OK, here is the question. I did try to post it a little while ago, but it does not seem to have appeared. Apologies if it appears twice. If you come across somethingt that Diana said and read something in the Bible that says something different, which one do you give authority to? A) Diana B) The Bible Please write down your answer. (Diana, if you are reading this, yo
Forum: Destructive Churches

said yesterday I was going to pose a question at 6pm this evening, and hoped you would do me the curtesy of having pen and paper ready to record your answer. If you have not got that handy just now, could you perhaps find some before continuing? I don’t think it is too much of an imposition to ask you to have something ready to record your answer. My preference would be pen and paper,
Forum: Destructive Churches

Dear reader, I have a question for you. Quite a straight-forward question, but I would like you to take it seriously, so I am going to ask for a favour of sorts. That favour is to have a pen and paper ready and to write down the answer to my question. You do not need to post the answer here or show it to anyone, you just need to write it down. You can destroy it a few minutes later if you
Forum: Destructive Churches

I thought the idea of putting a sermon through an AI engine was an interesting one, so downloaded the New Year Word and created a transcript for analysis. Before I give you the summary, let me remind you of a verse from Deuteronomy. QuoteDeuteronomy 18 21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name o
Forum: Destructive Churches

Referring back to the AI summary of a recent sermon that was posted by Falkirk Bairn, who does this teaching benefit? It is very clear it does not benefit the members of the congregations. Most of those in the congregation are miserable. They may not admit that publicly, but they do in one-to-one conversations. Pretty well all of those who have left have gone on record saying this sort of tea
Forum: Destructive Churches

So many interesting points are being made, it is hard to keep up with them all. I thought the Greek’s earlier point about a safeguarding co-ordinator was for example an important one. Here is a concern raised about children being allowed to stay in a meeting were they are taught that mental health issues are their own fault because they are not being spiritual enough or something like that.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Good points folks. There is just so much that could be said about this as it is wrong in so many levels. I can think of at least ten good points to make- so as most of you might expect by now, I will probably make twenty :-). Let me take just one aspect of this unholy mess of a sermon. Let us just say for a moment that Struthers is right and that the problem is demonic activity. That rai
Forum: Destructive Churches

Falkirk Bairn Welcome back! Good to hear from you, and thanks for once more sharing a bit of your personal story as well as the sermon summary. This is seriously worrying stuff. There is so, so much there to talk about here. I am sure there will be a number of comments in response to this but just one thought at the moment which is to follow up on the comment Falkirk Bairn makes abou
Forum: Destructive Churches

On another note, I gave just read an interesting post on Facebook: +++ I think I’ve been trying to make sense of something that has already made itself clear. I kept asking: How could the church do this? How could leaders know people were hurting and say nothing? How could someone serve for 20, 30, even 50 years and leave without one phone call asking, Are you okay? How could
Forum: Destructive Churches

Blackwatch, I fully agree. “Anointing” is of course mentioned in the Bible, but it is a one-off thing. David was for example anointed to be king, but just once, not twice a day for years. There is nothing in the Bible that corresponds to the Struthers doctrine on anointing. It is also interesting to hear Tim Keller’s view of this sort of thing. If you for example listen to his two
Forum: Destructive Churches

…although I actually logged in to post something quite different. I came across this and thought it might be of interest to forum readers. —— When abuse is exposed, many churches don’t ask “How do we protect people?” They ask, “How do we protect our image?” This framework comes from a conversation with Julie Roys and psychologist Dr. Julia Dahl, naming the most common image-repair
Forum: Destructive Churches

Rensil, I absolutely get your point about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I have retained mg faith in spite of the abusive behaviours I have seen. If a mathematician punches you in the face, it does not mean maths is wrong. I do think it depends a bit how the word deconstruction is used however. I think I probably have “deconstructed” my faith in the sense that I have realised t
Forum: Destructive Churches

WisePiglet Thanks for providing us with so much really helpful information. It is good to know there are people who understand these sorts of issues and there is help and support out there. There are so many bits I could comment on, but I will restrict my thoughts to just a few. These are not necessarily the most important points, they are just specific points that have stood out to me at
Forum: Destructive Churches

Thanks to the Latigo team and to you RedRoad for your amazing work on all of this – a Herculean effort indeed. I will not repeat the well-made points here, but it is worth noting that, as has been pointed out, this was drawn to the attention of the church in 2011 (and there were a number of reminders throughout the intervening years). Only arrogance stopped it from being addressed at the time
Forum: Destructive Churches

