I've been thinking a lot about high control groups like Gracepoint, Berkland, Antioch Baptist Church, and many other evangelical churches. What makes a church a highly controlling one like Gracepoint and what makes members stay in such a controlling environment? These are complex questions, but I think it's worth thinking about because everyone can be susceptible to high control groups.
If you have left a high control group, please don't blame yourself or wallow in self-pity. Many smart, capable, and successful people have been conned into high control groups. Don't give them the power to ruin the rest of your life either. You can move on and build the life you want, the one God wants for you.
If you are IN a high control group, I urge you to ask yourself if staying in the group is really what you want and worth what it is costing you. Namely, your agency and freedom.
Ed Kang and Gracepoint posted in their response to the Christianity Today article that they condemn abuse of any kind. He denies that their church is spiritually abusive. Any egregious incidents are one offs and not a direct result of the culture Gracepoint creates. I maintain that Gracepoint and all affiliated ministries and churches, including its mother church Berkland, are spiritually abusive because of the high control nature of these organizations.
Ed and Kelly Kang joined, created, and maintain a high control group because they think that it is God's will and that it is biblical. They believe in the Koinonia Cross (see Rebekah Kim's PhD dissertation) and that church=god=family. They believe that all Christians should be bivocational and that church activities should be prioritized over basically everything else including biological family, career, and school.
According to them, if you really love God, you should cut your vacation short to attend their church events and limit going back home so that you can attend all church activities. You should want to stay around and not move back to your home town after graduating because God (read church) should be your priority. Not your career, not your biological family, and not any of your previous relationships including your previous church if you had one.
If you really love God, you should want to live with your class sisters/brothers because Koinonia Cross.
Everything becomes black and white.
Everything becomes about whether you love God or not.
Everything becomes a choice between God and sin.
By creating a dichotomy where it does not need to exist and painting things in black and white, Gracepoint makes it seem like you have to do almost everything according to what the church or your leader says. And this is one way that they slowly control most things about your life including how much sleep you get and what you are doing on Wednesday night.
MOST of life is in the grey. Most things are not a choice between loving God and committing sin. You can move back home and still love God. You can choose to not attend the All Teams Retreat and still be a spiritual person. You can get the rest you need and not be a lazy selfish person, full of sin. You can decide who you want to marry or date and that person can be a non GP member and you can still be a God honoring Christian. You can decide to love God by becoming a teacher or a doctor. You can decide to serve God by going back home and serving your home church (or another church or no church). You can do all these things and Gracepoint should not meddle because then they are getting between you and God.
God honors our agency. Even God honors our agency and that's why it cannot be in God's will that a church be highly controlling like GP. God wants us to CHOOSE how we live and how we love. That's why God gave us free will. If not, God would have created robots. But robots is what GP seems to want because they want to take all the messiness out of life and create a church planting machine, obedient followers who can move across the country if their church wants them to.
There can be no love without choice. And high control groups take away that choice through hierarchy, pressure, and norm setting. In theory all adults choose to do all the things they do every day. But if you look at social psychology, our behaviors are heavily influenced by many factors. By manipulating these outside factors and making you believe that GP's way is God's Way, GP eventually dictates who you live with, who your friends are, who you marry, how you spend your time, how you spend your money, and even where you work. They will tell you what you should wear and what kind of car you should drive.
If MOST of your life is being decided by what someone else wants you to do, then you have effectively lost your agency. The test to knowing if you have lost your agency is to decide to do something different and seeing what consequences arise. My experience in this church tells me that the consequences will be swift and severe.
So what causes smart adults to stay at a highly controlling church like Gracepoint? It's because they do not think that they are being controlled. They think that they are choosing this kind of life for themselves because they want to please God and the church says this is God's will for them.
But this is not what most folks sign up for when they choose to be Christians or when they decide to join a church.
When I was a part of this church, I thought in this black and white way too. I thought God wanted me to be a part of this church and that if I chose differently, that I was somehow sinning.
But that was not true. I had decided to be a Christian and to follow Jesus. I had decided to love God and God's people but I had not decided to do whatever the church told me to do via my assigned leaders.
There is a difference. There is a big difference between God's plan for your life and what the church or your leaders want you to do. Gracepoint will tell you that god=church=family and that your leaders are the voice of God for you. But this is not biblical and it is not true. I can love God and God's church but I should still have agency and choice over my life. And just because I decided to attend one church during college doesn't mean I have to stay there my whole life. And it is not unchristian to change churches. And changing my mind about what church I want to attend doesn't mean I love God less than those who stick with Gracepoint. The power to choose is a God given ability. Gracepoint should not take it away in God's name. This is how evil gets perpetuated so easily in high control groups, by slowly taking away people's agency and convincing them that this is God's will.
GP may claim that they're not spiritually abusive but there is no way they can reasonably and rationally deny that they are a highly controlling group. GP tries to control almost every aspect of a person's life. And the more you conform, the higher your status in GP and the more praise and affirmation you'll get from your leaders.
Don't let others define what your life should be. Don't confuse God's will with your church's agenda. God said don't have idols. Church can easily become an idol for Christians. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let's be free. Free to love and to live the life that God had in mind for us. A life of joy. Not one of obligation.
