Editor’s note: This story is one in a series examining Grace Church in Mt. Pleasant including its beginnings and philosophy, its growth in members and assets, as well as a large vocal group of ex-members sounding alarms about what they say are manipulative and damaging patterns.
Previous coverage:
For many ex-members of Mt. Pleasant’s Grace Church now sounding alarms about practices in the organization, there are warning signs recounted in dozens of stories, repeated by those who attended over two decades.
As one post on social media platform Reddit turned to more than 100, common themes emerged: ex-members are concerned about Grace Church targeting young members, that the church might lack governance or a means to file a grievance, that women are treated unfairly, that members are asked to commit large amounts of time and money, and that elder team members exert too much control over members.
Additionally, family members of current Grace Church attendees are expressing concern, unable to connect in a meaningful way with their loved ones.
For others who are still members of the church —and who recognize some of the ex-members they once worshipped with— the stories are baffling and not at all their experiences.
“It’s saddening,” said current member Brian Locke. “I’m very sorry that was their perceived experience with our congregation. It’s not at all our goal.”
In an email sharing his thoughts, Locke said he has been loved, guided and coached but never “brainwashed.” “Like many others, I came to know Christ during those early years of this church, but unlike the posts I have read, this was a powerfully positive experience in my life,” he wrote. “I am not a deacon or elder in the church. I have not been raised up by Barry from a young child. I have not been manipulated, coerced, or abused in any way.”
More than a dozen ex-members and concerned family members, along with current Grace Church members and Lead Pastor Barry Flanders spoke to the Morning Sun in the days after the Reddit thread gained momentum.
Some shared their stories in detail but asked to remain unnamed —concerned with careers, reputation or safety— while others gave permission to be identified as they recounted their Grace Church or Young Church days.
“My thing is it’s not just one story...it’s all the stories,” said Sarah Weller Evenden, who was a member of the church when it was still just a youth group. “It’s the day-to-day culture that is so controlling. Every thought isn’t your own, but you don’t realize that this isn’t normal, because You didn’t talk to people who weren’t just like you.”
One ex-member called it a “weird combo of Stockholm syndrome and battered wife,” but also noted there was so much good and love in the church too.
“It is difficult for me to say this so directly,” said Rodney Green, a former Grace Church member. “I believe the light that could be possible is overshadowed by domineering and manipulative practices including no transparency, no accountability.”
In a two-hour interview, Flanders did not discount the stories or experiences of those posting in Reddit or speaking with the Morning Sun; in an email after the interview, he wrote that he and Grace Church were listening but withholding response.
“We simply don’t believe adding to a public discussion at this time is the way Jesus would have us proceed, and we are willing to suffer wrong perceptions for our lack of putting up a defense, if necessary,” he wrote. “But I think the question that can be answered is this: Do you, the leaders of Grace Church over the years, and/or Grace Church as a whole, take any responsibility for all the people and all the wounded experiences being brought up? The answer is simply, yes. We have tried to take responsibility in the past, and I (we) are certainly willing and even eager to do so in the present for things we did not handle in a Christ-like way in the past, or failed to even see in the midst of our immaturity, our limitations and wounds as leaders, and sadly, our hubris.”
Some of the recurring concerns among ex-members —those who attended the church from its beginnings and left years ago to the those who left within the last year— include:
Lack of voice or governance structure
Green was concerned when his leader pressured him not to visit his family, among other incidents; when he brought his concerns up with the Grace elder team —Flanders and other men who were teens when Grace Church began as The Young Church in the late 1990s— he was asked to leave.
“I wrote a letter with my concerns to my leader. I outlined the control and manipulation...I expressed that this didn’t reflect the love of Jesus and that I hoped it could change,” he said. “Instead, my leader requested to meet and asked me to leave. He told me I was not a good fit.”
Other ex-members repeatedly expressed concern with what they say was a lack of a way church members could have a voice.
“One issue is the lack of a real model of governance and the lack of a meaningful way the congregation can express choice in leaders and bring complaints. There is a rigorous system of accountability for almost everyone except the leader,” said one man —who started at the church in 2001 as a college freshman and stayed for 11 years.
That man, who asked to remain unnamed, echoed the sentiment of many when he said he felt the leaders in the church were “untouchable.”
“I idolized the leaders. I wanted nothing more than to be asked to quit college and work full time at the church. I so looked up to the people who did that,” he said.
Grace Church did share a copy of bylaws implemented in recent years that note the church follows an elder-led structure.
Equal treatment of women
Cary Kattelus moved to Mt. Pleasant to attend college and was dating a member of Grace Church leadership after obtaining her degree when she was pressured to sell her car to pay off her student debt.
If she wanted to marry a church leader, she was told, she needed to be a fit wife.
“(An elder’s wife) told me I needed to fall in line because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to have children, wouldn’t be able to have a marriage because of student loan debt,” she said. “Definitely needed to fit a certain mold for how it was supposed to look in the church. It was almost like I was being punished for having gotten a degree.”
