20/20

I watched the 20/20 episode about the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult with as open of a mind as I could get. After being within their movement for 15 years, I wanted to attempt to watch this segment without bias or anger from what I had been through. I watched with a careful and discerning eye and heart to see if there would be any hint of agenda to demonize the IFB unnecessarily. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t ‘seeing’ only what a revengeful spirit would want to see.

free photo source Pix-O-Sphere

They mentioned the case of Lydia Schatz death, which I thought was interesting, because to my knowledge they didn’t belong to an IFB Church, although they did follow the same doctrines as the IFB. I live in the county the Schatz live in and have watched their story closely. I know of many IFB churches in California and have not found an IFB church in the city they were from. So the idea that they were involved in the IFB is a bit misguided and unfounded as any kind of fact. Our local media did break an update on the Schatz story just last night, which I thought was interesting timing given the 20/20 episode airing the same night.

Although I do not believe they were connected to any legitimate IFB church, the child ‘training’ book they used by Michael and Debbie Pearl is sold in the ‘church bookstore’ of many IFB churches, including the one I came out of. I can not comment on whether or not they still provide the book at the cult I came out of, but when I left 2 years ago, it was still being sold in their church book store, along with other books by the No Greater Joy Ministries.

Another part of the 20/20 segment that some might claim to have an agenda with is the portion about women being in a subordinate role in the family and church. They showed a clip of Jack Schaap from First Baptist Church of Hammond, preaching about overweight women in what I perceive as a derogatory manner and he arrogantly stated that it would be a “cold day in hell before I ever let a woman teach me theology”. Fabulous! Didn’t he know that hell froze over?

I have met Jack Schaap. As a matter of fact, my husband and I had lunch with him just over 2 years ago, prior to us leaving the cult. He came to Northern California to preach a “revival meeting’” our church had scheduled. At one time this revival schedule lasted 6 days long and over the years was reduced to a 2 day meeting. During his time here they scheduled for all the local Northern California pastors and other wives to come have lunch with him. They chose the ministry restaurant of a mission my husband and I were on staff with, as the location of the meeting. Due to our position in that mission and our deep involvement with the IFB church, we were invited to attend. What I am about to reveal to you is a short summary of what took place that day.

The room filled with several couples, all of which I knew personally. Their husbands had been taught by my former pastors for many years either in the same church or through the ‘Bible college’ my former pastor teaches at. My former pastor was involved with assisting other churches in Northern California with arranging for these men to become pastors in their locales. For 15 years I saw and heard these men and their wives teach and preach at various conferences, camps, and meetings all over California. A pastor seated at his table saw Jack Schaap walk in and he said to him, “I feel like I’m in the presence of royalty”, as he shook Jack’s hand.

Red Flag

The assistant pastor of the church, who is the oldest son of the pastor, seated my husband and I at the head table with Jack Schaap and his preacher boys who came with him. I had heard of the skiing accident that took the life of a young lady in his youth group and I asked him how that event affected his church’s youth group. It was an interesting discussion, perhaps I’ll share about that another time. At the close of the lunch there was a question and answer time. Each pastor (and only the men) were allowed to write out anonymous questions for Jack Schaap to answer. My husband and I were seated just to Jack’s left with a full view of the looks on all their faces as he read each card aloud and answered them.

It was amazing to us to hear that all the questions had to do with specific tactics that my former pastor had taught them. Concerns such as, “I struggle with the idea of ‘full time ministry’ and making young people to go Bible College” and “What is the controversy about the KJV about on your church’s website?” There were many more and his answers were what hit us hard. Every answer he gave was an outright disagreement and rebuke of such teachings. Every thing my former pastor had taught these men, that they asked about anonymously, were refuted in this room before our very eyes. The look on the face of my (former) pastor was rather incredible. Flushed red skin, tight jaw, frozen still.

His covers had been stripped.

One of the things Jack Schaap stressed was that the KJV is NOT the “infallible word of God”. He made it clear that day, as well as on his church website back then, that what we have is an English TRANSLATION. He went on to prove this by asking everyone to open their KJV Bibles to a specific passage and to read aloud. Several of them had different words in the same verses. (Yes, everyone had a Bible at this luncheon. You don’t go to lunch with the ‘royal pastor’ without a KJV Bible)

Jack Schaap preached two nights. One night he preached on pride, the other night he preached on humility. His messages shook me to the core. As much as I dislike a lot of what Jack preaches, God used him that week to open our eyes. I have no evidence of what I’m about to tell you, but by discernment I believe this whole week was planned to do exactly what I saw, as a rebuke to my pastor. It seemed like a set up sting, an intervention. My husband and I have assisted many families suffering from addictions with interventions.

