Misleading Claims, Falsehoods, and Harm

This post is an excerpt from an upcoming addition to the Academic Report page on this website. We have taken the original Report, simplified some of the more complex or confusing language, and added some explanations for clarity, with permission from the original author. The original Report was prepared for the families who requested it, focusing on experiences of coercive control, abuse, and spiritual harm during their time at the church. The original author’s aim was to explain these issues, address them, and provide suggestions for ongoing care while helping them understand what occurred. Our aim is to communicate the findings and intent of the original Report in blog post form, over a series of posts, in a way that is clear and easy to understand for people unfamiliar with the language used to describe coercive control and high-control groups. Any use of the first person (I, we, me) reflects the original author’s phrasing and holds closely to the original writing.

The original author did not write, contribute to, or publish this version of the analysis.

“The Great Split”

GCC leadership presents false or incomplete information about why so many congregants left after the church membership standards were changed. The leaders withheld letters of resignation, concerns, and safety reports where the church was found to be dangerously and inexcusably violating the law on building and fire codes. This lack of honesty and transparency is a pattern, including but not limited to: pretending that departures were mutually decided upon when they were not, pretending that specific congregants leaving were part of a batch of church discipline cases when the person leaving was not under any church discipline, and pretending that specific congregants left because of petty theological differences or failure to submit to “authority,” when in actuality they were due to GCC leadership actively breaking the law. Certain individual GCC leaders have been found to repeatedly and actively lie, insisting that multiple separate congregants who left did not wish to be contacted when that was never actually stated or intended in any way by those who left.

Church Funds Management 

GCC leadership has willfully engaged in the spending of church funds beyond what was represented to the congregation. According to the church bylaws, there is a cap on how congregational financial gifts may be spent without express permission by vote of the congregation. GCC leadership has been ignoring this rule when it is convenient for them, such as in the purchase of buses and the manipulation of the payment plans in order to avoid a vote. (Another possible example of this is the continuation of the building project to move to Phase 2 when Phase 1 is not yet complete and finances are uncertain. This has yet to be determined.) This is a clear overstep of the leadership to keep the promises made to the congregation as to how their gifts would be managed. Other examples include the hiring of ruling elders for unlicensed commercial contract work, payment for personal “mission trips” and other travel, and expenses for which the leaders ordered church funds to be paid directly to individuals without receipts of expenses to document their expenditures on behalf of the church, when these expenses were not approved by the congregation. Public apology for such behaviors appears to only occur after enough of the congregants notice, as in the case of the buses.

Not a “Founders” Church 

GCC leadership has willfully misrepresented to people outside the church. A prospective congregant going to the church website to look into what to expect if they join will find a false picture of what kind of doctrine GCC teaches. At the time of the original report’s publication, the GCC website clearly claimed that they were a “Founders” church, but Tom Ascol, the president of Founders Ministries, confirmed through a phone call that GCC was not approved by Founders Ministry at that time and does not even qualify as a Founders Church based on their teachings. Founders Ministries does not permit congregations whose leaders teach Dispensational theology, which GCC does, to be members at all. It is not clear why GCC leadership markets itself falsely in this way.

The process of applying to become a Founders Ministry Church is an extremely simple online application. In order to search for a Founders church, you must agree to the statement, “The churches appearing here are listed voluntarily and have expressed agreement with the values of Founders Ministries and alignment with the criteria listed here. Founders Ministries is not able to evaluate and endorse each church individually.” 

Founders Ministries website: https://church.founders.org/login-register/

Not a 1689 London Baptist Confession Church 

Similar to claiming to be a Founders Church, GCC leadership also claims to be a 1689 London Baptist Confessional congregation. Again, this is willfully misleading, as the 1689 London Baptist Confession is absolutely incompatible with Dispensationalist theology, which is taught at GCC. The confession is staunchly Covenantal and based on the Westminster Confession of Faith.  Chapters 7, 19, and 26 of the Confession lay out a Covenantal theology that makes it impossible to align GCC’s teachings with this tradition. The elders previously tried to claim in their defense, falsely, that the contradiction between their doctrine and the Confession was not real, but was just a misunderstanding of their pre-millennial view of the prophesied return of Christ. This is false. The disagreement has nothing to do with being pre-millennial in their doctrine (which can be a component of either Dispensationalist or Covenantal theology), but instead relates to their Dispensationalist theology which is incompatible with the Covenantal creeds they claim. Why GCC leadership would actively attempt to market itself falsely, giving the impression that they are something they are not, is again left to speculation.

A copy of the claim to be a 1689 London Baptist Confession Church can be found in

Appendix E. 

A copy of the London Baptist Confession is available here.

Elder Distinctives 

GCC leadership does not tell people about the elders’ unwritten rule requiring anyone who becomes an elder to personally hold and actively teach from an exclusively Dispensationalist view. By withholding this information, they prevent the congregants from being able to fully consent to what they are taught. Withholding of such elder distinctives also prevents those outside of GCC from knowing what is happening in the church. They appear to be actively hiding Dispensational theology from congregants considering membership and from Christians simply looking for a church to attend. This appears to be a theme, with particular emphasis on the website and how the leadership is marketed to the outside world. Why they would do this instead of being forthcoming about their actual belief systems is, once again, left up to speculation.

Listed Elder Distinctives can be found in Appendix C.

