Culty is as culty does

I never used to think that the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) organization that I had worked with for over two years was a cult.  I had experienced manipulative and abusive behavior from members, but I didn't think that they had extremely radical beliefs. Later I started learning the actual definition of what a cult is from independent cult research organizations.

Contrary to popular belief, a group is not considered to be a cult because of the beliefs of the organization, but instead because of how members, ex-members, and non-members are treated by the group.

Several cult watchdog societies publish a list of red flags for cult-like behavior. The more red flags a group has, the more likely they are to be classified as a cult, regardless of what they say they believe.

Here is one such list from Rick Alan Ross (from reddit.com/r/cults).

1. Zealous commitment to the leader.
2. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
3. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
4. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
5. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
6. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
7. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
8. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
9. Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
10. The group/leader is always right.
11. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
12. The group is elitist.
13. The ends justify the means.
14. A strong “us” vs. “them” mentality.
15. A preoccupation with new members.
16. A preoccupation with money.
17. A huge time commitment.
18. There is nothing worth pursuing except the group’s goals.

--Cult Education Institute

My first experience with YWAM was in a “Crossroads” DTS (Discipleship Training School) school in Switzerland. The “Crossroads” schools are for older students, such as young married couples and retired people. I had been a Christian for over ten years before I entered this school, and was an amateur at reading the bible in Greek and Hebrew. My childhood experiences were Baptist and Lutheran, so I had a very high regard for scripture. I had attended multiple charismatic churches as an adult, and I was familiar with spiritual gifts and their usage.

In my classes in the DTS I immediately earned a negative reputation for asking questions of the speakers and having my own opinions on biblical topics. Not all teachers were scared of independent thought, but I have to say that the majority were. My wife also had a bible college degree and was as outspoken as me, so we quickly became problem children for the DTS. The sad part is that we were not even trying to stir up trouble, we just wanted to discuss the speaker’s topics using scripture. Most speakers felt threatened by this and wanted us to just sit silently and believe what they said. This should have been noticed by us as a huge red flag, but we dismissed it because we assumed that the Lord wanted us to submit to these apparently wise older missionaries.

My wife was pregnant during our DTS with our second child. The leadership had prayed and “heard from the Lord” that Autumn was supposed to be assigned house cleaning work. This sometimes involved lifting heavy objects that were dangerous for a pregnant woman. Autumn started having abdominal pain, but her concerns were ignored because the leadership could not be questioned about this because they had “heard from the Lord”.

Sure enough, Autumn started bleeding one day and had to be rushed to the hospital. She had a tear in her uterus from the heavy lifting and came very close to losing our child. Let me repeat, because of what people thought God had told them, OUR BABY WAS ALMOST KILLED! Let that sink in a bit.

YWAM regards hearing God’s voice as something they have mastered. This becomes even more of an issue because leadership is thought to hear God’s voice better than anyone else. They did NOT hear God correctly, but never admitted it. I am trying, but I cannot think of one single instance where any leadership in YWAM has ever admitted to not hearing God correctly.

The doctor ordered Autumn to not lift anything heavy and to avoid housework. The staff at the base reluctantly agreed, but kept referring to her as a “lazy American” who had “found a way out of her work”. This was only the beginning of our DTS. We were further trained to not question our YWAM leadership or, God forbid, speak anything negative about this beloved organization.

I was assigned a staff person to be my mentor. I would go on long walks in the Swiss forests and try to have conversations with him. He was very quiet, and I started getting the feeling that I was actually mentoring him. Later he confessed that he was ordered to not be our friends, as being our friends would somehow destroy the value of the DTS. This forbidding of friendships is a common YWAM practice that I have butted heads with at multiple bases, and it is foolish, harmful, and unbiblical.

A friend of my wife and I visited us at the base once. He was a traveling missionary, who actually had relationships with YWAM bases around the world. Even though the mission base had available room, they wanted to charge him a large quantity to stay one night. He camped outside on the lawn instead, because he didn’t have enough money. One of the other YWAM staff families felt sorry for him and camped outside with him. Later, once the base leadership found out that our friend knew some important base leaders from around the world, they changed their attitude and invited him inside. The important point is that YWAM leadership is highly regarded, and those who have relationships with the upper leaders receive special treatment.

I have to say that I did receive some good teaching from a few of the teachers at the base, but overall the experience had left a bad taste in my mouth for YWAM. This was mainly because what I perceived as a low regard for scripture, staff secrecy, strange rules against friendships, and constant treatment of students like they were rebellious juveniles who needed to be whipped into shape by constant micromanagement and being told what to think.

