anderson 24 years ago and thought it was crazy. The funny part was I had gone to BJU. 16 years ago my husband and I beat feet from an IFB. I watch this sickness all the time and shake my head. After years of being away it is hard to remember thinking about the Bible in such a distorted manner. Good luck on your journey. Oh yeah and saying Good luck is not a sin. lol
My wife and I have been running a childrens ministry for 3 years at the ifb that we have been attending for 11 years now. I have also taught in their bible institute for 2 years and am a graduate of that course. After this year we just felt that we needed to scale back what we were doing, and so we went and told the pastor that we were going to pull out of doing the kids ministry and the institute for the next year as we had to much going on. He accussed us of not being team players and our heart wasn’t in it. Then he asks why I haven’t been at soul winning the last two times and why I don’t stay around after sunday pm service for the fellowship. He says that if we don’t start showing up for the fellowship he won’t allow us to continue in the college and carreer ministry that we also are in charge of. All because we just were over burdened with these three big ministries and wanted to let go of two of the three. I feel this is unreasonable and am not sure what to do. Not Team Players? I am so frustrated right now.
Of course it is a cult. The cases of child abuse and spousal abuse (including murders), sexual abuse of minors, fraud, embezzlement, and coverups that little old ME ALONE was witness to is only a drop in a great vast sea of more and worse. I can provide names, dates, places, gravesites, whatever you want. I’m not laying low anymore!
For someone who is still actively involved with the IFB to say it is not a cult is worthless. If they were to ask a member of any religious group that the IFB consider a “cult” whether the other groups member considers their religion a cult the answer would be no. Members of David Karesh or Jim Jones groups didn’t consider themselves in cults.
It is also classic IFB rhetoric to say that anyone who makes the choice to leave the IFB is “back slidden” and/or “bitter”. Guess what? I am not bitter. I am a relieved, happy, God serving Christian who is no longer oppressed by the controlling demands of an IFB pastor. I am blessed by God on a daily, even moment-by-moment basis. As a result of my years in the IFB I am more suspicious of the motives of others, I refuse to sit through a sermon while the pastor yells at the congregation. (The last time I heard Hyles preach people were actually putting their fingers in their ears because of the volume. The sound man turned the PA system down. Hyles immediately stopped and proceeded to berate the sound man. Saying “don’t ever un-yell me!” I mistrust sermon illustrations that are not traceable to a specific person, time and place. If you can’t name the name…if it is an illustration borrowed from someone else…it is only gossip or a fable and I won’t trust its veracity.
The IFB does not have a formal “Association” but they do stand within their own clique of IFB speakers, idolizing some.
I don’t know why the focus on the bitterness of the abused. That is really the abusers working over-time to keep abusing and get others to join in, creating a mobbing of the abused.
The abusers working over-time is their using the word bitter and hurling it at the abused. They know who to pick on and they just keep doing it.