Some interesting reporting here from the BBC about the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a church it seems with very similar practices to SMC.

[www.bbc.co.uk]

They believe mental health issues are because of dark spirits or demons, that sexuality can be changed through prayer, and that deliverance can be performed on young people - Sound familiar?

Hi anonymousfornow,

That is interesting and, as you suggest, there seem to be a number of similarities with SMC. One difference is that SMC probably do not have a policy about not praying with folk under 18 however. Seems to me that one of the problems with organisations like SMC is they can never learn from others, so it will not even think about such a policy until something goes wrong.


And - as it is getting to that time of year - Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this thread.

Here is a link for a YouTube message by an American lady, Roberta Morrison, entitled Church Trauma. I thought people on here might find her talk helpful. She has been through the experience of church trauma herself and had to leave ministry behind. So she knows what she’s talking about. She calls it none other than spiritual abuse.

When you listen to her, it could be Struthers that she’s talking about. She mentions being shunned or treated coldly by members of a church you have left, and consequently you leave friends behind, authoritative preaching and pastoring, having decisions made for you by leaders, shaming if you make a mistake or don’t get healed after being prayed with, sidelining you when a younger person comes along to replace you in a ministry etc.

She describes what people who leave abusive churches experience and she calls it TRAUMA. And from that trauma, people need time to recover and to heal, time to learn their worth and value as an individual. Time to meet new people and find a healthy church.
Anyway, I’d recommend watching it. Here’s the link:

[youtu.be]

I am trying to find where in this thread where it talks about the amount of money that Hugh stole and embezzled? I am also trying to find the part where Mary groomed young girls? Not to mention the church praying on the often mentally unstable younger people and convincing them to give their money to God aka the black slush fund. The beauty of cults is they convince people that if they are not part of it they will lose something in the case of struthers many lost a lot and gained nothing. Losing their youth, money, sense of right and wrong and gained nothing if anything once you worked it out it really challenged any faith you had. Maybe it had changed but the earlier church of the 80’s was corrupt and most definitely a cult !!

I don't think there was ever any question that Hugh Black stole money. I believe he made unsuccessful stock market investments on behalf of the church.

I have also never heard anything about Mary grooming girls.

I didn't have the best of experiences at Struthers, but I think it's very important not to invent falsehoods on top of the negative experiences that people actually had.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2024 04:46PM by MW89.

Hi HughBlack and welcome to the forum. I always find it interesting when new people join and tell their stories or share their concerns (or their gratitude for good things, if that is their experience!)

MW89 – I fully take your point about making sure the reports are clear and accurate, but I do not think that the money issue was quite as straight-forward as you suggest. There are some posts about this on p60 and 61 of this forum (and probably elsewhere as well) that give some details and even personal experiences.

Mr Black did not just make unsuccessful stock market investments on behalf of the church . That would be bad judgement, not anything illegal. What he did was more than that however. He approached individuals to ask them to sign up for a release of shares, fraudulently using their names to obtain shares for the church.

Some organisation – possibly British Gas or BT or something like that was being transferred from government ownership to the stock market, so shares were being released for people to buy. You could only buy a certain number though. So the church could have bought say 100 shares and that would have been fine. What Mr Black and current treasurer Chris Jewell did was however approach people to get then to sign a share application form, which allowed that individual to also get their 100 shares. The problem is that it was not the individual’s money, but the church’s money that was then to be used to buy these shares.

Everyone thought it was a “sure thing”. The value would go up as soon as the shares were released, the shares would be sold again, and the church would make a nice profit. These share application forms had an option to sell immediately built into the form, so there was not any other later decision to be made. I do not think any money even changed hands – you made the application to buy at the government rate and then sell immediately once the value was determined by the market, pocketing the profit or, if they went down, having to meet the loss.

The problem (for Mr Black and Mr Jewell) is that the value went down instead of up. That meant they made a huge loss not only on the shares they bought legitimately, but also on all the shares they purchased that were not in their own name. Anyone I have spoken to that knows about these things says that is illegal and fraudulent. Had it been reported, there would probably have been charges.

I do not think anyone has ever suggested Mr Black would have benefitted personally from any of this, but it does raise a number of moral questions, and also begs the important question of why God, who apparently spoke to all the leaders every day, neglected to mention this important issue.

On another matter, the question of whether the church has changed is a really important one. If it has changed, they need to stand up and say that – “look, we got that wrong, but we have learned and would do it differently now”. They could for example publish a paper explain what happened about the shares and what action they took.

The problem is they of course cannot say that the church has changed, as it means the leaders are not these amazing channels of God’s blessing, they are just ordinary people who sometimes get things wrong, so their words have to be judged not accepted as some sort of Divine Revelation. Once they admit that, it all falls to bits.

Hi a private school update.
The church I understand, has had meetings about emptying church accounts, to keep the private school afloat. It was on the verge of closing.
Members all voted overwhelmingly in favour of it.

Hello again. I may be able to say something useful here.

ThePetitor's account is, as usual, measured and accurate. It was British Telecom not Scottish Gas which was being sold off. Hugh Black approached numerous members of the church in exactly the way ThePetitor describes. (He did not approach me because he knew I was dead set against privatization of public utilities.) It was an unethical and illegal act of monumental hubris, which should have been vetoed by the church treasurer; that is their sacred role.

The suggestion that Mary Black groomed girls is silly. She was a hopeless pastor, ruined many a relationship and career. I don't think she was cut out for leadership; I think she was only high in the status hierarchy because she was a daughter of a co-founder. But she was celibate, modelled herself on the walking disaster-area that was Amy Carmichael, and was far above any foul practice like grooming.

Thirdly, thank you for the intel that they voted overwhelmingly for the church to bail out their private school. I know some people in SMC and had heard about this vote. I tried to reason with them, arguing that the school was wrong from the start; it was clearly based in raw ambition and sentiment, not reason or revelation; not even Hugh Black agreed with it (he averted his eyes when I challenged him on the point at the time, and dissociated himself from the decision); that the decision has demonstably been proven wrong by, far from being a cash-cow, becoming a vampyre on the congregation; etc. Sadly, they did not listen. They have drunken too deeply of the proverbial Kool Aid.

Not that any of this makes a tight church a cult ....!

A cult would be a place, where it’s members aren’t allowed to mix with non members.
If you leave struthers you are ignored.

Hi Alistair,

Thanks for the comments about the shares I think that clarifies some of the fraud. Unfortunately there was a large focus on some members to give more than a normal cash contribution or bank cheque/ transfer. From personal experience I saw the pressure also put on vulnerable to give money when the church should have been supporting them. Hugh and family did personally benefit from this but I am sure you would never see it in the accounts let’s put it this way the collection plate was weighty! And when Hugh or Mary needed a new car that was announced so they could continue to do the work of God! The cult like grip meant that hardworking people dipped into their savings to support. Manipulation at its very best! I believe that cash was taken from someone who discovered it and challenged Hugh on it.

Regarding the shares not only did that go badly but Hugh without the knowledge of the church chased the losses with more funds. This you could say was for the Church however I understand that a large number of these shares were in his family name. (Including Mary). Maybe this was for some other reason but it seems like a strange practice.


Regarding Mary unfortunately I know this from m relative who experienced one-on-one coaching/prayer sessions as a young teenage girl.i find this totally in appropriate
And a breach of trust built on a lie of getting closer to god. Maybe you are not aware as you were older or male.
It happened a Wiston Lodge among other places.