YWAM treats students like they are in some sort of spiritual boot camp for the missionary marine corps. This treatment is not publicized, and can resemble a sort of “hazing” like a college fraternity would perform. A great example of this is “Niko camp”, which you can read about on my wife’s blog here:

https://autumnspringer.blogspot.com/2019/11/ywam-niko-urban-paris.html

Several years later, I felt as though the Lord called me to join a base in France. Maybe He did, but if so, I believe it was so that I could stand up against some of the problems I encountered. I did almost nothing of the sort, but instead tried to “be a good Christian” and submit to my leaders. I did not work full-time at the base, because God had provided me with a telecommuting programming job that I could work from France. Finding that job was an incredible provision of the Lord, but caused constant friction with the base because YWAM assumes all staff are full-time. I worked part-time for YWAM in the mornings and worked afternoon and evenings at my 40-hr a week job.

My wife worked full-time for the base. She was assigned to hospitality, which was mostly just cleaning. She did not enjoy the work, and soon transitioned into transportation. She constantly was rebuked for doing too much for the base visitors, and eventually started just using our money to buy them gift baskets instead of using the very little provided by the base. We were criticized for having an income. When Autumn had a good work-life balance, we were criticized for being lazy. When she tried to work harder, she was criticized for ignoring her family. When we hired nannies, we were criticized for “ignoring our own responsibilites as parents”.

The staff was organized into little groups that each had a leader. The leaders themselves seemed to have very little oversight, but instead operated with free reign over their groups. While I believe we had a base leader in name, there did not seem to be a single figure guiding and directing operations.

For me personally, I saw the same low regard for scripture that I had seen in Switzerland. By this I do not mean that people do not give lip service to the bible, but instead that the bible seems to have no power in the face of YWAM’s rules. A lot of the teaching was based on YWAM tradition and second-hand psychology from self-help books instead of scripture. Base organization and ministry seemed to have almost nothing to do with the bible. People were constantly annoyed and angry when I would bring up scripture that challenged the base rules and practices or that would direct the base to certain actions.

Here in France we were gaslighted (made to doubt ourselves constantly), spiritually abused, and manipulated into working 6 days a week (including 12 hr+ days) during schools for free "for the Lord." Our savings and resources were spent to try and provide some amount of a normal life for our four young children. Were we saving souls? No, we were essentially running a B&B and Christian conference center. This was a space meant to create more ywamers, running ywam schools with ywam policies as the focus instead of biblical discipleship. YWAM students were taught how to extract more "support" from their loved ones to further the name of YWAM here on the Earth. Very few ywamers I've met do anything except recruit people for ywam schools, even on the outreaches. They might perform a skit or give out free flowers for Jesus (just like Paul did, right?) once in a while but the organization as a whole is severely ineffectual in preaching repentance from sins and faith towards Christ’s finished work on the cross.

I was also reprimanded for making friends with the dts students. I guess this would disrupt the “spiritual marine corps” environment that YWAM is trying to create in order to toughen the students up. Also in France we were shamed for being Americans, shamed for quoting the bible, shamed for questioning leadership, shamed for not having as much musical skill as others, shamed for working a job and being a part time missionary, shamed for hiring nannies, and shamed for WORKING TOO MUCH FOR YWAM!

YWAM teaches students to "give up your rights". This means that leadership can ask you to do anything and you have no right to say no. If you question leadership you are told that you should not "touch the Lord's anointed" The things that you may hear from God are not as reliable as what your leadership hears, and if you disagree, then you are a sinful rebellious person. This creates opportunities for narcissists to abuse control. At one base in Germany, the photography teacher asked to take nude pictures of the female teenage students. He even tried to share hotel rooms with them. The students were told what a great honor it was to be picked by a great man of God. I think you can still google this story and find the facebook thread were the base is telling the students how sorry they and the perpetrator are, but that he has been restored to staff leadership.

I haven't even talked about being forced to write down and confess to a group every sexual sin you have ever committed and every sexual sin YOUR PARENTS have ever committed. This information and other confessed sins from supposedly confidential "one-on-one" sessions with leadership are then sometimes used against you when you start to question things or whenever someone wants to put you down and treat you as inferior. And these things are done to teenagers who are 18 and 19 years old.

These things are being done by those claiming to be the leaders and trainers of missionaries. These things are being done to missionaries. There is little to no accountability for anything the leadership does. I was told directly by two different base leaders that they had "no standards" for leadership because everyone is just a human so we shouldn't expect leadership to live by any sort of a higher standard. However these same leaders want absolute control, without being questioned, and with no accountability.

Spiritual Abuse is when a person in a position of spiritual authority manipulates or takes advantage of those that are submitted to them. YWAM’s policies are a set-up for abuse to happen, and the culture based around YWAM will blame the victim instead of the abuser 99 times out of 100, because the name of YWAM is seen as a sacred idol that must be protected at all costs.

