Words shape how we understand reality. They help us name what is happening, recognize harm, and seek truth.

 

In healthy communities, language is shared and stable - people mean roughly the same thing when they use common words, and disagreements can be discussed openly.

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In high-control environments, language often works differently. Words are not just used to communicate; they are reshaped to protect the system itself. Over time, this control of language becomes one of the most powerful tools for maintaining authority.

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This page explains how that dynamic functioned at Wellspring - not as a misunderstanding or a side issue, but as a central mechanism of control.

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Familiar Words Create Trust

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Wellspring consistently used familiar Christian language: love, grace, family, freedom, obedience, submission, Trinity, kingdom of God.

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These words carry widely understood meanings in Christian life. They signal safety, shared faith, and spiritual legitimacy. For many people, this language created a sense of comfort and trust. It sounded like Christianity as they already knew it.

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At first, these words were used in ways that felt ordinary. Newcomers heard what they expected to hear. Nothing seemed unusual.

 

But over time, many discovered that while the words remained the same, their meanings quietly changed.

 

 

When Meanings Quietly Shift

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Inside the system, common words began to take on new definitions:

• Love came to mean alignment and compliance

• Grace became something mediated through obedience

• Family became conditional belonging

• Freedom existed only within narrow, approved limits

• Discernment meant agreeing with leadership

• Rebellion meant questioning or disagreeing

 

People were not told directly that definitions had changed. Instead, the new meanings were reinforced through teaching, correction, examples, and consequences.

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Jesus warned against speech that obscures truth through layered or manipulative meaning:

 

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:37)

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Language that requires constant reinterpretation or insider explanation does not bring clarity - it creates confusion.

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“We Don’t Shun” - But the Practice Remained

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One of the clearest examples of language control involves the word shunning.

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Wellspring leadership has consistently insisted that it does not shun. Members are often instructed not to use the word, and accusations of shunning have historically been met with strong denial and defensiveness. Yet the issue is not the label - it is the practice.

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When relationships are reduced, withdrawn, or made conditional under sustained teaching, social pressure, or fear of spiritual consequence, the result matches what shunning plainly means: the broad and indiscriminate relational cutting off of a person, or the loss of meaningful contact, under pressure from leadership or the community.

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This separation may not always be demanded immediately. It may unfold gradually over time, as teaching, counsel, and social pressure consistently move members toward distancing themselves from family or friends who have left, until separation becomes the expected and normalized outcome.

 

By disputing language and terminology rather than addressing behavior, the focus shifts away from what is happening and onto debates over wording.​​

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Why Language Control Is So Effective

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When language is controlled, harm becomes difficult to name.

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People sense that something is wrong, but they lack the words to describe it. Fear feels like conscience. Pressure feels like love. Isolation feels like obedience. Questioning feels sinful.

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Jesus taught that speech reveals what truly governs the heart:

 

Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

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When language consistently minimizes harm, redefines reality, or silences dissent, it reveals what the system is protecting. Scripture reminds us that confusion is not a mark of God’s work:

 

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. (1 Corinthians 14:33)

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Reclaiming Words Is Part of Healing

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Healing often begins when people are allowed to use words again - ordinary, honest words.

• To name fear as fear.

• To name control as control.

• To name loss as loss.

 

Scripture connects truthful speech directly to relational health:

 

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25)

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Truth-telling restores connection. Silence and euphemism protect systems, not people.

 

 

Truth Does Not Fear Being Named

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Healthy faith does not depend on redefining words or policing language. Love does not need semantic defenses. Truth does not require people to pretend they are free when they are afraid.

 

The apostle Paul described faithful leadership this way:

 

We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2)

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God invites His people into light, not confusion; into clarity, not double meanings; into love that casts out fear.

 

If you struggled to name what was happening - if conversations felt circular, if objections were dismissed as misunderstandings, if ordinary words seemed to lose their meaning - you are not imagining it.

 

To speak truthfully is to walk in the light of God, who is not a God of confusion but of peace, and whose truth stands without disguise or defense.

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