Al Duff, | Absolutely. There has to be an explanation and apology for the financial side. There also has to be an apology for the abuse of the pulpit. I have said before that, if the leaders did not mean for everyone to refuse to have TVs, for all the women to wear hats, for people to defer to the leaders in terms of what job they took or who they married, then they had the worst communic
Forum: Destructive Churches

I have been thinking about my earlier post explaining why I think that there will at some point be answers and apologies, and would like to add in one further perspective, which is perhaps the most important one of all. That is “the God’s perspective” so to speak. I appreciate this is not the place to promote one particular world view, but it seems to me that is a reasonable thing to talk abo
Forum: Destructive Churches

Wisepiglet (/ML), Wow. Thank you. Your comments covey so much of the reality of what it is to be a Struthers Survivor. Powerful stuff that really resonates. So sorry you had to go through all that but thanks for sharing both your story and the very poignant poetry. Lots of stuff I could comment on but you have said it so well that I will just say to others to go back and read it agai
Forum: Destructive Churches

Liz25, I note your statement that people may never get answers, but I have to disagree. As there are a number of reasons for my view I have divided into sections, each of which comes at this from a different perspective. Not a dig at you though - just my thoughts/analysis on this issue. 1 The factual perspective +++++++++++++++++ It is a fact that apologies have been issued in the pas
Forum: Destructive Churches

Oops, another post, and one that ties in well with the comments above. Not planned that way though, I made the above post then received a message from a friend including the link below. I will be totally upfront and say the clip is about how to identify spiritual abuse. It is about 15 minutes long. Everyone in Struthers should listen to this. Everyone. E V E R Y O N E.
Forum: Destructive Churches

I thought folks might be interested in the enclosed extract from the Guardian this week. QuoteThe Guardian online, Tues 31 March 2026 When Rachael Reign finally left her relationship and called the police, she came with a litany of allegations. She felt parts of her life had been controlled, she told the call handler. She said she had been given instructions about what to wear, which includ
Forum: Destructive Churches

Thanks Rensil, On another note, has anyone listened to Diana’s sermon on Instagram? Apparently the first 5 minutes consist of her complaining about getting complaints. There are a few observations I would like to make about that. I have not listened to the sermon, so cannot speak about this with any authority, but there are still some things that may be worth thinking about. More than ha
Forum: Destructive Churches

I though some f you might be interested in some quotes from a book I have been reading, To Heal and not to hurt: A fresh approach to safeguarding in the Church by Ministers Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson. QuoteTo Heal and not to hurt Page 8 We have learnt there is no such thing as what used to be called a ‘historic case'. The abuser may be long dead, but the pain lives on. We have also l
Forum: Destructive Churches

...and here is the link to Tim Keller speaking. Just a minute or so long.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Blackwatch, Yes, I agree with your point(s) and cannot really argue with what you say in the final post on p271. Whatever might have been, the reality is that what happened is not acceptable. BeautyforAshes, what a powerful post. Clearly someone who has been there and felt the impact. Amazing how pastors who are not in Struthers have somehow reached the conclusion that part of the job i
Forum: Destructive Churches

I have argued in the past that Struthers has only one tool in their toolbox. When people are brought up in Struthers they end up with a very limited understanding of how life works and how the Kingdom of God works. What does occasionally happen is however that someone comes along with a broader experience, but missing the hammer that Struthers has. They go, "wow. if I could add that t
Forum: Destructive Churches

Rensil, thanks for the details about Mary Black’s illness. All interesting detail. One of the sad things (apart from what appears to be an unnecessary early death) is that there were many adults who had real life experiences, good and bad, that others could have learned from. It is really disappointing that the leaders were so afraid of anyone being “corrupted” by anything, including other c
Forum: Destructive Churches

I'm sure I heard that Mr Black told Mary she did not need medical treatment for her cancer as God would cure her. Pretty sad if that is true.
Forum: Destructive Churches

I do find it slightly ironic that the three daughters were only able to move into key leadership roles in the church because their mother saw her role as a supporter not as a leader and provided the support to Mr Black to allow him to build them up in that way.
Forum: Destructive Churches

It is good to see so many posts about different aspects of SMC and the experience people have. I would love to follow up on all of these interesting points, but that might make my post even longer than usual, so will just continue with some of my own thoughts just now. I really am quite intrigued by the comments by BlessedChild. It is as if they are saying that the answer to absolutely every
Forum: Destructive Churches

BlessedChild, thank you for your response. I am not familiar with these resources, but it is good to know there are things that may help individuals on their journey, and it is good of you to provide this info. Whenever I am presented with any sort of answer or solution, there is however a question I like to ask to help me understand what is going on. That question is, “what problem is this
Forum: Destructive Churches