For Sarah Weller Evenden, that pressure was common.
“A lot of girls especially never finished their degrees. They come (to Mt. Pleasant) for college, then drop out because they spend so much time serving,” she said. “There’s pressure to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom.... but there’s so much more to it than that. It’s every detail. How you got married. How you dated. How you had a child. Every aspect, they had their hands in.”
A woman who spoke to the Morning Sun but asked to remain unnamed said she was pregnant while a member at Grace Church, and because that pregnancy was high risk, the doctor scheduled a delivery.
Because she has the baby induced “against God’s will” she was expected to follow through on her service commitment, she said.
“There I was holding a newborn baby dressed up in high heels greeting people at the Christmas service,” she said.
Women at the church are encouraged to join the children, cleaning or hospitality ministries, while men become leaders; women can only lead other women in small groups, ex-members said.
“The church expects families to see the husband as the leader, and that basically puts the man in between his wife and God...and that’s also a good description of the leadership with the congregation,” an ex-member said in an hour-long interview about his 11 years at the church.
Targeting young people
It was a sign on CMU’s campus that first brought Kattelus to Grace Church —then The Young Church— in 2000.
“I was raised as a Christian and when I came to CMU I was definitely looking for a place to fit in; I was very vulnerable,” she said. “I do feel like they prey upon that...Young, looking to belong...that was me completely.”
Nearly all of the ex-members who spoke to the Morning Sun, and others who shared their stories on Reddit, shared similar sentiments.
“At the time I enjoyed the relationships. It was close. It felt like the group was extremely committed to faith and living it out. That was attractive. Now, I see that some elitism really played on ego. I like being part of a group that was ‘the best’ and had grand visions for changing the world,” said one former member who asked to remain unnamed.
Another noted that he was brought into the church when he was still in high school.
“I started going when I was 16. Classic recruit. Not a good home, I was young, impressionable also intelligent and good looking and popular. That’s who they want. Those are people they can get their hands on,” said a former member who asked to remain unnamed.
Time and money
After a few services at Grace Church, Ryan Soulard, a 2015 CMU graduate, decided to volunteer at the Twelve17 coffee shop, a ministry inside one of the church’s Mt. Pleasant buildings.
“At first they were small shifts,” Soulard said. “When we got into the summer, I was working more at the coffee ministry than at my part time job. I was putting in eight hours and like five hours a day at my actual job.”
Both the volunteer spot at Twelve17 and Soulard’s separate day job were under the same person: Grace Church Elder Phil Coffman.
“(The time commitment) came up a lot. I knew not to bring it up if I cared about keeping my day job. If I did complain then it felt like I couldn’t get paid,” he said.
The time and responsibility of the coffee volunteer spot felt more like a paid position over time, without the pay.
“We were working for free and Grace was renovating this entire building with a luxurious interior, new computers... They were always asking for money, but they always had nice things,” Soulard said.
In addition to volunteering at Twelve17, Soulard was asked to give time and effort in other ways, as well.
“We were always fixing up so-and so’s house...I painted the Flanders’ house for free,” he said. “I don’t even think I got a meal out of it.” Increasing demands on volunteers —time and money— is a common theme among the stories shared in interviews with the Morning Sun, in emails, and on the Reddit thread.
Once she started dating a church leader her role was elevated and Kattelus was pressured to bring new people to the church, she said.
“When people came in, we were encouraged to tell them to give everything they had to be a part of the church,” she said. “I spent over 40 hours a week at the church. It was made clear that God wanted me to do that and I was supposed to tell other people that.”
Over the years the church has had programs —called internships, intensives, the Mt. Pleasant Project or apprenticeships— that pay participants nothing but require fundraising to participate.
Internships fundraising requirements have ranged from nearly $3,000 to several hundred dollars over the years; some of those dollars support retreats for the interns and other events.
Those interns were told they needed to work part time jobs to support themselves, to tithe 10 percent, and to give “sacrificially” to the church as well.
“(The interns) were all college kids at the time, and we would do big Easter and Christmas productions...they’d tell us we need to raise like $15,000,” said Evenden. “We always needed bigger and better.”
Leadership would put interns in a circle and have them write down an amount of money they could give to the special offering; then, they’d hand the piece of paper back and say “I think you could do more,” she said.
“People were giving hundreds. Families giving thousands,” she said. “Over the years I gave a couple thousand when I was making nothing. It was always something.”
She recalled -and five other ex-members confirmed— a time when an elder was hoping to buy a new home and did not want to take on the debt or full debt of a mortgage.
“They asked the congregation to raise money for his house,” she said.
Submitting to leaders
Confessing “hidden sin” or other issues from the past or present —often becoming uncomfortable— to leadership are common accounts among ex-members.
“I would do the small group Bible study with Flanders or an elder. It always seemed like they were trying to dig deep to look for something you struggled with to use against you. It was very personal and very damning,” Soulard said.
That included very personal questions about sexual behavior, he said.