This is exactly what we were seeing.

The very next church serivce after Jack left, my pastor preached about the KJV. He said emphatically with red fired face and shouting at the top of his lungs, “I don’t care what ANYONE says, the KJV *is* THE infallible Word of God!”

Jaw drop.

Is his pride that bad, that the evidence shown to him at the luncheon that day, had no affect on him whatsoever?

There was another situation that happened before we finally left, but I’ll save that for another post.

Many prominent couples left my church over the years.

Some of the left rather quietly, without a word to anyone.

After we left, I searched them out. I’ll share about that soon.

I felt the 20/20 episode was done rather well. After everything I experienced in my 15 years in the IFB, I testify that their stories are not rare at all. My experience should help shed some light on that. There is currently a civil suit filed against a former youth pastor from my old church, against the pastor, as well as against the church. I was a member of that church during the time that this Jane Doe was violated. It wasn’t until after we left that we began connecting the dots. I applaud this Jane Doe for getting a lawyer, now that she’s an adult and can be her own advocate now. Her pastor should have been her advocate.

Pastor Fail.

The man in question served only 3 days in jail and it never went to trial.

The pastor told the church “The police are handling it”.

Everyone believed the pastor. Surely the pastor would do the “right” thing.

Apparently not.

I grieve for Jane Doe.

I applaud Jane Doe.

I stand with Jane Doe.

Jocelyn Zichterman is correct when she stated on 20/20, “Victims are afraid to come forward.”

If you attend an IFB church and you are afraid for your pastor to even know that you are reading all the blog posts about this and watching 20/20 that is a red flag that you are in a cult. no one should be afraid of what their pastor thinks about these things.

A truthful person doesn’t hide such things.

A truthful pastor will openly condemn the abuse happening in the IFB movement.

A false pastor will duck, hide, and avoid questions. A false pastor will make all the victims seem like liars, like they’re exaggerating.

If you are a member of the church I left and want help leaving, I’m here for you. I know how scary this all is. There is support in leaving. If you don’t believe me and think you need to print out my article to show your pastor? It’s ok, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has done that. He’ll probably pat you on the back and tell you, “Thank you. I’ll handle it.” And the moment I get threats again or hate mail I’ll publish every single bit of it. I’m tired of being harassed for telling the truth.

I’m not alone.

I have a lawyer.

Don’t be deceived by the testimony of the “nice” IFB pastor who spoke on 20/20. There are not that many IFB colleges out there, but they are massive and they do teach the same tactics. I have sat in on many “teaching conferences’ and ‘meetings’ where the tactics were taught. I was ‘trained’ up by an IFB pastor to teach and run a ministry ‘just-like-he-does’. Exactly the same way he teaches it at Golden State Baptist College.

The IFB is not a part of a hierarchical structure of over seers. They are truly independent, yet inter-woven in fellowship. There are pockets of IFB cliques that oppose one another, and at the same time will not speak openly about one another either.

Silence is a plague among the IFB.

There are survivors. Some suffered from sexual, physical, and spiritual abuse. Some have suffered from threats, shunning, and bribery to keep the exodus as quiet as possible.

These are my personal experiences and knowledge received through 15 years within their movement. Growing up in Christian Fundamentalism can be a nightmare. Get your families out of there and find a grace filled assembly where you can walk by faith and have healing.

SisterLisa

Related Articles:

Finding Help When Leaving a Cult

When it’s your former church that hits the headlines

A Former IFB pastor interviews me

Jack Hyles’ Approach to Church, could be Communism

Hiding the Pain of the Victims, sometimes you need to get your help from outside the church.

I have always tried to make it a point to never bring up a specific denomination in my writings, and I tend to lean away from giving any additional ‘advertising’ to wacko cults who picket the world with hate signs, but sometimes justice is demanded and victims need to rise up together and speak up for the greater good.

We know that the Catholic Church has many heinous crimes of pedophiles of it’s own to deal with and I’m not going to get into targeting them, they have enough media covering that as it is. What I do want to go on record as saying is that stories like Tina Anderson’s needs to be listened to. As a Christian community, we can’t hide these stories or dismiss them as lies. As a certified counselor for victims of spiritual abuse and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I can assure you that stories like hers are not rare, they’re just rare in getting the media’s attention.

Tonight on 20/20, Elizabeth Vargas presents her Yearlong Investigation Into The Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. You can view a snippit of tonight’s story where Tina Anderson speaks through tears about her abuse and the cover ups that followed.