Forced “Sanctification” 

GCC leadership cultivates an environment for the youth that intentionally subjects minors to grueling situations for the stated purpose of a type of forced “sanctification.” Church leaders, under the direction of Chris Riser, sometimes intentionally limited access to food and/or personal safety to children under their care without the informed consent of the parents. One such example, previously mentioned, was during the 2016 Youth Summer Camp in North Carolina. The youth were encouraged to enter water that was contaminated by a brain-eating amoeba, despite clearly articulated warnings by concerned parents who were aware of the death of a teenager by this infection a few days prior, as reported in the media. On other occasions, congregants reported heavily restricted meal access for youths engaging in certain GCC activities, such as hungry teens being limited to only two small crackers, two small slices of meat and cheese, and a single cookie as a substitute for the expected meal during a game of Outpost on a very cold winter night. Riser himself provided the food. A concerned parent questioned him about it and offered to go get more food, and he firmly insisted, “No, it will be fine.” Another example of subjecting minors to dangerous conditions occurred on the bike trips, as detailed by a previous blog post. Also, youth from grades 6 -12 were allowed to swim in open lakes on multiple occasions with no lifeguard or other designated adult watching over them. Many situations of intentional “opportunities” for “sanctification” over the years left the youth quite vulnerable to danger or unnecessary hardship both by design and by gross negligence.

Activities such as Underground Church and Outpost are also situations where the safety of the Youth is not disclosed to parents, with oddly intense expectations for games. There often appear to be no safety protocols at all, and full consent from the parents is not possible. In Underground Church, for example, both male and female teens are left unchaperoned and unaccompanied in remote locations, city parks, woods, basements, streets, etc., in a high-pressure game where they are chased down and “captured” by adults. There have been several documented incidents of outside individuals from the community witnessing these events and reporting them to police because the games appear to be real cases of kidnapping, abuse, and harassment. The leader boasts about these reports. The promotional videos for these games on YouTube involve players wielding real machetes and other weapons and duct-taping mouths shut, creating an atmosphere of fear. The games are marketed in a way that from the start promotes a deeply unsafe environment for young people. This kind of activity is inherently inappropriate as a church-sanctioned event. The pattern of severe neglect of basic safety along with pseudodoxical norms that such things create sanctification seem to be mostly kept from the parents. It also definitely qualifies as deeply irresponsible by subjecting vulnerable children to unnecessary and undeserved hardships, dangers, and potentially even abuse that are not justified by Scripture. The youth who grow up under this Pseudodoxy do not realize the potential dangers and the inappropriateness of the activities. The parents typically do not have full knowledge of the events, particularly of summer camp activities, and therefore cannot give full, knowing consent.

A copy of their Theology of Youth can be found in Appendix G.

The reader is reminded that every citizen of the State of Tennessee is a mandatory reporter when encountering incidences of child abuse. Tennessee Code Annotated 37-1-410 provides immunity from civil and criminal liability when reporting. Reporters do have the right to remain anonymous. Failure to report abuse is a Class A misdemeanor.

Tennessee Child Abuse Reporting Hotline: 877-237-0004

Sexual Abuse

GCC leadership willfully promotes an environment which easily allows marital rape. Marriage counselors there have advised that wives may often need to “cry their way through sex.” The elders hold to their own personal definition of sexual abuse, which is distinct from every other legally authoritative definition. They also disagree with well-established Christian Counseling protocols, drawing from those used by the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) but modifying them to suit their own permissive definitions of intimidation and abuse. They announced that their unique definitions are the mandate by which congregants will be judged under the rule of this elder board, and this mandate also informs their counseling guidelines. GCC leadership has brazenly published a detailed statement on their website, outright declaring that elders may choose not to intervene to prevent ongoing abuse, report cases of abuse to authorities, or even advise that spouses seek refuge from abusive sexual encounters. The statement categorizes and details, according to their opinion, what kinds of brutal and abusive sinful behaviors may occur that should be tolerated in a marriage, and which of those behaviors may rise to the threshold that requires the elder’s intervention. The number of times these issues have arisen at GCC and been handled according to the policy laid out by the elders is unknown.

After the original publication of this report, and after multiple questions and concerns from members, the statement was modified and then eventually removed from the GCC website. However, a full copy of the “GCC Elder’s Statement on Physical and Emotional Abuse in Relation to Divorce and Remarriage” can still be found in Appendix F and on the Academic Report page of the GraceMaryvilleWarning.info website. We would like to remind the reader that GCC has no legal authority whatsoever. Marital rape is a Class C felony and has been illegal on a federal level since 1993. There are no exemptions for the manner in which the rape occurred, including coercion by a spouse or other person. Further, at no point is it legal for church leadership to claim that a private confession or an instance of sanctuary frees the “counselor” from the mandatory reporting protocols of the State of Tennessee. Every citizen is, by law, a mandatory reporter, and the reader should be well versed in the procedures required if abuse is encountered.

If you or anyone you know is encountering or experiencing sexual abuse in any form, including coercion, please seek help. You are loved and not alone.

This behavior, and the environment cultivated by the leadership that supports abuse is not typical of a healthy church, and is exceedingly dangerous for the role of elder. A copy of the statement outlining GCC’s abuse definitions and categorizations of specific actions and frequency is available in the Appendices. For comparison, see Appendices A and B of the original report for full definitions and categorizations of abuse from a healthy and trauma-informed counseling protocol.