After my own experiences, I have met several people who were told that they would fall away from their faith and lose their salvation if they left YWAM. I have met several people who have given up on Christianity because of the cruelty they experienced. I have met several people who, after trying to discuss their negative YWAM experiences with their churches and families, were told that the problem was with them, that they were just horrible sinners who shouldn’t question such a reputable missions agency that is doing so much for the gospel. Blaming the abused is the last thing a real Christian should ever do.

For anyone else who is either considering YWAM, an ex-YWAMer who is possibly coming to terms with the fact that maybe Jesus didn’t require you to blindly submit everything you endured, or a current YWAMer with a nagging doubt about how things are being run that you have convinced yourself is really the devil trying to turn you away from the work of the Lord, you should research “Spiritual Abuse in YWAM” support groups on social media. Some groups have hundreds of members and stories of abuse going back to the 1970s!!!! Once you see that there are hundreds of stories of unbiblical manipulation by authority figures in YWAM from bases all over the world, some of them from the early days of YWAM decades ago, you might realize that the problem is not you, but an un-Christlike treatment of missionaries.

For my opinions on why YWAM as an organization should be held accountable, instead of blaming a few individuals, see:

https://ryanespringer.blogspot.com/2019/11/bad-individuals-and-dangerous-policies.html

Bad individuals and dangerous policies

Those who report abuse in the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) organization are often told that the blame lies in a few individuals, not the system of YWAM as a whole. This is my response to that statement.

At first, I thought that we had encountered a few “bad individuals” at a few “bad bases”. Over time I met more people with similar stories from bases all over the world. A couple of stories of abuse can be rationally regarded as a “few bad apples”. Once there starts to be a growing amount of reports, people should take notice. We have a constant stream of new reports in our "Spiritual Abuse in YWAM" facebook group on a daily basis from bases all over the world. Refusing to look into such a steady stream of abuse reports is actually one of the hallmarks of having a cult mindset like a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon who cannot question their own organization. This made me start to consider what sort of situations were created by typical ywam policies.

Ywam encourages complete submission of students to staff. It also encourages staff to submit to their own leadership. This sounds ok and normal at face value, but this principle is taken to extreme levels when combined with confession of sins, private one-on-one meetings, and the assumption that every person in authority hears God better than those underneath them.

A further dynamic is added when reports of problems with leadership or staff are dismissed as “disrupting unity” or “giving the devil a foothold”. This removes accountability from those who are wielding uncomfortable amounts of power. It is also typical to dismiss accusations with the response “do not touch the Lord’s anointed”.

Ywam encourages confession of sins, which also is a biblical principle. What is not biblical is forcing people to confess by threatening to fail them from the school that they have just paid thousands of dollars for. These confessions are often of a sexual nature and done in front of a group of their peers, sometimes even including the sins of the parents. Forced confessions of this nature being done to teenagers is just plain wrong. This is some of the most personal information someone can share. Forcing the confession robs the person of control over their own life. It creates a standard of submission on the level of slavery. True confession should be caused by the Holy Spirit, not some religious organization staff member. This is standard ywam practice that needs to be changed.

Ywam also teaches the principle of “give up your rights”. On face value, this sounds great too. We should surrender everything to Jesus, right? The problem with this teaching is that in YWAM Jesus is replaced by YWAM and YWAM staff. The practical implication of this "give up your rights" teaching is that students and those under any leadership have been taught to submit to their leaders commands and teachings WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON THESE COMMANDS AT ALL!  The students have "given up their rights", remember?

I have heard multiple accounts of YWAM students being taught to obey their leadership even if their leader were to ask them to do something wrong.  Obeying unrighteous or unethical commands is supposed to be justified because the leadership has been established by God and the students only have the duty of obeying commands.  Supposedly God will reward the student for their obedience.

I had to learn from an ex-military person that even soldiers are expected to disobey orders that are unethical and wrong.  YWAM places a stricter standard of obedience on a bunch of teenagers than the United States military does for soldiers making life and death decisions!

This is not biblical at all. We are to deny our sin natures, not our own God-given and Holy Spirit-led common sense. We are NOT to give up our rights to “test all things” 1 Thes 5:21. We are NOT to give up our rights to “search the scriptures daily to see if things are true” Acts 17:11. We are NOT to give up our rights to even test those who call themselves apostles (Rev 2:2). In regards to these rights, how should we test those who claim leadership in a para-church organization?

Will everyone take advantage of such a set-up? No, definitely not. There are many good men and women of God who will work very hard to keep their integrity even with this amount of power.