It is of an absolutely broken and grieving heart that I say adamantly, that I am relieved this has been brought to light. I do not rejoice in evil..as a matter of fact I think the evil that was committed against Tina and many others like her needs to be brought to justice. I do not believe the victims are doing evil by speaking out. One should never victimize the victim further by attempting to say they are guilty of bitterness or an unforgiving heart.

I am firm in my belief about grace, but God is also just. I don’t believe he is an extremist by any means, but injustices done to the oppressed is always going to reap what it sows. I applaud Tina Anderson for speaking up. It takes GREAT COURAGE to do so!

I was deeply involved with th IFB movement for 15 years and I saw so many missing pieces over the years and many times people were hushed into silence with the accusation that anyone who speaks out is a gossip and should be rebuked. The tactics for “church discipline” are widely misused in the IFB movement. I WISH, I could say that stories like Tina’s are rare and isolated, but they aren’t.

My husband was asked to consider becoming a deacon just days before we left our former church. He declined the position and I am so thankful he did. We saw a series of events and lies snowballing and we just couldn’t continue to support their church.

Leaving was incredibly difficult because we knew that leaving would mean questions. The more people who questioned us the more we would have to explain and the more we knew that no one would believe us. We were right, no one believed us. We were called liars, trouble makers, and lies were spread around about us to discredit us so that others would shun us and be afraid to ask us any more questions.

But those who had left before us, did believe us.

I sought out many of the former members, who at one time were dear friends of mine. When I told them we had left, they finally told us their stories too. My husband sought out help from other local pastors and they also confirmed that they knew that the IFB is a cult. Although we lost the friends who decided to remain, we regained the friends who had left previously.

I began searching the Internet to see if anyone else had ever written about this movement and there were only a few small things mentioned. Over the last two years the collection of stories have increased by leaps and bounds.

The hardest part for me, in speaking out, is that I have a few friends in the blogosphere who attend IFB churches.

I am deeply sorry that these stories are difficult to read. I know the first reaction is denial and anger toward those who are speaking up about the IFB abuse. If it was an isolated case then you wouldn’t be seeing stories from all over the country that span back for decades. The next reaction might be to disconnect from me totally. Should anyone decide to do so I won’t hold it against you. But know this, now that you have heard of these incidents happening you owe it to yourself, your spouse, and your children to investigate further. Keep your eyes opened. Don’t allow your family to become victims.

For those who believe it’s time for you to leave the IFB movement, you have support. There are others who have also left and can offer friendship and encouragement to get out. If you have family members who have always been suspicious of the IFB churches, go to them for help first. They can be your advocate and help you leave. You might think I sound a bit alarming about needing help to leave, and that’s precisely the point. It’s always hard to leave. When we left, we were told by the pastor not to tell people why we left, not to contact any of our friends about it, cease all emails to them, no phone calls, etc. Our family was the first to be contacted so we could have support in leaving.

Many IFB pastors have said that these are isolated incidents, but it keeps happening in their movement. The same scenarios play out. The same way of covering up. The holey cover ups. They are full of holes. They misuse scripture to make you feel like you’re the one doing wrong, they try to justify their accusations against you as ‘discipline’ for your ‘rebellion’. Some IFB leaders have even used information you shared with them in counseling sessions as weaponry against you to keep you quiet.

So, for Tina Anderson and others like her, I stand with you.

I don’t want my blog to become an Anti-IFB resource, but over the next few days I will be sharing just a few more things about this then resume my regular style of writing.

Be safe. Help raise awareness. Offer support to those needing help to leave.

** An additional note: If you are an IFB Pastor you should be proclaiming loudly to your church about such matters and putting yourself and your staff in the hot seat of accountability so your church members know you aren’t hiding these kinds of stories. I don’t want to hear any rebukes from ANY of you for writing this article. If you will stand by these victims by boldly sending a message to all IFB Churches that you will NOT tolerate any kind of abuse or cover ups like this and you take a stand about these matters then I would applaud you. For anyone who tries to silence or belittle the victims, shame on you!

I realize that some from my former church may see this article one day and all I can say is that if you attempt to harm me for speaking up, you are best to leave me alone, but if you want help leaving the IFB Cult, I would be glad to assist you.

Recommended Resources:

Spiritual Abuse Awareness

Spiritual Abuse

IFB Watchdog

Ind. Fundamental Baptist Deception

Paradise Recovered

WellSpring Retreat Center

Cult Info