“I was not comfortable answering them at all, especially in a work setting,” Soulard said. ”That kind of thing came up often. If they could turn on you, that was their ammunition.”
Those confessions were not always kept in confidence, as many ex-members attested to; one ex-member who was also in a position of leadership in the church, said he knew things about many members.
“I knew a lot about other people’s lives. A pastor should be confidential but that is blown all of the time,” he said. “I would hear things from leadership...that was common, to know about other people’s faults.” That ex-member asked not to be named; he said he is now “embarrassed” about his role at Grace.
Zach Cahalan remembers that sermons at The Young Church had some recurring themes: support the church at all costs -financial, family or social sacrifices- whatever it took; that The Young Church was “the hope of the world,” and that all church attendees are in a “fallen state” of sin.
“We were told that we were incapable of recognizing the depth without the assistance of God-appointed leaders,” he said. In other words, the church leaders.
Those leaders would “speak the truth in love,” he said, a way of pointing out flaws and making members feel they were not good enough; those sessions also touted as a point of pride for those on the receiving end: a way to prove they loved themselves.
“This was severe accounting of the ways leadership perceived you fell short. There was a heavy negative bias, with your weakness emphasized,” he said.
Pilgrimage —a grueling multi-day trek through the Canadian wilderness— is a right of passage at Grace Church and an expectation that is unspoken but known, Cahalan said.
Groups canoed and hiked, at some point portaging their boats for many miles without direction and without being able to help each other.
“Trip leaders were not questioned. They were the only ones who knew the day’s route, the only ones with watches and maps. They chose when we had breakfast, dinner, a break...they set an unrelenting pace.”
At one point, the leader handed Cahalan a map and with no orienting information demanded he get the group to the next stop.
“I asked the leader if he could help. He refused to help and forbade anyone from assisting with the map. I was anxious and struggled to think straight. I took a wrong turn,” he said. “I was ashamed.”
Cahalan said on pilgrimage, a woman had a medical emergency and he doubled back to help her; until the leader understood the severity of the situation, he was angry at Cahalan for offering help to someone in need.
Other ex-members like Kattelus said she still had scars on her neck from the pilgrimage she attended, but felt at the time it was something she was expected to attend.
Several of the ex-members —including Soulard who had been taking medication for depression when he started at Grace— were encouraged by leadership to stop taking prescriptions and instead submit to leadership and to God to heal.
Cut-off from family
Green and Cahalan are among many ex-members who say that Bible scripture was used to encourage them to serve the church above all things; if that meant not seeing family, working two or more jobs, or more, then that was what God wanted.
On the other side, are the families who may be wondering why their loved ones are less in contact.
Among the voices of ex-members of Grace Church, there are also those who are family and friends of members, concerned that their loved ones are pressured to cut family out of their lives.
When their adult daughter moved to Mt. Pleasant to obtain her doctoral degree, two parents —who have asked to be unnamed to prevent further erosion of the family relationship and because they’re concerned for the safety of their child— said she became involved with Grace Church right away.
Within a short time the daughter ended a long-term relationship, became engaged to a long-time member of Grace Church and was married and having children, the parents said.
“The change (in the relationship) was a gradual thing,” the mother said. “We were able to see our first grandchild.”
As time went on their daughter and her husband began “tightening up,” unable to make plans with the parents, then cutting off contact.
“When she was pregnant with her third child they didn’t tell us, we had to guess,” the mother said. “We got a text, saying ‘yes we’re pregnant.’ That child will be two in December and we’ve never met.”
Everything came to a head last month when the parents stopped by the daughter’s home unexpectedly; she was very clearly pregnant, and very clear that her parents were not welcome at that time.
“She wouldn’t let us in without her husband at home. She kept saying, ‘My husband is the head of the household.’ That is foreign to us,” the mother said.
After the parents posted their concerns in the Reddit thread, their daughter responded though an email to Flanders.
“Although I love my parents, we tend to disagree on many things. More recently, different relationship dynamics have made it difficult to have a peaceable conversation with my parents. As with any difficult relationship, it has been hard to navigate,” the daughter wrote.
“I know I have not dealt with this perfectly, but I have been at a loss as to how to move forward...So, for a while, my husband and I had not responded to frequent attempts at communication. Yet, more recently, we have begun taking some steps to try to move forward in our relationship with them.”
When her parents showed up at door, the daughter said, she did not feel safe and that in the past she’s felt bullied by them.
“As we have, indeed, sought out counsel from church members, including church leaders, they have not attempted to drive us away from our families,” the daughter wrote. “No one has told me to not let my parents see their grandkids, or that I should not speak to them without my husband present.”
The parents say there daughter seems to have done a “180” from the child they raised.
“Our daughter has always had self confidence. She was independent and spoke her mind. She’s smart; we would never guess she’d be easily swayed. It’s perplexing. We want her to be well. We want to know her kids are OK,” the father said. “Our daughter and her husband have pushed us out of their lives and they are secretive, not giving clear or valid reasons.”