Apologies The Petitor , I have only just seen your messages and have replied .

Fortunate to have experienced other churches , which we loved , but due to life and house moves were no longer possible to attend.

We stumbled across SMC about 3 years ago and started attending.

We are in no rush to find a church and are happy to hop around seeing where best fits us but are going to wait until the new year.

BloomingOrchid - I was genuinely not commenting on you taking a few days to respond, that is perfectly reasonable (and I think it is crazy the way folk sometimes expect instant responses these days!)

My comment was more that when looking at PMs, I noticed there were some messages from a number of months ago that had not even been read, so people may be firing off the occasional PM, then not checking for a response. That is a general comment to all readers of the forum, I am not particularly needing a response to anything I may have sent.

Good to know you have experienced other churches, I think that will make the move a great deal easier as, from what I have seen, it is folk with little outside experience that get stuck because they have lost the ability to discern what is good and bad.


To be honest, that applies to the leaders as well. Many of them have little or no experience of church life outside of Struthers, so have no idea at all how church really works.

Happy 2026 to all of you . I pray that more will read the experiences of the many on the forum , realise and escape the clutches .

Blessings to you all ..

Happy New Year all! An alternative "New Year Word" if I may:

Matthew 7:15-20
New King James Version
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them."

What are the fruits of Struthers? This forum shows pain, trauma, people who were pushed out of their faith, all sorts of harm and abuse. And we also see closed churches, closed school, dwindling congregation. The tree is not bearing good fruit.

(As an aside, I also find it fascinating that a church with such an open prejudice against Roman Catholics maintains its own doctrine of recieved revelation whilst claiming to be totally Bible based... oops)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2026 07:43AM by anonymousfornow.

Hello again!

Thought I would pop up again, with a bit of new material.

I was at an event very recently and bumped into several Struthers people, both leaders and the rank-and-file. I have to admit they were very nice to me, in fact I was touched by their grace. I can only assume they have been living under a rock and haven't seen my - or anyone else's - critiques on this forum! Or maybe they had decided to cut me some slack because the occasion was a painful one for Liz and me.

I am pleased to report that I did manage to slip in a jokey dig to the most senior leader, asking her whether she drugged new people (her branch is doing quite well) as they came through the door or at a later point. She said they don't drug people. I hit back with "Just the Kool-Aid then?!" She and her husband just smiled, sucked it up.

I did then - since I'd stuck in a dig and that's how interpersonal encounters go - pay her a great compliment, saying she had once saved my life. On one of her visits to the Glasgow branch she came over during a prayer time and gave me a prophetic word of knowledge, which gave me strength for a terrible and long period of work conflict I was entering. Without that word of encouragement, I would be dead. Pretty much. The thing is, I was a nobody, utterly invisible, in the church: Mary Black had made sure of that, blanking me suspiciously from the day I joined; so I was genuinely surprised and grateful that this visiting leader had spared me a thought. We hardly knew each other. I told her this, and she looked moved; as well she might.

Sorry to say, I couldn't resist a parting dig: "So you occasionally get it right".

Not trying to rehabilitate the church with these observations. My verdict remains the same: SMC is like the proverbial parson's egg - a mix of the good and the bad.

Form Al duff….My verdict remains the same: SMC is like the proverbial parson's egg - a mix of the good and the bad.

And therein lies the danger and confusion. A mix of good and bad. Because over the years there have been people who have been helped by leaders who have been well out of order on many occasions but can then give a word that is very helpful for an individual. It can cause a lot of confusion. But we need to look especially at the Old Testament and some of the things those leaders got totally wrong, yet God still used them. The leaders in SMC must not mix up anointing for ‘being right all the time, or even part of the time’ but must humbly submit their lives to God that they would repent and be completely changed.

I also found the "some good/some bad" issue tricky at times.
There were genuine healings and there were people who were helped to turn their lives around.
I think that was much more to do with God's grace and ordinary attendees helping each other than the the compassion or spirituality of the leaders, even when some of the leaders did "get it right" some of the time.
There were definitely some lovely people who stayed in Struthers despite the issues and the hurt they experienced. There were so many ways in which it was made difficult for folk to leave. Unwritten rules about moving elsewhere and being condemned or ostracised for doing so, being told you'd backslide or have problems with demons if you left, or more subtle pressures being applied.
There's no doubt in my mind that, overall, the harm done outweighs the help received as most posters have indicated.
It's interesting to see there are still new people reading the forum and sharing their experiences.
There are healthy churches out there - albeit none are perfect and neither are their leaders.
One of the issues at Struthers was that people were actually being coerced into total trust in and obedience to the leaders rather than to God himself. That would be strenuously denied of course!
I've moved house s few times since leaving Struthers and have been a member of three different churches all doing their best to follow God and to support and lead the congregation without being abusive or controlling.
All the very best to anyone looking for a new church and a Happy New Year to all.

Danger and confusion indeed and a point well made "Iquit" (if I may call you that)

And Al Duff many sympathies and much credit for poking the snakes in the midst of your situation.

And as ever the leader will repeat endlessly the one compliment relating to long ago and endlessly ignore the valid criticisms and the present realities resulting in so much ongoing pain for those her church mistreated. Many of those in pain have left and many still sit sad and broken in the ageing congregations.

And you both expose the New Year Truth:

They sometimes got a thing right but mostly messed things up in peoples lives through their venal natures and lack of basic pastoral training and care. THEN STOOD UP and insisted from the pulpit that they were so specially righteous that it was a sin against God to suggest that they ever got anything wrong.

I believe (as many do on here) that there are people who have led, and some who still lead, Struthers Churches who have no more important thing to do with the remainder of their lives than to correct that false teaching they self servingly gave and make amends with those they lied to from the Struthers pulpit.

15 years

2,678 posts

And now 1,000,000 views - spectacularly far ahead of any organisation in the world ever discussed on this Destructive Churches website.

And still new people regularly coming onto the forum to share their bad experiences.


Yet no mention of this ongoing reputational disaster for Struthers Memorial Church (even as a risk) in any annual report ever. Far less a plan to deal with it.

Far Far less a plan to help their own members understand why displaying a horrendous lack of care for those they have damaged is the shameful road they have chosen.

Far Far Far less to clearly explain how their conduct can possibly be compatible with Biblical Christian leadership.

Quite an inheritance to leave for the next generation of leaders to sort out for them when the present ancients finally relinquish their grip on power. Though at this point are there even any fragments left of the Black/Taylor teachings to pass on?

Happy New Year folks.

As the years go by, increasingly I find myself wanting nothing more than the total destruction / deconstruction of the cult. I make no concessions for them whatsoever. This forum serves as a reminder of the catalog of hurt, manipulation and control that has been exerted on poor souls down through the decades.

As one of the esteemed 'leaders' said in a prayer recently 'Oh Ramona Shakowar Innamyoss'. That's right - grown adults uttering nonsense. Hopefully more and more people come to their senses and realise just what a total nonsense it is.

I heard a whisper that the BBC documentary will be airing this year - please let it be true!