However, many people become YWAM staff who are very young and inexperienced with life. They have done maybe one DTS school and could still be only nineteen or twenty years old. The lack of accountability for such youth is a recipe for trouble.

At the other end of the spectrum there are legitimate narcissists who look for communities to operate in. I recently took “youth protection training” for Boy Scouts of America, which is a several hour long training created by law enforcement and child protection services. One of the points they hammer home is that abusers intentionally search for churches and other organizations where they can build a spotless record and establish themselves as trusted leaders. Abusers deliberately investigate if there are policies in place that would prevent their abusive behaviors. Even if preventative policies are in place, the abuser will check to see if they are just theoretical or if they are followed in practice. In this respect, YWAM policies provide a paradise for abusers to set up shop. They can do a couple of schools, build a great reputation and then often not have to worry about ever being held accountable.

I have definitely encountered at least one narcissist at one of the bases I served at, and this person was dug in like a tick to the point where they could constantly slander everyone else in leadership with no repercussions, require those serving under them to work a regular schedule of over 12 hrs of work a day, six days a week, and meet with young single people of the opposite sex for “one on one” counseling where this person discussed their unsatisfying married sex life. The people this person counseled constantly complained about the topics being discussed, but no action was taken, because the staffer had built a reputation of trust.

The european council eventually did become involved in dealing with one situation. However, very little action was taken. In regards to Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM, I know one person who has met with Loren in person to discuss some of these issues. Loren expressed concern about abuse in the bases, but no action was ever taken.

On the contrary, because of YWAM’s distributed nature, anything bad that happens at a base can be blamed on a few individuals or one bad base. Anyone higher up the chain of command can claim innocence and take zero responsibility for the situation. The policies are never to blame, because they are effectively regarded to be as pure and unquestionable as the ten commandments.

The final point I would like to mention is that an attitude is promoted to avoid ever speaking anything negative about the organization. It is as though YWAM is a precious brand name that cannot be allowed to be tarnished. Those who have negative experiences, for instance a student with staff member who tries to take advantage of their authority to boss them around to do their laundry or tries to learn every detail of their past sexual history for their own perverse reasons, are encouraged to just suck-it-up and keep silent. The main concern is not that a precious believer in the Lord was manipulated, but that the almighty holy name of YWAM should not receive a black mark. People seem more concerned with blasphemy against YWAM then with protecting the weak like Jesus commands.

Not being able to criticize an organization or its policy creates a bubble where the organization is basically turned into an idol. If YWAM is regarded as more important than a denomination, or if YWAM is considered to be equivalent to the kingdom of God, then we are getting into a cult mindset.

To sum up, some of the policy issues with YWAM are:

1. Too much power placed in authority figures
2. Lack of accountability for authority figures
3. Teaching an attitude of complete submission and trust to authority figures
4. Extreme devotion to the organization to the point of not being able to reasonably discuss any potential issues or problems
5. Teaching people to never speak negatively about the organization or else it will “promote disunity” or “give the devil a foothold”

At this point, I actually think that it’s unchristian to blame the individuals instead of the system of policies that makes abuse a dangerous possibility. Why wouldn't a love-filled Christian prefer to place blame on a system of rules instead of a precious soul for whom Christ died? Is the reputation of a missions organization so important that it must be viewed as perfect?

The sad truth is that these policies are a set-up for abuse of power. It is a constant temptation for those with positions of authority to go too far, because they are regarded as hearing the Lord too well and they have very little accountability. This is unsafe and the fruit of these policies are becoming more and more apparent as those who were on fire for Jesus are now in counseling for depression, filled with shame at their own perceived inadequacies taught to them by YWAM, or completely fallen away from the gospel because they cannot serve a God who has been portrayed to them as desiring them to be humiliated and treated like a slave on a constant basis.

For more details about my own experiences with YWAM, see:

https://ryanespringer.blogspot.com/2019/11/culty-is-as-culty-does.html

Here is a great blog from someone who served 12 years in YWAM.  This blog is what led me to the "Spiritual Abuse in YWAM" facebook group:

https://longehawaii.blogspot.com/2007/03/cult-of-ywam-honolulu.html

This is the story of a woman who was sexually abused in YWAM.  The response of many of the leaders to the situation was completely wrong:

https://medium.com/@rebeccalujanloveless/ywamtoo-my-sexual-abuse-story-f891884af23c

If you read the comments on her twitter stream, you will see more people with similar stories:

https://twitter.com/rlujanloveless/status/1073361471008985089?fbclid=IwAR0aK6Q4jTuN0PndR5nWEde4D0YXX_zvKqZ-b4Bqy8naBnZ6z_6RXYD2nl0