• High-Pressure Tactics: Members face intense, coercive meetings marked by power imbalances and intimidation. These practices create fear, humiliation, and lasting harm - echoing tactics seen in cults.

• Ambush Meetings: Private counseling sessions sometimes turn into surprise confrontations by multiple leaders.

• A spirit at odds with Scripture: Former members report that a culture of domination shaped both church life and family dynamics​​​

 

High Pressure and Coercion 

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In our experience, this church has used extremely high-pressure tactics, which many experienced as brute force and deeply harmful. Imbalanced power dynamics, inappropriate gender dynamics, surprise meeting dynamics and straight up bullying people. It's difficult to explain this area with logic, it is brute force and it is ugly. Some of these real stories are 30 years old, some are recent. From our perspective, once someone gives this church influence over their life, that influence can be used in ways that feel coercive.

 

Imagine a wife of many years led by her husband into what she thinks is a small private meeting, only to be met unexpectedly by a large group of men in leadership. It's one thing if you know the terms of an engagement beforehand, but quite another when a private counseling session turns into a surprise board meeting and you're the entire agenda. In the business world this is called an "Ambush Meeting" and considered a dirty trick - in a church it seems totally out of place. In the business world, people expect competition, strategy, and even manipulation. But in a church environment, people come in trusting - they don’t anticipate that kind of behavior.

Imagine a young wife and mother brought into a meeting in a closed room where she meets a large group of men in leadership who lay down the law for 2 hours. It's pure intimidation. This kind of behavior is absolutely, totally off-limits in a normal church. It would be seen as a massive breach of trust, a totally inappropriate imbalance of power and abusive behavior that would result in major repercussions for a leadership team. 

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We remember this happening to our own parents at this church. Even as kids we knew it was crazy, but what could we do? There was no higher appeal to a district leader, no larger church government, no national church governing body. There wasn't even an equal church in fellowship to challenge this abusive behavior. Our parents were alone in a room with these men as they brought the full weight of their authority down on them. 

 

These were real people we loved who were deeply hurt, trusting a system that - intentionally or not - caused significant strain on their mental health, relationships, and families. The patterns many of us witnessed over the years often resembled the dynamics documented in other high-control groups: strong personalities facing no meaningful accountability, power being exercised downward, and vulnerable individuals bearing the weight of that imbalance.

 

In healthy environments, harmful behavior is checked by peers or leaders who protect the weaker members of the community. But in this closed system, former members often felt there was no one to intervene, no one with the authority to challenge those misusing their influence. Across decades of stories, the same themes of control, intimidation, and unequal power consistently appeared, leaving many to conclude that these patterns have remained largely unchanged.​​

 

​A Spirit of Control

Many former members have reflected that the culture of Wellspring Church seemed to cultivate a spirit of control and domination - not only among leaders, but also within the homes of those shaped by its teaching. While relational imbalance or harshness can occur in any human community, several of us observed that these tendencies appeared to intensify under the church’s influence. What was modeled from the top often became normalized in families.

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This church’s hierarchical and performance-based theology - combined with its strong emphasis on obedience - seemed to give some men the impression that strict control over wives or children was spiritually justified. Yet the New Testament consistently teaches that spiritual authority is expressed through servanthood, not domination: Jesus said, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:43).

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Several former members have shared that their fathers became more rigid, demanding, or authoritarian during their years in this community, mirroring the tone displayed in this church. In some homes, spiritual “headship” became intertwined with domination - even though such a spirit is out of step with God’s own character.

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Rather than strengthening the fruit of the Spirit, the environment often reinforced patterns of fear, performance, and control. For many, this shaped their family life in painful and lasting ways. Our concern is not to condemn individuals, but to acknowledge how this system subtly or overtly forms people into ways of relating that do not reflect the example of Christ.

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